Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, David Hollander & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Sentimental, Ilya's past

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2025-12-25 Words: 994 Chapters: 1/1

a taste of home

Summary

the Hollander family's first Christmas dinner

Notes

I'm feeling Emotional About Food and I'm making it Ilya's problem <3

The people who give you their food,
give you their heart.

- Cesar Chavez

-

There's something so beautifully domestic about Ilya in the kitchen, bare feet dancing absently to Christmas songs and a Santa hat smushed onto his golden curls. If Shane was more of a smiling person, his cheeks would be hurting by now – let alone when his parents arrive, and Ilya embraces each of them with a kiss on the cheek, beaming from ear to ear.

“Devilled eggs!” Ilya cheers, taking the plate of offerings and passing them each a glass of wine. He laughs at the pun on David's shirt. “Shane Hollander, your parents are fun!”

He chatters away with them, and something warm blossoms inside Shane's chest. He's a bit of a lightweight, sure, but that's not it. It's Ilya, soaked in joy and glowing like the sun; free and open like he doesn't get to be with a lot of people. It's his parents, reciprocating, even though he'd feared for so long they would not. Maybe they can't tell the world, or not yet, but inside these walls, it's everything.

Shane drifts into the kitchen, and he wonders if they can feel all of it radiating from him.

“Do you want fish with glaze or without?” Ilya offers his parents. “Shane is having without.”

“I'm boring, remember,” Shane teases.

“Oh, with, definitely,” Yuna insists.

“I will pass,” David says. “I'm not much for the, uh, Eastern European pallet. Except for sour cream. Someone really knew what they were doing with that.”

“Smetana!” With the tongs he's using to cook the fish, Ilya gestures to the tub of it he's got sitting on the bench. “My sour cream, is your sour cream, Mr Hollander.”

“Oh, David, please,” David brushes him off, and just for a moment the shine from Ilya falters. The smile flickers in his eyes. Shane wonders if a man who never even called his own father Dad can fathom such a thing. He intertwines their fingers.

“Ilya loves to cook,” he offers up, by way of distraction. “There's so much food. Seriously.”

He leads them through to the living room, where the spread is so generous it takes up most of an already generous dining table. His parents' eyes go wide, and the sails of Ilya's pride tentatively flicker in the wind of it.

“Is not just me,” Ilya protests. “I find deli bakery who also likes to cook. There is roast turkey. Chicken pie. Pirozkhi – is cabbage, is pretty Russian, be careful.”

David laughs, and Ilya laughs, but it's not as bold as it was before. He shows off his table, but clings to Shane's hand, and if not that, to his immediate orbit. Joy battles desperation - be proud of me, be proud of me - and if Shane hadn't spent so much time with him, he never would have known how it seeps out of every pore. Is it harder for Ilya, he wonders, to pretend not to care? Or to try and be honest without letting slip just how desperately he wants it? Either way, he soldiers on, and Shane hopes something's healing.

-

“Now, Ilya-”

It doesn't take long before they're fed and happy, coming to rest on the sofas nursing impending food-comas. Shane's mother digs out from her handbag, a red box just a little larger than her hands.

“- I'm sure Shane told you, we don't usually do gifts. But since it's your first Christmas with us and everything we wanted to get you a little something. We hope you don't mind.”

It's got little white decorations on it, like the box itself is iced, and it's tied with a thin red and white string.

“We didn't know you're such a chef,” David continues, “I'm sure you could make it, but one of my old colleagues is from just outside of Tula and he swears by this place.”

“Ah, Tula!” Ilya beams, delighted as he pulls at the strings. “I know this place, that is so-”

Shane feels it hit Ilya like a truck.

The words die on his lips. Even his breathing clenches right up, like he's just been dunked in cold water. Tears spring to his eyes and if he could have fled he would but his body won't move.

Shane takes the box from his hands. Inside it is a little pile of ginger-bread figures, each crafted with artisanal perfection and care, on the very top of which is a horse of that sort of Nordic-drawn style, with intricate patterns in pastel colours dotted and swirled across it. It's beautiful. But it takes more than beauty to make Ilya Rozanov cry.

“Um. Thank you for these,” Shane attempts. “I think Ilya is... missing home, a little.”

“Of course, we should have thought-”

“- we're so sorry.”

Ilya shakes his head again, cutting through their apologies, and they wait as he tries to put a sentence back together.

“Kozuli,” he manages eventually. “Is lucky. My mother used to make for me.” Then something breathy and choked in Russian. Then:

“I have not had since I was twelve.”

He covers his mouth with his hand after that, and finally gets up and flees, behind the couch and out the back of the house to where the garden is quiet.

“Twelve?” Yuna whispers quietly.

“Geez,” David breathes.

I was young, Ilya had said. Tears prickle at Shane's eyes too, and at the back of his throat.

“I- I'm gonna go,” he says, nodding out the back after Ilya.

“Of course. We'll clean up in here a bit and get out of your hair.”

“Thanks. Sorry,”

His mother shakes her head, and Shane feels possessed to throw his arms around her. It's a surprise, he feels her jolt – he's the first to admit, he's not much of a hugger. But nor does he have the words to explain the overwhelming love, and pain, and gratitude.

She hugs back – briefly, firmly – then nudges him away and whispers, “Go.”