Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warnings:

Rape/Non-Con, Underage Sex

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Sibling Incest, Abusive Relationships, Manipulation, Sexual Coercion, Dissociation, Coping Mechanisms, Angst, Ilya Rozanov Had a Bad Childhood, Childhood Trauma

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-20 Words: 2,957 Chapters: 1/1

Bratishka

Summary

Alexei comes home drunk and crosses a line with his younger brother that can never be uncrossed, forcing Ilya to retreat into himself and begin imagining the escape that will one day save him.

Notes

Ilyusha — an affectionate diminutive of Ilya, like a nickname you'd use with someone you're close to or fond of.
Malysh — "little one" or "baby." A term of endearment.
Lyosha — an informal diminutive of Alexei, the way a sibling or close friend would address him.
Bratishka — "little brother," affectionate.

Alexei stumbles through the bedroom door.

Ilya checks the time on his clock radio. The red numbers blink around the molded plastic, wrapped around faux woodgrain:

1:14 AM.

Cheap vodka and some woman’s perfume clings to his brother’s jacket. 

Alexei kicks off his boots. One thuds against the dresser. The other skids somewhere under Ilya’s bed. 

“Ilyusha,” Alexei slurs, nudging him. “Wake up, malysh, I need to tell you something... and don’t pretend you’re sleeping, I saw your light on from the street.”

Tonight, Alexei celebrated his birthday. He had slipped away to some club and left Ilya behind like he apparently had always intended on doing.

Ilya rolls onto his back with a scowl, shoving Alexei’s hand off his shoulder. “You reek,” he mutters, voice rough from disuse more than sleep, because Alexei’s right. He wasn’t sleeping. What he had been doing was staring at the ceiling for the better part of the last hour nursing a bruised kind of sulk. “You said you’d take me with you tonight. I sat around like an idiot waiting, and you just, what, forgot? Found some girl and forgot you had a brother?”

Alexei huffs out a laugh and drops heavily onto the edge of Ilya’s bed. The mattress groans. Alexei doesn’t bother taking off his jacket. He sprawls half-sideways, one arm braced behind him, the other reaching out to ruffle Ilya’s hair, rough and clumsy, the way their father used to before he stopped bothering with affection altogether.

Ilya swats him off.

“Ay, ay, ay, don’t sulk at me, malysh, your face will stick like that.” His Russian comes out thick, vowels blurred at the edges. He smells worse up close. Like ethanol and cigarettes and something floral underneath it, cheap and cloying. “I didn’t forget. I thought about you the whole night, I swear.”

Ilya jerks his head away from the hand, hair falling into his eyes, and pushes himself up against the headboard with the blanket bunched in his lap.

“You’re full of shit,” Ilya mumbles. “You just didn’t want your little brother tagging along.”

Alexei sways and lets out a laugh that’s too loud for the hour. “Ah, Ilyusha, don’t be like that,” he mumbles. “I didn’t forget. I just—” he waves a hand vaguely, as if the gesture explains anything, “—got held up. You know how it is. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“I’m fifteen, Lyosha, not fucking nine.” Ilya drags a hand down his face and exhales through his nose. “Just say you wanted to get your dick wet and that you forgot.”

Alexei’s grin spreads slow and crooked, and his eyes linger on Ilya a beat too long, pupils blown wide and black. “Mm, such a mouth on you now,” he murmurs, voice dropping lower, warmer. He doesn’t move away.

Ilya doesn’t respond to that. He pulls the blanket up higher and turns his face away so Alexei can’t read it so easily.

That only makes Alexei lean in closer, one hand bracing on the mattress beside Ilya’s hip. “When did my little brother grow up, hm? Talking that way to me...” His other hand finds Ilya’s knee through the blanket. “Maybe I stayed away because it’s safer for you, malysh. Ever think of that?”

Ilya goes very still. The air in the room shifts, or maybe it’s just him. Something cold and wrong slides down his spine. 

“That club was no good for you. Too many bad men. I was protecting you, bratishka. Hey, don’t make that face—”

“Get your hand off me,” Ilya says, and his voice is flat the way ice is flat before it cracks. He shoves the blanket down between them with one fist and tries to push Alexei away. “You’re drunk. Go sleep it off on the couch, Lyosha.”

Alexei snorts.

When Ilya shoves him again, Alexei sways back, then settles forward heavier than before. His eyes drag over Ilya’s face, unfocused and wet-shiny, and he makes a soft sound in the back of his throat.

“What the hell are you on?” Ilya snaps.

“Bozhe, look at you,” Alexei breathes, ignoring the question. He strokes his thumb over Ilya’s knee. “You got her face, you know that? Mama’s face. Same eyes, same mouth... she was so beautiful, Ilyusha, so beautiful it hurt to look at her, and now here you are...” His voice cracks a little. “My pretty little brother. Prettier than any girl I had tonight.”

Ilya presses back against the wall behind him. The cold plaster digs into his shoulder blades. He’s a head shorter than Alexei, but built lean, and he can outskate anyone on the rink. 

That doesn’t mean much against the dead weight of a grown man who refuses to move.

“Don’t talk about her,” Ilya grits out. “Don’t you fucking talk about her like that. Not with your hand on me. Get off me, Alexei—” He twists, tries to draw his knee up and away and shoves at Alexei’s chest.

Anything to put space between them.

Alexei catches his wrist and tsks through his teeth like Ilya is the one being unreasonable. “Shh, shh, malysh, what are you doing, hey—” His other hand slides up, cups the side of Ilya’s jaw, thumb dragging along his cheekbone with a tenderness that makes Ilya’s stomach turn. “I’m not doing anything. I’m just looking at my brother. Can’t I look at you? After everything I do for you?”

Ilya doesn’t move.

He doesn’t bite or shout or bring his knee up into Alexei’s ribs the way he’s done in schoolyard fights since he was twelve. He freezes with his wrist caught in his brother’s hand and Alexei’s thumb on his cheekbone.

Some sick stupid part of him leans the barest fraction into the touch, because it’s been so long since anyone in this apartment touched him like he was worth touching.

Mama’s face, Alexei had said. 

Pretty. 

Ilya’s eyes sting and he hates it, hates himself, hates that his breath comes shallow now and he doesn’t know if it’s fear or something uglier curling underneath. “Lyosha,” he says, and it comes out wrong. Too quiet, too young. His hand is flat against Alexei’s chest but it isn’t pushing away anymore. It rests there, feeling his brother’s heartbeat.

Alexei huffs a laugh against Ilya’s hair, and it’s not kind. It’s the soft, satisfied sound of a man who’s won something he’s been circling for a while. The hand on Ilya’s jaw slides back to the nape of his neck and his fingers curl there, locking Ilya in place.

“There he is,” Alexei mutters, “there’s my good boy. All that mouth and look at you now, quiet as a mouse.” He hooks his other arm around Ilya’s shoulders and drags him into the sour heat of his jacket, chin heavy on the crown of Ilya’s head, the whole weight of him pinning more than holding. “You think I don’t know what you need? I know you better than you know yourself, Ilyusha. All that pouting when I come home late, all those big sad eyes. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” His hand drifts down Ilya’s back and settles low. “You should be so grateful that somebody in this house still looks at you. Papa stopped a long time ago, eh?”

Ilya goes rigid and the breath he draws hitches sharp and high in his throat like a hiccup. The words land like a slap, wrong and obscene. Because he’s not a boy. He’s fifteen and he’s the best forward in the junior league. 

But his jaw locks shut because Alexei is right about something.

Their father hasn’t looked at him in years except to criticize his skating or his softness or his failure to appreciate having a roof over his head.

The hand on his lower back spreads wider, fingers pressing into the muscle above his lower hips, and Ilya feels his eyes burn with the shame of not shoving it away despite everything.

“Don’t,” Ilya manages, but it comes out choked and wet and he doesn’t know if he’s begging Alexei to stop touching him or begging him not to pull away and laugh and call him pathetic the way he will tomorrow.

Alexei hums low in his throat and he tightens his arm around Ilya’s shoulders, pulling him deeper into that reek of vodka and smoke, close enough that his lips brush the shell of Ilya’s ear when he speaks. “You’re shaking,” he whispers, mock-sweet, and his hand cups the curve of his ass now through the thin sleep pants, fingers digging in just enough to remind Ilya who’s stronger as he straddles him.

“Who else is going to take care of you, eh?” Alexei grinds down on him, moaning into his ear. “Who else is going to make sure you get to America, hm? Not him.” He nudges Ilya’s chin up with his nose, breath hot and sour, thumb returning to trace the trembling line of his jaw. “Just me, malysh. Who paid for your skates, eh? Who convinced Papa not to sell them last month when the heating bill came? So be good. Let your brother show you how to be loved.”

Sweaty fingers slip down the waistband of Ilya’s sleep pants. The tug is rough enough to scrape skin. Ilya’s breath stops when his brother’s mouth finds the pulse in his neck, teeth grazing the tendon there with a wet pressure that makes Ilya’s knees jerk upward, but Alexei’s weight bears down, crushing him into the mattress and Ilya stares past Alexei’s shoulder.

What Ilya hears in that moment is the clean slash of skates on a fresh ice. He feels the cold air burning his lungs while Alexei is whispering “good boy, good boy” against his collarbone, fingers wrapping around his soft cock and Ilya goes limp.

Alexei groans and drags Ilya’s hand to place it against the hard heat straining through his own jeans. “See? See how much I love you, Ilyusha?”

Ilya squeezes his eyes shut until the darkness behind his lids sparkles like ice crystals under arena lights.

He is not in the bedroom anymore but flying down the center line of an empty rink. The cold air burns his lungs clean while his body goes slack, unresisting beneath Alexei’s weight.

… And Ilya thinks of his coach’s son.

He thinks of the way the boy held him last winter, hands warmer than they should have been, teaching him things about his own body that Ilya never knew.

Ilya clings to that now, the memory of choosing, of wanting, of being reckless and alive in his own skin, while vodka-sour breath settles against his neck.

Alexei grinds Ilya deeper into the mattress while his free hand fumbles at his own belt, the leather hiss loud in the dark room. “That’s it, malysh, just hold still for your big brother,” he slurs, and then his jeans are shoved down. The rough denim scrapes against Ilya’s bare thighs as Alexei presses his naked heat against Ilya’s hip, leaving a wet trail where the fabric of his sleep pants has been tugged low.

Ilya screws his eyes shut, but he cannot close out the wet sound of Alexei spitting into his palm, the slick noise of skin on skin as Alexei strokes himself against Ilya’s stomach, smearing the mess there. 

“Look at you, so soft, so pretty,” Alexei pants, and then his hand is wrenching Ilya’s sleep pants down to his knees, exposing him to the air.

Ilya feels the cold rink air, hears the scrape of his blades on ice, but his body registers the warm, meaty pressure of Alexei’s fingers gripping him with a roughness that makes his breath stutter. 

“You’re not even hard yet,” Alexei laughs, bitter and fond, and then he’s shoving Ilya’s legs apart with his knees, settling his full weight between them so the bedframe squeals, and Ilya thinks of the coach’s son’s mouth, warm and willing, while Alexei’s mouth latches onto his collarbone, sucking hard enough to raise blood to the surface, fingers probing and pressing where Ilya is dry and tight.

“Relax, bratishka, let me in, you owe me this,” Alexei groans, and then he’s pushing, spit-slick, burning as he forces himself inside with a single thrust that snaps Ilya’s eyes open wide, staring at the ceiling where the paint is cracked like ice fracturing under weight, and Ilya stops thinking of the coach’s son because the pain is too bright, too real. Alexei sets a brutal rhythm, hips slamming against Ilya’s thighs with a wet slap of skin on skin, one hand gripping Ilya’s jaw to turn his face toward him while the other claws at Ilya’s hip, holding him open.

“Say you love me,” Alexei grunts, his face contorted above Ilya’s, sweat dripping from his chin onto Ilya’s chest, “Say it, say ‘thank you, Lyosha,’” and Ilya’s mouth opens but no sound comes out, only a thin whine that Alexei swallows with a kiss that tastes thick and rank, his tongue forcing its way in as Alexei’s body forces itself deeper.

Ilya turns his gaze towards the ceiling.

And the room recedes. 

Because Ilya is not here. 

On the ice, he is alone.

Alexei’s weight becomes just another pressure to endure, the kind he understands on the ice (a ‘demon on the ice’ they’ll one day call him), by letting his brother take what he will. Because one day Ilya will skate away. In his mind he’s going so fast, faster, until the boards blur and he is nothing but speed.

Someday he will be far enough away that no one can reach him ever again.

A small broken sound snaps Ilya from his dissociative spell.

Alexei shudders, groans, and spills hot and thick inside him, collapsing immediately with all his weight pressing Ilya into the springs as his fingers stroke Ilya’s hair.

Ilya locks up, rigid.

The ice in his head finally cracks.

He brings his knee up hard into Alexei’s gut, twists out from under the dead weight with every bit of the speed that makes him dangerous on the ice, and half-falls off the bed, scrambling back until his shoulders hit the wall. His hands are shaking so badly he fists them in the hem of his shirt to make them stop.

Alexei grunts and doubles over, one hand clutching his stomach where Ilya’s knee drove into him, the other braced hard against the mattress. 

Sweat beads at his hairline. Then Alexei straightens, rolling his shoulders like he’s working out a cramp, and fixes Ilya with a look that’s all flat.

“Yob tvoyu mat’,” he breathes. “That’s how it is? I come home to share with you, to be close, and you kick me like a stray dog?” He spits to the side, grins with all his teeth, and spreads his hands as if to say, See, I’m harmless, see, you’re the crazy one. “I was playing, Ilyusha—” He laughs, sharp and ugly.

Alexei tilts his head, voice dropping to that syrup-thick register again, wounded and poisonous. “You hurt me, bratishka. After everything. Maybe you never make it to America. Maybe you stay here in this shit apartment until you’re as broken as she was. Is that what you want?”

The wall is cold against Ilya’s shoulder blades. He can feel the draft seeping through the cheap seals, raising gooseflesh along his arms where his shirt has ridden up.

His thighs are wet. His body is—

He doesn’t think about that.

He can feel Alexei inside him still, a wrongness, a burning, and his stomach lurches with the sudden violent urge to vomit, but he swallows it down.

His hand comes up fast and hard, knocking Alexei’s arm away when it reaches for him again, and he sidesteps along the wall toward the door, putting distance between them.

“Don’t ever touch me again.”

Alexei drapes himself over Ilya’s bed, watching Ilya with an expression that’s almost amused. “Where are you going to go?” he asks. “It’s the middle of the night. It’s freezing. You think Papa will believe you? He’ll say you’re lying for attention, just like she used to. Just like Mama.”

Ilya’s hand finds the doorframe.

He thinks about the ice and the surface is perfect, untouched, waiting for him to carve his name into it.

He thinks about America, so far away it might as well be the moon, and the scouts who came to watch him last month, the ones who said he had something special, something worth betting on.

His brother seems satisfied and certain that he’s won something tonight, that he’s claimed something that was always his to take.

Ilya yanks open the door.

The hallway is dark. Their father’s snoring drifts from his bedroom. The apartment smells.

“Ilyusha—” Alexei’s voice, behind him, suddenly uncertain.

Ilya doesn’t turn around.

He walks to the bathroom, locks the door, and turns on the shower as hot as it will go. The pipes groan and rattle in the walls. The water takes forever to heat up, and when it finally does, it’s barely lukewarm, but he steps under it anyway.

Demon on the ice, he thinks.

He lets his hands fall loose, lets his shoulders drop, and he smiles. 

(It’s the smile he’ll wear years later against the boards in American and Canadian arenas, all teeth and no temperature, charming and empty.)

Only three more years, maybe two if he’s lucky. He can survive two years. He has survived worse already. The water runs, and somewhere under it Ilya is already gone, already skating an ocean away, already the demon everyone will one day call him, grinning that empty grin across a rink in a country where no one speaks his brother’s language.