Maybe my second time ever writing fanfiction but the Heated Rivalry brain rot has truly been so intense I do not know what else to do with myself. Rewrite of Ilya/Shane/s first meeting, Ilya POV.
CH1. ILYA. Ilya Rosanov had forgotten how many times heâd killed Shane Hollander in his mind.
His household was not a place where things were done halfway. Grigori Rosanov, a commander-general in the MVD Internal Troops, had not gotten where heâd gotten with soft words and mercy, and so neither had his sons. When Ilya returned home from kindergarten proudly wearing a participation ribbon from a foot race pinned to his private school lapel, adult fingers had lifted the ribbon straight from its pin and into a raging ornamental fireplace. The next day, his first grade enrollment had been transferred from his too-kind international primary school to a national sports school. Grigori Rosanov did not raise halfway sons.
When he was thirteen, before the words ânational team,â and âMLH draft pickâ began to be whispered around him, Ilya beat every fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year old in the Olympic Reserve School in a shot accuracy competition: four corners of the goal, zero misses, ten seconds. Ilya sat alone in the bleachers, glowing with self satisfaction while he watched his coaches bark reprimands at a row of senior students. But alone with his father in the dining room that night, the table was silent. Ilya received a stiff nod before his father disappeared into his rooms, taking the second half of his dinner with him. The same night, Ilya searched junior shot accuracy international records on a new family desktop. Through a Japanese-Canadian motherâs grainy digital camera an ocean away, he watched a boy just a little smaller than him clear fours corners of the goal in nine point five seconds. Over the thwacking of the puck against the plastic targets, adult voices in an unfamiliar language cheered and whooped. The boyâs face turned to the camera, grinned, and lifted a hand in a wave the second the video cut off. Ilya pictured his fingers wrapped around the boyâs throat.
The year Ilya turned sixteen, heâd earned a record as the youngest player on the Junior National Team and a poisonous secret that made him shiver when he was backed into an alley with his coachâs son, and turned his stomach when he arrived back home. One such night, he slipped through the front door, latching it ever so softly behind him. The click of the door was drowned out by a newscast.
âThe Canadian parliament this week will vote on a shocking legislative change to its federal marriage policy--â The television switched off abruptly, freezing Ilya in the corridor.
âGod save mother Russia,â Grigori muttered to himself as his footsteps left the room.
 That night in bed, Ilya watched behind his closed eyes as Canadaâs junior national team decimated Ilyaâs rostered teammates on last year's international competition tape. And as the blade of his hockey stick crashed into their fourteen-year-old prodigy player, just between his cheerful maple leaf jersey and his chin.
Ilya was seventeen. His plane had landed in Regina, Saskatchewan less than a day before, but Russiaâs Junior National Team spared no moment in preparation for the International Prospect Cup. Ilya slipped out of the back door of the practice rink, sucking in the cold air of the back alley. How long before the bus was loaded and they noticed him missing? Lighting a cigarette, he let his head slip back against the brick wall and let out his first deep breath of the day. His eyes drifted shut. When they opened, he felt a presence next to him.
âYouâre not supposed to smoke here.â
For the thousandth time in four years, Ilya Rosanov pictured his fingers wrapped around Shane Hollanderâs neck.
