Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Grigori Rozanov, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Wrestling, Alternate Universe, Professional Wrestling - Freeform, Bisexual Ilya Rozanov, Gay Shane Hollander, Homophobic Language, POV Alternating

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-01 Words: 5,241 Chapters: 1/?

Head Like a Hole

Summary

It starts with tapes, turns into a match, and becomes ten years of pretending it doesn't mean anything.
or
"What if they were wrestlers?"

Notes

I'm a huge fan of professional wrestling, so I couldn't forger Shane's line, "We're not wrestlers," from episode 6. This fanfic is basically my answer to the question, "What if they were wrestlers?"

I usually write my pro wrestling fanfics in Kayfabe (within the fictional reality of wrestling), but since I assume most of you are familiar with it, I decided to write about the reality the characters live in instead of their stories in the ring.

I tried to make it fairly realistic regarding the wrestling scene of the late 2000s and early 2010s, but there might be some anachronisms. I'll add definitions and notes where necessary and I'm happy to answer questions, though I'm not always the best at keeping up with the comments.

Chapter 1

October 2008. Ottawa, Canada.

The house smelled like butter and garlic the second Shane pushed the door open.

Real warmth hit him first. Not the trapped heat of the gym but the kind that settled into your shoulders and stayed. He toed off his shoes by the mat, lined them up without thinking about it, and dragged a hand through his still-damp hair. It curled slightly at the ends when it was wet, darker than usual, clinging a little to his forehead.

His body registered the day in pieces after that. Shoulders first, a dull even soreness from drilling the same sequences too many times, sitting deep in a way that didn't quite fade when he stood still. His ribs ached when he breathed in too far, not sharp enough to matter, just present. His legs felt heavy in the way that meant they'd done what they were supposed to do and now expected to be left alone.

The test had been first. He hadn't studied as much as he should have, not because he couldn't, just because something always edged it out. Training. Workout. Tape. The things that felt immediate. He'd sat with one question longer than he'd wanted to, knowing the answer was there, just not cleanly enough to pull out of his brain. He'd written something down anyway. Probably right.

He exhaled slowly.

It would be fine. Passing was enough.

Then Hayden, at the end of practice, already grinning before he'd finished the sentence. Movie night. Some loud forgettable thing Shane hadn't caught the name of. “You need to relax,” like that settled it.

Shane had said maybe. He probably wouldn't go.

And underneath that, quieter, already losing relevance by the time he'd stepped outside: his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend, now. It hadn't been dramatic, no raised voices, no scene, just a conversation arriving where it had been heading for a while.

“You're never really here,” she'd said. Not accusing. Just stating it.

He hadn't argued.

He'd liked her. She was easy to be around, funny in a way that didn't ask anything of him. But every time something asked for his time, it was always that and never her. Always.

“I think you like wrestling more than you like me,” she'd said, almost smiling.

That hadn't been wrong.

So he'd let it end. No attempt to hold something he already knew he wouldn't maintain.

He stood in the entryway a moment longer, the warmth settling into him, the day sorting itself into what mattered and what didn't.

Training stayed. Everything else fell away around it, quiet and uncomplicated.

He pushed his hair back and moved further into the house.

"Shane?" his mom's voice carried from the kitchen, sharp and bright. "What was it today? Chain or conditioning?"

He stepped into the doorway, already knowing what he'd find.

His mother Yuna was at the kitchen table with a notebook open in front of her, pen in hand. She wasn't writing. She never actually wrote anything down, but the posture helped her focus. She looked up at him immediately, the way she always did, taking him in at a glance like she was running a quick diagnostic.

Across from her, His dad stood at the stove,David had his sleeves rolled up, moving something around in a pan with slow, careful attention. The smell sharpened: onion, garlic, something meaty underneath. He glanced over his shoulder when Shane came in, smiling easily.

"There he is," David said. "You look like you lost a fight. Did you even shower?"

"I didn't fight," Shane said, dropping into a chair. "And yeah, I'm clean."

Yuna didn't look away from him. "So? What were you working on?"

"Chain wrestling."

"What part?"

Shane reached for the glass of water already waiting at his place and took a long drink before answering. "Transitions., wrist control, reversals…"

Yuna nodded immediately, like that confirmed something she'd already suspected. "Were they focusing more on shoulder pressure or grip?"

"Both."

"Good." She leaned forward slightly. "And your base? Were they fixing your base?"

"My base is fine."

"It can always be better."

David slid a plate onto the table in front of Shane without comment. Potato stew, thick and steaming, peas floating in it. The heat came up through the plate.

"Eat," he said. "Interrogation goes better if he's not starving."

"I'm not interrogating him," Yuna said, not taking her eyes off Shane. "I'm asking about training."

"You're asking six things at once."

"They're connected."

Shane picked up the fork, his dad was right, he was starving. 

"And who were you with?"

"Hayden."

David hummed, turning back to the stove. "Blond kid, right? Seems nice."

"He's not a kid," Shane said.

"He's younger than you."

"By eight months."

"Sixteen is still a kid," David said mildly. “You are still a kid too.”

Shane frowned.

Yuna tapped her pen against the notebook. "How is he?"

"Inconsistent."

"He rushes?"

"Yeah."

"He know that's a problem?"

Shane hesitated. "Not really."

David snorted softly. "Most people don't."

Yuna ignored that. "Make sure you're not covering for him too much."

"I'm not."

"You do," she said. "You fix things in the middle instead of letting them fall apart. You take on other people's mistakes so everything still looks clean."

Shane paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. Set it down. Picked it back up. "It keeps it clean."

"It keeps it controlled," Yuna said. "That's not the same thing."

David leaned back against the counter, arms loosely crossed. "Here we go."

Yuna continued like he hadn't spoken. "Did Coach say anything?"

Shane took a bite, chewing slowly. "Said I'm getting ahead of it."

Yuna's eyes lit up. "Yeah. You are. You're too far forward. Stay in the hold, not already thinking about the next thing."

"I am in it, That's part of it."

"It is," she said, "but not if you stop feeling what's actually happening." She set the pen down. "The best wrestlers react. They don't just run through steps."

There was a beat of quiet. The pot hissed softly. Outside, wind moved through the trees at the back of the yard, dry leaves pulling off branches, the particular sound of late October, like something giving up.

Shane pushed a piece of potato around his plate.

David stepped in smoothly, like he always did. "How do you feel?" he asked, voice softer now. "After today."

Shane blinked. The question landed differently than the others. "Fine."

"Tired?"

"A bit."

"Anything hurt?"

"No."

Yuna glanced at him, sharper. "Your shoulder?"

"It's fine, Mom."

She held his gaze for a second longer, weighing it, then nodded once.

Shane ate in relative quiet for a while. The food was warm and solid in a way that settled him more than he'd expected, the tension of the gym metabolising into something ordinary. His shoulders loosened for the first time all day.

"You know," Yuna said, picking the pen back up, "what made guys like Misawa and Kawada special wasn't just how structured everything was. It was the moments that weren't. The parts that broke a little. That's what people remember." She tilted her head. "You can't just execute. You have to respond."

Shane pushed the potato around his plate. "I know."

"Do you?" she asked, not unkindly.

He didn't answer.

David pointed his fork at Shane. "Your mom's going to turn you into a champion whether you like it or not."

"I'm making sure he understands what he's doing," Yuna said.

"And I'm making sure he eats," David said.

Shane sat between them, still damp from the shower, and let it settle without trying to fix it.

The TV was already on by the time Shane finished eating.

Yuna had moved from the table to the couch, legs tucked under her, remote in one hand, a worn plastic case in the other. A stack of tapes sat beside her, all labelled in her careful handwriting.

"I got this from Keiko," she said as Shane stepped into the room. "She's been trading with someone in Germany. Small promotions, mostly. But there's good material if you know what you're looking for."

Shane leaned against the back of the couch, arms folding loosely. His hair had dried, curling slightly at the neck.

"What is it?"

"Russian indies." She slid the tape into the player. "Some trainees, some touring talent. Watch the opening match."

The tape clicked. Static. Then the picture settled.

Low ceiling. Bad lights. Everything grey and close, the kind of venue that trapped heat and noise and didn't let any of it out. The ropes sagged at the middle. The camera was too close, bodies cut off at the edges, crowd pressed in tight, noise bleeding through the speakers.

Shane had seen a hundred tapes that looked like this.

Two wrestlers in the ring. The bell not yet rung.

He noticed the bigger one first, wide through the shoulders, solid. Experienced, probably. Comfortable taking up space.

Then the other one moved.

Curly hair. Already restless before anything had started, stepping in and out of distance like the match had already begun in his head and the bell was a formality. Not performing. Just in motion. Testing something.

He pushed his hair back without looking at his hands. Smiled at something off-camera.

Shane's eyes tracked him without meaning to.

The bell rang.

They locked up.

The curly-haired one shifted his weight, barely anything, and the bigger man had to adjust first. Shane caught it. Filed it away. The bigger man was already a step behind and didn't know it yet.

“Smart,” something in Shane noted, and he pushed it aside.

The curly-haired one just made himself heavy. Let the other man do the work. Stayed there, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world and no interest in rushing toward anything.

Shane's frown arrived without him deciding on it.

They came back up. Locked again. The bigger man threw a lariat, wide and obvious. The curly-haired one dropped.

He took it. Hit the mat like it had landed clean, even though it hadn't by half.

The crowd came up anyway.

"He's selling it hard from the start," Shane said.

Yuna didn't look away from the screen. "Watch what he does with it."

The curly-haired one stayed down just long enough, then sat up slow and deliberate and came back with his own lariat.

This one landed. The other man dropped hard. The crowd came up louder.

Instead of following up, he turned and played to them. A kiss thrown out. A grin held just long enough for the room to react.

Boos mixed with cheers.

"He broke the sequence," Shane said. "There's no continuation."

"He chose the reaction," Yuna replied.

The other wrestler grabbed his ankle mid-showboating and yanked him down. The match snapped back. Mat again, close and messy, neither man with clean position. Shane watched the curly-haired one roll through, catch him, fold him into a pin.

One. Two.

Kick out.

No pause. Another lariat. This one just heavier. The kind that made the whole ring feel it.

Shane felt it somewhere in his chest and said nothing about it.

The curly-haired one stepped over him. Paused. Flexed.

The crowd booed. Loud. Real.

“He has them,” Shane thought, against his better judgment. Then, stubbornly: “Anyone could do that.”

"He's slow," he said. "Nothing special."

Yuna made a small sound that wasn't agreement or disagreement.

The other wrestler surged up and threw him over with a suplex. The curly-haired one flew and sold it bigger than it deserved. His body snapped on the way down, the ring shuddering with it.

Before anything could settle, he twisted, reversed, and came back swinging. Lariat. Another. Two suplexes, nothing clean about them, just forced through.

By the end of it, he looked tired.

Actually tired. Breathing visible. A fraction slower.

“He's spending himself,” Shane thought. “There's no reserve. He'll run out.”

He was sure of it. And the crowd was still watching.

The other wrestler pushed up, stumbled on nothing, barely a trip, and the curly-haired one snapped back like he'd been hit. Head whipping. Body turning. Selling a strike that hadn't happened.

The crowd reacted instantly.

Shane blinked. "That shouldn't work."

The other wrestler took the momentum. Pin.

One.

Two.

Three.

The bell rang.

Shane didn't move for a second.

On screen, the loser rolled away. The winner barely celebrated. The crowd still loud, still there, still carrying on like they'd seen something real and complete.

Shane reached forward and paused the tape.

The image froze. Curly hair falling into his eyes. Mouth just starting to curve into something.

Shane looked at it.

He kept looking.

The motion was gone, and without it there was just a face. The jaw. The line of the cheek. Something easy in the way it was held, like this person had never once wondered how he was coming across. The grin half-formed, caught mid-arrival.

Something shifted in Shane's chest. Low and unexpected, like missing a step in the dark.

He looked away. Looked back. Looked away again.

“That's not relevant,” he thought, with more force than the thought required.

He pulled his attention back to the useful part. No structure. No real escalation. Gaps everywhere, forced through on sheer physicality. It worked now. It wouldn't always. The body had limits, and this man was spending his freely.

But the crowd had followed everything. Every decision, every shortcut, every moment that shouldn't have landed.

Like he had decided it mattered, and the room believed him.

Shane's jaw tightened.

“I could do all of that cleaner,” he thought. “I could make it actually make sense.”

He believed that. He sat with it.

He didn't think too hard about the part of him that wasn't sure it would produce the same thing.

"He's sloppy," he said. "No structure. He'll plateau."

Yuna tilted her head. "He had them the whole way through."

Shane hit play and didn't answer.

The frozen frame moved again. Hair falling, mouth finishing its curve, and the show resumed.

November, 2008. Moscow, Russia.

The cold air hit him like a slap.

He breathed it in deep, sharp enough to burn a little, and fished a cigarette from his jacket. Flick. Light. First drag slow.

Better.

The street outside the hall was dim, patches of yellow light cutting through shadow. People moved past without looking. Nobody cared.

Ilya started walking.

The coach's voice stayed with him, not nagging, just present. Clear.

Footwork. Overcommitting. Letting it go.

He exhaled smoke and watched it dissolve into the cold.

He could feel the exact moment even now. The point where instinct had taken over and he'd stopped thinking and just chased it. The crowd noise, the impact, the momentum. Riding it instead of steering it.

That was the problem. Not the instinct. Losing it.

He took another drag. Crushed the cigarette under his heel at the metro entrance and went down the stairs, already going back over it in his head. Where his feet had been. Where his weight went wrong. What he'd do differently.

The apartment was quiet in a way that didn't feel peaceful.

Not empty, worn into itself. The kind of place that had been the same for twenty years because there was no reason, or money, to change it.

The hallway was narrow, lined with scuffed linoleum that dulled every footstep. A heavy coat rack leaned slightly to one side, weighted down with too many winters. The main room opened up without really opening: a sofa pressed against the wall, its patterned upholstery faded in uneven patches where the sun had hit it year after year. A low table in front of it, ringed with old glass marks. A rug that had once been intricate, worn thin now along the paths people actually walked.

The windows were double-paned but still let the cold in. The radiator ticked beneath them.

Always ticking. Like it was trying to keep up with something long gone.

Ilya shut the door behind him. Keys dropped into the dish. Jacket stayed on.

The TV was already on. Of course it was.

Grigory sat close to it, elbows on his knees, light flickering over his face. Old footage on screen, grainy, desaturated, everything flattened into grey. A proper ring set up in what looked like a sports hall somewhere in Central Europe. A small crowd circled it, quiet, watchful.

Two men in the ring. Not flashy. Not playing. Working.

Ilya leaned against the wall and watched.

They moved slowly. Not sloppy, never sloppy, but deliberate. One had the other grounded and was riding his movement, staying on top without force, shifting his weight each time the other tried to turn or create space. The control never broke. It just moved.

Grigory spoke without looking at him. "You're late."

"Training ran over."

"Mm."

Silence, filled by the dull thud of bodies on canvas from the tape.

Ilya pushed off the wall. "What is it?"

"Germany," Grigory said. "Seventies. Catch wrestling." His voice stayed flat, but there was something underneath it. "These men were shooters first. They understood why the hold worked before they decided how to show it."

On screen, one of them slipped, barely visible, just a fraction of lost footing. The other took the opening without hesitation. Drove him down harder, clean and immediate, like he'd been waiting for exactly that mistake. The crowd rose.

Grigory leaned forward slightly. "You see?"

"They're working," Ilya said. "Still a performance."

"Yes." Grigory tapped his fingers once against his knee. "But the understanding underneath is real. They do not waste movement because it is show."

Ilya crossed his arms loosely. "Still looks slow."

Grigory finally glanced at him. "Because you are used to noise."

Not sharp. Not loud. Certain.

Ilya held his gaze for a second, then looked back at the screen.

The match ended without flourish. A hold maintained just long enough. The man underneath pressed his hand flat to the canvas. The winner stood. Reset. Nothing extra.

"In the Soviet Union," Grigory said, "we had wrestling, not this, freestyle, greco-roman, sambo. You trained to win, not to entertain. But some of us went abroad. Worked these matches. Adapted." He paused. "We kept the discipline. That is why we were respected. You train with freedom," he continued. "No system. No consequences when you fail." His eyes stayed on the screen. "And still you are sloppy."

Ilya's jaw tightened, barely there. "I know."

"Do you?"

Not a challenge. A fact waiting to be proven.

Ilya didn't answer.

Grigory turned back to the screen. Conversation closed.

To his father's left, Alexei was sprawled across the couch like he owned the place. Boots still on. One arm thrown over the backrest, the other holding a beer he definitely hadn't paid for. The TV light caught his grin before he even spoke.

"There he is," Alexei said, drawing it out. "Star of the evening."

Ilya didn't stop moving. Grabbed a glass from the drying rack. Didn't pour anything. Just needed something in his hand.

"You get paid yet?"

"Not yet."

Alexei clicked his tongue. "You let them delay like that, they'll keep doing it."

"It's one show."

"It's money. Same thing." He eyed Ilya. "You looked decent, though. From what I caught. Bit messy."

"Yeah."

"People like messy," Alexei said, and smirked. "You love being the center of attention. Like a faggot."

Ilya's hand stilled on the glass.

One second. Just the one.

Then he set it down and turned toward the hallway. "Night," he said, flat and easy, like it hadn't cost him anything.

Alexei was already looking back at the TV.

From across the room, the tape kept rolling. Slow. Measured. Those same two bodies, same deliberate weight.

The hallway was colder than the rest of the apartment.

The bulb overhead buzzed faintly, light too dim to reach the corners. The computer sat on a narrow desk pushed against the wall, old and yellowing, the monitor deeper than it was wide. It hummed when it turned on, low and steady, filling the narrow space.

Ilya closed the living room door behind him. Not fully. Just enough.

The TV kept murmuring on the other side. His father still there. Always there.

He sat down and reached for the stack of burned DVDs tucked beside the monitor. Svetka's handwriting in marker on each one.

CANADA ACW 2008

GERMANY MIX

JAPAN AWF 2007

JOSHI JJW 1985

MEXICO 73 ANIVERSARIO

He picked up the first one. Turned it once between his fingers. Slid it into the drive.

The computer took its time. It always did.

The screen filled with low resolution and bad lighting, a ring in what looked like a community centre or a small arena, the kind of setup that did not pretend to be anything bigger than it was.

Ilya leaned forward without meaning to.

Two wrestlers. But one of them he noticed immediately.

Dark hair. Centered stance, already balanced before the bell. He stood like someone who had decided exactly where he was going to be before the match started and intended to stay there.

The bell rang. The dark-haired one moved first, or rather he received the tie-up from his opponent and immediately restructured it, not by force but by angle, redirecting the other wrestler's momentum down and sideways in a single smooth motion that ended with the opponent on the canvas before he had fully understood what had happened. He followed to the mat without hurrying. Locked in a side headlock, hips low, shoulder pressure exact. His opponent tried to roll him, tried to push up onto his shoulders to bridge free. The dark-haired one adjusted his weight just fractionally, and the escape route closed.

Ilya watched it happen and understood at once, the way he always understood physical problems, that the technique was nearly perfect.

He also understood that it was completely bloodless.

The crowd sat quietly through it. Not bored, attentive. They could see it was good. But there was no sound yet, no lift, because the dark-haired wrestler was not giving them anything to respond to. He was solving the match rather than sharing it.

When he ran a sequence of reversals, wrist control to hammerlock to the mat, each transition frictionless, each step landing exactly where it was meant to, it was extraordinary to look at. The kind of thing you rewound to study.

And the crowd barely moved.

“He's not wrong,” Ilya thought. “He's just not letting anything happen.”

On screen, the opponent fired off the ropes, came back fast. The dark-haired one dropped down, let him pass, came up behind him and took the back. The transition was instant, unhurried, like he had known it was coming. He rode him to the mat and held him there with the same quiet, precise pressure as before.

Ilya sat back slightly.

Then the opponent got a shoulder free. Created space. Came up swinging.

The dark-haired one stepped back once, just once, and went up.

Ilya's breath caught.

It was not like anything he had seen in person. The dark-haired one left the ground like the decision had already been made before his feet left the canvas, rotating clean and fast, and came down across the other man's chest with an impact that snapped through the whole ring. The crowd made a sound, not a cheer yet, more like air leaving a room.

Before anyone could process it, he was already moving again.

He ran the ropes. The opponent staggered up and the dark-haired one springboarded off the second rope, no hesitation, no adjustment, the trajectory already solved, and hit him again, crisper this time, landing on his feet and rolling through in one unbroken motion.

The crowd came up. Oohs, not cheers. The sound people made watching something precise.

“How,” Ilya thought, and then stopped thinking in words.

The dark-haired one did not wait. He hauled the opponent up, positioned him, climbed, and the next move came down from height, spinning once, landing with a violence that was somehow also completely controlled. The kind of impact that should have been ugly and was not. Every degree of the rotation accounted for. Every point of contact exact.

The crowd erupted properly this time.

Ilya sat with his elbows on his knees and watched the dark-haired one stand up.

No reaction. No acknowledgment of what he had just done. He straightened, assessed, moved back into position like the sequence had been a calculation he had completed and filed away.

The crowd noise dropped back to murmuring.

“There it is,” Ilya thought.

The crowd were reacting to the moves, not to him. Oohing at the skill the way you oohed at something in a museum. The dark-haired one was not in the room with them. Ilya knew what that was. He had worked with men like that. Men who were technically beyond him in almost every way and could not figure out why the room did not follow them.

He also knew, sitting there with his arms folded, that he could not do any of what he had just watched.

Not even close.

The aerial work alone. The rotation, the body control in the air, the way he knew exactly where the floor was without looking for it. That was years of work Ilya had never started, a different kind of athlete entirely.

He had power. He had instinct. He had the crowd in ways this man clearly did not.

What he did not have was any of that.

If he could take what this wrestler had and keep what he already had...

The camera zoomed in.

The dark-haired wrestler looked up as his opponent tapped. Light caught across his face.

Freckles. Scattered across the bridge of his nose and cheekbones, darker against the sheen of sweat. Dark eyes, fully focused, that particular look of someone who was present in a room before they were anything else in it. Pink mouth, slightly parted.

He was, Ilya noticed with some inconvenience, very good-looking.

He noticed it the way he noticed things, cleanly, immediately, without permission. The line of his jaw. The way the focus softened just slightly when the match ended and his expression went from concentrated to something easier, something that was almost a smile.

Ilya's gaze stayed a second longer than it needed to.

Then something else moved in him, quiet and unbidden.

What would it be like, he thought, barely a thought, more like a shape behind a thought, to be somewhere else. To go west and be no one's son and no one's brother. To meet someone like that. Walk somewhere at night with him. Kiss him.

The thought arrived fully formed.

Ilya went very still.

It was not new. He knew it was not new. But it had never been that specific before, that clear, that easy with itself, like it had been waiting for enough quiet to say itself out loud.

He looked away from the screen.

The hallway pressed in around him. The bulb buzzed. Through the door, the low murmur of his father's TV.

His brother's voice, easy and careless. Like a faggot.

Ilya's jaw tightened once.

He knew what that thought cost. He had always known. His father did not need to be loud to be final. His brother did not need to think twice. It would not be a conversation. It would be immediate and absolute, and he would lose everything he was still trying to build.

He reached forward and paused the screen.

The image froze, mid-motion, the dark-haired wrestler looking up, freckles visible even through the grain, that almost-smile still forming.

Ilya stared at it.

Then looked away. Leaned back. Watched the rest of the match with his arms crossed and his eyes forward.

The apartment did not used to feel like this.

When he was younger, sitting cross-legged on the rug, the pattern still bright then, not worn down to threads yet. The table was not scratched. The walls had pictures, too many of them, frames slightly crooked. Birthdays, parks, a summer somewhere.

And there was her. Always her.

She sat on the floor with him, one leg folded under, the other stretched out, dark hair falling forward as she leaned in. She kept tucking it behind her ear and it kept slipping back. Thick and curly and entirely disobedient, just like his.

"Again," she said, smiling, holding something just out of reach, as she moved the golden crucifix on her chest caught the light making it shiny. 

He lunged for it. She shifted at the last second, laughing when he missed, catching his wrist before he could overbalance and tipping him gently sideways onto the rug.

Her hand brushed his hair back from his face without thinking about it. He went still for a second. Then tried again.

-

Another memory came to him.

Same room. Different light.

He stood in the hallway this time. Watching.

She sat at the table, one hand pressed briefly to her mouth, the other flat against the wood. She was not crying. Not exactly. But her eyes were wet.

She blinked it back the moment she heard movement.

"Ilyushka," she said, voice steady in a way that did not quite hold. "You should be in bed."

"I couldn't sleep."

A pause. Then she smiled, smaller, still warm, just thinner.

"Come here."

He did. Always did.

She pulled him close, one arm around his shoulders, pressing his head lightly against her side. He could feel her breathing. Just a little uneven.

"You're growing," she murmured into his hair.

He did not answer.

"Don't rush so much," she said quietly. "You'll get there."

The last one came whether he wanted it or not.

Too many people in too small a space. Voices low, respectful, distant. The walls bare, someone had taken things down too quickly.

Irina lay in the centre of the room. Still. Hands folded. Hair brushed back neatly, not falling into her face the way it always had.

Ilya stood near the doorway.

Someone said something to him. He did not hear it.

He looked at her face. At the familiar lines that did not move anymore.

She looks like me.

---

The hallway snapped back into place around him.

Dim light. Buzzing bulb. Cold pressing in at the edges.

Ilya blinked hard. His eyes burned.

He dragged a hand across his face, rough and quick, and his hand came away damp.

"Fuck," he muttered.

He exhaled sharply through his nose and forced it back. All of it. Pressed it down to wherever everything else went.

He reached up and turned off the monitor. The screen collapsed into black.

Silence.

He sat for a moment with his hand still on the desk, eyes unfocused.

Then he stood, moved down the hall, closed his door behind him.

No light. Just the faint grey of the window and the outline of familiar shapes.

He lay down without fixing anything. The mattress creaked once. Settled.

He stared up into the dark.

The match was still there when he closed his eyes: the structure, the precision, the freckles. The thought he had buried.

He let himself keep it for one more second.

Then he pushed it down, where it was safe.

Breathing slow. Even.

He was going to leave this place. He was going to be better. And when he was somewhere far enough away that his father's name was not the first thing through any door...

Maybe then.