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"Because the last time you saw me / Is still burned in the back of your mind"
What Ilya remembers is the sequence of it—the way he finally let something real slip through, the way he said Shane’s name like it mattered, like it was safe to do so.
The way Shane ran in response.
Ilya had never done that before. Never let himself soften like that. Never reached for someone without armor, never stepped forward without checking where the ground was. Saying Shane’s name had felt like opening a door he’d never meant to unlock.
And Shane had backed away.
That’s how it lives in Ilya’s mind now: not as a choice, not as hesitation, but as flight. Shane seeing what was being offered and deciding it was too much. Shane leaving because staying would have required something he wasn’t willing to give.
Ilya tells himself he should have known better. That vulnerability has consequences. That this is what happens when you misjudge how much of yourself someone can handle.
For Shane, the memory is different.
It plays on a loop he can’t shut off: the way Ilya’s eyes had been soft and pleading, the edges of his mouth pulled tight as if holding something fragile in place. His hands had reached toward Shane, tentative at first, then more certain, trying to anchor them both to something familiar. Back before anything had changed.
Ilya had said his name. Shane had said his back. And in that instant, the weight of what had just happened hit him: the vulnerability, the trust, the intimacy between them. Everything suddenly felt larger, more real, more immediate than Shane had expected—or wanted—to face.
It terrified him.
He had hesitated at the door for half a second, like the choice might still be reversible, like staying could still be possible.
It hadn’t been.
Now, when the memory returns—and it always does—it isn’t words that hurt. It’s the image of Ilya holding himself together because Shane hadn’t stayed. Spine straight, expression carefully neutral, hands falling back into his lap as if they hadn’t just been reaching for him.
“You gave me roses and I left them there to die”
He thinks about it constantly, in the quiet hours when there’s nothing else to distract him. The way Ilya had lingered, had waited. The way he’d left space for Shane to step into, or not. The subtle gestures, the touches that didn’t need names, the way his eyes held questions without demanding answers. Every one of them had been like a rose placed in his hands—delicate, trusting, alive with care. And he had left them to die.
Shane hadn’t left because he didn’t care. He hadn’t left because he hadn’t seen it. He left because he wasn’t ready. Not ready to accept the intimacy Ilya offered. Not ready to acknowledge that what had existed between them might be more than just rivalry, more than just proximity and convenience. He wasn’t ready to be seen—and he certainly wasn’t ready to see himself reflected back in someone else’s honesty.
At the time, Shane had assumed it would always be there. That whatever this thing was between them could survive neglect, avoidance, fear. He’d thought it was safer to retreat, to protect himself from what he didn’t yet know how to handle.
Now he knows better.
Those pauses, those moments of softness, of honesty, had been Ilya handing him something fragile and real, trusting Shane not to drop it. Trusting him to meet it, to respond, to step forward. And he hadn’t.
The memory lingers, sharp and stubborn, like the scent of petals bruised and fallen. Every time he recalls it, he can almost see them there, waiting, patient, and abandoned.
“I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile”
Ilya doesn’t miss Shane all at once.
It comes in fragments—heat where there shouldn’t be any; the remembered weight of a body leaning into his space like it belonged there; expressive eyes that were never careful about what they gave away; smiles that played unknowingly across pouty lips. He misses skin most of all, which feels shallow until he realizes it isn’t. Shane had always been warm, always solid, like something real Ilya could press his hands into and trust that it wouldn’t disappear.
He tells himself this is normal. That bodies remember each other longer than feelings do. That muscle memory is a stubborn thing, that proximity leaves ghosts behind long after the person is gone. He tells himself this the way he tells himself a lot of things—confidently, insistently, as if that might make them true.
The lie settles uncomfortably in his chest, heavy and familiar.
There are moments—quiet ones, unguarded ones—when Ilya catches himself turning his head as if Shane might be there. In hallways after games. In hotel rooms that all look the same. In the split second before sleep, when his body forgets itself and reaches for something it hopes to find.
When the absence feels loud enough to become a presence all its own.
He hates that part. Hates the way memory has weight. Hates that missing someone can feel this physical, this undeniable, like a bruise he keeps pressing just to confirm it’s still there.
He hates that it’s Shane.
Because Shane was never supposed to matter like this. He was supposed to be temporary. Convenient. Someone who fit easily into the spaces Ilya didn’t intend to keep. Someone he could leave without consequence.
Instead, Ilya carries him in pieces—heat, weight, skin, the echo of a laugh that still feels too close to his ear. He carries him in the silence, in the way his body still remembers how to make room.
“These days, I haven’t been sleepin’ / Stayin’ up playin’ back myself leavin’”
Sleep becomes optional, then impossible.
Shane lies awake, the memory replaying on an endless loop. His hand on the door. His breath caught. That heartbeat where he could have turned around.
He never does.
It’s the leaving—the deliberate choice to step back when closeness had been offered, raw and unguarded, without hesitation or condition. The weight of it presses on him even now, months later, the way Ilya’s eyes had held something unspoken, something open and fragile, and Shane had turned away because he wasn’t ready to meet it.
He remembers the sudden awareness of what it would have meant to stay: to meet trust with trust, to hold what had been offered without fear. The thought of it now makes his chest tighten all over again, like the moment is still there, waiting, still impossible to reach.
He can feel it now—the quiet, stubborn recognition that he doesn’t want to leave it like this. That he wants to try. That he wants to step into the space he once fled, to offer the closeness, the honesty, the vulnerability that he hadn’t been ready for before.
He imagines holding Ilya’s hands, meeting the softness in his eyes, letting himself be reflected back not with fear but with care. He can picture responding where he once recoiled, leaning into the trust that had been offered to him, finally accepting it instead of stepping away.
The thought alone is both terrifying and necessary. It presses against the memory, reshaping it—not erasing what happened, not undoing the past, but opening a path toward something that feels like possibility. Something like redemption.
He wonders how many nights he will spend trapped in the loop, how many times memory can punish him before it hardens into something permanent—a quiet, unyielding weight pressing against his ribs, reminding him of what he ran from.
Even in the dark, when the world has gone silent, the memory doesn’t soften. It doesn’t blur. But now, layered beneath the regret, there is intention, a resolve he didn’t have before. A readiness to finally meet Ilya where he’s been waiting all along.
“How you held me in your arms that September night / The first time you ever saw me cry”
Shane had asked gently, almost cautiously, “Sick like...crazy?”
The question hung between them. The hotel room felt smaller somehow, the roar of the city outside muted by the gravity of the moment.
Ilya swallowed hard, the words tasting bitter on his tongue. “That too, a little, but no, sick more like...” he said, his voice quiet and rough.
"Oh, like cancer?"
"Dementia."
Then it hit him. The dam broke quietly, inexorably. Tears slid down Ilya’s face before he could stop them, hot and sudden. He pressed a hand to his mouth, trying to hold himself together, but it was useless.
Shane didn’t hesitate. He straddled Ilya’s lap, arms wrapping around him without question, the movement instinctive and sure. He held him close, steady, grounding. Shane’s chest was warm beneath Ilya’s cheek, his arms strong but careful, firm without ever feeling like restraint.
It wasn’t cautious, it wasn’t uncertain. It was protection, silently offered—the kind that didn’t need words or reassurance, the kind that simply was.
Ilya let himself cry.
The sound was small, humiliating in the way only private grief ever is, his breath hitching as he pressed closer, fingers curling into the fabric at Shane’s back. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been holding himself together until he stopped trying. Until he let the weight of it tip forward and settle onto someone else.
Shane stayed. Didn’t shift, didn’t rush him, didn’t pretend it wasn’t happening.
Ilya leaned into the embrace and let the moment carry him, trusting—just this once—that Shane could hold what he couldn’t.
Later, much later, Ilya would remember this night clearly.
The first time Shane ever saw him cry.
The first time he let himself believe that maybe being seen didn’t mean being left.
“So this is me swallowin’ my pride / Standin’ in front of you sayin’ I’m sorry for that night”
Shane feels it again, the weight of what he left behind. The absence between them he had created. The vulnerability Ilya offered and he fled from. The memory doesn’t sting the same way it once did—it aches differently now, quieter, sharper, like a reminder that he knows better this time.
He had said the words. Finally. And they had felt heavier than he expected, full of everything he hadn’t been ready to hold before. The apology wasn’t enough to fix the past. He knows that. But it was something. It was acknowledgment.
Ilya had let himself be seen. Not fully. Not completely. But enough that Shane could feel it, the honesty in his eyes, the small tremor in his hands, the careful steadiness of his body. The kind of steadiness that had once been absent, and had left a hollow Shane hadn’t known how to bear.
Shane wonders if Ilya sees the fragility in him, the hesitation he’s always carried, the fear of stepping too far too fast.
Ilya doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to. He had let the apology land, let Shane be present, let the past be acknowledged. He had let Shane try. And that alone, in its small way, had changed everything.
Shane feels the weight of relief and guilt wrapped together, tangled in a way he’s not sure he can untangle. But for the first time in a long time, he feels a pulse of something like possibility. Something like closeness. Something like trust being rebuilt.
And Ilya—he feels it too, though he won’t name it. The old hurt hasn’t vanished. The absence still lingers. But there is a quiet shift, imperceptible to anyone else, that tells him Shane is trying. That tells him maybe, just maybe, the distance can shrink, if he allows it.