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“Good morning, Ilya.”
Anya lifts her head from the foot of the bed at the sound of Shane’s voice, tail thumping weakly against the bed. She noses at Ilya’s calf, but he doesn’t look at her. His fingers twitch when she trots over to lick at his knuckles.
Ilya blinks slowly. His gaze skims over Shane’s face, pauses at his eyes, at his mouth, at each little freckle scattered across his nose.
Shane doesn’t expect a reply from Ilya. He cards his fingers through Ilya’s blonde hair, tracing the outline of his face slowly. Ilya lies on his side wordlessly as he gives Shane the same blank stare that Shane’s become all too familiar with. Ilya reaches to interlock their fingers, but he hesitates for a moment, fingers hovering carefully. When Shane squeezes back, the tension dissipates from Ilya’s shoulders. Shane’s face is so close he can almost remember how things used to be like between them. Or how things are like between them, now.
Ilya doesn’t quite know who’s hand he’s holding, who’s face he wakes up to, or who’s voice he’s listening to. Everything has been a haze to him, like a thick layer of fog standing between him and the rest of the world.
So much gets trapped— words unsaid, stupid jokes, and so, so many apologies. He knows there is something important he is meant to ask, meant to say. It presses against his teeth and dissolves into nothing before he can say it out loud.
The fog gets thicker every day, and he starts feeling inclined to reach out and feel for Shane’s face. To trace along the edge of his jaw, poke him on the tip of his freckled nose, pull at his rosy cheeks.
But he doesn’t know him. Or at least he did know him, in another lifetime, and in another world.
“You will, uh… You will know when to open this. When it’s… later,” Ilya whispers and slides an envelope across the table, past their half-eaten bowls of food. Shane’s been trying to experiment with more home-cooked food in the kitchen. Nothing beats the smile on Ilya’s face when he tastes one of Shane’s creations. Shane wants to make Ilya’s happiness and comfort a priority in everything he does.
“What do you mean?”
“For when I am no longer… me.”
“No,” Shane looks down at the envelope. “You’ll always be you, Ilya,” he shakes his head fervently, fingers still clutching the paper.
“We both know it, okay. You will feel like you have lost me, because one day I will wake up to… foreign faces. Foreign people. I might not even recognize–”
“Please don’t say that,” Shane keeps his head down and pushes the envelope back towards Ilya with shaky fingers. “Please, never ever say that again, Ilya.”
“You won’t ever forget me.”
“I hope so too, Shane.”
“Morning…” Ilya starts slowly, and Shane can tell that he’s struggling to find the next word.
“Shane.”
“Shaneee.” Ilya repeats after him, smiling softly, but if he feels like crying he doesn’t show it.
It’s almost idyllic, this scene that’s painted. The two of them sit by the window, with Ilya’s head resting on Shane’s shoulder. Anya curls up at their feet, chin on Shane’s foot. Every so often, she looks up at Ilya with a low whine for attention.
“That’s Anya. She loves you.”
“Anya,” Ilya repeats carefully. He reaches down slowly to scratch behind her ears.
Ilya sets his eyes on the horizon and lets shades of tangerine set his face aglow in the warmth of dusk. But he keeps silent, the whites of his eyes pink and glassy. As he tears his gaze away from the window to look at Shane, a knowing look settles gently on his face. It’s somewhat expressionless and still, but Shane sees the thousands of emotions running through Ilya’s mind. The way his nose scrunches when he sniffles. The way his eyelashes flutter.
Letting go has always been the worst part for Shane.
Ilya looks towards the beach again, then back at Shane. He nods ever so slightly, and with that, Shane extends his arm out towards Ilya. Two pairs of feet pad softly against the linoleum. As Ilya slowly pushes the door open, he can almost hear Anya’s soft cries next to his ankle.
They step out onto the sand, and Ilya feels the familiar, tangy breeze against his cheek, cool yet blanketed in warmth. He feels for every grain of sand in between his toes, feels the tiny fragments of iridescent seashells against his skin. Ilya’s hand is snugly interwoven in Shane’s, and for the first time in a long time, he feels truly at peace.
Shane lowers himself, letting Ilya lie on the soft sand with his head in Shane’s lap. An early evening lull slowly descends upon them, quiet between the fervent calls of passing seagulls and the gentle crash of waves. It brings Ilya back to when he’d sit shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow with Shane, the two of them watching waves come and go as they squinted as hard as they could, trying to see just how far the ocean could go.
As Ilya looks up at Shane, he sees a small smile painted on his lips. Shane’s eyes water ever so slightly. Ilya can’t help but notice the look of content on his face. He’s rarely ever seen this expression on Shane, and he decides that he wants to commit this—the sun aglow against his cheeks, a semblance of a smile on his lips, eyes creased slightly with contentment— to memory.
Because if he has to see Shane for the last time, he wants to see him with a smile.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Shane teases Ilya playfully, breaking his train of thought. He leans back against one palm in the sand, while the other runs itself through Ilya’s hair gently. Shane knows it calms him down. He sees Ilya with the same smile, staring straight back up into his eyes.
“Nothing,” Ilya looks away, fingers running through the sand next to him, eyes glistening with unshed tears. His lip quivers, but Shane doesn’t notice.
When Ilya finally looks back up, blinking hard, Shane feels the tears on his lap.
“I just… want to remember. This.” Ilya’s gaze lands on Shane’s face again, and the smile he’s greeted with makes his heart flutter. “I want to bring this memory with me when I go. If it is the only one I can. I keep losing things. I don’t want to lose you too.”
Shane gives him a pained smile as he pulls Ilya closer to himself, as if he’ll leave any minute now. Silence stretches between them, neither saying a word. Slowly, Shane feels Ilya’s cheek vibrate against his lap, and he feels more tears pooling against the fabric of his shorts.
“And, you know, maybe…. If I look at you long enough,” Ilya whispers softly, voice full of hurt. “I can.”
Shane rubs his hand up and down Ilya’s arm, starting at the shoulder and down to his palms. He can feel the tremors wracking Ilya’s body. The way Ilya tightens his grip around Shane’s fingers.
There isn’t a final, selfless statement or a last deep breath like how it is in movies. There aren’t any pleading screams or arms extended out begging for mercy.
It’s Ilya’s shallow breath against Shane’s lap. He steadies his own breathing, matching each inhale and exhale with the waves breaking on the shore. His gaze wanders and stretches far out towards the horizon again. Shane wishes Ilya’s breaths aren’t growing weaker by the second, but they are. He can barely feel Ilya’s cool breaths on his lap now.
It’s Ilya planting a quick but lasting kiss on Shane’s lips while he repeats the words over and over again in his face.
“I love you. It will be okay.”
There are tears streaming down Shane’s cheeks. He shakes his head in an attempt to shut Ilya up. Because, no, Ilya isn’t leaving. He never will. He made a promise to Shane, a promise to always be right by his side.
“I love you. It will be okay.”
You’ll be okay, Shane says, but he thinks it’s more of a reminder to himself. That the waves will carry everything away and at the end of the day he’ll be sitting on the shore watching the horizon again.
“I love you too, Ilya.”
His last breath is silent, and Shane wishes for another gentle puff of air against his lap, but it never happens, and he doesn’t get to feel it for one last time. Carefully wiping away the tears falling from his own cheeks onto Ilya, he holds Ilya as close as he can. Shane can almost hear Ilya teasing him, saying, “God, Shane, you are making seawater saltier if you cry!” Shane can almost feel Ilya’s warm arms wrap around him.
He smiles softly at the thought and wipes at the dried-up tears by Ilya’s eyes. As he looks up, a gentle breeze blows against his tear-stained cheeks, and it takes everything in him to not sob.
“Goodnight, my love.”
Dear Shane,
You are making breakfast as I am writing this from the couch. The couch is warm from where you sat next to me. I can see the mountain of pancakes on the counter because you forgot to halve the recipe again. I know I tease you for it, but I love you all the same.
I don’t know if you are reading this while I am still here, or when I’m already gone, but I hope this letter gives you a piece of myself you can keep forever. I will not be around much longer, and we both know that. Some days I wake up and I feel like I could still become the person I was meant to be.
Maybe this is all some nightmare that I can’t wake up from. I am scared in ways that I do not have the words for anymore.
I watch you move around the kitchen and I try to memorize you. The way you hum to yourself. The scar on your shoulder. The way you always turn around like you are checking to make sure I am still there. I am terrified that one day I will look at you and feel nothing, Shane. I am even more terrified that you will look at me and I will already be gone.
Thank you for teaching me how to love. For making me my favorite pasta even though you know I cannot enjoy them as much as before. For sitting on the bathroom tiles for hours with me. For being next to me but also giving me enough space to breathe. Somehow you always knew exactly what I needed.
There are so many things I want to do with you. Travel to new cities. Playing with Anya at the dog park. I want to grow old enough to complain about my knees and still reach for you in my sleep. I want to surprise you with a truck full of ginger ale. I want to say your name a thousand more times and mean it every time.
Maybe I will see you again, Shane. Maybe you will be sky and I will be sea and we will always find our way back to each other. I think that is how the saying goes. Go look it up, okay?
I will miss you. I will miss you in every way a person can miss another. I love you, Shane Hollander. Endlessly.
я тебя люблю (ya tebya lyublyu),
Ilya ♡
The couch still smells like salt and pancakes. Shane’s shoes sit by the door. Ilya’s thick jumper is draped over the armrest where he left it. Eventually, Anya returns to the couch and rests her head where Ilya’s hand used to fall. Where Shane used to catch it.
Anya doesn’t know what time it is. She doesn’t know what day it is, or where Ilya and Shane have gone. She only knows the rules of the world as they have always been. When the light reflects like this in her big, brown eyes, it most certainly means it’s time for dinner.
Anya doesn’t understand why they aren’t back yet.
So she waits.