tagging: @rc-catalog and @agattthaa cause i want her to read this
synopsis: I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you
tw: mentions of trauma, rated T
wc: 1.2k
Yan still feels the aftershocks of digging through everyone's memories. It lingers like static in his blood, a dull throb behind his eyes, an exhaustion that no amount of rest can soothe. He follows the group into the train station, the buzz of fluorescent lights and distant murmurs warping around him like a dream.
His clothes are stiff with dried spawn blood, sticking to his skin. He ducks into one of the side rooms, empty and dim, peeling the fabric off like it hurts him. The silence in here is louder than the chaos outside. He drags a clean shirt over his head, movements slow, shoulders heavy.
Then he hears them.
His footsteps.
Heavy, sure, and infuriatingly familiar. They stop outside the door. Dmitry's never hesitated a day in his life, but now he does. Long enough for Yan to feel it. The silence between them has weight, and it presses in.
No knock. Of course. He just walks in.
“We need to talk.” Dmitry says, voice clipped, professional. The door clicks shut behind him like a verdict.
Yan doesn’t look at him. He zips his bag, jaw tight. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“You’re a member of the squad.” Dmitry crosses his arms. “I can’t have this…animosity between us. It affects everyone.”
That makes Yan turn, slow and precise. His gaze is blistering. “Is that what you’re calling it now?” His voice is low. Controlled. But it trembles with something barely restrained. Something wrecked.
“Animosity?”
Dmitry’s breath stutters. He sees it, just for a second. The raw edge of Yan's pain. All that hurt Dmitry once swore he'd never cause. It guts him. The person in front of him isn’t the soldier who trusted him, followed him without question, laughed with him in the middle of hell. This Yan is hollowed out. Hardened.
“Pavel would’ve never recovered,” Dmitry says, quieter now. Like he’s convincing himself. “He would’ve turned if I hadn’t-”
“He did turn.”
The air pulls tight. Dmitry blinks.
“…What?”
“You didn’t kill him.” Yan’s voice is flat, but his eyes are burning. “He turned. Then he came after me.”
Dmitry feels the floor shift beneath him.
“I put him out of his misery.” Yan turns away, sitting down on the small bed. His long legs stretch out beneath him.
“You stayed there?” The softness in Dmitry’s voice doesn’t go unnoticed. Yan nods, too lost in the memory to stay angry.
“I was trapped. For days. He was there, infected though. It took me a while to find out which one was him.”
The dog tags around Dmitry’s neck feel like they’re searing into his skin. Pavel’s tags. What the hell is he doing wearing them? What right does he have?
“I’m sorry.”
It tastes like rust in his mouth. It feels too small, too late. But he says it anyway.
Yan looks at him, brow raised. “For what? You were right. He wouldn’t have gotten better.”
But his voice is too even. Too empty. And there’s something in his face that Dmitry can’t stand to look at, like he’d have rather been the one bleeding out on the floor that day. And maybe, Dmitry thinks, maybe that’s the worst part.
“I should’ve come for you,” Dmitry says. His voice breaks around the edges. He drops his arms and sits beside him on the bed, not touching, just close enough to feel the space between them.
Yan doesn’t even glance over. “You wouldn’t have found me.”
It’s the way he says it, simple, cold, and final, that guts Dmitry more than anything. Like he’s already decided he’s better off lost. Like he doesn’t know Dmitry did look. Spent years clawing through half-truths and abandoned bases chasing a ghost he prayed wasn’t Yan.
But he doesn’t say any of that.
Yan leans back against the wall, his shoulder brushing Dmitry’s for just a second before he shifts away, folding in on himself. The room smells like rust and old wood. It creaks with the weight of things unsaid.
“You don’t get to be sorry for that now,” Yan mutters, not looking at him. “You made your choice.”
“I didn’t choose that."
The silence afterward is oppressive.
“I came back every night in my head. That count for nothing?” Dmitry closes his eyes, fingers curling into fists on his thighs.
“In your head. Right. Because that makes a difference.” Yan lets out a quiet, humorless laugh.
His voice cracks around the edges. There’s no venom left, just the ache of something that could’ve been, something that still wants to be, even now.
Dmitry turns to him, slowly. Yan’s profile is hard and tired and beautiful in a way that stings. There’s blood dried along his collarbone, the clean shirt already wrinkled, but he still looks untouchable in the way Dmitry remembers. Just harder now. Sharper.
“Yan-” he starts, barely above a whisper, “I thought you were dead.”
“But you knew I wasn’t. Didn’t you?”
Dmitry doesn’t answer. Can’t. There are too many half-truths in his throat. He stares at Yan, and Yan finally looks back.
Their eyes lock.
And something shifts.
Something old and buried and furious with longing drags itself to the surface between them. A breath caught between their mouths. Dmitry leans in before he can stop himself, close now, close enough to feel the warmth of Yan’s exhale against his lips.
He doesn't touch him. He wants to. God, he wants to.
Yan doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe.
Dmitry hovers there, inches from him, and in Yan’s eyes is the echo of every memory they ever shared, every stupid, reckless joke, every late-night mission, every look that lingered too long. Every word left unsaid.
His hand twitches. Just once. He wants to touch Yan’s face, wants to close the distance.
But he doesn’t.
At the last second, Dmitry pulls back, barely, but enough. His breath hitches, jaw tight, like the restraint physically hurts.
Yan’s expression doesn’t change, but something shutters behind his eyes.
“Thought so.” He murmurs, quiet and cold, more tired than angry.
Dmitry forces himself to look away.
Yan stands, slow and measured. “It’s never the right time with you, is it?”
His voice is steady, but there's a tremor in it that betrays him.
Dmitry doesn’t reply. He can’t.
Yan grabs his bag, slinging it over one shoulder. He pauses at the door, back still turned.
“You want to talk squad dynamics, fine. I’ll do my job. But don’t follow me in here again if you’re just going to leave the same way.”
The door clicks softly behind him.
And Dmitry stays seated on the bed, hand still hovering near where Yan had been. The space is colder now. Quieter. And all that’s left is the echo of what could’ve been, what still wants to be, and the ache in his chest that won't let him forget.
