A/N: I'm really into doomed ships.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to CP Coulter.


"I have to go."

He was sent away when he was sixteen.

He was so young, Shane realized, practically still a child. Micah wasn't ready for the kind of tragedy that he only ever encountered in books. That kind of pain that he—that they both—went through? It never should have been real.

Shane was never even able to say goodbye to him. He had simply sat on the front porch of that empty house, and uninhibitedly sobbed into his hands.

"Please," he pleaded. The desperation in his voice was almost out of character, because Shane always prided himself for being head strong and loud. He was never one to beg.

"Please, bring him back to me. I need him here with me."

But his pleas weren't answered.

Micah never came.

And Shane never begged to no one ever again.

Instead, he tried to laugh. He forced himself to smile, and meet new people and keep his mind off the boy with lopsided grins and glasses, and the fact that his mailbox was always empty.

He did his best to move on.

Gradually days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and soon he was finishing the school year, and moving to a new school. One where there were less bullies, where he felt that he could finally breathe again.

Shane moved far, far away, and left the box full of Micah's things under his bed back at home. Because he was scared. Shane was in fact very, very scared of his parents finding out that he was—.

Because he's all alone now, you know?

His big-brother-Blaine was fighting off his own demons in Ohio, and he had never heard from his, his Micah. Never.

So when the brunet shows up a year and a half later, Shane never thought that he'd be the one breaking Micah's heart. But that's exactly what he does. Crushed it into little pieces before he even realized what he was saying.

"What are you talking about?" Shane asked, once he's finally found his voice. "You've just gotten back. You're not—you're not supposed to be going anywhere."

"Shane," Micah sighed so softly, that Shane simply chose to ignore it.

"You're still supposed to be recuperating," he argued, sounding desperate. And maybe that's because he was. "You think you can just waltz out of this hospital after what you've been through? You think I'm going to let you?"

The younger Anderson reached forward to grab the other boy's scarred hands, then hopefully lead him back into his room and continue to scold him for being so damn silly, but Micah quickly jerked his hands away. "Shane," he murmured, far too tiredly. "I can't stay."

"Yes, yes you can," he assured him. "Please, Micah. I—." Shane wanted to tell him that he still loves him, that he always loved him. But Reed, his Reed was in one of the rooms on the same floor as they were, and somehow that just didn't seem right. So Shane was left gaping at Micah, completely out of words. Out of goodbyes.

"I wish you nothing but happiness, Shane," the other boy almost smiled.

Micah kissed him before he left.

A quick kiss on the cheek, and the battle scar that the brunet left from where his lips touched his cheek is all Shane has to remember him by.