Mornings used to come gently.

Light pooled softly through curtains he insisted you deserved, even though he hated softness. He bought them anyway, hung them with exacting precision, then brushed a kiss to your hair like he was afraid you’d disappear if he didn’t.

He always woke first. Not all of him, never all at once. Sometimes it was we, sometimes it was I, sometimes it was nothing; but for you, he learned to be present. Leaning over you with a faint, crooked smile that the rest of the world rarely saw, he held a space where the fragments of him could feel safe, if only for a few stolen hours.

Coffee hissed from the machine. His playlist: deliberate chaos of silence and soft rock and songs he’d read might calm people, hummed low because he’d decided “character is built quietly.” You shuffled in, draped in one of his shirts, hair in revolt, and he turned, seeing sunrise in human form, seeing you, and paused as if not to disturb the miracle.

He’d kiss you slow.

Slow because he had to think about it. Slow because there were pieces of him that recoiled from intimacy, pieces that whispered he couldn’t love right. Slow because he was trying to merge those pieces for you.

Dance first, breakfast second. The rule came from him reading somewhere that movement was bonding. Or maybe he made it up. Either way, it was his quiet promise: we will try, just for this. Just for you.

He’d tug you into the kitchen, hands warm from his mug, guiding you like you were made of porcelain. Awkward steps, careful turns. Forehead resting lightly against yours, breath steadying. Laughter rattled low in his chest: uneven, fractured, but real; like a signal flare in the dark that he was here: present...trying.

He smelled faintly of antiseptic soap, winter air, and the cautious warmth he only ever let slip in your presence.

You didn’t know a moment could become a memory while you were still inside it.

Then the knock came.

Quiet. Polite. Efficient. Too polite. Too much like orders delivered with the weight of inevitability.

A folded Russian flag. Dog tags laid with deliberate care. His ring: the one he wore on a chain because it felt like you when he couldn't remember who he was: looped through the chain.

“Nikto didn’t make it back.”

The air froze. Your body froze. Reality arrived in pieces you couldn’t assemble.

You heard details. Didn’t process them. All that remained was the memory of him: the way he kissed you between spoon and sugar the way his hands moved without hesitation the way he swayed with you like a man who was only whole when you were near

The world didn’t end, but it dimmed.

Lights too sharp. Rooms too vast. Floors too cold.

His playlist still plays sometimes, chaotic and soothing all at once. You glance over, expecting a shadow at the doorway, a small, fractured smile reserved only for you.

You dance again. Not for healing. Not for closure.

But because your body remembers the weight of his hands, the way he tried so hard to hold himself together for you.

Hands hover in empty space, seeking warmth, finding ghosts. Muscle memory cruel and loyal.

Some days… there’s no music.

Only your own breath and the faint echo of we, trying, attempting, learning how to exist in a world that tried to take him apart.

You sway. Eyes closed. And for a single, impossible heartbeat… you feel one version of him settle against you, guiding, steady, gentle.

You keep dancing anyway. Because loving Nikto was a practice in patience, and remembering him is the only way to honor the best we he ever tried to be.