borrowing grief from the future but yk how jacob said what we see in heated rivalry is basically what shane and ilya remember from all those years. the language of memory. isn’t it crazy to think that when connor and hudson look back on filming heated rivalry it’ll be sort of similar. like. the world knew our names overnight, it seemed. we had a million eyes on us, everything was go go go. a blur of names, faces, places we’ve only ever dreamed of being, in rooms we only ever hoped to enter. but mostly, i remember the beginning, before it all went wild. running lines with you in those cramped apartments. work, home, gym, eat, gym, sleep, repeat. i remember us going from ilya at 19 to shane at 25 in the span of a day. swimming through seasons — years were condensed into hours, minutes. you never had to sell me on anything; i always believed you. cigarette smoke lingering in the back of the throat. his mother’s name etched into a taped up hockey stick. gold cross like a talisman, a good luck charm, a second skin. your hands being his hands, your mouth his mouth, your body his body — is this okay, does this work for you, do you want me to move — when i do this, he should respond like this. fucking around nonstop just to pass the time. my head on your shoulder in a cottage in muskoka, wading into the inevitable, watching the sun rise. the end of the world whittled down to your eyes, your furrowed brow in firelight. no words in mind that aren’t thank you, a thousand times over. i miss you already, even though you’re sitting in front of me. 37 days spent in each other’s pockets — here, take my hat, use my sunscreen, can i bum a cig, can i borrow your flannel? 37 days and 9 years. and you were there with me at the finish, the two of us shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the world that was looking right back at us, saying goddamn i think we made something worth it. i think we made something that matters. maybe we’re on the precipice of something special. maybe this is just the start.