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Till is there. He is there when Ivan wraps his hands around his neck, tender and sweet and everything Ivan is, there when blood seeps out of Ivan’s lips. Till is there when Ivan falls; he is there.
Till has always been there. There he stands, and Ivan falls, and—every story has an end.
Good grief.
Ivan drives steady, so Till can close his eyes and dream a world and wake to his nudging. Careful, always careful; to him, Till is a stained glass he painted with his own hands. The scenery flashes before his eyes and a slow 90’s song filters out the radio—the one Ivan likes because the singer’s voice reminds him of Till.
“—Till?”
Ivan’s hand is warm against his. The other he uses on the steering wheel; the road is almost empty at this time of the night. Till snaps out of it; blinks once, twice.
“...sorry,” he says. A beat. “You were saying something?”
Ivan shakes his head and smiles; a small thing on the corner of his lips. “Nothing.” He squeezes his hand. “But it would be nice if you’d tell me what you were so busy thinking about.”
He shakes his head and frowns. “It’s nothing.”
Ivan raises a brow and presses no more. He’s strange like that, takes whatever he can find in Till. Even he doesn’t know what he finds. “You’ve seemed out of it since—”
“Sorry.”
“Was it something I said?”
“No—no. It wasn’t,” Till says, and he means it; Ivan always knows what to say. But instead, he asks, “What was Mizi saying there?”
“Oh,” Ivan replies, “She was asking if you’d want to come celebrate. The set’s wrapped up and she wants to sing her little sad songs in the karaoke.” He laughs, sweet and familiar and alive. His lips are still tinted red from—whatever they used for the blood.
Till averts his gaze. “We should go.”
“Some other time,” he says, because he can read Till like he’s the only language he knows; a tapestry on the back of his hand.
It should all make sense here: sometimes all Ivan knows is Till. Sometimes his world is a small place where every road leads to only one place; tethers dangerously close to devotion that looks like an apocalypse and ends up devouring them both. He doesn’t know what to do with all of it; he doesn’t know how to be loved like Ivan loves him, doesn’t know how to let him.
Outside, the sky is black, starless as it is, vast in the way Ivan often seems like. It takes a dark sky to shine the brightest star and all that.
The thing is, today the star was Ivan, Till the sky, and every star burns out sometime: it’s the principle, and Till can’t fight the universe for him—all he knows is to try, and with Ivan, it’s hardly enough.
(“I think I didn’t do the kiss right,” Ivan says for the fourth time. He can feel his lips swelling up and his breath hitch—Ivan kisses him like a dream come true.
“You’ve literally said that too many times,”
“And I am correct,” he insists, “I don’t want this anything but right—it has to be.”
They do it three more times.)
Ivan always runs colder than he does. They would hold each other’s hands when they were little—I love Till’s hands, it’s like having the sun in my hold—and Ivan would be pressed at his sides all the time. At six, Ivan would let him drag him everywhere he went, at ten he would never let go, at twenty he doesn’t know how to.
Right now, he sleeps beside Till, an arm thrown over his chest and latched onto his side, breathing down his neck. It's steady; in and out, rise and fall. Even like this, he’s so, so cold.
Till holds him a little closer, enough that he can't tell where he ends and Ivan begins. And isn’t it strange, that; when Ivan breathes, the sun shines brighter? How, when he walks, the grass becomes greener? The way he sings, and everything becomes a love song? He’s Ivan and he’s perfect. He's Ivan and he’s close enough that Till can boast about having the whole world in his hold. He simply has no right to be so cold. Figuratively.
Ivan stirs, eventually. He does not let go, does not push away. But he does ask; “Can’t sleep?”
“I was about to till you woke up,” he lies. He has a feeling Ivan knows because—of course he does.
“Okay,” he concedes, threading through Till’s hair. “Do you want me to talk?” He asks, asks because that’s how he is. Ivan asks because he will always wait for him to agree; asks because, in his eyes, there is a day when Till will look at him no more.
It sends a shiver down his spine.
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah. Okay.”
A laugh, and he begins: “You know, back there on stage—” a yawn, “when you began, you know what I’d been thinking the whole time?”
He swallows. “What?”
“That you looked—” the hand in his hair stops. “You looked amazing.”
His heart seizes. And it’s as irrational as it sounds, because Ivan has said it before, many many times, and each time he says it like a poorly disguised secret—a confession, of sorts. But he says it now, and Till doesn’t think he’ll acquaint himself with the burning intensity of the love Ivan uses against him. It sounds ridiculous, and it must be, but it seems inherently true.
He prattles about the costume and the makeup, the way his heart lurched on stage, the kiss. He speaks about everything grander than it was, painted with watercolour and vivid in his mind's eye. It’s almost endearing.
“And I waited—waited for you to see me there, knowing that you wouldn't because that was kind of the whole point, but I just. I just wanted you to hold me in your eyes and never let go. It’s like you’re here in my arms and I’m missing you wherever I go and all I know is how—”
Till splutters, red down to his neck in the way he knows Ivan can see without really seeing. “Shut up.” He mumbles, “Wow, I can't fucking believe it—you’re like—”
“—I love you,” Ivan says, and then promptly reiterates his statement by kissing his forehead.
With that, he’s snoring by the time Till recovers.
“...I love you too,” Till whispers in the dead of the night. “Even when you snore in your sleep and hog the blanket and—whatever. I love you. I love—”
Ivan's grip on him grows a little tighter. He holds him like he’s scared of that, too.
There's something about Ivan that feels unreal. Maybe it's the slope of his jaw, or the intensity in his eyes; maybe it’s the way he loves Till like he was born to, the way he wakes every day and chooses him.
It scares him. Ivan is a collapsed star in the very centre, pulling things in his way, leaving nothing but his mark. It’s something you can't help but notice, awful as it seems; you can’t help but be pulled in. All Till knows is his unconditionality, and each day he tests its limits.
He sleeps beside him, body flushed together and breaths mingled and legs entangled, and Till doesn't move away when he should.
The crux is this: when even he has to embrace change, Ivan remains the same. Till goes to lengths, he does, and he doesn't see Ivan on stage at all; his voice is there and so is his touch and face, but to be loved is to be seen, and Ivan there—the one who had a bullet pierce through his skin—got neither. It’s how the story goes, a tragedy of its own. He lashed out and screamed and shouted and pushed Ivan away, because that’s how it’s supposed to be, and Ivan, all-knowing and all-accepting and unconditional in his love wherever he goes, he accepted it because before that being just how he is, it’s how the story plays him.
And does that not complicate things? All Till sees is his face, sees him crumple to the ground and blood seep out of him like a cascade, sees him kiss Till like the end of the world, sees him dead. It doesn't leave his head and all he can do is hold him alive because he's almost convinced that even his heart beats Till’s name. He wishes it didn't, but Ivan has said it before—To me, the most liberating thing in this whole universe will always be loving you like I've wanted to all my life—because he’s really that cheesy.
But that's where it becomes easier to distinguish: Till sees Ivan, sees him everywhere he goes, in everything he does, because all he knows is how to hold him in his gaze and offer everything that remains of his own heart; it may not beat out Ivan’s name, but it does know how to love. It will simply have to do.
Ivan stretches a palm out to him. His phone hums out a song he’s heard a million times at a volume so low that all he can hear is his voice fading out to Ivan’s and he freezes.
“Dance with me?” Ivan asks, softly as he does, quiet in his wanting.
Till blinks for a minute. If he stares too long, he might end up forgetting what he has to say so he—doesn't. “What’s gotten into you?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Absolutely nothing.”
“You don't even like dancing.”
“I can learn.”
Till raises a brow. “Okay,” he says, keeping his breath even, “okay.”
He takes Ivan’s hand and loops his arm around his neck. Ivan sighs, pulling him by the waist, and the volume of the song picks up, till all he can hear is the rich, recorded baritone of his voice and the lyrics they have both memorised to infinity.
“Why this one?” He asks, having nothing else to say and lets the music wash over him—to quiet my fears I’ll drown you—eyes closed, swaying and humming. “Thought you didn't like it that much.”
“You sang half of it,” Ivan replies like it's only the truth. “I like it.”
His face grows warm. He steps on Ivan's right foot and grumbles, “You fucking sap.”
Ivan laughs, soft and easy. “I thought you wanted me to be honest with you.”
And he is. He really is. He always puts forward his whole being to Till, like an offering to a slumbering God, who only knows how to take, never what to give.
If he were at liberty, Till would take him whole and latch onto everything he gives—selfish and starved, everything about how much he can take before what he can endure.
He leans in and presses his ears to Ivan’s chest and—it’s there. The faint thump of his heart, the hitch of his breath. He swings to the tune and lets Ivan wrap his arms around him like a prisoner to his affection. It’s terrifying.
But what he ends up saying is — “You’re terrifying.”
Ivan pauses. Cracks a smile and raises a brow. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be flattered here.”
“I don’t—fuck. I don’t mean it like that,” he bristles. Inhale, exhale. “It’s—like—sometimes you’re looking at me and the world fastens and it’s like I don’t know how I’d grown up missing you all my life.” A pause. “That’s fucking sappy. And terrifying. And—”
“You’re not going to miss me for the rest of your life,” Ivan cuts him off. A twirl, dip. Their faces are inches apart and the only thing Till can see is the sheer extent of the sincerity in Ivan’s eyes. It’s devastating, almost. “I’m right here—see?”
Oh. “Yeah.” Till whispers, “Yeah, you are.”
He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to being in Ivan’s arms; when he holds him like this. His laughter is an ode to his devotion and his smile a silent offering. His love is a quiet affair, enough to shake Till’s trajectory entirely. He is real, and he is alive, and Till feels a little lightheaded being in Ivan’s orbit.
The corner of Ivan’s lips tugs down in that covert way. “Then what’s bothering you?”
Till shrugs, feet shuffling around Ivan’s, falling back in the rhythm. He wasn’t born a dancer—he wasn’t born anything. Ivan would say that he was born for many things—don’t fret; it all suddenly makes sense.
His throat goes dry. “You would have done that.” He inhales sharply. “You would have done what happened on stage. Do you—do you realise how fucking frustrating that makes everything? That in some ridiculous, parallel reality all this love you have for me would have killed you?”
Ivan’s eyes widen, in the way only Till can tell; it’s the subtle surprise that bleeds out of him when Till points out something he’s hardly considered. Something that Till wasn’t supposed to do, and now that it’s happened he doesn’t know how to deal with it. Right now, it’s just as irritating as it is devastating.
“But it would have mattered very little,” Ivan replies at last, “to you. There would be no worse disservice to my love than to have you as a victim than a recipient. Don’t look at me like that, now—if I were the one who lived, I’d simply serve no purpose. How would that make sense?”
It would have mattered every bit and he doesn’t have the words to say that in a way Ivan can’t twist in his mind—so he doesn’t. Something ugly rouses in his chest. He hates it. “And you would let it destroy you like that?” He spits out when he can’t say; you would let me destroy you like that? He knows the answer to it, and he’s never wanted to know Ivan less than he does now.
“Yes.” It’s resolute, the way he says it—something he’s never been more sure of; like the sky is blue, the grass is green and no part of him knows anything else. “Yes.”
His heart drops. “You’re terrible,” is what Till ends up saying, when he means so many things all at once, “This is exactly what I meant by terrifying.”
Ivan looks down at their feet, moving on their own. “Make no mistake,” he murmurs — “My love for you is only the proof I am alive.”
Then again, there are very few things that you can do in the face of someone’s unadulterated worship. Till shuts his eyes, sways to the song nearing its end and lets Ivan pull him in.
let me drown in you;
until these falling stars
are buried in a blur of time
— Cure, Round Six - Vivinos