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“Have you ever wanted to be free from these?” Luka dangles a flower in front of him. Humans like to take pictures of food before they eat—Luka enjoys admiring his.
“Of course.” Ivan is busy on his computer, but he still lends Luka his attention. Luka chooses not to think about it too hard.
Instead, he rewords his question. “So you would fall out of love with that boy?”
“No.” Ivan answers just as swiftly, just as surely. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could.”
Which means he doesn’t want to. This boy and the love he holds for him is that important. Luka wouldn’t understand, he supposes.
Then Ivan looks up, and Luka meets his gaze. “Isn’t it ideal for you this way?” Ivan gives him a toothy smile. “You’ll never go hungry with me around.”
Luka’s throat gets itchy.
I hope that boy never loves you.
When did that wish mean more than just a convenient meal?
(Was it ever about the food?)
“You’re not the only one that loves without being loved,” Luka replies.
“I know.”
And Ivan does, but in this particular moment, Luka bets he really doesn’t.
“But you’re only feeding from me right now, aren’t you?”
Luka instantly wants to throw up.
“Don’t let it get to your head.”
Then he yawns and shuffles towards Ivan’s room, which serves as his room when Ivan isn’t using it and Luka doesn’t feel like napping on the couch.
He’ll throw up when Ivan leaves to go grocery shopping.
Luka knows how this ends for humans. He’s never cared about it before.
Faced with more weeds in the sink and this newfound care, he absolutely does not want any part of it. Yet, no matter how many soggy leaves he expels from his lungs, the feeling never goes away. The plants aren’t the feelings themselves after all—they’re just the byproduct of what’s already festering inside.
What Ivan has is something beautiful and pure. The thing swirling in Luka is not nearly as kind.
“Do you know what happens when the flowers keep growing?” Luka asks one day, a single day amongst many spent turning this question—and its implications—over and over again in his head.
“I’ll cough up a bush instead of petals?”
Ivan is joking. Luka knows he’s joking just by long term, sheer exposure to Ivan’s mannerisms, and he doesn’t appreciate it any more.
“You die.” He might as well be blunt about it.
Ivan’s smile dims. “Won’t we all die?”
“You’ll die young and unloved.”
“…are you trying to make me angry?”
Luka, though annoyed, is actually a little offended by Ivan’s apparently equal annoyance. One of them is behaving flippantly in the face of their own mortality, and Luka for one can’t die.
Ivan scrutinizes him, and then his expression relaxes. “Or are you actually worried?”
“I’m worried about my dietary stability,” Luka insists, because it’s not not true. “I like how your feelings taste.”
“Then isn’t it fine how it is? You can eat until I die.”
This isn’t how this conversation is supposed to be going. Luka doesn’t want to admit that he’s concerned for Ivan’s life not his food source, and going any farther would be doing just that.
Luka grouses at being forced into a corner, then snaps his fingers.
“Forget the last two minutes.”
Ivan’s eyes fog over, then he blinks and comes to. He takes stock of his surroundings, then Luka.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asks. “Did someone piss you off?”
Luka looks Ivan dead in the eye. “Yeah.”
Then he stalks off without further explanation.
Luka doesn’t really care for enchanting humans often, even if some of his kind engage in it regularly. He doesn’t particularly like humans acting in their nature either, but predictability tends to get boring and he doesn’t see the point in expending energy for something that fails to interest him.
The reason he has Ivan seated in front of him is different.
It’s been about a month since Luka has started this. On a whim that’s dangerously veering into habit, Luka will make eye contact with Ivan and render him entirely complacent. From the outside looking in, Luka doesn’t do anything fun with it though.
He just sits across from the human, stares at him, then starts reciting:
“I love you.”
It’s not hard. Humans struggle with the most basic of tasks.
“I love you.”
What’s the big deal with these three words anyways?
“I love you.”
Luka doesn’t even feel the weeds tickling him.
“I love you.”
His face is wet. But if he doesn’t touch it, then eventually the water will dry up as if it were never there.
I love you.
When he says it in his heart, for no one but himself to hear, the misery chokes him tighter than the weeds.
“Would you die for him?” he asks.
Ivan doesn’t respond. Luka would have to command him to, and then he’d have to doctor his response as well.
That’s not necessary when he already knows the truth.
Standing up, he walks until he’s right in front of Ivan.
Tilting his head up by his chin, Luka blinks and a tear rolls down his cheek, then splatters silently onto Ivan’s face.
“You wouldn’t live for me, would you.”
This is not a question. But by saying it as if it isn’t a fact, Luka can protect himself from a truth that his heart doesn’t want to accept.
He comes back to the apartment after a long walk, just to find Ivan still sitting where he left him.
Whoops.
“Wake up.”
Ivan startles into himself, then furrows his brows.
“Why am I sitting here?”
Luka doesn’t look at him as he retreats to the couch to sleep.
“Punishment,” he drawls, and refuses to elaborate.
Luka dreams, but he never remembers. When he awakens, all that’s left is the aftertaste of whatever scenario his mind subjected him to.
Today, Luka stares at the ceiling, and feels how he imagines a bird would if it were soaring through the sky before suddenly losing its wings, plunging to the ground and certain death.
He never has happy dreams recently.
(Ivan, dressed in the suit he’d had to wear for a dinner last week, sweeps Luka into a dance that he doesn’t know the steps to. They’re walking on air though, so it doesn’t matter as much when Luka stumbles and struggles to keep up with Ivan’s lead.
They waltz through a cloud, past a flock of birds, and then Ivan dips Luka as if he’ll drop him.
Luka’s heart skips, and Ivan laughs at him before gazing into Luka’s eyes.
Even here, Luka’s heart knows not to long for impossible things.
“Don’t.”
Ivan ignores him, and kisses Luka.
And Luka, unable to distinguish what’s real and what’s not, is powerless to refuse him.
What a small mercy it will be to forget all of this in the morning.)
Luka doesn’t believe in meddling in human affairs beyond what helps fill his stomach.
He also didn’t believe in love, and now his lungs are feeding weeds that won’t stop clogging his chest.
So when he hears a voice he recognizes, his first thought is that it’s strange for him to remember a human voice. His second is that he only remembers these kinds of trivial things against his will, and the second and a half thought is that if there’s one thing shoved down his throat as much as the weeds, it’s that boy Ivan can’t let go of.
The annoying part about that is that Ivan isn’t the one doing the shoving; Luka just notices too much about what makes the flowers in Ivan’s ribs taste sweeter.
He doesn’t even remember the kid’s name, just that this is the voice that Ivan listens to through his phone before coughing up a flurry of petals.
Luka has stopped before he realizes it, and stands before a crossroad of choices: meddle, or don’t meddle.
Some street busker shouldn’t have anything to do with him.
(He shouldn’t have fallen in love either.)
Luka waits until the song ends, then gets a good look at the singer’s face.
Hm.
“You’re not that cute.”
It seems artists are some of the best fakers out there, because the intensity of the emotions packed into the song he’d just sang melt into garden variety offense at a speed that would be comical if Luka weren’t so unenthused.
“And what does that have to do with anything?” the boy with a guitar snaps. He glares, and it turns into more of a squint in Luka’s direction. “Do I even know you?”
“No. It was just an observation.” He intends this to be an act of grace, reaching into his wallet to pull out human money Ivan gave him and dropping it into the open guitar case.
The singer himself seems to see it differently. If anything, his mood just gets worse.
“I don’t need your pity, asshole.”
Luka is already bored of this attitude. “I think you do, if you’re playing for free to people that aren’t listening.” This too is just an observation.
“What the hell is your problem?!” He’s standing up now, the boy that Ivan is irrevocably in love with, looking a lot like he wants to throw a punch in Luka’s direction.
Luka is about to open his mouth and insist he doesn’t have a problem—then he takes stock of himself. His hands have curled into fists, his mouth drawn in a tight line, and he doesn’t have a name for this human but what use is a name when this is who owns Ivan’s heart and the flowers sitting in Luka’s stomach?
It’s not out of any fear of the human that Luka steps back. He cowers only in the face of his own feelings, and it won’t matter to anyone if he just flees now—
And then he’s getting wrenched aside, out of view, and he can’t see who it is right away but his heart lurches when he thinks of the only person who would have a reason to do so.
“What are you doing here?” Ivan has a strong grip on Luka’s arm, and Luka inexplicably thinks about whether the force is enough to bruise. When he looks at Ivan’s face, there’s an indescribable urgency in his eyes.
What are you so scared of?
“This guy’s a friend of yours?”
It’s a clean break that shows Luka immediately where he stands: Till’s words cut through the air, Ivan lets go of him like he’s been scathed, and Luka sees the triangle that will never bend in his direction as Ivan’s eyes stay glued on the boy he’s loved for most of his life.
It’s about time he stops pretending he doesn’t know that boy’s name. Since he’s met him now, Luka can’t deny the reality that he exists.
“That’s… it’s complicated. He’s…” Ivan stumbles through explaining. Flowers can bloom off his love for Till, but he can’t even form a sentence when it comes to being Luka’s friend.
“He’s what?”
Luka suddenly doesn’t want to hear the answer. If he does, he fears he might throw up weeds all over the street, and he isn’t keen on making a mess in public.
With nothing holding him back, he turns and flees to the silence of no one’s footsteps coming after him.
He throws up in an alley, much to the surprise of a nearby cat. Sad, pathetic, wet clumps of rotted brown pile up on the ground, and even when his stomach stops heaving Luka shoves his fingers down his throat to summon up whatever’s left in there. He gags up leaves until all that’s left is his own spit and the ugly sounds of it all wrenching free from his chest.
He forces himself until tears push past his eyelids, and even if he can’t throw up anything but air, he knows that the unsightly feelings he holds will feed a new patch of weeds soon enough.
He should have never meddled in human affairs.
(He should have never fallen in love.)
The rebellious, unreasonable side of him wanted to stay out past sunrise and return only when Ivan had surely left for work, but exhaustion pulled Luka back to familiarity.
He returned to an empty apartment anyways, and convinced himself that it didn’t mean anything before collapsing on the couch.
When he awakens, it’s with a weary heart and a determined mind.
He knows how this ends for humans.
Now that he cares, he might as well do something about it.
Ivan is asleep in his room. Or at least, Luka assumes he is. When he enters, he sees Ivan’s figure on the bed, only for the human to sit up upon his entry.
He doesn’t have time for whatever conversation might occur.
As always, Ivan looks at him straight in the eyes.
“Sleep.”
It takes a moment for the magic to work, a hiccup that doesn’t usually occur, but Luka knows his own strength and the meager strength of humans—any inconsistency is likely the result of his frayed emotions. Ivan falls backwards, and then it’s time to end it.
Approaching the prone form on the bed, Luka braces one knee beside him before he slowly peels back the blankets, then pulls up Ivan’s shirt to expose his chest. His fingers trace along his bare torso, just because in this moment he can, and it’s the last moment he’ll be able to.
They stop at the chest. Then, Luka’s hand sinks in.
His fingers dig through the tangle of stems, trace them down to the base. He grasps the bulk of them, and then he pulls. He pulls, and pulls and pulls, but the flowers won’t come free. The roots don’t want to let go—or rather, Ivan’s stupid heart refuses to let go of them, even when something tries to pry them away from him.
His kind don’t usually do this. Extracting the flowers forcefully means a big feast at once, but then it’s over and they have to find someone else. Some like that method, but Luka prefers stability. Humans usually kill the flowers in their chest eventually; their hearts, evidently, aren’t built for not being loved in return. Most can’t stand the pain, and let go once it becomes too much. Even humans, craving love as they do, won’t choose it over their own life.
The ones who do… well, they make their choice. They die for their love.
But even then, the flowers can still be pulled out. Luka has never heard of a human refusing to let go.
It’s not a conscious choice after all; even if one doesn’t want to let go of the painful feelings, humans are averse to pain. A little pressure, and their hearts will give.
Ivan, from the very depth of his core, refuses to give up loving Till.
Luka tries again, and he might be imagining it but the roots feel just a little bit more stubborn. Or maybe it’s his resolve that weakens.
He stares at the unconscious human, then sighs in defeat. This was hopeless from the start.
Luka pulls his hand from Ivan’s chest, then rests his fingers against where his heart beats.
“Loving someone that much can’t be healthy,” Luka muses to himself. “The subject of your affections has a heavy burden to carry.”
What a monster, to be able to love and fixate so deeply. Luka pities whoever would want such a thing.
He doesn’t even flinch as the weeds start clogging his throat, and wet, unseemly hacking brings them past his lips.
This time, Luka lets them plop pathetically on Ivan’s chest, gazing at the stark difference between his feelings and their object.
He won’t be throwing these up any more after this. Unlike Ivan, Luka’s love isn’t pretty, nor will he fight to keep hold of it. These feelings that he’s not supposed to have aren’t precious at all.
And yet, his fingers delicately arrange the mangled mess of browning leaves right over Ivan’s heart, then he presses his palm against them expressionlessly. Or at least, he hopes so. He won’t be looking in a mirror to check.
In a fantasy, the kind humans love so much, he can deliver his feelings like this directly to Ivan’s chest.
Since they exist in reality, however, all it does is leave a stain.
Looking down at his hand, and then his own heart, Luka gives up on one more hopeless endeavor.
While he still loves him, Luka allows himself a moment of indulgence. Ivan is under compulsion, so it’s not that different from every other time he’s put him to sleep, but now Luka is free to look at him like it’s the last time he’ll ever see his face. It very well might be; a Luka that doesn’t love Ivan won’t see a reason to come back here.
In the end, his impossible love had nothing to do with what he was, and everything to do with who he wasn’t. It will end unnoticed and unrealized, with Luka its last and only witness.
He’s learned what it’s like to fall in love; he will find out what it feels like to mourn it as well.
“You should talk to that boy,” he says suddenly. With what conviction—magical or not—he can’t determine. “He seems too stupid to get it without an explanation.”
And if words don’t get through to him either, then that’s no longer Luka’s problem.
When he reaches into himself, the weed gives way like it was rooted in topsoil. He is willingly letting it go, after all.
But when he extracts it from his chest, instead of the browning, rotted version he spits out, the thing is deep green and fresh. Maybe because his insides hadn’t had a chance to rot it yet, twisted by what he really feels.
Either way, it’s of no use to him now.
He tosses it in the trash, then walks out of Ivan’s apartment without looking back.
“So what was it like, being in love?” Hyuna asks, chewing on a rose.
Luka shoots her a sour look. “I didn’t tell you so you could harass me.”
“This isn’t harassment! Just curiosity. We’re not supposed to feel those things, after all.”
There’s a reason for that. Luka learned it the hard way. “It felt like a weed. Unsightly, incessantly growing, and obscuring what’s actually beautiful.” Luka steals the rest of her rose and bites it to the stem, much to Hyuna’s outrage.
“Hey!”
Luka offers the stem back, but Hyuna doesn’t seem to appreciate the gesture. Her loss.
He ends up tossing it away, and his stomach remains unsatisfied. That flower was a little too bitter for him. It seems he’s developed a sweet tooth.
There’s no laws that govern their kind, but it’s standard practice to pick up the mess you made. That’s why Luka vanished all traces of himself from Ivan’s apartment—the clothes he’d (Ivan, that is) bought for him, his favorite foods that Ivan didn’t care for, photos (there weren’t many), and lastly, all of Ivan’s memories of having ever met a monster.
Luka did it while he still loved Ivan, because a Luka who didn’t might decide it’s more practical to kill him than leave him be. Cleaning up a corpse is simpler than cleaning up a mistake.
When he reached the final step, Luka let himself be selfish.
“Ivan.”
Then Ivan’s eyes opened, the same empty gaze that had kept Luka company so often in these past few months. It had been lonely then; it’s lonelier now. He wasn’t saying goodbye to a person—he bid a foolish dream farewell.
“Kiss me.”
It was not supposed to be satisfying. Ivan wasn’t looking at him, and he wasn’t doing this because he wanted to. But Luka is blackened in his heart, which is why it still skipped when Ivan stepped closer and cradled the back of his head.
Luka closed his eyes.
The kiss didn’t come.
Instead, the feeling of the back of Ivan’s fingers against his face made him reel back in shock, and Ivan stood there just as possessed as he should be, doing what he shouldn’t be able to.
“Don’t cry,” he said. And then like Luka’s orders finally got through, he leaned forward and kissed him.
One last act of selfishness, and Luka couldn’t even enjoy it.
He tore out the weeds immediately.
・❥・
Ivan looks in his trash, and sees something odd. He doesn’t raise succulents nor does he garden, but a bundle of weeds somehow made it to his garbage.
He takes them out just to see if they jog his memory at all—and they don’t.
But he does take a moment to admire the flower that bloomed:
A dandelion.
They’re called weeds, but he’s always thought their flowers were too pretty to be lumped with other garden pests.
When they mature, they even turn into fluffy, wish granting plants.
Ivan gazes at the single bright, yellow flower, and decides on a whim not to throw it back in the trash bag.
In his windowsill, in a mug he bought two of for some reason, the lone dandelion loses its petals and becomes a featherlight ball of white wings ready to take off into the sky.
Ivan opens his window, takes a deep breath, then blows.
They scatter on the breeze, instantly out of sight, before Ivan realizes.
Ah, I forgot to make a wish.
Somehow, he isn’t too disappointed though. Those seeds feel like they were meant to be delivered to someone—somewhere—and he trusts they’ll make it.
A breeze overhead ruffles Luka’s hair, and he scrunches his nose in annoyance.
When he goes to fix it, a clump of seeds flutters down.
How annoying.