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Till’s muse is Mizi. She has always been pencil lines on Till’s sketchbooks, pink paint and warm colors on his canvas.
Till’s muse is Mizi, so he doesn’t quite understand it when her image starts to get foggy and gray under the eraser’s influence, over and over again, until he’s just staring at a blank page once more.
He doesn’t understand—Mizi is still just as pretty as she was a few months ago, with her cotton candy hair and lemon green eyes. She is still just as bright, lighting up wherever she walks. So why is it impossible to draw her all of a sudden?
Till has always liked Mizi, so it can’t be that he somehow just—stopped, can it?
It’s just an art block. That’s all there is to it, really. Perhaps it is not a Mizi problem (not that it ever is—Mizi isn’t to be blamed for his mistakes, obviously) but simply a “my pencils and paints refuse to listen to me and I am starting to hate art once more” problem.
Still, Till hunches over his sketchbook for another two hours.
He ends up with a wrinkled page and a drawing that looks like slop.
He rips the paper out of the book’s binding. The other side didn’t really have anything of any value either—it was a drawing of a girl that was supposed to be Mizi, it seemed, but her face was all wrong.
Till groans.
“Till, are you done yet?” Ivan laments from somewhere behind him. His chin hovers over Till’s shoulder, who flinches at his voice. He shouldn’t be surprised at this point. Ivan haunts his every presence.
“What do you want?” Till focuses on crumpling the paper into a ball and attempting to throw it into the recycling bin on the opposite wall. He misses.
Ivan hums infuriatingly, flashing his stupid perfect all white teeth smile. The warmth near Till’s shoulder subsides as Ivan hops over to the discarded paper ball and returns back to Till’s side. Till leans back on his chair until all he can see is Ivan’s unfairly perfect face.
Ivan unfolds the ball until it’s just a wrinkled piece of paper. “Is this supposed to be Mizi?”
“Shut up,” Till screeches, hands going for the paper. He makes a wild grab for the (can he even consider it a drawing, with how horrible it is?) thing, but Ivan stretches out one hand to impede his path.
“It’s good,” Ivan says, tone blank and devoid of any emotion. “All your drawings are beautiful, you know…even this gray blob over here.”
Ivan taps the other side of the paper while saying the last part.
“Those are eraser marks,” Till deadpan, but his face still goes red at the praise, even if Ivan is toying with him.
Ivan shrugs. “Still better than what I could do.”
“Obviously. A rabbit could draw better than you, even with its eyes closed and feet bound.” Till rolls his eyes and slumps back in his seat. Ivan nearly lands in his lap, but Till pushes him to the side just in time.
He still lands right next to him, though, just like he always has since they were kids.
They both barely fit in the constricting chair, especially with Ivan’s build. Till wonders if he would be forgiven by their neighbors if he started to screech uncontrollably at Ivan until he fucked off to annoy someone else.
“I bought you new art supplies,” Ivan says.
Nevermind. Till supposes Ivan can stay a bit longer, just as he always has.
“Where are they, then?” Till grumbles.
“You wanna guess?” Ivan grins again, cheek smushed into Till’s shoulder. Almost his entire lower half is off the chair so he is able to accomplish that feat.
Till shoves Ivan as far away as he possibly can in their enclosed space. Ivan slides back up in the seat, sitting properly, now. He takes back his earlier statement. “Fuck off.”
Ivan has the audacity to giggle as he swivels the chair around.
“Stop that,” Till commands. Ivan keeps spinning. Till is reminded of the time he was sentenced to the teacup ride with the guy at a festival, once. After Ivan decided to spin them at hell’s pace, (and after Till screeched loud enough for the next town over to hear) Till threw up on Ivan’s shoes.
Ivan stops spinning after a few minutes of Till staring at the back of his eyelids. Ivan brushes Till’s bangs behind his ear, his touch burning him wherever it traces.
“Are you okay?” Ivan asks, his voice soft.
Till contemplates turning away. Nodding yes, claiming his gift, and tossing Ivan out.
“I can’t draw her,” Till clarifies, “Mizi.”
If he were to push Ivan away, he would only come chasing after him harder until Till was backed into a corner.
It’s annoying, but it’s nice to have someone care that much about him.
“It’s so fucking infuriating. No matter what I do, I just can’t draw her anymore. It doesn’t make sense,” Till says.
Ivan hums, picking at Till’s piercings. “Have you tried to draw something else, for a change?”
“I’ve always drawn Mizi,” Till says in lieu of a response.
“And maybe that’s why you can’t right now,” Ivan reasons.
When Till doesn’t say anything, Ivan chomps down on his ear.
Till screeches when Ivan doesn’t move his mouth, but Ivan’s words bounce around in his mind.
No. He shouldn’t need to draw anyone else, though. He’s always loved Mizi, hasn’t he? So as long as he loves her, he doesn’t need to look into it. It’s a temporary thing, this art block.
“Sua and I are dating!” Mizi announces.
They’re at their local diner, which has become their designated hangout spot since freshman year. Mizi and Sua sit on one side, while Ivan, Till, and Hyuna and Luka sit on the other. (Sua had forcibly squished them into the space.)
“Congrats! I assume Mizi confessed!” Ivan chirps, clapping his hands together twice.
“It was about time!” Hyuna laughs heartily, grinning.
“Can we move now,” Luka complains.
“Nice,” Till says, offering a thumbs up.
He likes Mizi, right? So he’s supposed to be jealous, because he likes her. There’s supposed to be bile rising up his throat right about now and he’s supposed to feel horrible, because Mizi is his one and only just as she is to Sua.
But there isn’t.
He moves back to where he usually sits beside Mizi on the inside, near the wall. Because Sua refuses to let Ivan squish her off the edge with “how fat he is” (to which Ivan responds with “how fat my ass is, you mean”) Ivan sits right across from Till. (“I must be as close to you as possible,” Ivan claims, grinning.)
He and Ivan engage in their usual foot-war while conversation surrounds them as they order. Ivan always gets the sweetest milk tea possible with buttermilk pancakes—which he gets even now, Till notes, even though it’s three in the goddamn afternoon.
Ivan hooks his foot around Till’s knee and slams it into the wall, keeping it there even as Till thrashes his leg. When he looks up to glare at Ivan angrily, Ivan’s gaze is already locked onto him.
It should be creepy, with how often Ivan stares.
Till can’t seem to find it anything but comforting. It would be weirder if Ivan stopped or simply just didn’t.
“You okay?” Even amongst the louder chatter, Till can still hear Ivan’s whisper.
“Of course I am.” Till knocks his knee against Ivan’s foot, escaping from the prison. “Why wouldn’t I be, dumbass?”
Ivan’s gaze traces the outline of his eyes and nose and mouth and reaches deeper to try to wrench an answer out of Till.
What can Till say, though? “Hey, so you were actually kind of right and this crush that’s been my anchor to everything, this unchanging thing I could always rely on, actually changed and I don’t know why or when and I didn’t even notice, somehow? Which is really weird because you also didn’t notice and you know me better than I do so if you did notice why the fuck didn’t you tell me?? And honestly I’m probably on the edge of a breakdown or something but I’m just gonna focus on how your leg hits mine, thanks for always being here.”
Like hell he’d ever say that.
Ivan doesn’t move his eyes away, but he takes his right sneaker off and brushes Till’s thigh with his right foot and he shrieks so loudly that if their group had not been here at this abnormal time and had not come here every week for the past year or so, they would have been permanently banned.
Ivan stacks his foot on Till’s thigh as Sua glares at them. Luka is still too busy staring into Hyuna’s soul, or something along those lines, to care at this moment.
“Can you quiet down?” Sua snarks. Mizi giggles.
Their usual waiter, Acorn, is actually an acquaintance of Till’s (and therefore one of Ivan’s friends, and therefore Mizi knows them, and therefore Sua knows of them, and therefore Hyuna and Luka know him too. But also, Luka is some kind of all-knowing sociopath who knows everything about everyone, so there’s also that) who used to have a crush on Sua, according to Luka, but is now dating a guy named Marty. (Who is also a friend of Ivan’s, so by extension, also an acquaintance of Till’s. For some reason, everyone Ivan knows might as well know Till for how much Ivan seems to talk about him. Most of them know Mizi and Sua and some of them know Luka and Hyuna, but Till is convinced that when Ivan introduces himself, he always includes Till because without fail, every single person who has even just talked to Ivan seems to know about him, too.)
Acorn hands them their drinks. A coffee for Till, Ivan’s deadly sugar concoction, Luka’s lemon water, Hyuna’s iced tea, Sua’s herbal tea, and Mizi’s milk tea. Till just realizes Mizi’s ordered the same thing as Ivan, just without pearls. He wonders how he didn’t notice that earlier.
Ivan’s foot digs deeper into his thigh, suddenly, and Till refrains from the urge to empty his coffee into Ivan’s face. He recognizes Acorn chatting mindlessly in the background with Mizi as he angrily hisses, “What do you want?”
“I can’t believe you drink your coffee like that,” Ivan says, grinning.
“You literally always say this.” Till glares at Ivan, “it’s not my fault you’re a fatass who can consume three times the amount of sugar compared to the average human.”
Ivan reaches over and pinches his cheek.
Till keeps glaring. Ivan sticks his tongue out. Till seizes Ivan’s hand and pushes it back towards him before taking a sip of coffee, finally refocusing on his surroundings, where Acorn is making conversation with Mizi, now.
“Ah, that reminds me!” Acorn exclaims. “Mizi, why didn’t you ask Ivan or Till to help you confess to Sua back then, since they also know her?”
“Huh?” Mizi blinks, “Ivan helped me a little, but why would I do that?”
The coffee is good, just as it always is. Till wonders if he should just drink it all in one go. Maybe in two goes?
“Because they’re dating, of course!” Acorn says, "They'd probably know all the ins and outs of confessing."
Till, mid-swallow, chokes on his coffee, and slams it back down on the table. Horrible, wheezing coughs take over his body as the liquid goes down the wrong pipe. He leans over and bonks his head on the table as everything around him goes static as he focuses on trying to eject the drink from his lungs.
Finally, he looks up, coughing stopped, to see Acorn blinking at them owlishly. Hyuna is cackling, Sua looks murderous, Luka looks amused, and Mizi’s desperately trying to hold on to the remnants of her poker face. Till refuses to look at Ivan.
“You’d think,” Hyuna says after she’s done.
“No,” Till says. “I’m, uh, straight.”
He’s straight because he likes Mizi. Or liked Mizi. Whatever. Same thing. Or something. He doesn’t really know and he’s kind of too tired to find out at this particular moment in time. He dumps the rest of the coffee down his throat while he still can and pointedly does not look at the man across from him.
“Awwww, Till, do you not love me?” Ivan’s voice says. Till literally feels a vein bulge. “C’mon, Till, give your boyfriend a kiss-”
It’s so obviously fake–a statement made to piss him off. Does Ivan really think Till can’t tell? For fuck’s sake, he’s known this guy for more than a decade.
“Shut your mouth, Ivan.” Till, once again, does not look at the guy in question. He also pointedly ignores the sudden warmth in his cheeks and forcibly wills it to go down. It doesn’t work, so he just prays no one notices. He refocuses his attention on Acorn.
The guy is gaping. His expression is twisted into one of utmost confusion before he recenters his face. “Huh,” Acorn says, quietly, and then, “HUH?! BUT-”
Acorn stops. He looks at Ivan, whose gaze is locked onto Till’s–-Till can feel it through the very marrow of his bones. He once again fights every cell and atom in his body so it won’t turn to face him. He feels Ivan’s foot kick his ankle.
Acorn looks at Till, who is distracting himself by staring into Acorn’s soul. He looks at Ivan again. Sua looks like she wants to commit suicide. Mizi is running her hands through Sua’s hair, also looking at Ivan. Hyuna is still giggling at Acorn’s expression. Luka appears to be chugging his water.
“Cool,” Acorn says, running out of words to say. Why the fuck is Ivan still looking at him. For once in your stupid life, Ivan, Till thinks to himself, can you stop LOOKING AT ME YOU FUCKWAD??????
Ivan slams his heel into Till’s foot. It hurts like hell. It reminds him of their school days, when they’d get into fights on a grassy lawn, rolling around in the grass.
Till slams his foot directly onto Ivan’s toes. He doubts it hurts that much. Ivan always won their fights.
It’s a stupid statement made by Acorn, by all people, so it’s really not anything. They go on, they eat their food, they talk and they congratulate Mizi and Sua once again, and everyone’s happy. Everyone’s content.
Till, for some stupid reason, can’t get what Acorn said out of his mind. It sticks to the back of his head on his way home with Ivan, it writes itself on his walls and ceiling as he tries to sleep.
He and Ivan share an apartment just a bit off campus. It’s nice. It’s a comfortable size, the shared rent is fine (especially with Ivan and Sua’s nepo baby money; it took all summer to convince Till to leech off of their parents’ money, too) and it’s familiar, with Ivan inside. Whoever wakes up first, which is usually Ivan, cooks breakfast, but sometimes Till pulls an all-nighter and Ivan still cooks. Either Till cooks lunch or they go to the diner with their friends, and Ivan and Till swap turns cooking dinner or ordering takeout.
“Till,” Ivan says while unlocking the door to their apartment, “You’re okay?”
“Why do you keep asking me that, dumbass?” Till asks, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, don’t you like Mizi? And now she’s dating Sua?” Ivan says.
“Which you knew would happen,” Till drawls, “I’m fine.”
Ivan’s silent as they walk into their apartment.
Till, for the fifth time in three minutes, throws a pillow at the wall.
He needs to draw.
Till fumbles out of bed. Ivan and him are roommates–he thinks that even if they weren’t, Ivan would still find ways to terrorize him day to day. He hopes Ivan’s asleep–he would get barrelled by questions if he wasn’t with incessant poking, and Till really doesn’t want to do that.
He reaches around for the light at his desk, then takes out his sketchbook. Jagged edges of paper protrude from the spine from where he’s ripped out failures of drawings. He’s nearly done with the sketchbook, now–he’s on his final pages. Nearly a third of it is ripped out from the past few months of unsuccessful portraits of Mizi. There are a few mindless sketches here and there on some of the pages near the middle of the book, while the beginning is also filled with drawings of Mizi. The rest of the portraits of her are okay at best. They’re her, yeah, he supposes, but they hold not nearly enough soul. They’re simply harsh pencil lines.
Some of them barely look like her. Maybe this is when he stopped liking her. He wonders how he didn’t notice, why he clung onto this illusion even so long after it ended.
“Have you tried to draw something else, for a change?”
Till doesn’t want to think about it, so he doesn’t. He just picks up his HB mechanical pencil and draws. He fills up the remaining sketchbook pages mindlessly. He climbs back into bed as soon as he feels his eyelids droop.
When he wakes up, it’s around noon. His sketchbook is on his desk.
Pictures of Ivan decorate his last pages. They’re anything far from perfect, but they’re the best he’s done in ages. He even got his smile right–the one that made Ivan’s eyes crease and made him look unbelievably fond.
Till doesn’t think about it yet.
He adds the red to Ivan’s eyes and fixes his hair. He adds his snaggletooth.
He dates the pages. He stuffs the sketchbook into the drawer of completed ones. He reaches out and rips off the plastic from a new one Ivan bought him a couple months before. Till places it on his desk and leaves it there for the time being.
There’s a note on the fridge from Ivan, to Till. He went grocery shopping since there was nothing in the fridge, and would make sure he purchased the spicy instant ramen noodles Till liked.
Till stares at the note and the little kaomoji next to Ivan’s name for an embarrassing amount of time. He wonders what’s wrong with him as he leaves the note taped to the fridge.
Ivan was right, Till thinks as he glances around the refrigerator. It’s mostly empty except for a few leftovers and fruits and a half-finished carton of milk. He uses the last of their eggs to make scrambled ones, and eyes the empty chair across from him.
“Because they’re dating, of course!”
Till furrows his brows. Why is he still thinking about that? Well, more accurately, why had Acorn thought that? Till wasn’t uncomfortable with it, or anything, he guessed. It’s not like he wanted it.
To date Ivan. Till wondered how that felt.
Well, he’d be a little annoying shit. He’d follow him around anywhere, cling onto his clothes and nip on his skin and piss him off. And he’d buy him random annoyingly thoughtful gifts all the time. And he’d steal his stuff and send him all over the place. Just like usual.
Wouldn’t Ivan show affection, too, though? Wouldn’t he sneak in kisses just because he could? Latch onto him in sleep? Tell him he loved him whenever possible?
Till’s thinking too much about this.
It’s because he pities Ivan’s future boyfriend. Yeah. That’s it. Really, only Till can stand him at this point. No one else possibly could with how little time they spent with him compared to Till.
Yeah. Till pities them.
He does. That’s it.
Why the fuck did he pick an art major, Till thinks as he stares at the foreboding assignment in front of him.
He should have dropped out as soon as he was forced to draw the same subject over and over again. His Mizi-Art-Block had started shortly after he entered college, he presumed, so he chose a guitar instead. His fingers ached for days.
After careful consideration and a deep, long dive of his memories, the Mizi-Art-Block started in his freshman year of college. He supposed this was about the time he started liking the idea of Mizi more than the real Mizi. (Which brought up the question of did he ever like the real Mizi, which he didn’t want to think about.) However, his drawings were mostly unaffected–he just wouldn’t want to draw her a hundred times, at that point.
(High School Till would, but High School Till was a bit crazy in the head.)
He was in his sophomore year, so sometime over the course of the summer before his freshman year–probably when he was hanging out with Ivan (hey, actually, Ivan and him spent the past two summers almost always together–that was kind of weird, wasn’t it…nah, that’s just Ivan, Till thought), his crush on Mizi faded.
Anyways, the assignment.
It was a charcoal animation.
He started the assignment right after having dinner with Ivan, so at around seven or eight.
It was two in the morning.
He had two seconds of animation and seven frames done.
Just as he finishes Frame #8, Ivan bursts into his room. The door opens to reveal an amazing scent drafting in from the kitchen.
Till must stay strong.
“Hi, Till,” Ivan says through a mouthful of instant ramen noodles. They’re Till’s favorite brand. Ivan knows this. Till always tries to keep him from eating the particular label at all times. (It never works.)
He’s going to murder Ivan in his sleep.
“What,” Till responds, cranky.
“Say aaah,” Ivan’s suddenly five inches away from him and raising chopsticks in front of him. Till turns away and adds Frame #8 to the animation.
He glances at Ivan. His hair is messed up and he’s grinning at Till. His lips look soft. He wonders how it would feel like to kiss him.
(What the fuck. Is that thought from sleep fatigue? Did the Mizi-Art-Block affect his brain this much?)
His lips part unconsciously.
Ivan’s chopsticks shoot into his now forced open mouth as he guffaws. Flavor explodes on his tongue. Ramen is stuck on his chin after Ivan’s assault. He tries his best to glare, but he hasn’t had this brand in a long while, and he’s kind of hungry, so all he can do is look up to where Ivan is still smiling.
“Is it good?” Ivan asks. Till swallows.
“Fuck off,” Till says.
Ivan’s hand touches his chin and raises his face up to meet his eyes. Till can see the stars in them. His breath stutters. Ivan swipes his index finger from one side of his chin to another, and it touches his lips.
“Ta-daa!!” Ivan chants, breaking the spell, though Till is sure the flush on his cheeks from that interaction is still there. Ivan raises a single ramen noodle from Till’s face and drops it into his mouth. “Take a break, Till.”
Till doesn’t know what the fuck just happened, but he stands up and follows Ivan to the kitchen in his stupor.
They’re hiking. Till is dying.
He desperately needs water. No, Ivan, it doesn’t matter that he had just chugged down an entire bottle of it twenty minutes ago. Fuck off.
“Rest stop!” Mizi chants. At least Luka looks worse than he is. Luka’s hair is plastered to his face and he looks like a corpse as he lays down.
“Ivan, let’s go get snacks!” Mizi says.
“I’ll take care of Luka.” Hyuna waves her empty water bottle. “Hey, Sua, can you refill this for me?”
“Ouhhh, Till, refill these too!” Ivan chirps, pushing five giant water bottles into his hands. One is his, which he emptied into his throat about an hour before. One is Ivan’s, which he drank half of. One is Mizi’s, judging by all the stickers, which still has a bit of water in it. One is Sua’s, which is about half full, and one is Luka’s, which is completely empty.
Till glares at him from over the armful of metal water bottles he has, but he guesses Ivan did let him drink from his water bottle. So.
“I hope you break your arms,” Till says, and marches off to the water station, Sua close behind him.
“I LOVE YOU TOO, TILL!” Ivan screams. He can hear Hyuna’s laughter.
He feels his ears warm up. Sua groans from behind him.
“So,” Sua says while they’re refilling the waters, “You don’t like Mizi anymore, right?”
Sua seems to be looking right through him. Till suppresses a stutter as he says, “Nah. I got over her, uhm, a long time ago, I think.”
“Hm,” Sua hums. “Anything else?”
He turns off the nozzle as Ivan’s water bottle nearly starts to overflow with water. “Uh, not really. I promise I’d never hit on Mizi or anything. Even if I tried to, she’s too in love with you to notice.”
Sua smiles a bit at that, holding Mizi’s bottle up to the nozzle on her side. “And Ivan?”
“What about him?” Till’s filled Ivan and Luka’s waters, while Sua has filled hers and Mizi’s. He holds his to the nozzle and gulps it down as soon as it reaches the halfway point before letting it fill up again.
“He has polaroid pictures of you everywhere,” Sua says, “You have polaroid pictures of him everywhere.”
“And?” Till scoffs, watching the water near the opening of his bottle.
“There’s a picture of you in his wallet. He has a clear phone case just so he can put you in it. He keeps them in all of his bags and you take up most, if not all, of his phone storage,” Sua says. “He’s in your phone case too, isn’t he?”
Hearing the stuff about his photo makes his insides clench and fuzz weirdly. It’s kind of a nice feeling.
“So?” Till asks, turning off the nozzle and tightening the cap. Sua is holding two water bottles–presumably hers and Mizi’s. He guesses he’ll lug the rest.
“Did you ever keep a photo of Mizi?” Sua asks.
“There should be a lot on my phone. Well, there were a lot of really bad ones that I deleted last year,” Till replies. Where the fuck is this conversation going–and oh, shit, these things are heavy. “I kept the good ones for reference.”
“So each summer,” Sua summarizes, “You and your best friend take a hundred photos of each other-”
“Ivan takes them-”
“-and you keep each and every one of them stored in safe spaces, and during those summers, when you liked someone, and took photos of them,” Sua says, “you kept only the good ones on your phone, for reference.”
“I wasn’t as close to Mizi,” Till says, “Ivan is like a leech who feeds off my very existence. Mizi and I were on opposite sides of a river. Or something. An analogy like that.”
Damn, these bottles are heavy.
“Do you still draw Mizi?” Sua asks.
“No. She never turns out the way I want her to anymore,” Till sighs. “Honestly, the last person who did that, uh, turned out the way I wanted, you know, was probably-”
Coloring in the red in his eyes. Adding his snaggletooth on a few side profiles. Adjusting his bangs. Adjusting the highlights in his dark hair.
“Probably?” Sua prompts. Till’s about to respond some stuttered out, half-hearted, see through lie (“Uh, my um, mom?”) when-
“Till! Sua!” Ivan sings, running towards them. He lifts the bottles off of Till’s arms, which start to ache as soon as they hit his sides. “Mizi and I got a lot of snacks, but we got back quick. Figured you needed some help.”
“You mean you wanted to be with Till,” Sua drawls. “I wonder what sin I committed in my last life to get stuck with a brother like you.”
“Sometimes I wonder if the devil himself created you,” Ivan shoots back. He turns to Till. “I’ll race you. Winner does the chores for the rest of the month.”
He’s already gone by the time Till processes the words. “Oh, shit–IVAN, YOU ASSHOLE–GET BACK HERE! SHIT!”
Till’s panting by the time he reaches the circle of benches Hyuna, Luka, and annoyingly, Ivan, are sitting at.
“Fuck you,” he says to Ivan, drinking from Ivan’s water bottle just to spite him.
Ivan hands him one of his favorite snacks. He steps on his foot for being so agitatingly thoughtful. His heart hammers in his chest.
“Ivan,” Till says, recounting his conversation with Sua, “I think Sua thinks you’re in love with me or something.”
It’s silent for a few beats, but Till swears he hears Ivan mutter, “or something.”
But maybe it’s just the wind (…or something).
“Hm. I don’t know. Maybe she thought you were in love with me,” Ivan says. Till stomps on his foot.
“As if.” The words feel like sandpaper in his mouth. Ivan takes a moment longer to crush Till’s foot than he usually does. The phone in Till’s left hand burns, and all he can think about is the photo of Ivan mid-laugh stuck to the back of it.
When they’re back in their apartment, Till sets his phone face down on the table. He extracts his phone case from it. He gingerly peels the back of the photo off of the device. Ivan had stuck some white sticker thing on the back of it the day they took the photos. Now, it was colored gray from use.
The photo has Ivan tilted slightly away from the camera, standing directly in front of the setting sun. The light behind him reflects off his hair and casts shadows on his face. He looks ethereal. His hand is curved, facing downwards against his mouth as his face is split in a lopsided, open smile. His eyes are barely open, and he’s leaning over from laughing.
Till is not a photographer, so the photo is slightly shaky. He hates his past self for that.
His mouth still goes dry at the image. He bitterly wonders how one of Ivan’s fangirls would react to it.
Till thinks it’s his favorite photo of Ivan.
When Till opens the door to Ivan’s room, Ivan is pulling on a shirt, his back muscles stretching. Till’s face warms from the sight.
Which, now that he thinks about it, is slightly odd.
He pushes that thought to the back of his mind for later inspection.
“Till?” Ivan hums.
“Do you have that, uh, sticky white thing-” Ivan’s eyebrows raise suggestively, lips tilted upwards in a grin. Till glares at him. “No, not like that, you freak. The stickers. You know, we used them to stick the photos we took last summer to anywhere we wanted? Do you have more of them?”
Ivan opens a drawer and takes out three of them. “Whatdya need them for?”
“I unstuck the photo just now and need a replacement sticker,” Till explains as Ivan follows him to his room. Ivan peers down at his desk which now holds his phone, phone case, and photo of Ivan.
“I didn’t know you still kept it,” Ivan says, voice soft. Till likes his voice best when it’s like this. It makes him feel nice.
(He’s the only person Ivan talks to like this. That thought makes him feel giddy.)
“Why wouldn’t I?” Till scoffs, “It’s a good photo. Hey–don’t get in on your head at that, dumbass. I was the one who took it.”
It’s not really the photo being good that makes it so valuable, though. It’s the expression on Ivan’s face. He looks free, there in front of the sun, behind the camera. He’s so…happy.
Till doesn’t mention that, though.
Ivan smushes his cheek against Till’s. “Didn’t say anything.”
He licks Till’s face. Till starts screaming again.
Till buys a canvas. He doesn’t really know why.
He supposes when someone (probably Ivan) inevitably asks why he bought it, he’ll just go, “It called out to me in the middle of the art store, chanting my name. I couldn’t bear to leave it there.”
(Kind of like the first episode of Madoka Magica. Exactly like that. Oh well.)
So, when Ivan asks him, “What are you going to do with the canvas?”--
–he very intellectually declares, “I’m going to paint a portrait to redeem myself.”
What the fuck, Till. Where did that come from??
“Do I get to see it when it’s done?” Ivan grins.
No, because it’s not going to be done. When’s the last time he successfully painted a portrait and it turned out the way he wanted?
“Whatever,” Till replies.
What the fuck is he doing. Is something wrong with him? First, there’s the weird body reactions to Ivan, and then this weird word vomit thing that’s going on right now. Why is he so nervous around Ivan right now? He’s known him forever. He was there when he shoved a bug up his nose when he was seven, for fuck’s sake. Or that time he ate dirt. And mud. And grass.
…how is this loser popular? Till thinks, distantly. Why is he so fond of this dork?
“Thaaaaat meaaaans yesssssss!!” Ivan sings, “Can I be the first to see it?”
“No, idiot, I’m the first to see it.” Till rolls his eyes. “...you can be the second, I guess.”
“Heheheh,” Ivan nefariously giggles, “I’ll be the first to see.”
“...did you hear me just now?” Till grumbles, but lets Ivan pull their bodies flush together anyways. Every spot where their bodies meet burns.
Till barely managed to finish the animation on time, but it turns out okay, in his opinion. There were a lot of spots he definitely could have improved, but he was running on three hours of sleep and two energy drinks, so, yeah. He didn’t really want to fuck with his mind beyond that.
School lets out for the holidays soon, so he supposes he could work on the canvas during that period of time. He guesses. If he feels like it, maybe.
Ivan, Sua, Mizi, and Till run back to their hometown where they were raised. Hyuna and Luka grew up elsewhere. Till’s heard about Hyuna’s brother, though, who attends college abroad, in a different country. He’ll have to ask about him later.
They take the train. Sua and Mizi sit on one side of a four-seater while Till and Ivan sit on the other side. Ivan and Mizi are pressed up so close against Till and Sua that if they wanted to, Luka and Hyuna could probably slide in as well, if they had come. Eventually, Till pushes Ivan off of him, and with the lull of the train, Mizi and Sua end up asleep against one another.
Till and Ivan listen to music on the ride. They share a pair of ratty, wired earpods connected to Ivan’s phone. Till gazes outside the window, and Ivan reads a novel.
Eventually, Till ends up dozing off in the space between the window and Ivan, who’s watching him when he wakes up. Which isn’t a big deal, because it shouldn’t be. Because what’s wrong with that? Yeah. Yeah…yeah. Yeah. That funny feeling in his heart is just nerves from...going home. And seeing his mom.
(It sounds awfully like he’s trying to convince himself of that. Which, well, he is. Admittedly. Because something in his heart does something when Ivan looks at him like that. Which is weird. Because it’s not like he likes Ivan. Right?)
(He finds out Ivan removed the earphone from his ear shortly after he dozed off. It makes him feel a little funny. Which. Well. That’s. Yeah. Weird. Weird as hell.)
Before he can think too much on it, Sua announces that their stop is next and they spend the next three minutes tidying up their bags, unplugging the earphones from Ivan’s phone.
Till’s mom is the sweetest person he’s ever met. She exudes care and kindness. Ever since he was young, she had never blamed Till for being too rowdy or rebellious, and had always supported his decision of going into the art industry and loving him unconditionally.
She treats Ivan like a second son. All of his friends love her.
He’s not embarrassed when she engulfs him in a hug at the station and pulls Ivan in after a few seconds.
“Wow, all of you grew so much!” Io says. “Do any of you need a ride home?”
“Ah, no, we’re okay,” Sua says. “Thank you.”
“Bye, Till! Bye, auntie!” Mizi said.
In the car, Io asks him about college. About Mizi. About Sua. About Hyuna and Luka. About Ivan. She asks him to help with the groceries she had bought on the way to the train station.
Softly, as Till holds the door open for her, she says, “You glow when you talk about him, you know.”
Till, dreadfully, knows who she's talking about as soon as she opens her mouth. He does not deign to offer a response. She doesn’t push for one.
Till’s going to prove to himself that he’s straight using the language he understands most: art.
In the safety of his childhood bedroom, he flips open his new sketchbook. Art is made out of feelings, isn’t it? So…
It’s almost muscle memory. Ivan’s sharp jawline. The outline of his nose. The crinkle of his eyes. The upturn of his lips. The little annoyingly cute snaggletooth of his. The highlight in his hair.
He doesn’t take another look at it after the rough sketch. He flips the page and takes his phone off its case once more and stares at the photo of Ivan under the light of his desklamp.
He looks at it, and draws again. He draws until his pencil is dull and his eyelids start to droop.
Hours later, he wakes up to the call of his mother’s voice.
He looks at the sketches of his best friend of fourteen years.
It isn’t like how he used to draw Mizi. It’s far from it.
He doesn’t know what he was trying to do, but Ivan still looks beautiful as messy pencil lines.
Stupid, idiodic Ivan, who once stuffed a dead raccoon into Till’s locker as a way of showing his value for their friendship when they were thirteen. The carcass attracted fleas and flies and ants and mice and the entire school had a lockdown. Ivan had detention for three days–and with Till himself, for some stupid reason, because what the fuck, Till didn’t even do anything but open his locker!
Ivan, who pushed both he and Till into a lake on a field trip when they were twelve as a way of declaring the importance of their bond and going through things together. Till didn’t talk to him for a week because he looked stupid in front of Mizi. Or, well, he tried. Ivan stole all of his pencils and returned them one by one over and over again over the course of three days, and Till finally snapped and told him to fuck off. They talked for six more hours after that.
Dumbass Ivan, who signed up for an art class Till was in just to annoy him. He didn’t even like art. He just. Did it. To talk to Till.
He did anything to talk to Till.
He was one of the only people who cared about him like that. He was the only person Till could never push away. He was the only person Till could trust with anything, everything, and still have Ivan wrapped around him the following day.
And. Well.
Ivan was stupid, and idiotic, and hypocritical, and annoying, but that’s what Till likes most about him, isn't it?
“You slept late last night,” his mom says during lunch. “Are you feeling alright?
“Mom,” Till says, a little bit tired, a little bit mindless, but still sure whatever he’s saying is the complete, honest, truth, “I think I like boys.”
Io reaches for his hand across the table. Lays her hand on top of his. Her palm and fingers are soft and warm.
“I know, honey. And I’ll always accept and support you. You know that I'll always love you regardless.”
“Thanks, mom,” Till says. He clasps his hands around her slightly wrinkled ones and brings his forehead to the side of her palm. He feels the tightness in his throat before his vision blurs, and his shoulders start to shake. Io gets out of her seat, her hand unmoving, and wraps her other arm around him.
“Oh, hun,” Io whispers.
They stay like that for a while.
Io’s back on the other side of the table, humming a small melody, when Till confesses softly, “It’s Ivan.”
“I know,” Io repeats, “I know, Till.”
It starts snowing while Till is asleep. The sound of something hitting his window is the thing that jolts him awake, and before he even opens his eyes, he knows it’s Ivan who woke him up.
He lifts his window open to see a blanket of white.
In the middle of it is Ivan, with his cheery smile and his stupid perfect face. There’s snow on his hair and face. He holds a snow-covered rock in his hand.
Till raises his window up. He yells into the frosty air, “What do you want?!”
“It’s snowing!” Ivan cheers, as if that answers his question.
It does, in many ways, though. Unfortunately.
Every winter, they come back to this small, old town. Every winter since Sua’s sixth birthday, Ivan and Sua pop up at Till and Mizi’s houses respectively. Every winter, they shove snow up each other’s backs and build snowmen and watch them melt and pelt the stuff at each other.
Till’s in his pajamas–an oversized white shirt and large black shorts. “Give me a minute!”
Till pulls a bulky pair of winter pants, a long sleeve shirt made of the thickest material he can find, and the warmest, heaviest jacket he owns out of his closet. He stuffs on long black socks and pulls a hat over his ears and nearly forgets to brush his teeth and eat his breakfast before he’s outside again.
Ivan greets him with a snowball to the face.
Till throws snow at his hair.
(Ivan looks like an angel, but Till doesn’t think about that.)
Ivan and Mizi team up against Till and Sua. Ivan aims for them both but is disgustingly nasty towards Till, who is just trying to peacefully take a sip of his water when large, dirty chunks of ice are shoved into the bottle and he looks up to see Ivan’s large grinning face.
This time, Till hops on Ivan’s back and shoves pee-snow down his shirt.
To make matters worse, Sua isn’t even on Till’s side. It’s Ivan and Mizi against Till and Sua, but at the same time, it’s also Mizi and Sua against Ivan and Till. And even then, Ivan spends more time trying to distract Till and dodging rather than helping him unsuccessfully pelt snowballs at the girls. And when those numbers are tallied up, it’s Till who’s on the losing side. When Ivan dodges Sua’s snowballs and her fast arm, he’s putting Till directly in the line of target for it, and both of the siblings don’t even have the decency to apologize for it.
Till nearly gets knocked into a frozen-over ditch as the bullet of a snowball sails past where his face once was. He can literally hear Ivan snickering.
They’re currently on a low bridge that oversees a small river just below them. Till locks his legs around Ivan’s neck and attempts to push him over the railing as Sua grabs Ivan’s legs and tries to lift them up.
They fail. Till blames it on Ivan’s non-existent fatness and ignores how he falters when those red-pupiled eyes stared up at him behind long eyelashes. They end up falling down into the snow, Ivan placing his hands on Till’s shoulders and burying him into it.
It burns wherever he touches Till. It’s the greatest feeling alive.
Ivan and Sua have dark chocolate sticks for hot chocolate and marshmallows, so Mizi and Till go to their house after they’re wet and freezing from rolling around in the snow (and having certain individuals–ahem, Ivan–pelt them with snowballs all day long…).
Since Ivan won the “snowball fight” (though it was more of an assasination attempt aimed at Till, in Till’s opinion), he forces Till to make hot chocolate for him. Till is tempted to just give him black coffee and see how that turns out. He knows Ivan hates bitter drinks.
Till puts five marshmallows in Ivan’s hot chocolate. Ivan’s a stupid idiot and a complete ass, but it’s obvious he’s also cold and tired and shivering and, well. Till doesn’t really want to actually make him disappointed.
“So,” Sua says as they’re waiting for the chocolate to combine with the warm, microwave-heated milk, “Ivan, huh?”
Till suppresses a groan. “What about him?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Till,” Sua says, still staring at the very apparent non-melting frozen solid milk chocolate stick in Mizi’s coffee. Till stares at his dark chocolate stick and Ivan’s cookie-and-cream chocolate stick. “You got anything you want to tell me?”
Till didn’t think Sua would be the second person he’d come out to, but, well. He’s pretty sure his entire friend group knows already anyways. His mom knew before him while he was at college–-does this mean he liked Ivan while he liked Mizi???
(This is getting confusing. Till’s going to stop thinking about it.)
“Uh,” Till says very intelligently. Sua raises an eyebrow at him.
Is he still shivering because of the cold, or because of the weight of Sua’s glare?
Till lets out a deep sigh that shakes and rattles his very own bones. “I like your brother, I have discovered. Your no-good, asshole brother.”
“Hm,” Sua hums an approving sound, “Well, it’s about time you figured it out, I suppose.”
“How’d you know?” Till asks, because what the fuck did he do to make it so obvious he liked Ivan even when he didn’t know it himself?
Sua’s silent for a moment, thinking. He touches the chocolate stick in the white mug he’s using. It’s room temperature now.
“When I’m alone in a room with you guys, it feels like you’re in another world,” Sua says, “Your complete attention is always on each other. It’s sickeningly sweet, really. And you’re always smiling when you talk about him, you know that?”
Till blinks. He scoffs half-heartedly and looks back to the chocolate. His heart beats erratically at the prospect of Ivan’s attention on him always.
“Till,” Sua says, softer. Her eyes are cast downward when he looks at her. “Don’t lie to him. Don’t make him wait even longer.”
Till–well, Till, in all honestly, doesn’t get what the fuck Sua is saying. But it doesn’t really matter. His answer will stay the same.
“Yeah, of course,” Till whispers.
The chocolate starts to clump at the bottom of the mug. Till gets a spoon and starts to stir the cup of hot chocolate, half the stick still unmelted. Sua does the same to her cup.
When he hands the completed cup to Ivan, Ivan’s grinning at him, looking at him as if he was radiant.
“Thank youuuu, Till!” Ivan chirps, “It’s really good. You should have a sip.”
“You haven’t drank it yet,” Till deadpans. He drinks from the cup anyways. It’s too sweet for him.
“It’s too sweet,” Till complains.
Ivan places his mouth where Till’s once was. It makes Till want stupid things, like to take Ivan’s head and smash his lips into his. Which is, well. Stupid.
“You just have bad taste,” Ivan grins.
“No, I don’t,” Till says. He looks at Ivan again.
…yeah, he doesn’t, he guesses, a smile creeping up on him.
Ivan pushes Till’s own mug of hot chocolate into his hands. “Aren’t you going to drink any, Till?”
The drink is great. It’s just sweet enough with the slightly bitter aftertaste of the dark chocolate that Till loves. It’s lightyears better than Ivan’s, and he says so.
“You just have bad taste,” Ivan repeats, shrugging. He’s smirking at Till, watching him while leaning his head on one of his hands.
His taste, Till thinks, as he watches his best friend wrap a blanket around him on Ivan’s bed, is immaculate--as much as it pains him to say it, in this scenario.
Till always felt like he was about to explode around Ivan. Now that he knows why…it doesn’t make it any better. Ivan will press their legs together and smile and talk about dinner and Till will be smiling and nodding while feeling like he’s about to burst into blame. Ivan will brush their fingers together while they’re swinging their arms walking down the sidewalk and it’ll send shivers up his spine.
Everything Ivan does is intoxicating.
It’s a pain in the ass to deal with.
Till actually despises art.
He hates it he hates it he hates it he hates it.
Ivan is there (as always), with a mug of not-too-sweet matcha cupped in his hands for Till to take, standing by his side as Till bangs his hands on their kitchen table and rants and rants and rants.
(Till wonders why Ivan doesn’t complain at trivial things such as this, why he doesn’t complain from being around Till.
Till’s a messup and a freak. Ivan, even in all his annoyingness, is perfect scores and perfect charming smiles.
Still, Ivan stays.)
On that big canvas he had bought, earlier that day he had tried to paint Ivan–once, twice, three times–and he never came out right. His paintbrush wasn’t paintbrushing. His canvas wasn’t canvasing. Ivan wasn’t Ivaning. It was all chaos and screaming and screeches and “crashout playlist” on Spotify.
So Till takes the matcha, he avoids Ivan’s invasive questions (“So what are you painting? You said I could see it, after all, didn’t you, Till? Haha! Don’t give me that look–you’re like an angry cat. Don’t be mad because it’s true, Till,”) and he goes back to camp in his tiny burrow of a room where the outline of Ivan’s face stands.
He gets absolutely nothing done. He barely manages to restrain himself from tearing the canvas in half.
Till ends up angrily getting a stick of charcoal and drawing a landscape instead, but even that turns out horribly, horribly wrong.
Till vents more to Ivan later that night.
“Till,” Mizi cries out to him on an early morning, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a bubble tea in another, “You’re out for a run?”
He can understand her disbelief. Till is scrawny at best, with thin, noodle arms and straight, skinny legs only masked by his large sweatpants. To see him at the gym would be a miracle.
“I woke up motivated today,” Till says in lieu of saying, I can’t paint Ivan and it’s pissing me off so I had to go on a run to stop myself from destroying my canvas.
“Once in a lifetime experience, huh?” Mizi teases, a sly grin on her face, “I’m surprised Ivan isn’t here with you.”
Till shakes his head, “He’s at a lecture, and he would’ve called you and joined you on your trip to the bubble tea store if he wasn’t.”
Mizi giggles, laughing into her hand. Once, Till would’ve thought it was a dazzling sight.
Now, it’s just a girl–one of his good friends–snorting like a pig. Sua would still want to coat this moment in resin and keep it in its perfect state of stillness for the next five generations, though.
“I doubt it,” Mizi says. Till raises an eyebrow, and Mizi starts running with him, sipping from her drink.
“Really,” Till says, disbelieving, “He loves bubble tea. It’s his favorite drink.”
“Yeah,” Mizi says, a glint in her eye. She knows something he doesn’t. “But you’re his favorite person. To Ivan, you’re sweeter than any drink. He’d give up all the bubble teas in his life to spend time with you.”
Till looks away to hide his reddening face.
It can’t be true. Mizi is just humouring him.
But he deludes himself, just for a moment, and lets that joy spread through all the pores in his skin and throughout all the limbs in his body. For just a moment, he feels like he is flying.
“Don’t say that,” he says.
Mizi smiles, “It’s true, Till. It really is.”
Till stamps the hope down. It isn’t true. Mizi is just a forever optimist, and-
“By the way, you guys look at each other like you each molded the Earth from your hands and spun it around the sun,” Mizi says, “like how I look at Sua. Totally different from your crush on me.”
Till, disregarding the earlier statement to save himself some embarrassment, says, “Wait, how did you know about that?”
Mizi’s grin widens.
“You’re obvious. I knew the entire time,” Mizi says, “even more so with Ivan. Don’t worry. We’re all rooting for you guys.”
Till goes back home to Ivan slightly disturbed, very embarrassed, very flushed, and very in need of water. He doesn’t think he’ll ever go on a run again.
Till gives up on painting Ivan. For now, at least. He resorts to drawing sketches of him in charcoal in his sketchbook, outlining the scope of his face in pencil, having him pose for “outfit inspirations, it’s so I can document your shit taste in clothing” and coloring him in with complementary colors.
…anyways, he needs to get a new sketchbook, already.
(Look, he’s been feeling really inspired recently. Also, he’s been hammering out junk when he starts to think about Ivan, kicking his feet on his mattress and shit like that.)
Anyways, when he gives that painting up, stocking it in the back of his closet, he returns to his previous schedule (basically the other schedule he had used but instead of sleeping he painted for two hours and screamed in anger when nothing worked).
In Till’s opinion, he’s got a good thing going–wake up, bush teeth, eat breakfast. Fall victim to Ivan’s ragebait and teasing, attend his lectures and classes, cook some lunch or something, draw or listen to music, maybe a night class if he has one, start screaming because he actually despises college life and this was not the aesthetic videos Mizi had shown him in high school, despise love because why the fuck does Ivan look so good like that he just got out of the shower, eat dinner, sleep.
Actually, it’s a perfect thing going, until he’s taking a shower and returns to find Ivan looking through all of his sketchbooks, eyes glued to each page.
Before Till can start to shriek at him in embarrassment and rage, Ivan lifts a page of one of them up–one of the first drawings Till had sketched out during winter break, when he was trying to prove to himself that he was straight–and blankly, carefully hiding any of his true feelings, asks, “Is this me?”
Till, who is currently running on two energy drinks and a coffee, stares at him, deadpan.
Oh haha no, Ivan, it’s actually your carbon copy who I’ve been drawing and like, I don’t know, am at least halfway in love with? Or something? Like I’ve been like that for years and I somehow didn’t know, isn’t that crazy? Anyways yeah, this is actually your evil twin! His name is Cryvan, because he’s a crybaby and holy shit where am I going with this thought process uhm anyways yep! That’s actually NOT you, you self-entitled little freak! Haha! Why would you think that? It’s not like anyone else doesn’t fit the description of “black haired, gorgeous, really fucking annoyingly handsome and charming, devious, devilish, red-pupiled black-eyed boy my age who I grew up next to with an actually really cute little snaggletooth and is an annoying ass bitch.” So, this actually isn’t you!
“...No.” Till makes sure to stare directly at the wall behind Ivan, “How could you think that?”
“So.” Ivan raises an eyebrow, “Who is it?”
“Mizi,” Till answers on autopilot, winces, and corrects himself, “Mizi’s genderbend.”
“Mizi’s genderbend, who's a perfect copy of myself?” Ivan questions, gesturing to the very obvious sketch of Ivan on the white sheet of paper.
“Not perfectly,” Till argues, “Look, Mizi’s genderbend, er, uh, Navi, yes, that’s his name–”
“Navi,” Ivan repeats, “And my instagram spam account’s username, navillit, has nothing to do with that?”
“Yes,” Till says, “Why would you have anything to do with Navi? Look, Navi’s snaggletooth is slightly shorter. His hair is a bit longer at the neck. His dimensions are different.”
Till is taking this half-assed lie and clutching it close to his chest until he’s six feet under. He will die on this hill.
Ivan clenches his teeth together, his eye twitching. Oh, yeah, he’s getting sick of this bullshit. Maybe he’ll leave it alone?
“Cut the shit out, Till,” Ivan says, “Is this me?”
The hill Till will die on has suddenly ceased to exist. Till drops the lie instantly at the sound of something in Ivan’s voice. He doesn’t know what it is, but he doesn’t like it.
“Yeah,” Till sighs, “I was doing some studies-”
“This entire sketchbook is of me,” Ivan accuses.
“Color studies,” Till tries.
“There’s doodles of me in your notebooks,” Ivan deadpans, “In the margins. I checked.”
“...many anatomy studies.” Till hates his life, “Fuck, why are you acting so weird about it? It’s not like–it’s not like I love you, or anything–”
(Except he has, except he knows that as soon as he said that it was a lie because it was so deeply ingrained in his soul he didn’t even bother questioning it when he was trying to focus more on gaslighting himself into liking Mizi in those later, later years long after even the idea of liking Mizi had already long passed-)
“–and it’s not like, you love me or anything–don’t be dramatic, Ivan.” Till is actively fighting the tears that are about to come out of his eyes. He is his greatest enemy, he supposes.
And then oh, shit, because Ivan’s not saying anything.
Ivan’s not saying anything.
Oh, shit.
…shit, is he angry? Did Till hit a nerve? What the fuck?
…how does Till go back in time?
Answer: he can’t. So, Till, ever the problem solver, attempts to book it out of that room as quickly as humanly possible because he is a selfish little bastard and doesn’t want to see that stupid, so fucking stupid look in Ivan’s eyes. He thinks it’s going to break him if he does.
He attempts to. Ivan’s voice literally stops him in his tracks.
“Till.”
…and oh, it’s so soft, and it’s a little bit sad, underneath some of the anger, and it’s a little bit fond (though Till's probably imagining the fondness--it's just desperate hope for him at this point).
“Till, don’t be so dodgy about this,” Ivan says. Till refuses to look at his face, “like you said, it’s not like you love me or anything, right? Just give me a reason. Please.”
Till turns on his heel, literally rips the sketchbook out of Ivan’s hands, and bolts out of Ivan’s reach.
“Don’t look through my stuff.” Till’s voice cracks in the middle of the sentence, and it’s a bit wobbly, and he sounds like a petulant thirteen year old.
“You won’t even look me in the eye,” Ivan hisses.
Yeah, Till won’t, because he’s a fucking bitch about it.
“Look, Ivan, just leave it alone for once in your life,” Till seethes, “I draw you, so what? That’s it, Ivan. I’m just…bored, and you’re just. There.”
It’s the greatest lie Till’s ever told.
Ivan is silent, again, for a moment, and Till’s mind runs a thousand miles a minute.
For the first time in the fourteen years Till has known Ivan, Ivan gets up from Till’s bed, dusts his pants noncommittedly, and walks away.
For maybe six minutes, maybe six hours, maybe six days–Till can’t tell–he stares at the place where Ivan once was.
He thinks, what the fuck?
When Till emerges from his room, it is dark. All the lights have been shut off. Ivan is nowhere to be seen.
It makes his chest feel strangely tight and empty.
The morning after that, Till wakes up to the sound of someone dropping something, followed by a curse. He walks over to the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. Ivan looks like a criminal at a crime scene, staring at Till like a deer in headlights.
There is no customary “good morning.”
Till tries to initiate it.
“Good morning,” Till says. It comes out awkward in the empty silence. Ivan simply turns away.
“...good morning,” he mumbles, picking up the various kitchen appliances he had dropped. In this awkward dance, Till’s not going to ask him something stupid, like “what’s for breakfast?”
He winds around Ivan and makes himself toast. It tastes so…(boring? Is that the word?) next to his usual meal, seated next to Ivan instead of across the room like this.
Ivan doesn’t appear randomly, anymore, or hover around Till.
The first night, Till is angry. He wants an explanation. He wants to go back in time and see why Ivan’s so distant despite Till’s advancements toward him.
The second night, Till is tired.
He ignores his tear-streaked face and attempts to go to bed early for once. It doesn’t work.
“Hey, Till.”
Behind him is the honey-sweet passion-filled voice of Hyuna, who he immediately turns to greet.
His entire schedule has been upended.
First off, conversation between him and Ivan is stilted. In the rare instances Till now sees Ivan, who is practically a ghost nowadays, they rarely exchange words. When they do, it goes somewhat like this:
“Did you order a new package? It’s outside,” says Ivan, eating his horrible cheap cereal that Till made in five minutes because he got two hours of sleep and Ivan didn’t make him that coffee he always made him and he was tired now–and on top of it, he was running late.
“No–shit, yeah. I’ll get it later,” Till replies hurriedly, dumping an energy drink down his throat and immediately inhaling the cereal.
Before, Ivan would have said something along the lines of, “oh, Till, but you wouldn’t want someone to steal your precious items, would you?” with a cheeky little grin.
Now, he’s just silent. Again. It’s so…unnerving.
Ivan is never silent or distant. He’s always a constant in Till’s life, always a low hum embedded deep within his veins, always leaning over Till’s shoulder or pressed against his side.
And he’s always talking, hashing out the intricacies of his day to Till just to speak.
And he’s always weird, and annoying, and clingy–he’s always doing something like reaching his hand up Till’s shirt or licking the blood off his papercut or pressing a bruise on his arm or tracing the outline of his piercings with his nails.
And Till likes it. He likes the weird, always-talking, always there Ivan.
For the first time in forever, when he looks across the kitchen table, there isn’t a stare that returns his look. There isn’t crimson red or a slight, lopsided smile.
There’s just a focused, downwards stare.
“So, you and Ivan got into a fight?” Hyuna says, “Over what?”
Till blinks owlishly. Once. Twice. The words finally process. “Huh? How could you tell?”
To him, Hyuna is some type of older sister figure–a cool, slightly older badass woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone.
“Your heavy ass eyebags–-seriously, Till, get some more sleep–-the fact that he isn’t with you right now or approaching you, and the fact that you both look absolutely fucking miserable and constipated all the time. Angrily constipated,” Hyuna points out, “Literally everyone knows. Like I’m sure half of the student body knows just because you two make so much ruckus when you’re together already.”
“...shit,” Till runs his hands over his eyes, rubbing them and seeing stars, and god, Hyuna is right, he needs to sleep. “Yeah, like a week ago. Or something. What day is it?”
“Thursday, Till, it’s a Thursday,” Hyuna sighs, shaking her head. She idly comments, “Jeez, you’re a wreck without him.”
“Yeah, okay, we argued, uhm. Saturday. I think,” Till replies, ignoring Hyuna’s second statement. Hyuna nods at him to continue. Mizi probably sent her, to be honest. Or Sua, who was tired of their shit. Or she just came here herself in lieu of Luka, who would angrily demand in that cold way of his to “get your bullshit together.” (Or maybe she came here herself, but that would be really horrible, as she didn’t involve herself unless it really was a dire situation…)
“Uhhhh. So. Uh.” Till fidgets with his messenger bag, “I’ve been drawing Ivan. And, he, uh, found out and snooped through my stuff. He really wanted to fucking know why, and I didn’t really want to tell him, and he kept pushing and I told him to leave it alone and now we’re just. Uh. Like this.”
Hyuna blinks at him.
“I think you missed some key details,” Hyuna says, “Like why the fuck were you drawing him? And why the fuck would he leave it alone?”
“So.” Till’s walking faster now, maybe at the speed of a jog, and Hyuna is matching his pace step for step, “I have had a discovery, during winter break a couple of weeks ago, that I, perhaps, mayhaps, maybe, had liked Ivan for a little bit. Or, like, a long time actually but whatever, so I took to, uh, drawing him.”
Hyuna abruptly pauses in her walking, eyebrows scrunched together.
“...so why didn’t you tell him that?” Hyuna asked.
“Well, first off, it’s fucking embarrassing. He’d hold it over my head forever,” Till snaps, “and he’s, under all that goddamn annoyingness and stubbornness and shit, really fucking nice and kind, and-”
…why the fuck is Till tearing up. The lack of sleep is actually getting to him.
“-and he’d stop fucking touching me after he finds out, not because he’d be disgusted but so I could get over it-”
“Wait wait wait. What the fuck? Rewind.” Hyuna makes a loop with her index finger, “Why the fuck would he want you to get…over him?”
Till blinks at Hyuna.
Hyuna blinks at Till.
Their facial expressions mirror each other in utter confusion.
“Well, if you liked Ivan, he’d want you to get over it, yeah?” Till asks.
Hyuna blinks again, three times, face in a state of utter confusion. Then disbelief. “Holy shit. You don’t know. Fuck, how could you not know? What–TILL. Till, look at me–do you, do you really think…what? What. Till–holy shit you really are dense. Till. What.”
Hyuna, the badass, rockstar, unfaltering legend is literally lagging in front of Till’s eyes. It’s certainly a sight to behold. Then, carefully, she says, “Till, what did you say during the argument?”
“Well.” Till’s throat is kind of closing up now but whatever, “I think a big thing I said is that it wasn’t like I was in love with him, or, like he was in love with me, so, it wasn’t a very big deal. He, kind of, uhm, didn’t respond after that. For a while.”
“Till.” Hyuna’s holding her face in her hands, dragging her palms over her eyes and cheeks, “Repeat what you just said, slowly. And think it over while you do.”
What the fuck could trigger Ivan like that?
“I said,” Till repeats, louder, “It wasn’t like I was in love with him or he was in love with me-”
“Because they’re dating, of course!” Acorn says.
“There’s a picture of you in his wallet. He has a clear phone case just so he can put you in it. He keeps them in all of his bags and you take up most, if not all, of his phone storage,” Sua says.
“Ivan,” Till says, recounting his conversation with Sua, “I think Sua thinks you’re in love with me or something.”
It’s silent for a few beats, but Till swears he hears Ivan mutter, “or something.”
He did anything to talk to Till.
He was one of the only people who cared about him like that. He was the only person Till could never push away. He was the only person Till could trust with anything, everything, and still have Ivan wrapped around him the following day.
“When I’m alone in a room with you guys, it feels like you’re in another world,” Sua says, “Your complete attention is always on each other. It’s sickeningly sweet, really. And you’re always smiling when you talk about him, you know that?”
“Till,” Sua says, softer. Her eyes are cast downward when he looks at her. “Don’t lie to him. Don’t make him wait even longer.”
“Really,” Till says, disbelieving, “He loves bubble tea. It’s his favorite drink.”
“Yeah,” Mizi says, a glint in her eye. She knows something he doesn’t. “But you’re his favorite person. To Ivan, you’re sweeter than any drink. He’d give up all the bubble teas in his life to spend time with you.”
“By the way, you guys look at each other like you each molded the Earth from your hands and spun it around the sun,” Mizi says, “like how I look at Sua.”
…oh, shit. OH, SHIT.
“Hyuna,” Till says, desperately, clutching at Hyuna’s shoulders, “How long has Ivan been in love with me?”
“You’ll have to ask him for that,” Hyuna says, “All I know is that it’s been a really fucking long time.”
Till, without missing a beat, sprints off of the path he and Hyuna were currently on and crashes through a couple of unsuspecting, unaware freshmen as he makes a run to the apartment because he knows Ivan will leave in fifteen minutes to attend his lecture where Till can’t meet him or even enter the building and it’s a thirty-two minute walk from where he’s currently at to him.
Behind him, Hyuna faintly screams, “GO GET HIM, TILL!”
He’s sure it attracts a bunch of stares and attention and will surely be posted on Twitter and at least three groupchats, but he can’t afford to waste time, right now.
Youareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiotyouareanidiot, Till thinks absently as he crosses a street, barely managing to evade a car that is definitely going over the speed limit.
How could he let all that just fly over?
How long had Ivan felt like that?
Till, panting, flings open the door as Ivan’s putting on his shoes. It feels like he’s about to die. His heart beats erratically, as if he had just run a marathon.
Ivan pauses where he stands as Till places both his hands and feet on the floor in front of him, bringing his forehead to the wood.
He lifts his head up to see Ivan’s strange, beautiful eyes glancing down at him.
Till feels a hand against his forehead, and he grabs it, sinking into Ivan’s touch. Shit, he missed this insufferable idiot.
“...fuck, sorry, shit,” Till pleads, “Don’t go.”
Ivan kicks off his shoes, arranging them neatly on the mat they own, and pulls Till close to himself, checking for injuries of the sort.
“Are you okay?” Ivan asks, cautiously. Till wants to stay in his arms forever.
“Yeah, sorry, uh, just–I need to talk with you,” Till says. Ivan’s face is unchanging, but Till feels him tense slightly, “...actually, it, uh, now that I’m thinking about it, you can go to your lecture first, probably. I’ll just. Wait. Or something.”
“No,” Ivan sighs softly, looking at Till so fondly it makes his heart hurt, “get it out now, Till. I’ve got time.”
Ivan, in fact, does not have time. He has to be out the door right behind Till in the next minute and twenty-three seconds if he wants to be at his lecture in time and maintain his perfect attendance record.
Till knows this (it’s why he ran so fast).
“So, you remember that argument we had on Saturday,” Till comments. Ivan stares at him. He brushes a lock of Till’s hair behind his ear, which feels awfully warm.
“Yes,” Ivan states.
Well fucking obviously, he remembers, Till thinks angrily to himself, it’s the reason why he’s been avoiding you like an ant to water for the past four days.
“I may have.” Till makes sure to attach himself to Ivan so he cannot run away, “Omitted some information. And lied about some…things.”
Ivan is silent, waiting for Till to elaborate.
“Like, for instance,” Till says slowly, “I’m not just bored, and you’re never…just…there.”
“Just there,” Ivan repeats ominously.
“Just there. And, um,” Till says. Rip off the bandage. “I’m not not in love with you, you know. And after some deep speculation and thinking, I have realized…I hope–that you’re not not in love with me. So.”
Till waits. He grips onto Ivan’s hands until they’re white and his nails are digging into the soft skin.
“Not not in love with me,” Ivan repeats, like a mantra, “Not not in love with me.”
“The opposite, really,” Till huffs, leaning his forehead onto Ivan’s and holding both his hands underneath his own, then softly, “I–ha, I love you is pretty strong for a first confession, right? So, I, uh…just, I like you a lot. Sorry it took so long for me to realize.”
There’s silence. Till stares down at their conjoined hands. Ivan is shaking, so he presses their sandwiched hands together harder. Ivan’s hands are palm-to-palm while the back of his hand is overhapped by Till’s.
“Are you real?” Ivan asks, so soft Till might have mistaken it for an unsuspecting breeze. His voice slightly cracks.
Till pinches the skin in between Ivan’s fingers.
“No shit,” he says. Ivan laughs under his breath.
He feels something wet fall onto the side of his hand. His hands go to wipe away Ivan’s tears, and Ivan’s hands chase after his to frame his face.
“Can’t be that much of a burden to love me,” Till whispers, his heart aching.
“It’s worth it,” Ivan said. He brought Till’s hands and arms closer, dragging Till into a gesture that was less like a hug and more like as if Ivan was trying to combine their bodies into one, trying to press as many inches of his body to Till’s. “You’re worth it, Till. You’ll always be worth it to me.”
When Till kisses Ivan, his lips taste salty from the tears and sugary from his sweets. Till isn’t the fondest of sugar, but when it comes to Ivan, he thinks he could get used to anything.
They’re at the diner again.
This time, they have a bigger table, so Sua doesn’t force everyone except her and Mizi into a two-seated space. Even so, Ivan still presses his entire side into Till’s, and hooks their legs together every time Till tries to separate them.
(Till won’t admit that he secretly loves the contact more than anything. If Ivan knew, he’d probably try to conduct some crazy experiment to stick themselves together forever.)
Sua has been glaring at Ivan for the past five minutes. Ivan has probably noticed out of the corner of his eye. Since they arrived, all Ivan ever did was look at Till.
Till sighs deeply, like a victim to years of suffering. He grabs Ivan’s chin and juts his face out, towards the other direction, so he is no longer freakishly staring at him.
Ivan tightens his hand where it lays on Till’s thigh. Till tries to swat him off. His hand comes back and holds onto Till’s, and an electric shock runs up his arm.
Till sets down his phone as Acorn, their waiter once more, approaches. His phone case is transparent, so you can clearly see the photo that he’s stared at a thousand times before and probably will stare at a thousand times more in the next two months.
“One black coffee,” Acorn says, sliding it to Till. He ignores the rest of their group order and takes a long sip, hissing at the heat.
“I can’t believe you drink your coffee like that,” Ivan says, grinning. He takes a long sip from his caramel, sugar abomination. It’s ten times as sugary as Till imagined—he’s tasted it on Ivan’s lips before, when they kissed.
“You always say this.” Till tries to arm this statement like a barb, but it only comes out somewhat fondly.
Acorn is midway through his usual customer service shit when he pauses abruptly. “I hope you enjoy your meal, and feel free to—”
Till follows his eyes, which pause on where Ivan’s hand grips Till’s.
“Not dating,” Acorn says, a bit incredulously, “Straight.”
“About that,” Till smiles, a bit uneven, “We’re dating, now. Haha. Stop staring at me, Ivan.”
Ivan, in fact, does not stop staring at him. He almost actually stares at him harder, somehow.
“Who could’ve seen it coming,” Sua deadpans, “It’s not like Ivan performed some touchy thing every time we came here. Or like he literally professed his love in three hundred different ways. Or like he stares at you like a monster.”
“He doesn’t,” Till snaps, knowing he is one hundred percent lying. He tries to separate his hand from Ivan’s to pull his chin away so he’s not looking at Till, but Ivan immediately pulls it back. With their conjoined hands, he tries to pinch Till, who dodges.
“Awww, Till, are you defending me?” Ivan almost sings this, leaning so close into Till’s space he’s pushed against the wall. Till wants to be angry so, so bad at this dumbass for his best friend and boyfriend, but all he can feel is the erratic beating of his heart.
“No,” he vehemently denies. He squeezes their hands together. Ivan hums.
Then, a familiar weight lies on his shoulder, dark hair brushing his chin. Till feels completely at ease.
Till’s hunched over a sketchbook when Ivan comes into their room.
The sketchbook is new; Ivan bought it for him just the other day, with a black leather cover and thick, ink-resistant pages. Till was—well, he was undeniably elated. He jumped into Ivan’s arms so quickly that Ivan didn’t even have a chance to tease him about it.
“Till,” Ivan says, with a playful lilt, “Come to bed. What’re you drawing?”
Till can hear it in his voice, how tired he is. His words drag on for an extra millisecond, slurring just ever so slightly. He talks softer, his voice deeper. Ivan’s arms wrap around him, and his head falls on Till’s shoulder as he stares down at his sketch.
“Me,” Ivan answers himself, dragging his index finger along the outlines of his figure, “But it’s not right.”
“No?” Till grins against the side of Ivan’s head. Ivan hums almost thoughtfully, first tilting Till’s glasses before pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Then, he seizes the pencil in Till’s grasp.
When Till looks down again, he sees that instead of the previously unoccupied space next to Sketch-Ivan, there’s now a stick figure with dots for eyes and a slight smile and wild hair. Ivan puts a heart between the sketch and the stick figure, and then kisses Till on the cheek.
“Till,” Ivan whines, again. Till rises from his seat at his desk and follows Ivan, telling him that he should come home earlier.
On the open pages of his sketchbook, Sketch-Ivan and Stick-Figure-Till stare at one another, a heart in the empty space between them.