Chapter Text
Till was never a prim and proper person, not like how the orphanage wanted him to be, and certainly nothing like Ivan. Till was violent and aggressive. He didn’t like being bound to what other people thought or wanted him to be. He just wanted to exist as himself. That was hard though. Hard because when he was himself no one seemed to want him.
All his life he was an unwanted child. Unwanted by the mother who abandoned him in the first place, with no name and no clue to who he was. Unwanted by the orphanage themselves, who’d proven time and time again that they didn’t care what happened to him. They called him a waste of food and space.
(That was okay though. Till held no affection for them either.)
Till often got into fights with the other kids. They thought his eye color was too weird, too bright, too piercing. He won most of his fights through, years of taking punch after punch. He wasn’t just one to sit down though, and once he learned to fight back he got his revenge.
He learned that if he avoided meal time that they would stop pestering him. Stop putting bugs in his food or stealing his pencils. So he learned to avoid feeling hunger. He could always go to the kitchen after and steal a little something anyways.
Till never thought he’d find someone who’d want him. And beyond wanting him, wanting to know him as he was, without changes. Ivan wanted him. He didn’t care that Till drew him without asking. He liked Till’s drawings. He found them beautiful. He didn’t find Till’s behavior too much, in fact, he teased back. Till didn’t need everyone to understand him, just one person. And that one person was Ivan.
Till had been kicked out of his last school after his grades had fallen too low and he had too many marks against him for fights. He expected the same would happen here too. But now that he met Ivan he didn’t want that to happen. He wanted to stay. Sure, Ivan could get a little bit annoying. Always pestering him with questions and stealing his pencil. But he also cared and he always gave the pencil back after ten minutes at most. Interactions with other people could be fun. They didn’t have to end in violence or punishment. Till didn’t have to keep fighting.
What if Till met Ivan earlier? Would he have been able to live differently? Would he himself be different fundamentally?
The answer to that may remain unknown, however this much is true, Till wouldn’t be alone for the rest of his life.