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Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound of the heart monitor was burned into Till’s mind. Beep. Beep. Beep. A metronome. A beat, he thought sardonically, the composer in him dragging the morbid idea to the surface. Now and again, he found himself humming something to fill the spaces between each bleep, fingers tracing over the place where his collar used to be. Beep two three four beep two three four beep two three four–
Till growled and covered his ears like the sound was coming from outside rather than within. It had been almost a week now since Ivan’s rescue, if you could even call it that. Till wasn’t convinced Ivan was still in there.
Body parts had been replaced with machinery. Wires peeked out from the metal covering where strips of skin used to be. His body was deeply sick as it fought to reject the shavings holding his wounded lung together, the plates and rods in his body to support all that had been broken.
Shooting Ivan wasn’t enough. The aliens had to fuck with him too. Had to get their dirty fucking claws on him, touch him, change him. When Till first glimpsed Ivan’s broken body when the rebels brought him in, he nearly threw up. He had to lean against the wall for balance so his legs wouldn’t give out, and then he just sank to the ground and stared at the wall for what could’ve been minutes or hours. Others passed him in the hall during that time. They must’ve known not to talk to him. Not to so much as look at him.
If they did, he honestly couldn’t say whether he would’ve burst into tears or tried to rip their throat out.
Eventually, it was Mizi who managed to coax him into visiting Ivan in his room. He’d been avoiding her almost as determinedly as he was avoiding Ivan (not Ivan) . He could hardly bear to look at her anymore either. She was so different. And he was so different, too. He didn’t think they even knew each other now.
He started to doubt if they ever did.
But Mizi was as resolute as ever, if that counted for anything. She used to convince Till to play tag with her and Sua in Anakt Garden. Sometimes Ivan would be there, too, and when Ivan was it, he only ever chased Till. He chased him so relentlessly that Till wouldn’t even be able to run after anyone once Ivan tagged him, so out of breath that his chest hurt and his breaths came in weak, wheezing gasps.
Don’t think about that.
About him.
…So he wound up in Ivan’s room, eyes averted from him, rocking back and forth in the chair Mizi had been sitting in. From Till’s quarters, he’d been able to hear Mizi singing to Ivan every now and then. Other times there was just the low hum of her voice as she talked to him. Maybe she told him stories. Maybe she told him things she’d never had the courage to say to him before, because when you think you have all the time in the world with someone, you just don’t say what you mean.
At least Till didn’t. But Mizi had always been better than him in so many ways. While she comforted whatever shell was left of Ivan, Till hid in his room like a coward and listened to her through the thin walls.
Funny how his entire image in Alien Stage had been crafted as a rebel, because now that he really was one, he didn’t think he fit the bill at all.
It was easier to talk to Ivan when Till knew he couldn’t hear. He didn’t sing for him like Mizi–hadn’t sung at all since his interrupted round with Luka. He was too… too selfish. Instead of trying to reach Ivan, he just… rambled.
He told Ivan how he never really minded his company. He told him how he’d known about Ivan’s little hobby of stealing his things and then returning them by the third time he did it and didn’t really care about that, either. He told him how he wished Ivan had run that day, because then none of this would’ve ever happened. His voice started to tighten when he said he sometimes wished he’d gone with him. He asked him why, why, why would you do this to me? You must really hate me to pull something like this. To do this to yourself and leave me to grieve you and wonder what everything about us meant all these years.
He spat out a damn confessional, like something you would say to those Gods Ivan believed in, and then he left the room with blurry eyes and a churning gut and shoved past Mizi when she tried to stop him and ask if he was okay.
After weeks of numb, cold guilt, he cried his eyes out the whole night, and even that felt selfish, because here he was getting this emotional release he so desperately needed while Ivan was stuck in limbo, unable to feel anything at all.
Mizi hadn’t even tried with him for two days after that, which was probably good. Till didn’t deserve her sympathy. He didn’t deserve her Anything.
When she knocked on his door on the third day, he almost didn’t open it. He only did because he couldn’t stand to hurt her feelings again–which was, of course, incredibly ironic considering he was staying away from her to preserve her feelings.
“Till,” she said quietly, like he would break if she spoke too loudly. “Ivan is awake.”
She spoke with such hope. She spoke like she was delivering the best news Till would ever hear.
And Till staggered back from the door with a high, wounded noise, and groaned into his hands, “ No.”
That left Till alone again with his thoughts. The beep. Beep. Two, three, four. Beep. Two, three, four. Beep. Two, three… four.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell him anymore,” Mizi said desperately when Till rejected today’s offer to see Ivan. “He’s asking for you. He wants to see you.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Till rasped, his voice grating like sandpaper from lack of use. What have I ever done for him? What have I ever done but hurt him? “It’s not a good idea.”
Mizi stared at him for a long moment, her body very still in the doorway of his dark room.
Her fists clenched and her eyes went cold. The sympathy had run out.
“You know, Till?” She set her jaw, eyes glittering like burning stars. “If I could have even one last chance to talk to Sua, I wouldn’t keep her waiting for even a second. I would do anything for that chance.” She turned to leave, only pausing briefly to spit, “Here’s your chance.”
“Mizi–” The door slammed shut on him. Back in the darkness.
It’s not the same, he wanted to shout. It wasn’t fair for her to say that. It wasn’t the same.
Isn’t it? Ivan’s voice taunted from somewhere in the back of his mind.
His fingers traced random patterns over the door, and his tongue poked out of his mouth to feel the healed nick on his lower lip where Ivan’s snaggletooth had caught.
Without thinking, he opened the door and hurried down the hall to Ivan’s room.
“Mizi,” he called to the head of pink hair weaving in through the door. “Wait.”
She gave him her attention, and he swallowed. He was going to regret this.
“What can I do?” he stammered.
She smiled approvingly, almost smugly, and Till was fairly sure he’d never seen Mizi look smug before. She handed him a plain white bottle with a straw poking out the top.
“You can help him drink. It’s what I was going to do.”
Now was definitely not the time to back out. Till regarded the bottle with a faintly ill complexion to his face, then took it in the hand that wasn’t squeezed into a tense fist.
“Do I…” He licked his dry lips once, twice. “Do I just–like–”
“Just put the straw to his mouth.” Mizi sounded on the verge of laughter. It was both vexing and a relief; Till hadn’t heard that tone in her voice for a while now. “He’ll do the rest. And give him time. He has trouble swallowing.”
Till squeezed his eyes shut– don’t you dare back out– then nodded and watched Mizi push the door open with a sense of impending doom.
“Hey, Ivan!” she called softly. “You have a visitor.”
Ivan’s eyes snagged on Till immediately. Till could imagine the look in his eyes, the sunrise-red pupils expanding into dark irises. He could imagine the artificial sinew holding his organs together.
Till couldn’t look.
“Hey,” he breathed, trying to look anywhere else than at this–this mess that was supposed to be Ivan. He shook the bottle in his hand awkwardly and stuttered, “I brought water. For you.”
Mizi’s hand at his elbow guided him towards the bed, its metal posts and cold white sheets. She urged him to sit, and he lowered himself to perch on the very edge of the bed, the heart monitor’s beep-beep-beep drowned out by his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.
Dizzy, he focused on Ivan’s mouth, instinctively licking at the old mark on his own lip. At least… at least his face was still mostly intact. He lifted the bottle so the straw gently prodded at Ivan’s chapped lips.
With some effort, Ivan opened his mouth and closed his lips around the straw, shakily sucking at the plastic. He managed to draw a burst of water into his mouth, and Till could see his dark eyelashes fan against his pale, grayish cheeks in relief. The snaggletooth made an indent in the plastic.
He almost forgot about Mizi’s presence entirely until Mizi leaned down to kiss Ivan’s temple.
“I’ll check on you guys in a while,” she murmured, the affection she had for Ivan evident in her tone. Till used to be jealous of their friendship. Every now and then, he’d look at them laughing together and wonder why it was so easy for them to be with one another.
Why he couldn’t be like that.
Now, Till was just glad Ivan had someone by his side through this whole ordeal, someone who didn’t fail him in every way imaginable. He watched her go. Watched the door close behind her.
The quiet sounds of Ivan sipping his water filled the space between them. Till tried not to let his hand shake.
When Ivan pulled back from the straw, water dribbled over the swell of his bottom lip and onto his chin. Till rushed to help, to do anything he could for him, whatever he could do now that the damage was already done. He pulled the sleeve of his shirt up over the heel of his hand and wiped away the water Ivan couldn’t swallow. All the while, Ivan’s eyes felt like a physical brand on his skin. Like he was carving his name on Till’s body right alongside Till’s own name.
The room was cool and Till still felt like he was sweating bullets.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he mumbled, unable to handle the silence any longer. If he let Ivan, Ivan would just stare at him without a word for hours.
Ivan smiled, weak and crooked but so achingly him that Till had to take a deep breath through his nose and remind himself not to bolt. “Like what?”
And God, his voice, his poor voice, it was so–so fucking wrecked. It was like his vocal chords were stuck together and the effort to say two little words peeled them apart, the flesh clinging and sticking to each other, scraping and scratching. His voice was barely a croak, and this somehow felt worse than seeing the modifications intruding on his body, because Ivan’s voice was so objectively beautiful. Haunting. The kind of voice that would’ve had Till shot through the skull.
It was the kind of voice that demanded to be heard, and now it was ruined.
The thought made Till’s throat and chest ache. He turned away and set the bottle on the nightstand.
“Like I’ve ever done anything for you.” It’s a quiet admission. A guilty whisper.
Another selfish confession, he chided himself.
Ivan huffed, annoyed. “Of course you’re blaming yourself.”
Till’s shoulders tensed, and he grabbed the edge of Ivan’s blanket to have something to focus on, his fingers fidgeting with the soft material. “You died, Ivan. You were dead.”
“Technically not for more than a few minutes.”
Till glared down at his own hands sharply. “ Technically that counts as being dead.”
Ivan didn’t say anything as Till bristled. Then Till blew out a loud, fast breath through his mouth and forced himself to soften up. “How do you feel? I mean, what does it feel like?” He glanced over the metal infused into Ivan’s skin, then quickly looked back down. He couldn’t stand it.
There was a moment of hesitation on Ivan’s part. “I’m feeling better with some company,” he deflected.
Great. So he was feeling horrible. Till wanted to curl up and die.
“How are you feeling?” Ivan asked, and that was laughable, seeing as he was the one trapped in a withering, mangled body. Till made a strangled noise that was meant to sound humored, but he didn’t think it came out that way.
“Fine.” His breath shuddered. He was unworthy of this misplaced concern. “I’m… fine.”
Even after everything, they were still lying to each other.
Till squeezed the blanket in his hand. “You know, I–”
Ivan sat up straighter, and Till winced at the movement, jerky and uncoordinated. All his fault.
A lump welled up in his throat, and his sentence broke off into a trembling gasp. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never paid attention. I’m sorry I never listened. I’m listening now. Please. I’m listening. Just stick around and tell me something.
All he managed was a choked, “Sorry.”
Ivan frowned and shook his head, his eyebrows furrowing in irritation. “I don’t want an apology from you. I chose this. I knew what I was getting myself into, and these are the consequences of what I did.”
How could he say that? How could he look Till in the eye and say it? “Then you’re an idiot,” he spat. The proximity was making him too jittery, so he stood up and paced beside Ivan’s bed. What could be his deathbed. “You should regret it! Did you really know what you were doing? Do you actually have any clue what you’ve done to yourself? Because I don’t think you do!”
The heart monitor hopped offbeat, and Till jerked his head to look at Ivan. Fucking bastard. He was just sitting there with that stupid cocky, condescending, fond smile on his face that Till recognized too clearly.
“You’re alive. You’re untouched. They can’t touch you anymore. That’s what matters.”
“What matters is that you’re broken. You’re…” Till pressed a fist to his mouth and looked over the cybernetic grafts and implants. The eyebags and sunken cheeks.
“They ruined you,” he whispered. They took Ivan, dark and clean and whole, and they shattered him on the floor with no thought for the person behind those red eyes.
Till could get past the damage that’s been dealt to him by the aliens over the years, but not this.
Not him.
Ivan, for his part, seemed much more bothered by Till’s rambling than his own deteriorating body. “I’m not ruined. I can see you. I can hear you.”
“That’s not…” Till shook his head, teeth pulled back in a pained grimace. “Look at you, Ivan. Look what they did to you. You’re a mess.” He meant to keep that last part in his head, but everything just kept spilling out, and after all, it was true, wasn’t it?
Ivan clicked his tongue. “You’re the mess, Till, listen to you. What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. It just–It should’ve been me.” Till sank down into the chair by Ivan’s bed and pressed his face into his hands. “It was supposed to be me. And then you did whatever that was and you took…” Everything. “You didn’t let me choose.”
A sigh. “Do you want me to be honest with you?”
“For once, please.”
He can almost hear the smile on Ivan’s face. “If I hadn’t thrown the round, I would’ve ended up killing myself.”
“Don’t–” Till groaned, voice muffled by his hands. “How am I supposed to react to that?”
“I don’t care, just don’t–” Ivan paused. “Just don’t leave.”
He couldn’t ask that of Till. He couldn’t ask him to just sit here and watch his body fail.
But Till, the idiot he was, couldn’t say no to him.
“I won’t.” He raised his head and leaned back, gripping the arms of the chair so tight his knuckles bleached. He let the back of his head thunk against the wall behind him and stared at the ceiling. “I won’t.”
Beep. Beep. Beep. Ivan tilted his head towards Till with some effort, sniffing. “You know, I am sorry about one thing. I’m sorry you’re the victim of my selfishness. I think you would’ve been better off if we’d never met.”
It was probably true. If Till never met Ivan, it stood to reason that his entire life would’ve never been flipped upside down.
And he couldn’t stomach the thought of it.
“You were kind of my only friend, so.” Till scuffed the floor with the toe of his shoe. “Maybe I wouldn’t have been better off.” His eyes dimmed. “You would’ve, though.”
“That’s a stupid idea.”
It felt like an invitation to argue like they used to. The older they got, the less they fought and pulled each other’s hair, but the bickering never went away.
Till couldn’t bring himself to take the bait.
“I mean it.” Ivan’s hand reached for Till’s from the bed. His fingers just barely brushed against the arm of the chair before his arm sagged. Till caught his hand, and then he thought it would be strange to let go, so he didn’t. He held Ivan’s cold, bony hand in his own and wished he could transfer some life to it from his own body.
“You’re the only reason,” Ivan continued, his pinky finger petting over Till’s palm. The gentle touch made Till’s breath hitch. “My only reason for anything. You made me believe. I want you here.”
Till’s chest trembled. He tried to pass off a wet inhale as a yawn, but god was he a terrible liar. He’d never been good at it. Not like Ivan. “All I’ve ever done is hurt you.”
Beep, two, three, four. Beep, two, three, four. Beep, two, three, four.
Ivan had a look of deep thought on his face as he regarded Till, or rather, the place where their hands were joined. His nail tapped against Till’s hand. “You could do something for me that would make it better. You wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore. Whatever you think you did wrong would be forgiven.”
Till hesitated. It sounded like some childish deal they would’ve made when they were younger, in simpler times. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“It could.”
Asshole. Till snorted. “Okay, then if it did, what could I do?”
“You’d do it?” Something pleading crept into Ivan’s voice. It made Till’s face fall. “Anything?”
Anything? That was a dangerous game to play with Ivan. Till knew better than anyone.
“Anything can be a lot of things,” Till stammered. “I would do… most things. Anything actually within the realm of possibility.”
“Fair.” Ivan grinned, flashing that snaggletooth, and Till felt his own heart skip a beat. He almost expected to hear it on the heart monitor.
Ivan’s expression sobered, and Till angled himself towards him, willing to hear whatever he had to say. Tell me something, he thought. Tell me something.
“Look at me.” Ivan’s voice came out in a raspy murmur. “I just want you to look at me.
Till went still. Look at him. Look at him?
“What?”
At the frozen, stunned look on Till’s face, Ivan smiled tremulously. “Look at me. Really look at me, in the eye. You never look. Just do that for me and you can rest easy.”
You never look.
Till’s mouth opened and closed uselessly. Ivan’s request was so simple, and yet it felt like he’d been punched right in his sternum. It was easy. Why was he overthinking it if it was so easy?
He sucked in a shaky breath and lifted his eyes to meet Ivan’s. He could almost feel both of their hearts stop.
“Maybe you never noticed me looking,” he offered.
Then a cry escaped through his teeth, and Ivan pawed at his arm until Till moved back to the bed, close enough for Ivan to reach him. Ivan’s hands came to rest at the sides of his neck as tears spilled from Till’s eyes, silent and full of grief.
Ivan’s thumb traced the edge of the patch covering Till’s brand. Till didn’t know which one of them he was trying to comfort. “It’s okay,” Ivan told them both, his frail voice telling Till otherwise. “It’ll be okay.”
Till held Ivan’s wrists to support them, squeezing. “How can you say that? It’s not. It’s not okay.”
“Then it will be,” Ivan corrected. “I’m still in here. I’m right here.”
For how long? The unspoken words clogged Till’s throat.
If Ivan wanted to lie this time, Till wouldn’t chastise him for it. He could lie for the both of them and Till could keep his mouth shut and nod and pretend to have faith.
“I have a second chance,” Ivan continued, dark eyes glittering with unshed tears. “So it’s better than okay.”
Their hands shifted so their fingers linked together. Till held on tight since Ivan couldn’t. He held them together and hoped they would stick this time.
“A second chance to suffer?” Till croaked. “To waste away?”
Ivan’s eyelashes fluttered. “A second chance to–to get this right.” He strained forward. The pain was visible on his handsome features, so Till rushed to help him, wrapping one arm around him and leaning him so his head rested against Till’s chest. “I had to know…”
Ivan trailed off. Till frowned. “To know…?”
His head shook against him. “Nothing. I know now.” He nuzzled into Till’s shirt, and Till didn’t even think about it, he just let him. He wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t let him do anything now. Within the realm of possibility.
“I should have stopped you,” Till breathed. “I could have done something.”
“I did everything I could to distract you. And to say goodbye.”
A tearful laugh jumped from Till’s throat. He felt dizzy with relief and sorrow all in one. Delirious. “That wasn’t a very good goodbye,” he said thickly.
Ivan’s face crushed into his chest harder as his body shook with what could’ve been pain, laughter, or tears. “I know. I said I was selfish. You should know better by now.”
Till let go of Ivan’s hand to cup his face and tilt it back to look at him. He should be furious. He’d spent weeks being furious.
Ivan’s exhausted smile made it fade into a low hum, and whatever anger he had left in his body in this moment, he injected into his tone. “Don’t you dare die on me, you hear me?”
Ivan opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Till held a finger to his lips in warning. “I’m serious. Don’t you dare.”
The grin he got was so broad (so sad) Ivan’s snaggletooth brushed against Till’s finger. “...Yeah.”
“Good.” Till removed his finger and brought his hand back to Ivan’s cheek.
Minutes passed between the two, staring at one another for all the times they couldn’t. Beep. Beep. Beep.
“You should rest,” Till finally mumbled. Ivan nodded, stiff and reluctant, and Till helped ease him back into the pillows. He gave him a few more sips of water and asked, “Do you need anything else, or…?”
Ivan smiled at him like that was the dumbest thing that had ever come out of Till’s mouth.
As if he could ever want for anything else now that he finally had Till’s full attention. He’d never been happier in his entire life.
“Just you.”
Till felt his cheeks warm, embarrassed. “Yeah, well.” He pulled the covers up to Ivan’s chin. “I’m here.”
Ivan watched as Till’s fingers found his again, holding on tight.
“Then I have all I need.”