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There’s a man standing in front of Ivan with sea-colored eyes and features that Ivan would know even if he were blindfolded and tossed in the middle of a darkened room, but there is something fundamentally different. He wears his face, but he is not his Till, because Till belongs to no one but he has only ever belonged to Till.
“Hello,” he says, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms across his chest. “You aren’t Till.”
“I am,” not-Till says, before narrowing his eyes at him. “But perhaps a different Till from what you’re used to.”
“Then you’d be an imposter,” he says, still wearing a polite smile. “I wonder what the appropriate course of action would be to deal with someone like you.”
“If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s not working.” And oh, now he does sound a bit like his Till. “And you can stop talking like that, if you were going to throw me out, you would have done so already. But you can’t, can you? Is it because I look like him?”
Looking at him makes Ivan feel disoriented, as if he were walking up a staircase and his foot suddenly meets air instead of the solid certainty of the next step. It’s not just the fact that they share similar features, they also feel different. Ivan’s Till feels like a comet streaking through the sky, fierce and awe-inspiring, and forever out of Ivan’s reach. This Till feels more like a planet, reliable and steady, already fixed in its orbit.
They’re both undeniably beautiful, but the differences are blindingly obvious to anyone who’s known Till long enough (and Ivan likes to think he’s got a few years of pining on everyone else.)
“You’re from a parallel universe,” Ivan tests, tilting his head curiously. This seems to be the only plausible explanation, sans cloning and hallucinations. He likes to think he’s not that desperate (yet) to manifest another Till when his own has always been more than enough.
“You’re very sharp,” Till says, and the praise feels so foreign to Ivan that he turns his head away for a second to compose himself. When he turns back, he meets sea-green eyes crinkled in amusement, and feels, almost embarrassingly, seen.
“That wasn’t an answer,” he says, trying to keep his voice carefully even.
“That wasn’t a question,” he replies, quick on the uptake.
“Well I’m asking now,” Ivan says, “are you from a parallel universe?”
Till studies him for a second as if weighing the potential impact of the truth, but Ivan has never been afraid of the unknown. He must find something, because he nods, then says, “Yes. I’m from a different universe.”
The words are weighty because it is one thing to hypothesize, and another to have something almost implausible be confirmed. Despite himself, Ivan feels in awe of all the possibilities that this poses, before he quickly changes the subject.
“Did something happen to my Till?” He asks, and he braces himself for all possibilities involving Till missing, lost, or trapped in an alternate universe where no one knows him. Whatever the answer, Ivan could take, because he would cross worldlines to find him.
“If this situation is anything to go by,” Till says, “there’s a high chance he’s with my Ivan.”
Two things run through Ivan’s mind almost simultaneously. One is the fact that this situation is so much worse than he had imagined because somewhere out there is another Ivan who doesn’t know how lucky he is to even be breathing the same air as his Till, and a flash of jealousy fills him at the thought. The other are the words my Ivan repeating in his head like a broken record and sounding more substantial than the way he had claimed Till as his.
“You have an Ivan,” Ivan says, stunned, “and you’re together. ”
Till nods and Ivan can sense something softer about him, brought about by the mere mention of his Ivan’s name. “Yes,” he admits, “we’re together.”
There are a thousand questions that Ivan wants to ask, mostly consisting of, Who confessed first, How long have you been together, Do you have any courting tips and How far have you gone , though the last one feels wildly inappropriate.
“What’s your Ivan like?” He asks instead, one of the safer questions to ask, and one that won’t make Ivan feel like jumping off a very tall building.
“Like a golden retriever,” Till says bluntly. “He always says my name like it’s his favorite word, and he follows me around everywhere I go. He used to be a former idol you know, before he shifted to -” And here Till pauses.
“Shifted to what?” Ivan asks.
“Acting,” he says, and it’s as if all the pieces are suddenly falling into place. “We’re actors.”
“And this is what you’re currently working on,” Ivan guesses, making a sweeping gesture that’s meant to encompass everything in the room and even further beyond it. It would explain how this Till doesn’t seem fazed about anything since arriving here, navigating through the situation with an almost suspicious ease. All the world’s a stage, Ivan thinks.
“Yes,” he says, avoiding Ivan’s gaze for the first time, and this feels more familiar.
He looks uncomfortable and almost apologetic, and if it were anyone else, Ivan would have already sharpened his edges to watch them bleed, but this is still Till albeit a different version, and it is an undeniable fact that all Ivans are simply worshippers at the altar of Till, so he simply smiles resignedly.
“So you already know what my decision is going to be,” Ivan says, and this time it isn’t a question. Till nods anyway, and Ivan sighs.
“Well, let’s hope your Ivan knows how to keep a secret,” Ivan says, drily. “I’m surprised you aren’t trying to change my mind.”
“How could I? You’re doing it for him after all.” Till says, and this statement could be said about 95% of Ivan’s decisions. The simple fact of it is that there would be no Ivan without Till, so this choice is a thousand times easier to make than being the one left behind.
“You do know me,” Ivan says, and the words come out softer than he had intended them to be.
“I’ve followed you and your story for quite a while now,” Till replies, and there’s something almost comforting about the distinction he places between those two, as if Ivan had always been something more than the sum of his parts.
“So you must know everything about me,” Ivan says, wondering what answer he’d prefer. Till looks at him thoughtfully.
“Perhaps not everything. What’s your Till like?” He asks, a parallel to Ivan’s earlier question, and it's the easiest thing in the world to answer.
Beautiful. He thinks. Headstrong. Wild. He shines so brightly that his image is imprinted on the backs of my eyelids whenever I close my eyes. “He can be a little fierce sometimes,” is what he says instead. “He’s a talented songwriter and artist too, there’s a lot I can learn from him.”
“Ah,” Till says, looking at him knowingly. “So you must be close.”
“Close? I wouldn’t say that. We’re fine, I guess.” Ivan says, wearing a polite smile and thinking that will be the end of it.
In response, Till gives him a deadpan stare. “You can cut that out, I’m not as oblivious as your Till.”
Ivan is reminded once again that this man is an actor, but lying has become second nature to someone like him, and he wonders if there is still enough truth left in him to matter.
“If you already know how I feel about him, then why ask?” Ivan says, exasperatedly.
“Because you don’t know how he feels about you,” Till says, crossing his arms across his chest. “You think he doesn’t care about you because the alternative is too terrifying to think about and would make your decision ten times harder because then you’d be a hypocrite.”
Damn, Ivan thinks, just shoot me, it would hurt less than this.
“You’re not a mind reader Ivan,” Till says, not unkindly. “You know your Till better than anyone else, but you don’t know everything about him.”
A part of Ivan wants to refute, wants to tell him that the numerous years he’s spent collecting knowledge and items related to Till has culminated in him becoming something of an expert on him. But a smaller part of him is quietly awed by the idea that perhaps Till still holds an ounce of care for him, that if he couldn’t have his affection, he could have his care.
“Well, let’s just see who’s right in the end,” Ivan says, with more confidence than he feels.
Till, of course, sees right through him. He sighs, and walks forward until only a few centimeters separates them. “Lean down a little bit,” He says, and Ivan’s eyes widen.
“I know I look like your Ivan, and you’re definitely attractive, but I’m taken, not in the same way you’re taken but I’m very much taken by my own Till, and I have talked about how beautiful he is -” Ivan says, barely pausing to take a breath in between each word.
Till lets out a laugh. “All Ivans really are the same,” he says fondly as he reaches out and brings Ivan’s head to his shoulder. He runs his hand through Ivan’s hair and it finally catches up to Ivan that he’s receiving a headpat.
Oh, he thinks, burying his face in his white shirt, this feels nice. He can’t remember the last time he was touched so gently and wonders if he ever was.
Eventually, Till starts singing something about crushed flowers, the light that dying stars leave behind, and the smell of rain on grassy meadows.
“Did you write that?” Ivan asks, once the song stops.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Till says, “Your Till wrote it for someone very dear to him.”
Ivan’s first thought is, That doesn’t sound like something he’d write for Mizi, with his next being, Did I have other competition all along? Who the fuck is this bastard that caught his attention?
“It would be nice,” Ivan says, “if he wrote it for me” because of course the possibility of this happening is slim to none and is one of the last things he thinks.
Till doesn’t say a single word, and so Ivan continues to dream of a world where his gaze is returned, without knowing that Till has been looking back for a very long time.
After switching careers from an idol to an actor, Ivan has long since thought that nothing could surprise him anymore, but he finds himself completely and utterly wrong when he finds himself with a lapful of Till, dressed up in his round 6 outfit and with his arm across his windpipe, slowly pressing down and cutting off his air supply.
He initially thought that this was his sunbae, that he had somehow fallen into his lap looking like all of Ivan’s wet dreams, except he feels different, sharper somehow, and this is only cemented further by the fact that he may very well be trying to kill him.
“You’re not Ivan,” Till growls, and Ivan has to beg his body not to react, because this is not his boyfriend, regardless of how similar they look.
“And you’re not my Till,” he gasps, and confusion flits across Till’s eyes briefly. He takes that as a sign and carefully reaches up to tap on Till’s arm as if surrendering.
“Won’t you let up a bit? I can tell you my side, you can tell me yours, and we’ll probably have a working theory done before lunch,” He says, and hopes it comes across as intelligible words and not a series of gargles.
It must have, because Till simply nods before removing his arm from his throat. Ivan sighs in relief before dropping his hands to Till’s elbows. “Would you like to continue the discussion as is, or would you like me to pull up a chair -”
“No need,” Till says, sliding off Ivan’s lap (Ivan does not let out a sound at that, he swears) and stalking off to grab his desk chair before walking back to him. He turns the chair around before sitting down and resting his arms on the headrest.
“Go ahead,” he says, nodding as if this is an interrogation, “talk.”
This Till’s behavior feels so different from his sunbae’s, and it should put him on edge, especially after the whole attempted murder incident, but honestly, it just makes him more curious about this different side of him.
“You mentioned a Till,” Till prompts, after seconds have passed with Ivan simply staring at him. “You said my Till. Are you together?”
“Yes sir,” Ivan says, sitting up straighter in response, and something akin to amusement flickers through Till’s expression before it’s gone. “I mean, Till. Younger Till. You look younger anyway. My Till is older than me -”
“Stop rambling,” not-sunbae snaps, and Ivan nods so quickly he fears his head will fall off.
“Ok,” He says, “I was a former idol, but then I became an actor. That’s how I met sunbae, my Till, but I knew him longer than that.”
“You’re an actor?” Till asks, his gaze sharpening. “What show are you acting in?”
The name of the series is on the tip of Ivan’s tongue, but then he takes a longer look at the Till in front of him, at the way the ends of his long hair brush against his nape and the numerous silver piercings on his ear, the loose black shirt he’s wearing, and he thinks, Oh.
“It’s a story about yearning,” he says instead, “for liberation and warmth and someone’s gaze. It has the makings of a tragedy, but we don’t know the ending yet.”
“No one really does,” Till mutters, slumping a little bit, as if his strings were cut. “It would be so much easier if I could see what comes next.”
Now that the initial threat has been resolved, all the fight has seemingly gone out of Till and all that’s left is exhaustion. The next round features a man in mourning, but the man in front of him already feels like a ghost.
Ivan reaches out a hand and carefully places it on Till’s elbow, his touch as light as a feather. When Till doesn’t shake him off, he waits for a few seconds before resting the weight of his hand fully on him.
“I don’t know you very well,” Ivan says, his knowledge of this Till limited to stage cues and notes that the director has scribbled in red ink on his script, “but I‘m in awe of you.”
“Why? You shouldn’t,” Till says, the words slightly muffled since he’s buried his head in his arms, “There’s nothing about me to admire.”
“You’re wrong,” Ivan says, thinking of a shattered segyein, a voice louder than anyone else, and a red sky full of meteors. “You may be different from sunbae, but it’s a given for all Ivans to adore each and every version of Till.”
Till raises his head at this and studies Ivan intensely. Ivan almost wants to look away but remains where he is, wondering how on earth the other Ivan handles his Till’s gaze, weighty thing that it is.
“You’re staring,” Ivan points out when the silence stretches on, fully aware of how much of a hypocrite he’s being.
“You’re different from my Ivan,” Till says, and the way he says my is so soft and uncertain that Ivan’s heart aches. “It’s like you wear your heart on your sleeve for everyone to see. It makes me want to protect you.”
A hint of red creeps up on Ivan’s cheeks. “Well,” he says, trying to keep his voice even, “have you ever considered that’s how your Ivan may feel about you?”
“That bastard’s actions and thoughts are never aligned,” Till says, waving a hand as if to dismiss his words. “I can never tell what he’s thinking. He follows me around everywhere like a second shadow, but the distance between us feels immeasurable.”
There is an almost somber tone to the last words, and while Ivan understands the reason why they drifted apart and knows that it isn’t the other Ivan’s fault for external factors pushing them away, he still has the urge to reach out and smack his head for ever making his Till feel as if he doesn’t care.
“Sunbae once told me that we could never truly know someone else, no matter how hard we try, and the only way to avoid stumbling in the dark and feeling along the walls for a sign is to communicate,” Ivan says.
“We tried,” Till replies, “it didn’t go so well.”
“I know,” Ivan says, then physically backpedals. “I mean, in a hypothetical and empathic way, not in the literal sense, because how on earth could I ever know, I have absolutely no right to speak on things like this -”
This continues for a solid 2 minutes before Till sighs and holds up his hand. “Save your breath,” he says, and Ivan immediately closes his mouth. “This is a parallel universe isn’t it? The thing you’re working on right now, it’s a story about my world isn’t it?”
There’s a reason why they call him the genius rookie, Ivan thinks, before nodding guiltily. “Yes,” he says, “it’s called Alien Stage. I’m sorry for trying to keep it from you, I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
“Alien Stage,” Till says out loud, rolling the words around in his mouth. “I could die in the next round but at least I’m in a show with a catchy title.”
“You could make a better one,” Ivan blurts out, instead of offering the numerous comforting words in the book Sua gave him for his birthday a few years back entitled, Conversations for Dummies . “You could rewrite the entire thing and I would audition for it all over again because it was made by you.”
“Careful,” Till says, tilting his head, “you’re a taken man aren’t you? That almost sounds like a proposal.”
Ivan splutters and the corner of Till’s mouth lifts up ever so briefly. “Ivan,” he says, before pausing and choosing his next words carefully. “In this world, is everyone happy?”
Not alive , but happy , because Ivan knows that it isn’t enough for Till to know if they’re alive, he needs to know if there’s a world where the possibility of happiness exists for all of them.
“Yes,” Ivan says, thinking of the picture he took with sunbae at a cheap picture booth stall on one of their dates tucked safely into his wallet alongside the polaroid picture of the whole cast, with Luka and Ivan fighting to give Till his morning coffee, Mizi and Sua with their heads pressed together and leaning over a book, and Hyuna chatting animatedly with Hyun woo. “They’re happy.”
“That’s more than enough then,” Till says, even though it isn’t, and could never be, enough.
“Let me do something for you,” Ivan says, almost begging, even though he knows there isn’t anything substantial he can do for Till. But perhaps it’s almost instinctual, this urge that Ivan feels to never let any version of Till be in harm’s way.
“Tell me a story,” Till says, closing his eyes. “Tell me about why you wanted to be an idol, the first time you met your Till, if Mizi or Sua fell first, if Luka ever managed to confess to Hyuna, and if you still love space and looking up at the night sky like my Ivan does. Tell me everything Ivan, so that when I go, I’ll remember your voice.”
“Ok,” Ivan says, his voice feeling scratchy, thoughts stuck on the way my Ivan had been said more firmly this time. “Ok, I will.”
And so he does, telling Till stories until his throat aches and the afternoon sunlight streams through the window and sets Till aglow, and still he continues, with his hand eventually finding its way to Till’s sleeve, holding onto it as if it was a lifeline and he were a drowning man.
He only stops when warmth starts to envelop his hand as his Till intertwines their fingers and presses their palms together.
“I’m home,” he says, familiar sea-green eyes meeting midnight ones.
“Welcome home,” Ivan says, gripping his hand back just as tightly, feeling as if he’s finally found the shore.