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Sometimes Ivan lays down and pretends he’s falling off the world again.
He unfocuses his eyes until he feels dizzy. Every frame of the sky clicks by. The same scratches repeat in his retina lenses. It’s a kind of blind spot. It shoots straight into his nerves, unable to be processed. He stares up and up.
He often wishes the winds would be strong enough to carry him into the stars. It would be cold around him. He would get to stare down on the teeming life before. Without knowing it, they would look back at him.
The word has never been love. It was never taught to them beyond the song lyrics. There is when he can feel his heart beating, and when he cannot.
When he’s barely a teenager, Ivan realizes he might want to die. He doesn’t have a reference point for how dramatic this is. He doesn’t care much about the fact anyways.
He leans his head back more. The pulsing starts. He wants more. It calls.
Ivan blends into the shadows. He doesn’t mind it. When people accidentally look at him, they always shift and pretend they were doing something else.
Sometimes he stares at himself. The thing which looks back is unhappy at this feedback loop. He smiles for the camera. He doesn’t see his own appeal.
His skin is smooth and pale. It is envied. His veins are cool below. He presses down.
He only sleeps when he can no longer keep his eyes open. It swallows him. There are a couple hours of panicked dreams all around him. Then he wakes up.
The blankets cling to him. He relishes it. His body temperature returns to normal.
He wakes up earlier than most of the other students. They’re vulnerable like that. Their movements are uncoordinated, eyes heavy. He records.
Ivan leans against a tree and wishes he could glitch through it. Something whirrs in the side of his head. There’s a blur of pale hair walking past him. Ivan smiles too fast. He scrapes his lip.
A drop of blood falls down. He laps it up. The taste is soothing. He wishes there was more.
The concept of Till’s arteries appeals to him. He should feel shame about that one. Till probably bleeds a different color than him. He knows that isn’t true, but it should be. He wants to drink it down. He wants to watch it swirl beneath.
Till also makes Ivan want to die. In a different way. Till is the opposite of the cold abyss. Till is the meteor that has been seeking Ivan out since he first learned his heart could beat. Till’s smile is more perfect than he realizes, and Ivan hopes that this time the flames will eat him alive.
His teeth let go of his lip. If he lost enough blood, he would faint. If only.
He walks away that day. Mizi is humming a melody to the blades of grass. Till scutters up to her, bashful, almost crumpling his notebook. Ivan’s empty stomach twists.
Sometimes, Sua shares her rice with him. He doesn’t know why. They don’t care for each other. Not at the end of the day, at least. Maybe she just pities him. They eat in silence.
Ivan rarely feels hunger. Aside from a certain kind. That kind is a pit which widens inside him day after day. The four of them tackle each other, laughing, and Till’s side crashes into him. His elbows are sharp. He runs warm. Ivan aches and aches.
Sometimes Till gets sick. He gets punished for it, ribs bruised. He curls around himself afterwards.
Ivan doesn’t want to see Till hurt. He just wants to see Till’s insides. Till fits into his arms better when he’s limp. Till holds his hand tighter when he’s scared. Ivan wants more than he could ever say.
“I like to look at the sky.”
“I’ve noticed,” Till scoffs. Ivan’s heart leaps. He’s noticed.
“I don’t see the big deal.” Till climbs back up and walks away. Ivan rides the high of the interaction for as long as he can.
Sua and Mizi practice together often. They sound like a pair of angels. That day, Ivan stares in the water and tries to see how he can hide his glare.
When nobody else is looking, Sua tilts her head. It’s taunting.
Ivan and Till harmonize when they all sing as a group. Till doesn’t notice. He never cooperates, never tries to match anyone else’s tempo. He’s a firecracker. Ivan is a freezing man. Always will be.
Mizi is too kind to hate. She’s lucky for that. Ivan watches Till’s voice become soft around her and feels bitter things stab into his chest.
He wants and wants and wants.
Ivan finds a sharp rock once. He scrapes himself with it on purpose. He can feel heat rush to the site of injury. It’s welcome. It’s almost what he’s looking for.
…But never quite.
You strike two stones against each other correctly, and the spark catches. He practices it for hours. A useless skill. If only everything was that simple.
He helps Till redo his bandages. He presses a little too hard when he wraps them. Till hisses at him, frightened. Electric.
Ivan’s deepest fantasy is one where they lean on each other softly. They’re in a bright world, a real one. They take their time to hold each other, to gaze at each other. Nobody comes around. The sky shines and every touch is soft. A perfect equilibrium.
He should bash his skull in next time.
Sua says goodnight, softly. She pauses. She hugs him.
Her body is small, delicate. Her touch is gentle. He hugs her back as lightly as he can.
Sometimes Ivan can’t bear it. He wants to never let Till out of his sight. He itches with every movement he cannot watch. He wants to become one with the walls, to hoard everything Till’s ever touched. As if he deserves it.
Sometimes he’ll kneel on the ground as long as it takes if he gets those eyes to catch his again. There is nothing that can hurt him more than the absence. He’ll take his skin getting rubbed raw, his joints being snapped apart, his eyes yanked open. Nothing will permeate.
They graduate. Ivan bids goodbye to all the things he never said when it was safe. He doesn’t look anyone in the eyes, just looks up at the sky.
When he practices on stage, he hopes he will fall.
He hopes and hopes. The numbness continues to spread around him.
Ivan’s deepest fantasy is one where he’s anywhere else. One where his first memory is warmth. One where there will never be eyes which watch again. One where touches linger for longer than they do. One where he has anything at all.
One where he is a person. One where his heart thrums every day. One where people like his actual smile, not the reflected one. One where his skin fits.
He doesn’t know how he would ever have that.
Till screams on stage. He’s sweaty and grinning. Not for Ivan. Obviously not. It hurts in an almost relieving way. It’ll never be enough to see the happy flush on Till’s cheeks and know it’s not for him. When Till laughs at Ivan’s jokes, it’s sharp instead. Ivan’s nails dig into his palms.
He’s imagined kissing Till many times, because he’s disgusting. Of course he has. He’s imagined it slow and violent and repeating and fading as soon as he opens his eyes. When their fists graze, when they run until they get tired and collapse gasping. He’s thought of it ever since he could. He thought of it before he knew he was thinking of it, back when he just knew that Till was the center of something he would never escape.
The act is unimportant. It never would have been enough.
When the first bullet hits, it’s Till’s gasps of surprise, hesitant and warm. It rushes through Ivan’s fingers. Deliriously, he wonders if they have the same pulse at that moment.
The second bullet is the flex of Till’s neck away from him. Ivan feels sick. He’s twenty-two and fifteen and eight years old, reaching for something that will never be his. For a second, he squeezes like he actually wants to kill. There’s something bitter in his throat.
The final strike is the rush. Till’s eyes meet him and it’s finally right. His blood is thick in his throat. His heart is rushing. He’s brought to the edge and God is there to take him home and it’s as though time had never passed. He’s happy.