Chapter Text
...
Drip, drip, drip..
The sound of the falling rain, coupled with the wetness of his skin, seemed to drown his surroundings in an erie way that had him feeling like the world was as small as the stage they (no, not they, He) were stading on. An absolutely wrong impression , taking into account the fuckingly ridiculous vasteness of it.
But little did logic matter, because, for all that he cares in his half drugged half shocked state, the world, right then and there, was himself, the stage and the... The .... The body? Of Ivan, the only man whose existence was annoying in a weirdly ressuring and familiar way.
And wasn't that just so damn fucked up? The fact that the freak, whose presence he always considered an unavoidably irksome bother, was FINALLY quiet, still and not trying to get a rise out of him but that didn't bring him any joy.
"Hey..." He managed to mutter after spending too long trying to overcome the knot in his throat. His voice raspy and SO damn vulnerable that it made him want to puke (obviously, that was the cause of his nausea and NOT the fact that a pool of rain water and blood, IVAN'S blood for fucks sake, was touching his shoes). Still, he swallowed the bylis rising and tried again to... To get some reaction from the motionless white, black and red mess on the floor that he would NEVER recognize outloud as the closest thing he ever had to a friend.
"Asshole?..." Barely a whisper, one embarrasingly high pitched, escaped from his dry mouth. The sound surely something that would evoque a stupidly low and amused chuckle from the weirdo if he weren't sprawled on the floor out cold like... Like ... Like a blur horribly undefined by water, and... Damn the motherfucking RAIN for getting in his fucking eyes.
The click of the reflector turning off barely registered in his brain before darkness engulfed his vission. It, however, did nothing to erase the red, forever imprinted in his eyes, that covers the floor under BOTH of them.
Suddenly, the feeling of utter weakeness and lightheadedness overwhelmed him and, next thing Till knew, his knees and right side hurt like a bitch. The realization that he was soaked in the tupid cold ass red puddle brought shivers and another roll of his stomach but he put it down with the thought that he was closer to Ivan. Close enough to fist his stupidly soft clothes in both his shaky hands with a deathly white grip.
Unfamiliar desperation painted his next actions, something he couldn't quite feel in his detached blankness, as he got the closest he had ever been in years to his childhood stalker.
If the fabric now touching his face wasn't soaking wet, cold and weird smelling maybe he could have cursed at the twists of fate that had HIM thrusting his face into Ivan's body and not the other way around. But that certainly wasn't the case and his search for ANY sign of life from the blackhaired singer superseded anything else for the fist time. Thus, he closed his eyes tight enought to hurt and concentrated on erasing all sounds except for that of a heartbeat, finally getting a result after an insufferably long silence..
Thump, thump, thump...
A wave of relief hit him but the little comfort that the steady sound provided for a few seconds vanished like a cruel mirage when his blissfull delirium, brought by a naive hope so unlike him, made the loud thumping accelerate to the max. (Ah...)
THUMP,THUMP, THUMP
To his horror, the sound continued uninterrupted for a while. Then, the dreaded reality fell like a cold bucket as his rationality, finally shinning through his drugged stupor, told him that the sound of a heart beating furiously against a ribcage came from himself and not from the CORPSE in which embrace he had craddled.
Subsequently, a feeling, that he didnt even know existed inside of himself, broke him. Broke the world to be more specific... Because an unprecedented and unnerving silence seemed to engulf him so completely that it was like someone pressed pause on his system paralizing his all.
The blankness of total disassociation left him bereft of everything and the nothingness offered an unexpected comfort from reality.
The time didn't seem to pass, the thoughts didn't exist, there was no beating heart, there was no breathing and, oddly enough...
He could have stayed that way.
Wouldn't mind staying that way but...
Just as God didn't exist, humans were alien's pets and getting attached fucking hurt, life was always a bitch to him.
Thus, whoever paused him got it undone when someone took him by the back of his shirt and tried to forcefully break him away from Ivan and (I'll be FUCKED if I ever let them think they can pry me from whatever is left of this selfish stalker without a fight) was the first thought that ran hot through his mind.
The familiar motion of a fight, vivid anger and the deep rebeliousness running through his blood sparked a fire and exploded raw. Suddenly the world was back, overwhelming, big and noisy, with him inside of it.
Screams, shots, explotions, fights and all kinds of inharmonious sounds surrounded him in a pandemonium between running aliens, fighting robots and strange humans that threatened to swallow what little life was left of him. Little did it matter compared to the hand trying to drag him away.
With a renewed vigor and strength, Till's hands surrounded the cold, sticky and unresponsive body of Ivan, clinging to him like his life depended on it.
Maybe some part of him truly believed that, because even when his harsh and fast attemps of breathing were almost rendered unsuccessful by how deeply his face sinked into the others body and by his messy tears, he didn't care.
Kicking, lashing out, screaming, cursing, everything physically possible was done with a singleminded primal desperation to stay beside the last familiar face left in his life. The unsightly, raw and heartbreaking fight considered pointless by his captor, whose annoyance at the futile resistance of his prey irked him.
Strike after strike fell heavily over several parts of his body and silver grey locks, making blood, now his own, run down his head.
A deafening high pitched sound rang in his ears but he held strong with fire in his teal eyes. It was the most lucid he had been since weeks thanks to the familiar anger, even if that anger was tainted with a sorrow and desperation he was not ready to handle.
Sadly, this fight was bound to end the same way all his previous fights did.
His insufferable collar dressed as a choker beeped and a neddle hidden inside it bumped a burning sustance into his blood, which spread all across his body so torturously acidic that a groan escaped his lips despite his high pain resistance and immunity.
As it settled in his system, and heart, his sigth blurred and he lost control of his limbs despite his best attempts to hold on and, horrified, felt as his fingers slip one by one until his last connection to Ivan was lost, forever.
"Nnnno" his muddled head thought between hard to make huffs of air before the blackness consumed him.
...
The sterile sight that welcomed him didn't surprise him, neither did the cables, machines and restraints in familiar places of his body.
Being clearheaded had long become a privilege he got on good days when he didn't have to go out nor deal with fuckers that wanted to amuse themselves with him.
So, the blurriness present at the corner of his eyes and slowed thought process didn't bother him.
Still, the deep emptiness (loss) he seemed to feel, accompanied with the profound (heart)ache, was difficult to overcome.
The heartache of never getting to fight away his stress with Ivan, to scream at him when angry, to silently appreciate his help and recues, to be annoyed at his cheekyness, to get irked by his weirdass personality and to be followed by his damn heavy gaze, always stalked or accompanied in some way or another, was similar but immensely different in intensity compared to that caused by the news of Mizi's missing status.
Was the void in his world bigger?
Is it possible for someone that only caused anger, annoyance and shame with occasional relief and reassurance, someone who I always wanted far far away but reluctantly had around, to leave a bigger loss and deeper pain than Mizi dissapearing?
As he laid in the cold sterile lab used for punishment and detention, Till questioned his fractured world, a bloody smile flashing before his eyes.
Like an answer to his question, uncontrollable tears ran down his cheeks in that moment of vulnerability and he was afraid of what unfixable damage might be caused by acepting the fuckingly obvious answer.
So, just like so many times before since plenty of years ago, he chose to not aknowledge, ignore and discard the thought of understanding whatever unknown emotional mess Ivan made out of him. To push the weird feelings and weirder late realizations that came along with them to the very back of his mind.
Instead, he'll focus on the vicious anger that motherfucker so desired to give him with his (preferably catalogued as) confusing actions and TRY his hardest to live in this solitary and bloody guideless hell, since that's what the weirdo seemed to want more than his own damn life.
That stupidly nosy self-sacrificing and selfish childhood fucker who could rot wherever he was for all he cares.
...
Of course, everything was going just dandy until the manipulative blond bastard decided to pull out shit that he DIDN'T want to think about and whatever he pushed aside came crashing down like an avalanche, choking him, at the worst moment.
As if it wasn't pathetic enough to be haunted at night, Luka and his drugged system made the ghost of Ivan also haunt him during the performance. The replaying memories coming alive so damn easily in his traumatized delirium that only his strong will power to TRY and muscle memory kept him going.
Though, even those were faltering when the intrusive and hysterical thought of letting Ivan's vengefull spirit take him, if he so wanted, presented itself as a good idea to keep him around just a little longer, to see him just a little longer.
Thankfully, as Till felt like his brain was gonna give out and his vision swam, the pink beacon of hope named Mizi brough him back from his selfdestructive stupor, the holy guide she always was. The prospect of not being so utterly alone, of someone familiar who could understand and share the buried pain killing him, gave something to reach out for.
If in the past pink was everything good that he wasn't, at that very moment pink became the thought of salvation from the heavy weight of lone survival. Thus, like the drowning man he was, he reached out for that which could keep him afloat in a futile attempt to TRY, to delay the inevitable chains that threatened to dragged him down to the deepest red sea of sorrow.
As selfish as it might sound, when the deep pain of a shot on his neck registered in his brain, the first thing that the shadow of death gave, flooding his senses, was relief.
The second, and heaviest, was guilt, because how fucking funny was it that Ivan died to keep him alive and, not long after, he was dying? The motherfucker was probably cursing at him from wherever he was! (And wasn't that a funny picture? Serves you rigth bastard!).
As his body fell to the floor powerless and colapsed on the (thankfully) dry floor of the stage. The temporary oxigen deprived and pained overwhelmed mirth of vividly imagining the weirdass son of a bitch lose his cool façade, fumbling and screaming frustrated at him for dying, brought a totally out of place (definitely vindictive!) smile.
He wouldn't have minded dying with that terrifyingly clear vision actually.
But then, warm and soft hands placed his aching head over equally warm thighs and all he could see was a very fuzzy Mizi. It was fucking ironic how he could never seem to look at what was right in front of him because he was thinking of something that could never be.
Maybe the switching places of the two only significant people in his life was the world being a new kind of bitch, because, instead of enjoying how close he was to Mizi and how out of picture Ivan was, he was feeling like shit.
Teardrops fell on his face, staining him with a detached guilt. He didn't mean to pass his lone survival guilt onto Mizi but it seems like all he could do was add to the heavy deadweight her equally traumatized self already carried.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to die on you. I don't want my death to be another ghost that haunts you. Don't cry" He wanted to say, but his mouth was filled with blood and he refused to add more gore to her horror. So, he tried really really freaking hard to concentrate all his strengh onto his leadlike arm just so he could dry her tears.
Thump, thump, thump...
But the world was so damn blurry,
Thump... thump...thump...
He was tired as hell,
Thump..... thump......thump....
Breathing was hard
Thump........ thump.........thum
And his pain tolerance keeping him conscious so far was a fucking miracle already.
Thump..................Thump........
Ahh, Fuck, I am dying on her but I can't even reach her crying face to console her. He thought with little bite as the certainty of not making it any further came with a strange tranquility and peace.
Thump.....................................
His hand was falling, no strength left on any part of his body, and all sensations; pain, warmth, cold, wet, tired, noisy, beeping, bloody, were being turned off until only his unfocused sight remained.
A weird clarity overcame the blurriness to show him, for a few vivid seconds, exactly what was in front of his eyes: two golden eyes focused on him painted with tears and unwillingness.
Then, even of he didn't close his eyes, his sigth was gone. God, it was shameful how reassuring it felt to know that someone cared enough to focus solely on him, watching him in his solitary parting while feeling unwilling about it.
Was this feeling the reason why he smiled so sadly at me? Was the last though that crossed Till's mind. Without his knowledge, the flashing memory that accompanied the question put a similar, but slightly different, smile on his lips.
Then, as if that memory was the kickstart to play, a carrousel of flashing memories, one after another, ran before him until the film ran out and the world blanked.
...................................