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It’s in the midst of a tense, cold, feud between Ivan and his manager—because Ivan wants to take his music in a new direction and his manager warned him against that and Ivan said no through a sharp smile pressed to his face, and so his manager said See how far you can get without my help—it’s in the midst of this and because of this that Hyuna brings in her friend of a friend to help create visuals for the next era of Ivan’s music. This is fine, on the surface. Hyuna understands Ivan’s visions for his music, and she has experience firing her own managers at least thrice because they refused to cooperate with what she wanted, and she’s better off for it.
Ivan trusts Hyuna’s judgment.
But when she introduces him to her friend-of-a-friend, Ivan stops short halfway through the door, frozen by the sight of once-familiar platinum hair. They haven’t spoken much since graduation—or rather, since Ivan dropped out in their last semester after securing a record deal and then sat alone as he watched all of his friends receive their diplomas. He said he would go back and finish his own schooling if the idol life didn’t work out for him, but there’s been no need.
Till looks up from where he’s scribbling in a notebook. Just like when they were kids.
Ivan draws a polite smile across his face. It’s possible Hyuna is aware they know one another, but of course she wouldn’t know Ivan spent his most formative years in love, pining from afar, while Till was preoccupied bathing in Mizi’s light. It’s not as if Ivan could blame him, really. Of course someone like Till would long for the warmth of the sun rather than Ivan’s cold shadows. He could never offer the radiance Mizi carries with her wherever she goes.
But Mizi was never interested in Till like that.
It made things easier for Ivan, and worse for Till, and so perhaps it is no surprise at all that their group drifted apart after graduation, when they were no longer bound by the forced proximity of sharing a campus.
Till meets his gaze with wide eyes.
“Long time no see,” Ivan says drily.
“Oh, you two already know each other?” Hyuna looks between them. “Cool!”
“We went to school together,” Ivan answers through the smile still splitting his lips. The one he spent months perfecting in his youth, studying his expression in bathroom mirrors until his genuine smile was indistinguishable from the fake one. Until he couldn’t recall whether he’d ever had a genuine smile in the first place.
“Yeah,” Till agrees vaguely. He’s looking at Ivan like he’s trying to unravel a mystery. Like he’s looking for the answer to some unspoken question. But Ivan’s selling point is that he cannot be read beyond what he chooses to show his audience.
Hyuna nods. “Small world, I guess. And that means I don’t have to worry about introductions. So,” she waves her hand vaguely, “the two of you can have fun brainstorming or whatever. If you kill each other, it’s not my fault. Bye!”
She flashes them both a grin, drops her sunglasses over her eyes, and leaves the room.
“She didn’t bother telling me which idol I would be working with,” Till explains. His words sound carefully calculated, unlike throughout school, when he would blurt out the first thing that came to mind. It’s uncanny. Like he’s been replaced with an android that merely wears his skin and mimics his voice.
Ivan is struck by the near-unshakable urge to poke and prod at Till until he’s certain he’s still flesh and blood.
Instead, he steps fully into the room, shutting the door behind him. “How did you meet Hyuna-noona?”
Till shifts. “I’m just here for work—”
“But it’s been so long.” Ivan pouts, in the small barely-there way that plays up his sympathy in front of a crowd or a camera. “Wouldn’t it be nice to catch up a bit?”
Till’s eyes narrow. There he goes again, with that searching-for-something demeanor. Ivan wonders what he’s looking for. Ivan wonders how long it will be before he realizes he will never find it unless it is granted to him. “Sure, I guess.”
Ivan wipes away the pout with another smile. He crosses the room in a few long strides, then places himself on the couch beside Till. In another life—in their old life—he would lean into Till’s personal space, just enough to get Till’s hands on him as he shoved him away. But this is delicate now.
He’ll have to work them back up to how they once were.
“How did you meet Hyuna-noona?” he repeats.
Till shrugs. “Her brother. We were working backstage together a few months ago.”
“Backstage?” Ivan’s curiosity spills from his lips before he can stop it. “Where? With what?”
“Ballet show, at a local theatre. It’s some community club or class or whatever—Sua and Mizi joined, ‘cause Mizi wanted to and you know Sua will follow her to the ends of the earth. Then Mizi recommended me for backstage work. I guess Hyuna-noona’s brother is employed at the theatre full-time.” Till picks at a thread on his shirt. He looks like he wants to say more.
Ivan needs to coax it out of him.
He could sit here and listen to Till talk for hours, if not days. Weeks, even. Till’s voice falls over him like a waterfall, and the sudden rush of cold is the only thing to break Ivan from the numb flow he’s been subject to ever since he released his first song. Of course it’s Till. Till, Till, Till, who else—what else—what other force in the world could be so strong?
Till, like the rising tides. Till, like a flood. Till, like a typhoon. Till, like—
“I’ve only ever seen Hyun-woo in passing,” Ivan comments. “What’s he like?”
Till scoffs. “I’m really not here to chit-chat about our common acquaintances. I’m trying to, like, get a decent job so I don’t have to be cleaning shit off the stage after mediocre dance shows.”
Ivan laughs. “Sua would have your head for saying that.”
“Sua would have my head for a lot of things,” Till grumbles. And it’s true. Ivan can think of a rather large misdemeanor Till has been committing against her for years—the simple act of having a crush. But hurting Till would upset Mizi, and the only thing Sua cannot stand more than the possibility of Mizi falling away from her naturally is being the one to break Mizi’s devotion with her own actions. “Hyuna said you want someone to design your next album cover?”
Ivan hums pleasantly. “My manager isn’t too fond of the style I’ve gone for with my recent music, and he thinks taking away my access to all of his resources will make me rethink things.”
Till scoffs. “He must not know you very well, then.”
But you do, Ivan thinks. Of course Ivan would not lie down in defeat so easily; only those who take him at face-value would believe in such a possibility. Till knows better, because Till knows him. He has not changed beyond all recognition.
It’s a comforting thought.
It makes him think, perhaps, there is hope for him and Till yet. Maybe they can find their way back to how they were.
—
“How do you and Till know each other?” Hyuna asks him later, peering at him over the frames of her sunglasses.
“We went to school together,” Ivan parrots his earlier reply. It’s the easiest way to answer, and there’s no reason to fill Hyuna in on all the details at this moment in time.
She smiles, like she knows something he doesn’t. Like maybe she’s not being entirely truthful about this situation, or she had some ulterior motive for bringing Till to him.
“I see,” she says vaguely.
Perhaps Ivan should press for more, but—
He would rather have Till than answers. So he says, “I’m sure we’ll work well together,” and leaves it at that.
🎨
Till should have seen this coming, probably. When Hyuna refused to tell him exactly which of her idol friends he would be working with. But he was dumb, and thought she just didn’t want to name-drop Luka after what happened last time he and Till were in close quarters. He figured the explanation was just about anything apart from—
Ivan’s careful smile, tooth jutting out between his lips, looking almost exactly the same as when Till last saw him years ago. He’s settled into his body better now, his movements more confident and his shoulders broader, but he’s still the same guy. He has the same dark eyes, the same flawless skin, the same meticulous movements as if he believes he is always being watched. He is still Ivan.
And Till is still Till.
And so they talked, and broke past the barrier of awkwardness brought on by the time apart. Ivan leaned into Till’s space and Till pushed him out of it, and Ivan just grinned like that was exactly what he wanted. Ivan put on the face of someone who is perfect in every way, and Till saw straight through it, because he knows Ivan better than that. He’s felt Ivan’s fists, tasted his own blood spilled after they made contact with his face. He’s tasted Ivan’s blood, too, splattered on his knuckles.
He’s watched Ivan lick blood from his fingers, unsure who it even belonged to in the first place.
Thought, Wow. What a freak.
Thought, I need to see him do it again.
They’ve grown now. Or so he hopes. But there’s still something deep inside of his chest that longs to make Ivan bleed—something he doesn’t think will ever fully die. It laid dormant while they were apart, but now that Till has seen him again, it’s rearing its ugly head in full force.
He wants to dig his nails into Ivan, rip him apart, and coat himself in the blood he’s spilled.
(And if Till is still Till and Ivan is still Ivan, he’s almost certain they both want the same thing.)
—
“What’s your vision for this album?”
Ivan hums. Till taps his pencil against his notebook. He needs something to go off of, if he’s actually going to do this, and Ivan did agree to pay him and he does need the money. So. Catching up with an old friend was nice and all, but Till is here for business.
However, Ivan still doesn’t seem to understand this.
“It’s sort of experimental,” he answers through a smile too-soft for a professional conversation. “So I think you should experiment with your graphic design skills, too. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“That doesn’t help me at all.”
Ivan leans forward. “It doesn’t?” He sounds so genuinely confused that Till cannot tell if it’s an act or not. His skin pricks, and he looks away from Ivan’s stare.
“No,” he replies. “It doesn’t. I need something with more substance.”
Ivan hums, as if in thought. “In that case, I don’t want it to look like any of my previous album covers. Or single covers, for that matter. Make me something unique.”
Till raises an eyebrow. “Do you have a thumb drive with all those covers on it, or am I just supposed to use Wikipedia?”
“You haven’t seen them all already?”
Till’s face heats, and anger bubbles up in his chest. Ivan’s presumption isn’t wrong, per se, but it’s not because Till has made a habit of listening to his music. It’s more that he likes picking at scabs and poking open wounds. It’s more that seeing Ivan’s face—his perfectly-curated public image—is like nails on a chalkboard, and Till returns to the pain time and time again because at least it’s a familiar discomfort.
“You’re not the only music artist in the world, you know,” Till mumbles.
Ivan bats his eyelashes. “But you have seen them?”
Till doesn’t bother giving him an answer. “So…something experimental, and something different,” he notes. “That’s still pretty vague.”
Ivan laughs, and Till feels his cheeks grow even hotter. Can they turn on the air conditioning in here or something? He tugs at the collar of his t-shirt. How is Ivan surviving in a sweater right now?
“I want you to create something you’ll have fun with,” Ivan tells him. “If you like photography, you can take pictures of me. If you prefer working with photos that are already taken, I’ll find another photographer. Use your favorite effects and fonts and techniques.” He rests his chin on his hand. “Make me something you love, and I’m sure I’ll love it too.”
A bead of sweat slips down the back of Till’s neck. He glances up at the lights, wondering if maybe they’re secretly heat lamps. “I don’t have any favorite photoshop techniques or any of that shit,” he answers honestly. Because this is Ivan, and if Ivan wants to be difficult, Till is going to be difficult right back. That’s how they work, isn’t it? Till will tear away the pleasant smiles in the way only he can, revealing the dark blood beneath.
And then they’ll move on without ever directly addressing it.
“You don’t?” Ivan frowns. “But you—”
“I only got into graphic design and marketing because it pays better than other art,” Till interrupts. “You want my favorite techniques? Painting. I like the hands-on stuff. Digital art is kind of shit, honestly.”
Ivan’s eyes light up.
Somehow, Till feels as if he’s played directly into a trap. But if he’s fallen into a cage, he still can’t see the bars surrounding him.
“Paint me something, then,” Ivan says. “I’ll send you the demos for the album. Listen to them, and paint how the music makes you feel. I don’t need my face on the cover at all.”
Till blinks.
If this is a cage—
it’s a golden one.
“Deal,” he agrees.
He holds his hand out, and Ivan takes it, shaking firmly. His palm is cold, and all too familiar. His touch lingers for a moment, and Till lets it, because—
if this is a cage—
it’s been so long since Ivan has baited him into a fight, so long since he’s pulled his fist back just to see Ivan’s bloody smile, so long since there was any excuse for touch exchanged between them at all. And Till never really understood why Ivan seemed to like the fighting so much, but…
He must be awfully touch-starved himself these days. Because he thinks he might finally get it.
—
Ivan sends him the demos.
Till listens with his pencil in hand, sketchbook open, letting the music wash over him as he thumbnails various designs. He fills small squares with doodles, fills pages through the duration of the album, and when the last song has ended—
Every single drawing is of Ivan.
🎤
After one of Hyuna’s shows, she and Ivan go out for drinks.
Ivan typically stays away from alcohol, lest he lose enough control that he breaks the image he and his manager have both so carefully crafted for him. He hasn’t had more than one drink per sitting since his university days. Back then, they would sip straight from the bottle—him, Till, Mizi, and Sua—seated on the floor of someone’s dorm or apartment. Mizi would get clingy and then pass out early, Sua would retain her composure surprisingly well, Till would get louder, and Ivan would follow his suit.
And sometimes, with Till’s inhibitions lowered, he would let Ivan linger in his space.
He would let Ivan touch him without excuse, and he would touch back without intent to harm. He would play with Ivan’s fingers as he rambled on about incompetent professors and classmates. Ivan would pretend to listen through the bubbly haze in his brain, his attention captured exclusively by how pretty Till looked when the world was blurry and unserious and nothing could hurt any of them.
Till was almost always the second to fall asleep, leaving Ivan and Sua alone. And as Ivan covered Till’s sleeping form with a blanket, Sua would eye him with a dark judgment that only comes from one one looking in the mirror.
You will only hurt yourself in the long run, she’d spit out, whisper slicing through his throat.
And Ivan would smile his meaningless smile before telling her, You are a fool for believing you will never face pain of your own.
These days, it’s easier not to drink at all.
But Hyuna insisted, and they’re celebrating her show, and very few other places are open this late anyway. So they order drinks and food, and Hyuna launches into a rant about Luka scheduling his next single drop for the exact date she’d planned to drop hers. Hers hasn’t been publicly announced yet, so he has plausible deniability, but Hyuna insists it was on purpose.
Ivan believes her.
He nods along as he sips his drink, draining the glass slowly, knowing that once it’s gone, he’ll be switching to water or soda for the rest of the night.
And then, just as he’s finishing, Hyuna turns the conversation onto him:
“So,” she grins, “Till, huh? What’s his deal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies through his teeth. “I told you, we just went to school together. That’s all there is to it.”
“Oh really?” Hyuna leans towards him, elbows on the table, chin in her hands. “Because Luka said that Mizi said that there was something else going on between you two.”
Ivan raises an eyebrow. Luka knows Mizi? It’s unsurprising that Hyuna is still in contact with him despite all of the issues between them, but he can’t imagine a world where someone like Mizi could get along with someone like Luka.
Then again, Mizi got along well enough with Ivan himself. And while he doesn’t shroud himself in a lie of blinding sunlight like Luka does, he utilizes a similar mask of perfection to hide his true nature. Perhaps it’s less that Mizi gets along with him and more that she fell for his act.
“Mizi likes to exaggerate the details,” Ivan replies. He intends to stop there, but Hyuna pins him with her unbelieving stare, and out slips, “She’s always been too much of an optimist.”
Hyuna grins like she’s won the jackpot.
“I mean—” Ivan tries to backpedal, but his words fail him. Has his alcohol tolerance been lowered so much, to render him speechless after a single drink?
Or is the issue his recent proximity with Till?
They’ve only held two conversations in the past week, but compared to years without contact…
“You mean you don’t think he feels the same?” Hyuna stirs her drink with her straw, then takes a loud sip. She points at him, movements slightly uncoordinated. “Is Mizi an optimist, or are you a pessimist?”
Ivan hesitates.
He waves the bartender down and orders a second drink.
“Wow,” Hyuna comments. “That bad, huh?”
“I’ve long since accepted it,” Ivan explains. “The way I feel for Till is not the way he feels for me. It’s been like that since we were kids; I’d be a fool to still expect things could change. Unlike Mizi, I don’t make a habit of clinging to false hope.”
“Mizi doesn’t think her hope is empty.”
“Mizi has been the sole subject of Sua’s worship since elementary school,” Ivan says, “and Mizi has Sua to protect her from the harsh truths of the world.”
Hyuna squints. But she can’t argue, because she only knows Mizi secondhand through Luka or something while Ivan watched Mizi grow up. Ivan grew up beside her. Ivan saw the way their classmates orbited around her as if she was the sun, and the way Sua encouraged it so long as no one else got too close. She always believed Mizi worthy of the world’s devotion, but only if the world’s devotion could not hold a candle to her own.
“Hm.” Hyuna downs the rest of her drink. She points at the rest of the food they ordered to split. “Are you going to eat that?”
Ivan shakes his head.
She pulls it closer to her and starts eating. Ivan watches, draining his second drink, letting his mind go numb. He doesn’t know what Hyuna heard from Mizi and Luka, but it must have been compelling if it was enough to convince her to intervene. Hyuna never does anything she doesn’t want to, and rarely does she deem the trivial interpersonal issues of others worth her time.
“You know,” Hyuna says between bites, “you could’ve told me if you didn’t want to work with him.”
“But I do want to work with him.”
Ivan has known for years that he will never be anything more than a blip on Till’s radar—someone he met by chance, and was friends with only because they happened to grow up attending the same school. Someone he was thrown into contact with by coincidence alone.
It was not fate that allowed them to meet. Their love will not feel as if it were written in the stars before time began; they are not like Mizi and Sua.
They are Ivan and Till.
They exist by luck alone, drawn together by split lips and bruised knuckles and the euphoria bursting in Ivan’s chest whenever he got Till to touch him. And if they exist by luck alone, with each touch exchanged nothing more than a carefully manipulated circumstance on Ivan’s part, why should he throw away a second opportunity to regularly be in Till’s presence?
Even if it lasts for only a few weeks.
Who is Ivan to look this gift horse in the mouth? Why should he not simply enjoy their victory lap before Till drifts out of his life for good?
“Huh.” Hyuna grabs his drink without asking and takes a sip from the side. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “It’s like looking in a fucking mirror.”
She doesn’t offer an explanation; just waves the bartender down and asks for the check. She pays for Ivan, and when he attempts to argue out of principle, she tells him, “Think of it as an apology.”
He doesn’t ask what she means.
He’s not sure he wants to know.
—
He gets a message from Sua two days later—the first from her in over a year—that says:
I will never understand why you enjoy pouring salt in your wounds.
He doesn’t bother responding.
🎨
Till listens to Ivan’s music, and he thinks of:
Days spent in the grass, picking wildflowers and weaving crowns, children’s laughter and chasing one another around. The sun shining down on them, warming their skin, and Mizi’s smile that could give even the brightest day a run for its money.
A red flower in his palm, placed there by Ivan. A gift? A trap? Oh, what does it matter; are they not the same?
The cafeteria in their high school, under fluorescent lights, trading food and complaining about homework. Mizi taking Sua’s sweets and Sua accepting her bitter vegetables in return. Till gave Mizi his desserts, too, but he received no payment. It was like a terrible metaphor from their literature classes.
Ivan at his side, hands cupped around his, swiping his thumb through the droplet of blood squeezed from a papercut. Instead of wiping it on a napkin, Ivan brought his thumb to his lips.
Walking home together. Doing homework together. Singing together. Sleepovers and a camping trip. Looking at the stars. Playing video games. Watching movies.
Ivan is always there.
It was the four of them: Mizi, Sua, Ivan, Till, but—
Ivan is always there.
In every memory, in every moment, in every thought, in every thumbnail—
Ivan is always there.
Till listens to Ivan’s music, but when his senses are overwhelmed by Ivan’s voice, there is no other thing he can think of. From the pages of his sketchbook, only Ivan stares up at him.
—
It wouldn’t be a problem, maybe, if any of Till’s ideas felt good enough.
But Ivan wants different and Ivan wants unique and all Till has is a hundred doodles of compositions that have been done before, poses that are tired and overused, color palettes that you could find anywhere. It makes his hands itch, makes his brain twitch in dismay, sends him flipping through all of his old sketchbooks, trying to figure out where his creativity has gone.
He wasn’t always like this.
He went through a phase where he filled pages upon pages with Mizi, but even those break the mold he has set up for himself now. Has he lost himself by making his art palpable for clients? Has he lost himself?
Or—
He drops the old sketchbook, the one from when he was twelve and in what he thought must be love because everything you feel at twelve years old is the strongest and most important emotion in the world. But was it love, or was it worship? Was it worship, or was it desperation? Are those three things any different from one another?
Is Till holding himself back?
When you’re twelve and everything you feel at twelve years old is the strongest and most important emotion in the world, you are unafraid to put those raw emotions into the creative outlet you find works best for you. Art, music, poetry, whatever.
If Till suspends his disbelief and lets himself believe this, whatever it is he’s feeling right now, this obsession, this despair, this nauseating dread, if he lets it be the most important thing ever—
How would his art change?
Would it change at all?
Ivan said this album is experimental. He suggested Till try an experiment with his cover design as well.
It’s worth a shot.
He opens up his current sketchbook, puts his headphones in, and hits play.
—
“I’m having a bit of trouble,” Till admits, over the phone, frustration bleeding into his words. His sketchbook taunts him from his desk. Ivan’s pencil-lined face stares at him as Ivan’s voice responds:
“Trouble?”
“Yeah.” Hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. “None of my sketches are coming out well.”
“I didn’t tell you to sketch.” Till can hear the frown in Ivan’s voice, and he hates the innocent confusion. Hates that he can’t see Ivan’s expression to figure out if it’s real or not. “You didn’t say you liked sketching best; you said you like painting. Just paint.”
Till scoffs. “You have no idea how art works. And I can’t afford endless canvases to try out different ideas.”
Ivan hums.
And then the fucking bastard hangs up on him.
Till stares at his blank phone screen in dismay for a full minute before chucking across the room.
—
Two days later, Till receives a package with five large canvases. When he texts Ivan, HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET MY ADDRESS WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!!!! he gets nothing but a smiley face emoticon in response.
🎤
Hyuna does Ivan’s makeup for a photoshoot, because his manager is still keeping a tight hold on all of the people he typically works with, and Ivan can never seem to get his own eyeliner even.
Luka watches from across the room, because he’s here too for some reason—because Hyuna invited him, or because he just followed her here; it’s impossible to tell—intermittently critiquing Hyuna’s work.
“If you’re not going to say anything useful, why are you even here?” she complains.
Privately, Ivan agrees. But he’s also not interested in getting in the middle of these two. He’s heard the stories, and he knows it’s a bad idea.
Luka shrugs. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
Hyuna scoffs. “Liar.”
She tilts Ivan’s head slightly to the left, squinting at him.
“He needs some color,” Luka says, bored.
“He never uses color,” Hyuna argues.
“Well.” Luka stands, stretching his arms above his head. His joints pop, and he grimaces. Dressed down from the flowy layers of clothing he wears for every public appearance, it’s abundantly clear just how thin he is. Ivan wonders how he makes it through his shows without passing out. “Didn’t you say he’s trying something new with this album? Maybe try something new with the makeup too.” He crosses the room, coming to a stop beside Hyuna. “What’s the vibe of the single again? I haven’t listened to it.”
“Love,” Hyuna answers.
At the same time, Ivan says, “Misery.”
They look at each other, confused.
Luka barks out a laugh. “There you have it, then. Use red.” He nudges Hyuna out of the way, reaching for a tube of eyeliner. “Close your eyes,” he instructs.
Unsure what else to do, Ivan obliges.
“Love and misery,” Luka muses, amusement lining the words. “I can’t believe you guys didn’t think of this earlier. Both of those are defined by blood.”
—
Before Ivan leaves, Luka asks, “Are you using these photos for your album cover?”
Ivan smiles, imagines the red lining his eyes is real blood rather than a poor imitation of something he once knew so intimately. “No. The album cover will be painted.”
Luka raises an eyebrow. “A portrait?”
Ivan shrugs. “Probably not.” He told Till to paint how the music makes him feel, and he is fully expecting swatches of pink against the blue sky of their childhoods. He is expecting white flowers and a growing darkness in the background and something so poignant he can hear Mizi’s laughter whenever he looks at it.
“You don’t know?”
Ivan shakes his head. “I gave my artist full creative freedom.”
Luka furrows his brow in dismay. Hyuna laughs.
🎨
Till stares at the blank canvas.
He set it up on his easel, got out his paints, and turned on Ivan’s music. But he’s spent the first three songs doing absolutely nothing. He has a brush in hand, at the ready, waiting for inspiration to strike, but—
Paint how the album makes you feel.
Till doesn’t know how the album makes him feel! It’s good, and different from Ivan’s usual style, and it sounds like sitting on his bedroom floor at seventeen, listening to him hum along as Till plucked at the strings of his guitar. But that’s not enough. That’s not a feeling; it’s a memory.
The music makes him remember, but he can’t parse out the feelings that brings forth. Can’t, or doesn’t want to—he’s not sure it matters. He has a habit of poking his own bruises, but he doesn’t want to rip himself apart for something that, ultimately, is just a job. He can’t give everything he has to this project, because he still has to keep going after it’s complete.
He sets his brush down, and reaches for his sketchbook. He can see Ivan’s disapproving glare, can feel his presence peering over his shoulder, silent and heavy and dark. Like a storm cloud looming in the distance.
Till flips the sketchbook open anyway, and his thumb catches on one of the pages, slicing through the skin.
“Shit!” he exclaims, dropping the sketchbook and shaking his hand, as if that will numb the pain. When it doesn’t immediately work, he cups his thumb with his other hand, bringing it to his mouth on instinct.
And then, mere millimeters from his lips, he stops.
He pulls his thumb back and looks at the blood beading at the tip. Then, his gaze drifts to the canvas before him.
Instead of licking the blood away and allowing his saliva to begin soothing the cut, he holds his hand out, and he smears the blood onto the canvas. Given that the cut wasn’t very big to begin with, it leaves only a small stain in the center of the otherwise-empty white. But it looks—
It feels—
In the background, Ivan’s voice sings, It’s stained with blood / That’s just how it is / This always happens to me…
—
Till texts Ivan: I need your blood.
Ivan replies: Okay.
—
In the end, Till only needs one of the five canvases.
He paints Ivan like a storm cloud, like the storm itself, with rain and roaring wind. He paints him bruised like a tornado, eyes blacker than night, and he paints him bloodied like lightning tearing through the sky using his own blood to do so.
He paints what he feels, which is a tumultuous flood and a typhoon swirling in his chest. It’s the pain of missing the past, the bitter nostalgia, the icy knowledge that it will never come back. It’s the regret that he spent so long dedicating himself to someone who could never love him back, and it’s the anger at spiraling into the same pattern all over again. He paints the desperation in Ivan’s voice, and he paints it with love, because the act of creation is useless without it.
By the time Ivan shows up on his doorstep with a smile, Till has nearly finished. He has band-aids littering his fingers and hands and a few on his legs. It took more blood than he anticipated to make the red stark enough.
Now, he just needs one last thing.
“Are we fighting in here or outside?” Ivan asks.
“We’re not fighting at all,” Till replies. He takes half a second to appreciate Ivan’s expression flickering into one of confusion before grabbing his arm and pulling him into the apartment, locking the door behind them.
“Are you finally going to kill me?” Ivan teases.
Till lets go of him, leaving him stranded in the entryway. “Depends how much you struggle.”
“Okay.”
Freak, Till thinks. And then he remembers he spent the afternoon literally cutting himself open, so maybe it takes one to know one and he has no right to judge.
He grabs a new knife, and then he turns to find Ivan has wandered into the apartment on his own and found the nearly-finished painting. He remains silent for a moment, trying to gauge Ivan’s reaction.
But his face is carefully blank.
“Well?” Till asks, suddenly nervous. Ivan told him to do whatever, and he thought the piece turned out really well, but if he hates it, Till can try again. It’s not as if he’s a stranger to bleeding for no purpose. He spent years staring at the sun, knowing it would only blind him.
“I said you didn’t have to paint me,” Ivan tells him, words falling from his lips slowly, as if each one is meticulously planned out.
“You said to paint how the music made me feel,” Till reminds him.
“I did.”
“Right.” Till nods. He gestures vaguely. “So, I did that.”
Ivan turns to look at him. His eyes roam over his body, and Till notes the way his gaze catches on each bandage before flicking back towards the canvas. “You—”
“Hold out your hand,” Till interrupts, because he doesn’t actually want to talk about this. He half-expects an argument, but of course, Ivan obeys without question. If Till did want to murder him, he’s making it way too easy.
Till takes Ivan’s hand in his, and he presses the blade of the knife to his palm. Ivan doesn’t even wince when it breaks the skin; he just watches Till with that sappy smile that always has his face heating and his heart stuttering. It’s too much to look at, so Till doesn’t.
(But maybe he should.)
He exchanges the knife for a clean paintbrush and dips it into the wound.
Using Ivan’s blood, in messy handwriting, reminiscent of their elementary school days, Till writes NOWHERE diagonally across the canvas. He goes over the letters a second time, so they’re visible, but not as stark as the lightning bolt blood decorating Ivan’s face.
Then, he steps back and admires his work.
If this is everything he has to offer—if it’s all downhill from here—
At least he’s satisfied with the result.
He drops the paintbrush into his water glass, then turns to face Ivan. He opens his mouth to announce that he’s officially finished, but before he can get a single sound out, Ivan surges forward, cups his face with both hands, and seals their lips together.
A startled sound of surprise bubbles up in the back of Till’s throat.
He tries to push Ivan away on instinct, because he wasn’t ready for this, because he didn’t expect it, because Ivan’s hand is still bleeding and now the blood is getting all over Till’s face and in his hair. But Ivan’s grip on him only tightens, and when he sinks his teeth into Till’s lips, it ignites a fiery need to fight back.
So Till returns the kiss, as best as he can, because he’s never actually done this before. He bites, and he drags Ivan in closer, fisting a hand into his shirt. He forces his tongue into Ivan’s mouth, and he doesn’t back down when Ivan bites it, instead smearing the blood against Ivan’s teeth. It’s coppery and bitter and tastes like sitting on the sidewalk in middle school, out of breath, bruised and licking his wounds, coming down from an adrenaline high, with Ivan beside him.
When they finally break for air, Ivan pants against his mouth.
“Oh,” Till mumbles.
“Oh?”
He doesn’t elaborate. He just kisses Ivan again.
—
In the end, they don’t really talk about it.
It’s just as well, because Till doesn’t know what he would say. What he does know, he thinks, as he shifts his head to press his ear against the bare skin over Ivan’s beating heart, what he does know is that he will always long for Ivan’s blood in his mouth. He will always long to tear into his ribcage, and he wouldn’t mind making a home there to live out the rest of his days.
What he knows is that he will not let Ivan walk away from him a second time.
🎤
Ivan’s manager hates the album cover.
And so, with Hyuna’s voice offering encouragement in the back of his mind, he tells his manager, “You’re fired.”
He’ll deal with the consequences and ask Hyuna for advice later. But he won’t stand for anyone insulting the blood Till spilled for him, and he sees no reason to mold himself to fit the ideas of someone who cannot appreciate true art.
He leaves his manager sputtering behind him, meets Till outside, and takes his hand as they walk into the next phase of their lives together.