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On the day Ivan died, it was very cold.
Till ran through the forest until his eyes started to double and his fingers lost feeling. The cold rain pelted the leaves, forming large drops that hit his jacket, making it difficult to hear anything. He stopped periodically to try to make sense of the world, terrified that if Ivan called for help, he wouldn't be able to hear him over the rain.
Ivan never called.
When they found him, he was pale and looked dead — he was lying on his back in the grass, all his clothes soaked, his lips blue with the cold. He didn't move, and neither could Till, until the others came up and said he was still alive. Then, hating himself for his panic and stupor, he helped get him down the mountain, even though the whole search party had been telling him to be easy and let someone else do it, someone who wasn't frozen to the bone and didn't look like he was going to collapse right there. How could Till do that? Trust Ivan to someone else? He'd been looking for him for too long already.
Now, six months later, as Ivan opened his stomach to him like the quilted belly of a stuffed animal, he realized that he had never found him.
What stood before him now, smiling, with sparkling eyes and skin splitting at the seams, was not Ivan. Perhaps he should have stuck his hand in his gut to finally understand it.
"Don't be afraid."
"I'm not afraid." Till says, plunging his arm inside up to the elbow. A subtle ripple runs across Ivan's skin, as if his shell is about to crumble from the movement, but despite everything, he almost moans, leaning forward and resting his chin on Till's head. Till remembers to exhale and almost rests his sweaty forehead against Ivan's chest. Well, against the gap in his chest.
"Does it hurt?"
"No..." Ivan sounds like he's choking, but he doesn't even need to breathe. How well he's learned to be human. "It's very pleasant."
Till bites his cheeks from the inside. It feels wrong, but he doesn't want to stop — Ivan is cold and slippery from the inside, contracting and moving uncomfortably, and he grabs his shoulders with his hands. His hand reaches so far that he's almost up to his shoulder, but he can't find any sign of a heart.
"You feel like a raw chicken inside," he says for some reason. Ivan trembles with laughter. Till moves his hand, and he almost whimpers, as if...
Till bites harder until his mouth tastes sour, but it doesn't help, because his face is burning. And for some reason, his stomach is aching. It was hard to touch the real Ivan, but now... He was pliable, soft, and willing. He wasn't deceiving him or pushing him away, and he wasn't teasing him. Realizing what was happening to him made him feel ashamed, and he tried to pull his hand away, but he couldn't.
"Ivan. Let go."
He exhales noisily, and his split skin ripples. It's as if he's being swallowed.
"Ivan!" Till twitches and gets pulled a little further in. He starts to panic, pulling his head out as hard as he can to keep from getting pulled in, and he thinks he's made a mistake, that he's a wimp and an idiot, and that this was never Ivan, and now he's going to die-
And then he's abruptly spat out, and Till falls back without support. He lands on his back on the gym mats with a thud, breathing heavily, as if he had almost drowned, and his hand is clean, but he still feels cold and slimy. His ears are ringing, and he can't breathe properly.
Ivan is standing there with his shirt unbuttoned, his skin closing up and healing over, just like it was before, without a single scar. He's smiling, his face flushed with excitement. He has a fang sticking out, a tiny detail that makes him seem so real that it makes Till's stomach churn. He looks and feels like a real person, but Till can't bring himself to forget that he's dead. Ivan died on that mountain. Till is an idiot for choosing to ignore it in order to avoid being alone in this place.
He's so angry and scared that he doesn't realize at first that Ivan is laughing at him, then he's crouching down and touching his cheek.
"Till? Are you scared?"
He slaps his hand away and stands up, stumbling. He brushes himself off angrily, wipes his hand on his shirt, even though he's not feeling anything.
"I'm not that dirty," Ivan says, amused.
"Fuck you!" — it's surreal. He's suffocating, but he can also feel his ears and face burning, and his stomach aching, and he wants to think it's from fear, but.
It takes him too long in the boy's bathroom, with his hands under the icy water, to calm down. He washes his face and looks at himself, disheveled, scared, and pathetic. Till realizes that he won't give up on this — on seeing him — and it only makes his heart ache.
They continue to hang out at Ivan's house, eating ice cream, playing games, and going to school together. It's all so ordinary that it's only Till who seems to be losing his mind.
"I really like being friends with you," Ivan says one day.
His bangs stick to his forehead, and he's lying next to him on the floor, so close that if he wanted to, he could lie on his lap. Till stumbles as he writes physics homework. His handwriting is uneven and jerky.
He looks at him, but Ivan is lying on his side, his eyes closed, his legs slightly bent, and one arm under his head. He's breathing slowly, his heart is beating, and his lungs are working. Till remembers his pale face in the scratchy forest grass.
He looks soft and harmless. Till could have pat him on the head.
"Why did you say that?"
"No reason. I just wanted to."
Ivan never said things like that just for the sake of it. He never said anything like that at all. He did things differently — he stole Tills pens, he dipped his notebooks in puddles, he tripped him up. Then he helped him up, gave everything back, and he did his ruined homework for him. If Till couldn't understand him before, he was really in the dark now.
"You've given yourself away," Till says bitterly. "Ivan would never say that."
He shrugs lazily. He's probably falling asleep.
"I just wanted to say thank you. For still being friends with me after you found out. Thank you."
Till takes an uneven breath, pausing for a moment. It's not much, but he doesn't know how to respond. As a familiar lump forms in his throat, he sets down his pen and covers his face with his hands, resting his forehead on the notebook. He wants to hold it together, but he lets out a shameful sob, unsure if it's because he's been waiting to hear this for a long time or because it's not coming from Ivan. Not his Ivan.
When he turns his head to look, he notices that Ivan is already asleep.
Till wipes his face, shakes the water off his notebook, and rubs his cheeks even more furiously. He's just a few inches away, familiar and real, and Till reaches out and places his hand on the top of Ivan's head. His skin remembers the slimy feeling of cold, and he wants to wipe his hands, but they're clean, and Ivan is warm. His hair is thick and smooth, curling from the humidity. Ivan has always slept less than he should, and it's rare to catch him in this state.
Till has to slap himself to remind that this isn't Ivan.
The real Ivan... probably hated him.
***
“Why?”
Till nervously tries to unhook the bike from the parking lot. The lock is stuck again. He pulls it one more time, and again, damn, it won't budge, why now?
"I thought we were friends."
His hands are slipping and nothing is working. Ivan is quiet behind him, as if he's not even breathing. His shadow next to Till is stratified, melting like a forgotten ice cream, and growing in size.
"Then why are you running away?"
"Fuck," Till stops trying to pry lock off with trembling hands. "Because you're acting weird! You're the one who's acting weird."
He turns around — he shouldn't have done that. He had to keep trying. He had to…
Ivan looks at him, but one half of his face spreads into the air — a liquid that has fallen into zero gravity — and Till freezes. He doesn't know why, he can't even get a word out. He usually holds himself together enough to at least attack first, but this is clearly not the case.
"It's Ivan," his brain is pounding in panic. It's strange, but it didn't bother him when he was a child. But as a child, he didn't search for Ivan in the forest, check his pulse, or carry him down the mountain on his shoulders.
"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" Ivan asks softly. His face is blank and colorless, just like back then, and he's slowly surrounding him, but Till still can't move because he really doesn't know what to do. He won't be able to escape, he doesn't want to attack first.
Till drops the key to the bicycle lock from his fingers and feels more helpless than ever. As the shadow closes over him like an umbrella, he realizes that his eyes are stinging.
"Please, not you," Till whispers, swallowing a lump in his throat.
Ivan says something, but then stops abruptly. Something changes in his expression as he recoils and covers his face with his hands, as if trying to push everything back in. The sun hits Till's face harshly, and he can hear one of them crying over the sound of the cicadas. It takes him a few seconds to realize that it's him.
"I didn't mean to," Ivan lowers his head and seems to almost shrink in size, cringing and holding himself together as if he might suddenly lose control. "I didn't mean to."
"I know," Till wipes his face with his sleeve. He's never been in such a stupor in his life — this isn't Ivan, but inside this fact simply does not fit when his face is in front of his eyes. It's a cruel joke that's gone on too long. "You- you wouldn't, would you?"
"I don't want to," Ivan says in a small voice. "But I really don't understand. What am I doing wrong?"
Till squats down, rubbing his face with his hands, and doesn't know what to say to him. Ivan is like a barbed wire that apologizes for being barbed, a beaten-down animal that only knows how to bite. At least, that's how it used to be. This Ivan doesn't have a filter in him, he doesn't know how to act the same way the real one did, he doesn't have the experience, he doesn't even understand the need. The words "I like you" came out of his mouth as calmly and simply as if he had said "good morning" or "pass me the textbook”.
The worst thing is, Till doesn't know if it's the feelings of the real Ivan, or the monster who took over his identity and interpreted everything in his own way. Where does Ivan end and this begin?
"I don't know," says Till, his head in his knees. "Maybe it's my fault."
He hears Ivan slowly approach and sit down next to him.
"Why?"
"You again..." Till is almost irritated by this, but some sour feeling inside prevents him from expressing it fully — he just pushes Ivan in the shoulder, half-heartedly, almost gently. "With your stupid questions!”
Ivan clearly wasn't expecting this, and he lost his balance, falling to the ground with a soft thud. Dust rose into the air, and he blinked in confusion, sitting on the ground in front of him. Till sniffs, then snorts, and then laughs softly, burying his face in his hands.
Maybe if he had been more honest with himself and with Ivan while he was still alive, Ivan would have been more careful in the mountains. Or maybe he wouldn't have gone at all. They would have stayed at home, everything would have been fine, no one would have died, he wouldn't have had to deal with this now, and he wouldn't have been left alone.
Till feels a gentle hand clumsily patting his head.
“Hey, cheer up.”
He grabs his elbow and pulls him in, forcing Ivan to rest his head on his shoulder, and he clings to him, wrinkling his school jacket and the sweatshirt underneath. For a few seconds, Ivan freezes, but then he hugs him back, gently, not too tightly. They're both on their knees in front of the school, and if anyone sees them, they'll get into trouble. Till doesn't care, to put it mildly.
"Are you comforting me for yourself or for him?"
Ivan shrugs. He's probably wearing his silly expression again, stroking Till’s back.
"I don't know anymore. He... he liked you. And I know it's mine too.”
The beginning and the end close up — maybe they intertwine, grow into each other, and this makes it even more difficult to understand who is where. Till swallows, buries his face in his hood. It's not good to use him as a way to grieve. This Ivan is like a child who does not understand why he is being punished.
"Then why didn't you ever say it?”
“I don't-”
“If you say you don't know, I'll punch you.”
His shoulders shake with laughter.
“But it's true. I… I just wanted you to look at me.”
"I've always looked at you," Till weakly slaps him on the back. “Asshole, I thought you hated me. Why did you have to die?..”
"So you would have hit me anyway?"
"That's for almost eating me."
"I wouldn't eat you,” Ivan says softly. As soon as Till relaxes, he adds, "Too many bones.”