Work Text:
There’s a strange shift in the air this morning.
Till scans the green lawn, biting down on the top of his thumb. At such an hour, the area is still pretty empty. The second-to-last bell for breakfast had gone off not too long ago. Every few minutes, another bedraggled classmate crosses his line of sight, straightening their shirt as they take off in the direction of the dining hall, quickly disappearing between the trees.
Till himself had stepped foot inside the room as soon as the second bell stopped echoing. He’s not great at rolling out of bed, especially when it means all those hours of nodding to the beat of the stinky segyein, but he’s learned to make peace with it. Urak is notorious for pulling him out of classes randomly for physical checks. He can’t be counted on to return Till back in time for lunch or dinner. Last time, Till found himself swaying on his feet in the middle of vocal practice. The mic had then slipped from his hands, making such a loud bang that all his classmates stood up in their seats to take a look. Embarrassing. Till’s face stayed red for the rest of the lesson.
He really can’t take the same risk again. Mizi shares that class with him.
The radish bits from earlier churn uneasily in his stomach. Till wonders if those bastards oversalted them on purpose. He wonders if his classmates got the same share. He’s glad the last of the cubes were stolen from his tray before the robots got a chance to shove them under his tongue. Their metal arms are rarely gentle, and he would rather not get tetanus shots on his gums again. Those hurt like ass. Everything else already hurts as it is.
Besides, that guy hadn’t even looked ashamed when he popped Till’s share into his mouth. But Till could swear he saw him wincing slightly as he swallowed. Of course, none of their other seatmates appeared to notice. Whatever. Till still hopes his suspicions are true. It would serve that bastard right.
Somehow, Till is often the only one looking. Even now. There’s still at least half an hour till classes begin, so the few students who are sitting nearby are bent over textbooks. A few trees to the right, he can see Acorn hitting Bari on his shoulder with a bundle of papers. Bari’s uniform appears largely unruffled. He retaliates by flicking Acorn’s forehead, after which they both laugh. Till finds himself in awe of fights that end without a hair out of place. Forgiveness that arrives with a touch to the forehead, time and time again
His ear itches. Not for the first time, he longs for the same old buzz under his skin. Not the one blooming in his chest in the wake of pointed words, but the one trickling down the side of his face upon feeling a whoosh of someone else’s breath in his ear canal. Always followed by the sound of a broken wheeze. So abrupt. As if the person’s vocal chords weren’t used to imitating the tempo of laughter. So faint. Till still wonders if he had even heard it at all.
Oh, those stupid intimacies of childhood. Till almost wants them back more than anything in this universe.
Neither Acorn nor Bari has glanced this way, oblivious to other people’s troubles. Till peers over their figures toward the farthest tree on the right. He can barely make out Mizi’s hair swishing on one side of the tree trunk. The rest remains hidden behind the wooden bark, likely spilling over Sua’s shoulder on the other side. There’s a reason Till chose this spot. For as long as he can remember, he’s watched the ease with which their two heads make contact, pink strands meeting black without causing a clash in color. Even without being able to see, he can bet their hands are looped in either of their laps. If he cracks open his sketchbook, passing over the occasional scribbled face, he’ll find the same pose drawn ten times over.
It’s no longer in his right, but Till still imagines tipping his own head over and meeting that stiff shoulder. A few inches taller now, huh. His neck would surely complain later. But the ache would be a much-needed reminder, all things considered.
Maybe that’s why Till’s eyes keep returning to the same place again and again. Scratch that. The thought feels like a bad drawing. Till may be occasionally bothered by such fantasies, but he gets through most moons without paying them any mind. The situation right now is just way too different. He can’t believe no one else is seeing the same thing. A sight that could be classified as a miracle, almost.
Till blinks to confirm it. The collar of Ivan’s shirt remains lopsided.
Okay, at first glance, this doesn’t seem like anything extraordinary. Till understands the doubt his classmates might direct toward him if he tried to point at the boy next to him. As always, Ivan is sitting upright against the bark of the tree, spine aligned perfectly with the wood. If Till were to slip a sheet of paper in the gap between Ivan’s back and the trunk, he’s sure it wouldn’t fold even slightly. All those modelling gigs have clearly had their effect. Ivan can’t even seem to afford hunching his shoulders.
Luckily, Urak’s dislike for Ivan’s guardian has him avoiding adding any of Ivan’s broadcasts between the usual play-by-plays of other excelling ANAKT students he likes to show Till. Even someone like you should be able to do this much, right? This way, Till has been spared from the worst of Ivan’s displays. He’s not sure what he would do if Urak gave him a front row seat. The big screen has never been kind to Till. On that screen, the sight of each strained muscle making up that damn smile would be clear as day, cutting in deeper than the ropes around Till’s wrist. It would be undeniable.
As it is, Till can barely stand seeing the remains of it on Ivan’s face whenever he returns from his shoots, pausing by the entrance to talk to yet another one of the other students. He’ll pretend to brush away his slicked-back hair, every strand firmly put in its place, like its owner. Only Till knows the way it begins to curl after half an hour of running.
Selfishly, Till thinks back to the little bead of sweat rolling down Ivan’s nose, dripping off of his misshapen smile. A little too eager. Not yet perfected. Maybe back then, Till should have said what he had always wished for Ivan to say instead: Just like this is fine, too. Sometimes, he wishes Ivan, so popular, suddenly wanted by everyone in the garden, would say it still.
But these whims of his are snuffed out swiftly once he catches Ivan’s back straightening further, all his little bones falling into line. Till hates drawing him recently, all ninety-degree angles and lines that refuse to bend, even a little. Back when they were still little, Ivan’s outlines kept turning out slack and wiggly, forever drooping over Till’s shoulders, like those of a loose leaf pressed between pages. Now, they have gained the texture of the unyielding tree bark, instead.
Not that Ivan asks Till to draw him anymore, but Till hates doing it anyway. Maybe that’s why the imperfect collar feels like a small victory. Evidence of what once was. Evidence that Till can still catch Ivan slipping if he turns around quickly enough.
Still, something is making Ivan shift in his seat. Till looks from the flap of his collar, flipped in the wrong direction, to the slight squint of his eyes, no trace of red in them as of now. Rather, they stay dark as ever, trained on the sheets of paper spread all around. Expression of Music Vol IV: Lesson #141. The bane of all their existences. Figures.
Ivan has a habit of leaving his work all laid out. Smug asshole, with the right answers all the time. It’s like he is begging to be copied from. Well, no one other than Till would dare to take a peek. But still. Their classmates prefer catching Ivan unaware on the way back from the bathroom or the library, gathering all around him, and touching the strings of his shoulders until his head is pulled into a nod.
Till himself is above such lowly, underhanded methods. Unlike literally everyone else, he doesn’t need Ivan docile. Or worse, obedient. He doesn’t even need Ivan’s notes. After all, they are in different classes. Till doesn’t need any more reminders of the gap between them. He is well aware it exists. It doesn’t count if he glances over it out of the corner of his eye. It doesn’t count if he crosses the distance accidentally. Once. Or twice.
Begrudgingly, Till has to admit Ivan’s tendency to turn one concept into something else is pretty interesting. It’s like Ivan’s own brand of creativity. Long ago, they were told to memorize how muscles in the throat expand and contract during a particular vocal note. It was Ivan who said each point could be a star. If you think of it that way, does it become easier to digest? Ivan liked asking him those kinds of questions, too. Till could never tell whether he was being helped or made fun of. It is the same now. The scales tend to tip over on the other side, though. Huh? I don’t get it, Till had said even then. But look, the stars come together to make one of your constellations. Like this, he added, drawing over the diagram in Ivan’s textbook. I don’t think the stars can be anyone’s. Definitely not mine or yours, Ivan had said in return, not even trying to get his book back. He pushed it more toward Till. Would you still like me to tell you about a new constellation tonight?
Of course, neither of them talks so freely of the stars anymore.
This morning, the pages appear to be sparingly filled. Arranged side-by-side as always, for once, their edges don’t seem to line up. A sentence written with a green pen is missing its period, suspended in a pause. Another paper has both its corners folded, making it shorter than the page next to it, upsetting the balance. Ivan traces the letters with the tip of the pen, occasionally committing to a mark. Other times, he just leaves the space scarily blank.
Are these concepts puzzling even to him? Till doesn’t even get the chance to soak in his glee because his gaze is yet again drawn away, this time to the way Ivan keeps bringing the pen close to his parted mouth, only to drift it away again.
Till supposes biting onto it wouldn’t go along well with his present style. A little pathetic. If Till says so himself.
Ivan shifts yet again, right knee moving closer to the other. His collar actually ends up pressing into the tree, the fabric crinkling upon contact. He doesn’t seem to notice.
It’s unacceptable.
“The lesson giving you trouble?” Till asks, craning his neck in Ivan’s direction, rubbing the base of it so it can be mistaken for a stretch.
Ivan’s left eyelid twitches. A quick, unmeasured movement. Till feels a mirroring twitch in his chest. It’s how he feels when he catches Ivan pursing his lips after biting into a pepper at lunch. It’s how he feels when he catches him sniffling after a tumble into the river. So much of Ivan seems to exist in carefully executed motions. Forever landing on his feet. Till, whose falls end in him sprawled on the ground, can’t seem to get one on him, ever.
It makes him savor the moments he gets to see Ivan bare, careless.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Ivan says, finally turning toward him. His hands don’t stray to his neck. But he moves closer to the tree again, left knee tapping against the ground. The flaps of his collar flare in the air at the force of the movement. Ugh. “I should be able to manage.”
“But it’s giving you some trouble?” Till prompts, eager to unravel the thread that keeps sticking out. “You must be frustrated, huh? Top student and all. I guess even you have such times.”
It’s not the first time Till has considered this. Of course not. Over the course of their time together, there have been many times that Till has thought: Surely, that guy must have his own problems. Knowing them would at least help Till sustain the illusion of them being on equal footing. But illusions take time. To form an imprint of the real thing, the subject must keep in contact with the surface for a sufficient while. But Ivan refuses to stay still enough for the same. Before Till can finish tracing, softening the contours of Ivan’s body with graphite, Ivan lifts off the page, leaving behind half-done impressions. By the time Till deciphers them, they only read like biting remarks.
Yes, the Ivan in his head would say. It’s hard for me, too, Till.
“Don’t you look delighted?” The actual Ivan says, rolling his right shoulder, his neck jerking slightly backward. “It’s only mildly perturbing, if anything, for unrelated reasons. I wouldn’t worry about it so much. Besides, don’t you have your own work still pending? From the looks of it, you haven’t gotten very far.”
The Ivan he knows is always the painfully real thing. Till’s brain can’t comprehend him at all.
“Don’t look at my work,” Till says, forever the hypocrite. He slams Volume III of Music Appreciation and Interpretation shut, cutting off any and all escape routes. “And don’t change the topic. How about you don’t worry about it so much? You’ve got one hell of a vocal sense, yeah?”
Ivan’s eyebrow raises. Intentional. His left eye widens. Unintentional. Till supposes the score stays even.
Till’s not just saying it, either. It’s embarrassing to admit, but unlike the segyein, Till knows a good voice when he hears it. Even if it’s Ivan’s. Especially if it’s Ivan’s. When Till had just started playing around with songwriting, he used to like leaving his lyric sheets half-folded, so Ivan could read them over his shoulder and hum them out loud. Even then, Ivan had the heavy, sorrowful sort of range that made Till feel stuffy inside his clothes. The songs spilled out of his throat like water overflowing in a cup. Like the mirages Ivan had once told him about, his voice truly did promise false depths. At least, Ivan seems to be keen on convincing both of them of that falseness.
Unfortunately, this means that the songs of Anakt Garden do suit him well. The songs they are taught tend to carry a gentle cadence. Lullabies and prayers. They create a lull so far removed from the loud bang of gunshots or the whirring of medical equipment. As a result, Ivan, no longer straying far from the limits imposed upon them, steadily hits all the right notes. Ivan, whose fists once chipped Till’s milk tooth, nods along when they tell him to and stops when they ask. Till knows the caretakers approve of this behaviour. He has heard them say it. Till, why don’t you learn a little from Ivan? He is an excellent student of music, don’t you think? Someone with your talent would do well with a little bit of his discipline.
It’s not that Till dislikes lullabies or prayers. Far from it. He has spent so much time traversing the faint memories of the ones he had heard in the first few moments of his life. When the hurt grows unbearable, it is these tunes he tries to recall under his breath, so they can chase away all his demons as they once did. But the sound of Till’s own heart is different. It may crave the kind of love that creeps on someone slowly, but when he tries to put words to its rhythm, they burst out loud and angry, carrying the desperate, staccato-like beat that echoes inside his body when it loses sense of everything else.
Underneath every song, there is only one sentiment: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Till wants to believe even such cowardice can bear the shape of love.
“You’re being quite generous with your compliments, Till,” Ivan says, tugging on the back of his shirt collar with his index finger and thumb, the rest of his fingers still curled around the pen. It makes the gesture look so exceptionally awkward that Till feels a second thump inside his chest. “Whatever will you do if I let this get to my head? Will you take responsibility?"
“Take responsibility for what? S’not like you need my permission to run your mouth. Didn't I tell you to stop changing the topic?” Till grunts, fingers digging into the spine of the textbook. He wants to whack Ivan’s head with it so his hair will turn out all ruffled, too. “Something’s bothering you, isn’t it? I can tell.”
“It seems you’re letting your imagination run wild as always,” Ivan states, the corner of his mouth slowly lifting to reveal his tooth, the gesture reminding Till of a weapon unsheathing. He pulls on his collar with the same hand holding the pen again. It’s like he’s forgotten he has another. Ambidextrous, Till’s ass.
“Ivan.”
“Till.”
“Ivan,” Till hisses. He makes an effort not to grit his teeth. “If you’re okay, then why do you keep…”
Ivan’s hand begins to drift upward again before quickly returning to his side. “Hmm?”
“That. You keep doing that!”
“What am I doing, Till?” His hand is still hovering a few inches from the ground.
Till feels that familiar itch spread across his skin. He is too busy burning up to indulge in the nostalgia of it.
Wait.
“Wait,” Till says, looking at Ivan’s hand. “Could it be that you’re…”
“I’m what?” Ivan’s palm moves to clutch the fabric of his pants. The pen was uncapped the last time Till saw it. It’s going to leave a mark. It’s really going to leave a mark. “I’m nothing but pleasant today. Thank you very much for wondering.”
“Ivan,” Till says, his own lips beginning to twitch. He lets go of the textbook, instead digging his fingers into his cheek to keep the now delirious grin from spreading. “Ivan, are you itchy?”
Ivan’s hand flexes. There are actual wrinkles in the cloth now. Unintentional. Definitely unintentional.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replies.
Till’s hand moves to entirely cover the corner of his mouth. It’s bad. The grin is getting a little out of control. He is scared to know what his collar might be doing. For once, he finds it a little relieving that the eyes have their limitations. He doesn’t need to see the whole picture. He’s gotten by just fine without it.
“What, are you embarrassed? Too cool to scratch it out like the rest of us?” Till snorts, trying to hold himself back. Is this what they call déjà vu? Ivan used to be all weird about such things even then. Till remembers wriggling his fingers underneath Ivan’s armpits, trying to get him to laugh again with the same mouth Till had punched only a few minutes ago for disturbing his nap. After a few dozen attempts, he could have sworn he heard Ivan’s breath stutter. He hadn’t spoken to Till for the rest of the afternoon. “It’s a basic human urge.”
“I suppose you would be an expert on those,” Ivan says, sniffing. “You can hardly keep yourself in check.”
“Yeah, actually, I am an expert, so let me use my ex..expertise.” Till hums, tapping under his chin. He clicks his fingers. “Aha! Is it on your neck? I assume it’s closer to your back by the way you’ve been all wiggly. I could be wrong, though. You’ve been moving your legs a lot, too. Don’t tell me… your as—”
“There’s no need to be so uncouth,” says the boy who once licked Till’s runny nose so they could both be sent to the infirmary together. “Though it does seem like you would be familiar with such gestures, too.”
“Okay, Ivan,” Till says, pointedly scratching his chin. A little earlier in this conversation, those words would have been enough to set him off. But that was before Ivan decided to reveal his hand like this. Till ups the tally on his end. If he gets hit ahead of this, he knows it is just damage from all the flapping around the poor bastard is doing to save face. “Just admit it. Would save us both the time. Denying it just makes you look more uncool, yeah?”
Ivan stares at him before moving his gaze to his offending palm. He purses his lips, returning to looking back at Till.
“Okay,” Ivan repeats, finally raising his fingers to the back of his neck. He gives a few pitiful scratches, then shrugs. “I admit that I was a little… affected. But now the matter has been resolved. You were right. For once. Congratulations”
This time, Till can’t keep his laugh in. “What is that?” He shakes his head. Ivan can be so strange. Till’s heart is growing a little estranged from the rest of his body, too. It keeps tumbling in his chest for no reason. He must be overheating from all this back-and-forth. “That’s not going to do anything. Turn around. I’ll get it for you.”
Ivan’s hand drops away from his neck. The pen falls onto the grass. “What?”
“What?” Till echoes. “You obviously can’t reach it if it’s on your back. Aren’t you supposed to be the genius here?”
“It depends. In many situations, that would be you, instead,” Ivan says. He makes no move to pick up the pen. With no obstruction in the way, the green spot on his pants is clear to see. Till really does keep winning. “It’s alright, Till. There’s no need to trouble yourself to this extent. I can handle it.”
“You keep moving, smart ass. It’s distracting me,” Till replies, raising an eyebrow, “so I guess it’s my problem too, now. That means I have all the right to solve it, don’t I?”
A loud chime goes off around them. The last warning bell for breakfast. Ivan’s eyes go a little wide. It reminds Till of the look he used to get when he closely examined a cool rock Till showed him. It is the look he still gets from time to time when he looks at Till’s drawings. Even if he doesn’t make many attempts to snatch them and hold them over his head, which oddly feels more like cruelty than kindness, his distant gaze remains the same. Till tries to find solace in that.
“Come on. Classes start any minute now,” Till insists. He pushes his textbook aside, turning sideways to fully face Ivan. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees another classmate run down across the lawn, trying to make it to the dining hall. He can’t quite make out who it is. “Unless you’d rather wait until then, so you can get one of your fans to do it. Is that what you want?”
It’s a low blow. But Till’s grin is starting to wane at Ivan’s inexplicable reluctance, especially when Ivan is already starting to crane his neck this way and that way. Of course, Till would never make Ivan bear his touch unwillingly. Ivan already gets that from their classmates as it is. Unlike them, Till can stomach his taunts. His frustration. His punches. His defenses. His defenselessness. Besides, Till knows better than anyone how it feels to have unwanted hands prod at places on your body.
But Ivan is in clear discomfort, and no one but Till has looked close enough to tell. For whatever reason, Ivan doesn’t want to relieve his own pain. If so, Till can do the dirty work for him. Haven’t the two of them done worse to each other over many moon cycles? Haven’t they laid hands on each other’s beings to hurt or to hold, unable to tell one from the other? Doesn’t Till know the ridges of Ivan’s spine, the spot near the base of it that feels a little hollow under his fingers, how rubbing his knuckles against it always had Ivan rolling off him? Doesn’t Till know how Ivan’s skin runs a little cold, but a few minutes of tussling will leave it warm and alive? Hasn’t he sought the heat of it over and over again?
Why does Ivan insist on putting up with things he shouldn’t? Till is right here, isn’t he?
“No need for such measures,” Ivan says, sighing. He puts his palm flat against the grass and begins to turn his torso sideways, pausing in between. On instinct, Till glances at the back of his covered neck. Or what’s visible, at least. All morning, he has wanted to look at it. “I suppose you won’t budge.”
“Ivan,” he calls, voice hoarse even to his ears.
Another sigh. “Well,” Ivan says. “If you insist.”
He turns around fully. His shoulders rise until they are at the level of his ears.
At first glance, Till understands why Ivan had tried to delay this moment as much as possible. Being faced with someone’s back is quite intimidating. From this angle, Till can only see the backside of Ivan’s head and uniform shirt. Straightened black hair and ironed white cloth. Drab and unassuming. Parts of a silhouette that could belong to anyone else, really. An unflattering perspective from the artist’s eye. An unspecial view that could seemingly be erased without any consequence. To be graced with it can either be a great show of trust or dismissal.
Not for the first time, Till wonders which one Ivan had seen that night.
Till likes people’s backs. Sua’s back in the long lunch queue, almost lost among all the other taller girls. Mizi’s back, which had carried him down the hill, way too effortless. Ivan’s back, which he has fallen asleep against on dizzy afternoons. He likes drawing those backs, too. So often finding himself lingering at the back of the line, he’s familiar with how his peers look from here. Some moons, he imagines watching all of them walk out without a single glance back. It is the kind of impossible dream that he stores on one side of the blank white wall.
For a moment, he’s unsure what dream he should find in the sight of Ivan’s back. Like this, Ivan seems even more exposed. Till can so easily poke at what aches. He has done so time and time again.
He chooses to lay his hands in peace, instead.
“Can you relax?” Till asks, spreading his palm across the middle of Ivan’s back.
Unsurprisingly, the muscles under his fingers are stiff. Till wonders if the students he often overhears talking about Ivan’s wide back ever get close to questioning what it must carry. Even Till doesn’t know the right answer. All he knows is that it feels as if Ivan has been lying motionlessly against a hard mattress night after night. Till wonders how much sleep he has been getting.
When they were young enough to squeeze into one bed without awakening either of their roommates, Till rarely saw Ivan falling asleep first. Night after night, as Till’s eyelids began to droop, Ivan’s breathing remained steady as ever. Only once did Till wake up to see Ivan, eyes closed, turn halfway onto his side, his toes sliding out of the sheets. Sluggishly, he had tucked his palms in the blanket pooled between his thighs. The smallness of the image had kept him awake that night and for many nights ahead.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” Till reminds Ivan, fingers sinking into his shirt. He taps the pad of each finger once, then twice.
“I know,” Ivan mutters, shakily. His shoulders square up before lowering. “I am trying. It may be frustrating, but bear with me. This has been… unexpected.”
Till sighs. It’s fine, he thinks. He didn’t expect this to be a smooth ride by any means. Getting Ivan to agree was a lot as it is. Who knows what is going on in that brain of his? Maybe it’s best to leave him to his thoughts. Till can take care of the rest.
He drags his index finger from the bottom of Ivan’s creased collar down the rest of his spine, pausing only when the trembling starts. A glance at Ivan’s head reveals nothing. Till wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy, but sometimes he wonders what it would be like if Ivan did wear a collar. In some twisted way, would that make it easier to understand him?
Here, he guesses, dragging his finger over the same spot again, a little more firmly. It must be here.
“Around this spot is okay?” Till asks to be sure.
Ivan’s head lowers. It’s barely passable as a nod.
Till scratches a little lower. The tremors are fainter, but still there. “Should I go further down?”
“I didn’t realize you were such a perfectionist,” Ivan states, lowering his head further. He really does like to make it so much harder than necessary.
Till scratches the same spot harder in retaliation.
It is a little odd to do this to someone else. Is this why Ivan is being this way? It feels a little gross, doesn’t it? When Till is alone in his room, working on his songs, he sometimes breaks out of the zone to scratch his belly or his knee. In those moments, the fragile ego he has built over the course of the last few hours, with every new line that remains uncrossed, feels a little broken. It is hard to feel prideful when you have to twist your knee sideways to scratch into the soft, fleshy region underneath. Something about the action seems extra forbidden. Vulnerable. To be seen then might just be the end of him. Perhaps humans were destined to care for such sensations alone.
So what does it mean to share the gesture with someone? What does it mean to have Ivan’s finally hunched form before his eyes, so far from the sturdy figure walking down the ramp under the glare of a thousand lights? What does it mean to be the only witness to the rigidity of Ivan’s spine? What does it mean to sense the change in Ivan’s breathing with his bare fingers because for all his polished exterior, he itches like anyone else embarrassingly human. There is nothing handsome about him at this moment. All that’s left is the little sigh he releases when Till’s nail catches over the fabric, accidentally scraping over the skin underneath.
Till’s own breathing grows unsteady.
No one else can touch this part of Ivan. No one else will ever know. The other kids can grab his sleeves and tug until he gives in with his best face, but they will never be able to catch him turning away, showing the most boring part of himself. Ivan’s back has no features. It can’t smile. It can’t speak. It can’t hand out step-by-step solutions. It can’t give anyone anything. Till has never needed it to.
Till has only been waiting for this kind of Ivan all this time.
Stay, he wants to beg childishly, rubbing a little toward the right. Stay, and let me stay, he imagines saying, like he used to when his thigh hooked around Ivan’s hip, knee pressing into his side, heads sliding onto the same pillow. Ivan always tried to leave a little too early. It felt simpler to say it then because they were both sleepy and good at pretending nothing had been said at all, much later. It feels much more difficult to do it when they might both have to take conscious responsibility for the same.
“Till?” Ivan calls out, leaning backward. Till finds himself bearing more of his weight than expected. It has been a long while, indeed. “Remember when I told you about the monkeys?”
“Mhm.” Till pushes his thumb into a particularly tight muscle. It refuses to give.
Ivan has told him about many such creatures. The horses, galloping down rainy roads, following the scent of the damp mud. The deer, grazing on the grass in their little herds, breaking out into a run at even the sound of a falling leaf. Quick to provoke. Sound familiar? The alligators, lying in wait in shallow waters. The parrots, pecking at the centres of fruits as green as their feathers, able to fly out of their open cages. Even the moths, he’d whispered into Till’s ears, that do resemble Sua’s guardian, if I must say so myself. Till had laughed over it for hours after. He had wanted to ask if something similar could be said about Mizi’s guardian, but Ivan seemed not to want to talk much about sea creatures. Not his area of expertise, he always said. Even if that were true, Till had wanted to hear about them in his voice. He still does.
Nothing of the old world exists anymore, except for in Ivan’s words.
The monkeys are one of the many that Ivan has brought back to life. Those fuzzy little creatures that came before humans. Those fuzzy little creatures that shared 93% of the same blood traits as them. If Till opens his sketchbook from Year 5, he will be able to see why between the thirteenth and the seventeenth page. They liked climbing trees, like Mizi did. They liked nibbling on bananas, like Sua did. They liked to puff up their chests to assume a higher place in the social hierarchy, like Ivan did. They liked to croon their children to sleep, like Till once had done to him.
“They used to do this to each other, too,” Ivan tells him. Till finds it easy to forget how old they are in this instance. “They often scratched each other’s backs as a sign of affection. Admittedly, they were even worse. They even liked to pick the dried scalp out of each other’s heads.”
Till waits for the bad part, but it never arrives. When Ivan pauses to catch his breath, Till realizes that that’s all there is. I remember, he wants to say. I remember having that done to me. Back in that black box, during the hours the skin between his hairlines had burned so fiercely, tears had surfaced in his eyes, hands had emerged from the darkness above, sifting through his hair, putting out the little fires on his being with a single touch. Till has sought after that sensation all his life. Every time rubbed his bleeding face into Ivan’s chest, puncture wounds causing friction against the cloth, Ivan’s hands had hovered over his body, seemingly uncertain. Not knowing where to touch him, they would eventually find a place to rest on his head. Pat, pat, pat. One, two, three. Till would chant to himself until the other darkness returned to take over his vision. One, two, three. One, two, three.
If what Ivan is saying is true, then haven’t people like them done this to each other long before they even remembered being people? Perhaps this is what existed before there were words: Taking one’s hands. Running them over the skin folded in between spit-parted hair or shoulder blades growing crooked with age. The parts of the body that not even the light wants to graze. Perhaps this is the oldest love language in the world: Scratching out someone else’s itch. Relieving them not of some excruciating pain but the little mundane aches of daily life.
For the first time since they sat down next to each other this morning, Till’s hands begin to shake.
“Since monkeys preceded humans, humans liked to study them to understand more about each other,” Ivan continues, the bones of his back growing prominent with each inhale, receding underneath his shirt with each exhale. They are so close, Till feels each flutter under his palms before he sees it. He doesn’t know when next they will be able to exist nearby like this. Why didn’t the humans just talk to each other? He would wonder if he weren’t living proof of their legacy of silence. “They were powerful, you see. Unlike us, they believed themselves superior to other creatures. They liked to conduct certain… studies.”
“Like experiments?” Till asks, suddenly sick to his stomach. He dips his fingers in the crook of Ivan’s armpits, giving little scratches.
Ivan’s neck straightens, but he doesn't look back. “I suppose you could call them that, yes. Exceedingly ironic, all things considered.”
“What kind of experiments?” Till dares to question. He moves to the sides of Ivan’s hips. The itch must have been mostly sated. He doesn’t know why he keeps going. He's not sure where they are heading. All of Ivan’s stories end with him putting the birds back in the real sky. They’re not unlike Till’s drawings of the kids walking down the forest path. This can’t be any different. Till finds that he is still scared. After all, those humans had hands like his, didn’t they?
“It appears I have given the wrong impression.” Ivan lets out two small exhales. “This one wasn’t quite so terrible. They wanted to study love, you see. So they brought in young monkeys. Products. They separated them from their natural providers for a short period and instead placed them in cages with two fake providers. One was made of soft cloth but did not have any means to provide nourishment for the products. The other was made of wire but had a little bottle with liquid attached. They were curious to see which provider the monkeys chose most of the time.”
Caught in Ivan’s words, Till’s touches have lightened in pressure, he realizes. It seems that he has been absentmindedly drawing circles around Ivan’s tailbone. Angling his nails toward the cloth, he starts to draw smaller but purposeful circles. Ivan’s spine gives a little jerk.
“Aren’t you curious, too?” Ivan asks, tilting his neck toward him. A single red pupil fixates on Till. Isn’t it often fixated on Till? As always, Till isn’t sure how that makes him feel. “What do you think the monkeys chose? Warmth but no means of survival, or survival without any means of achieving warmth?”
“I don’t know.” All Till can think of is the black box where his world began and how what he remembers of it isn’t the hunger but the snugness of the arms around him. He thinks like he might crawl back inside that tiny space over and over just to feel that again. Who wouldn’t? If they knew how it feels, who wouldn’t?
If he told Ivan this, would he laugh?
“Come on, Till,” Ivan says, the side of his mouth twisting up. The wrong smile. It’s the wrong smile. Till wants to be faced with the plain view of Ivan’s back again. “What do you think they chose?”
“I don’t know!” Till exclaims. His nails burrow into Ivan’s flesh. The shirt feels thinner around here. Till feels smaller around here. He feels like he did when Ivan first knocked him over, and Till fell right in the mess of the scattered petals belonging to the flowers he had spent hours picking for Ivan. Are they going to hurt each other again? It is starting to feel like it. “Wouldn’t we all make the same choice?”
Ivan snorts. It is such a dirty sound, so far removed from the quick burst of breath that he had let out in Till’s ears once upon a time. Till has wanted to hear him laugh again, but he never meant for it to turn out like this.
“Well, then I believe not all of us evolved from the same monkey,” Ivan says. Just like that, he severs the delicate thread of flowers outstretched in the space between them, leaving them at odds again. “Disappointing, isn’t it?”
Till grits his teeth. So much for trying, huh? In the end, Ivan will never stop acting like he is better off than the rest of them, even when he looks like every third guy in this miserable place when he turns his back on Till. Ivan, who has chewed on the ends of Till’s pencils, spit grape seeds on his cheek, soaked Till’s tears with his sleeves, and slipped pink-hued rocks from the riverbank in Till’s pockets for a week straight because Till told him it was his favorite color, but as it turns out, he wasn’t doing any of it out of want because he is a different breed from Till. When the bridge of his nose pushed into Till’s cheek in the middle of the night, Till was the only one craving warmth.
Before Till knows it, his hands have drifted to the base of Ivan’s spine. This place right here. He has slammed into the hollow curve of it with his fists before. But he’s never done what he does now. He bends low, holding his thumb and index fingers a few centimetres apart. As gently as he would to the whorl of a flower, he puts pressure on the area.
Ivan curls in on himself, a gasp seemingly punched out of his lungs.
Till has never heard him make such a noise. He didn’t realize Ivan was capable of it.
“Really?“ Till says, pushing harder. He can’t tell which one of them is responsible for the quivering anymore. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like we came from the same damn monkey, after all.”
There’s no answer.
When Till lifts his head again, the back of Ivan’s neck has turned a light shade of pink. Liar. So much for not wearing a collar. Till wishes it could be this simple to read him every other day.
There’s still no answer. Ivan begins to shift away.
For a moment, the two of them are suspended in place and time. Over the long table in the dining hall. Halfway inside the river. Beneath the coarse sheets in the dormitory. In a field surrounded by brilliantly lit stars. Ivan’s face when he eats something spicy. Ivan wiping his nose against the back of his palm. Ivan wiggling his toes in his sleep. Ivan panting, sweaty palm dragging Till forward. Ivan red, red, red. Stay, echoes in Till’s head. Stay, and let me stay. It can’t be. He knows it can’t be. But he wishes Ivan would just say it. He wishes either of them would just say it. Stay, and let me stay.
But the daybreak is here. Ivan is already slipping out of his hold, pulling away from the proximity of their bodies, heading toward a day Till will spend sitting in his own corner as Ivan sits far away with a dozen others pawing at him. He’s turning away, taking his back away from Till’s reach. Not even giving him the privilege of looking at the back of his head.
“I’m not done yet,” Till mumbles, loosely gripping Ivan’s shirt. "You're still a little itchy, aren't you?"
Ivan pauses. Slowly, his hand lifts again, but this time, it is only to fix his collar, turning it the right way again.
“I’ll live,” he says, properly moving away to lean against the tree, leaving Till grasping at the empty air. Like every other time before this, Till tries not to wonder if this is how it felt back then.
He watches as Ivan looks down at the homework sheets, grabbing the fallen pen with one hand. His other stays on the grass. Till doesn’t dare reach for it anymore. He hasn’t for many years now. Instead, he stares at his palm, still twitching with the weight of what it had been entrusted with. He puts it flat against the grass. Using it as support, he drags himself over until his back bumps into the tree.
Around them, the other students are still chattering. Looking around, Till sees Acorn and Bari peering over their books together. Farther right, Sua is cleaning Mizi’s glasses with the hem of her dress. No one knows what just happened. Even if they had turned heads, they would have only seen a quite unextraordinary set of events. What the two of them shared has left no trace behind.
“Scoot over, then,” Till mutters, biting his lip. It’s his turn to save face. “Let’s see what else has the top student in a bad mood. Maybe this genius can save you. Can’t have you failing now, can we?”
Ivan glances at him from the side. After a few seconds, he sighs, looking away again. He moves by maybe an inch.
Stubborn to a fault, Till slides closer. Their shoulders brush.
It is the only evidence they ever touched at all.