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Till thoughts in the last few minutes had spiraled on to ‘Is this vacation even worth it?’.
See, it was his first trip with Ivan as a couple, in Ivan's childhood summer house nonetheless, so it had to go well. But the drive over was lengthy, and the heat was getting to both of them, so they were both gradually just getting more tired and irritated as time went on. Not to mention, the car radio was terrible in these rural parts, and there hadn’t been a gas station to stop for a break in the past hour.
Now, they had finally arrived at his empty summer house, and wanted nothing more than to sleep for about 10 days straight.
The house itself was pretty nice, old-timey with odd cruise-ship decor going on.
As they entered Ivan's old room, the first thing Till noticed was the comically large amount of posters thumb-tacked on the wall, the old wallpaper barely showing in the more crowded areas. The wood of the roof was visible, slanted and cinnamon colored.
It’s not what he expected, to be completely transparent. Ivan, in his mind, was still a bit of a dude-bro with a jock-themed wardrobe, with a very expectation defying music taste. Basically, if Till was a few years younger and still didn’t know any better, he’d think that Ivan's overall persona did not look like a man of whom this room belonged to. He’d think that this room looked like it belonged to a twelve year old, deep in the 80s, with little to no connection to the outside world.
“Welcome to my humble adobe!” Ivan breathed out, and turned to Till with a tired grin on his face, and suddenly the correlation between him and the room was clear.
“…I would not call it humble.” He was trying hard not to let his mouth morph into something of a smile, so he settled on distracting himself with looking around more.
The room wasn’t big, but definitely not small either. The carpet and the furniture looked like they came straight from a corny old movie, that would probably be considered lost media by now. Warm toned and peeling wood everywhere.
The bed was pretty much the same, and as he looked back to Ivan, and his annoyingly long legs and stature, he doubted Ivan even fit into it normally.
His eyes turned up, away from Ivan’s legs, and to his eyes. Two mischievous, glistening black circles were already looking back at him, blinking at his face like Ivan was trying to think of what to say to break some of the earlier tension.
For a moment, Till could’ve swore he heard gears running.
He felt a flush, and he knew his face got red then, and Ivan's eyes thinned out a bit, like he was about to say something desperately incriminating. So, logically, Till turned on his heel to look somewhere else, anywhere else.
What he didn’t expect was to look directly at an actual, bare butt.
He stumbled back then, his expression morphing into what could only be described as a simple ‘what? The hell? Am I looking at?’.
With his startled step back, his elbow came in direct contact with Ivan’s abdomen, and now, they were both drawing back with pained expressions, with very different reasonings.
“What?? Till what the hell?” Ivan whispered-screamed at Till, bringing a hand to clutch over his stomach like an old lady with her beloved purse.
“I- it’s-” Till tried to say, but then he made eye contact with the butt again, in what he just realised was a poster, and his eyes just kept shifting between looking at Ivan’s confused face and that, and he really didn’t think his face could get any redder.
Ivan seemed to get the point, and looked at where Till was looking, his face turning into more sceptical. Then back at Till, and like the angels coming from above, his expression changed into pure realisation on why exactly Till had actually stumbled back into him.
And then he broke all at once, tiredness fading away, starting to laugh and seemingly not being able to stop, now clutching his stomach in a much different manner. His laughter rung out so loud, and so annoyingly obnoxious, that Till made a very distasteful face, which only sprung Ivan on more.
“Alright, what the hell are you laughing at asshole?” Till really wanted to say that he wasn’t pouting then, but if he did, he would be lying.
“Are you- did you-” Ivan said in between uncontrollable chuckles, his face now almost as red as Tills.
Till narrowed his eyes at him, and then very pointedly looked at the door.
And that seemed to get the point of ‘spit it out or I leave’, because Ivan sobered up, a bit, right then.
“Did you actually flinch at my poster? Cause of the naked lady.” Ivan was actively trying to control his laughter now (and failing), as he grabbed Till shoulders and looked him square in the face.
“I- No! I was just startled-!” It did not help that his gaze just kept shifting over there again and again, and sure enough Ivan lost it once more.
Ivan let his shoulders go, and fell back to sit on his childhood bed, which made an irritating creaking sound as he settled onto it.
Till stayed in place though, crossing his arms, looking like he was frozen there or ready to bolt out.
Ivan finally calmed down, and wiped actual tears from his eyes, grinning up at Till like provoking him was the most satisfying thing in the world.
“This was amazing. God, fuck, thank you for that, I’ve not laughed like that since Luka fell into that fountain” he crossed his legs, and brought his hands behind him on the mattress to steady himself.
“Oh shut- Wait. Luka fell into a fucking fountain?” And that broke his pout in return, exasperation taking its place. Luka was another music kid in Ivan's class that they also knew from high school. Till barely knew him though, he was more familiar with his girlfriend, Hyuna. Ivan hung out with them a lot, back in the day, he recalls.
“Oh, big time. He had to walk home all wet too. It was before any of us had a car back in high school, and me and Hyuna could not stop laughing. He didn’t talk to us for an entire week after that.” Ivan shook his head, the grin on his face only getting brighter, and it actually made Till kind of sick. People should never be this pretty when they’re being this punchable. His boyfriend was a dick.
He lowered his arms back down, and stumbled forward to join Ivan on his bed, sitting right next to him. The mattress creaked once more, and god, he wished he could tell it to shut up without sounding like a lunatic.
A moment of silence passed before Ivan spoke up again.
“It’s a Queen poster.” He said, and Till turned to him.
“…What?”
“The poster of the naked lady. It’s a Queen poster. You know Queen, right?” He asked, seeming offended at the mere idea of someone not knowing Queen.
“What, the band?” Till made a point not to look back at the poster, and instead focused on his own hands, fumbling with the mattress cover under his fingers.
Ivan nodded at him.
“Yes, I know Queen, Dumbass. How uncultured do you think I am?” He rolled his eyes.
“Well, you didn’t know Bee Gees back at the CD shop! So.” Ivan spoke with a shrug of his shoulders, his T-shirt bunching up and smoothing down again, which Till found oddly captivating, for whatever reason.
“That’s totally different!”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Nuh-uh? What are you? Eight?” Till sighed with a chuckle, his eyebrows scrunched up. He was probably going to get wrinkles by the end of the summer, at this rate.
“Hm, you know,” he paused for a second, “that poster is actually how I realised I was…you know.” He stumbled over the words, just a little. And that felt very sincere and very out of place, until Till actually processed the words.
“What? How?!” And Till twisted his body a bit to look at Ivan for any sign of lying. He found none, which just made things more unclear.
“Well, when I was like, nine, I think? I was staying over here for the summer, and my grandpa got me a Queen vinyl. It was the first one I ever got, and I got to open it on my birthday morning. He forgot that the band had put the uncensored version of the fat-bottomed girls’ poster in the vinyls for free. You can imagine my parents faces when I pulled that out.” He shrugged towards the poster, and Till let himself look at it now, and he could see that the naked girl was riding a bicycle, and written beside her were ‘bicycle race’ and ‘fat-bottomed girls’ in hot pink lettering at each side of her, and with ‘QUEEN’ in-scripted on the upper right side.
“Well, I ended up loving both the songs featured on the poster, so I hung it up on my wall here. I couldn’t understand why all the summer friends I brought over would either freak out or look at it weird. I just saw a nakey lady, and literally nothin more.” Ivan huffed a low laugh then, and looked at Tills eyes.
“Made me realise that I was different, somehow. It was my first step to realising, I think.” The tension in the room only got heavier after that.
“A Queen poster made you realise you might be gay? What homoerotic rom-com did you come out of?” And Till said it before he could really think, he said it out loud when Ivan couldn’t, just to say something that might break the tension. This might as well be the stupidest thing that’s ever come out of his mouth, seriously.
And yet…
Ivan cracked up beside him, and his hand slapped Tills knee as he laughed, quick warmth taking place before the hand was brushed off, and the dumb joke was worth it.
They looked at each other, smiles plaguing the atmosphere, and did just that for a moment. There it was, tension broken. Till thought that this probably was a much more important moment that he’d given it credit for then. Ivan swiftly leaned in and stole a quick peck against Tills lips, a sweet smile spreading across his face.
Ivan just closed his eyes and fell back, into the bed, dragging Till with him with light giggles falling from his lips.
So worth it.