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Sleek rosewood floors, lacquered to perfection and trimmed with gold; burgundy wallpaper atop brick walls smoothed by plaster, and large, bright windows overlooking lush gardens and bustling students-Anakt School of Fine Arts was no joke.
“Well, duh,” Sua bristles, “What were you expecting, a landfill in the middle of nowhere?”
“Kind of, yeah,” comes Ivan’s chuckling, lilting response. “I paid so little for my tuition that I didn’t think it would amount to much.”
“You got a scholarship,” counters Sua, firmly. Ivan cracks a smile, proud of himself, and touched that Sua kept that in mind. “That’s why it was cheap.”
Sua isn’t wrong at all, and the way she says it doesn’t feel like a jab or a mockery. If Ivan were to go out on a limb, he would say that Sua sounded a little admiring of him, but that would probably result in her threatening to fling him out the window like a paper plane, so he keeps that thought to himself. Ivan did fight tooth and nail for this school, famous for churning out award-winning musicians, composers, and producers, weaving threads of individual talent into a singular, reverberating tapestry of art. Attending Anakt has been his dream ever since the pads of his fingers touched ceramic keys, since his legs were too short and stubby to reach the pedals, and now he’s finally here. Ivan-young, prodigal, starving, no longer an outsider but rather one amongst everyone else.
They push open the door to the concert hall-one of the smaller ones in Anakt, but still massive to Ivan’s eyes. He dreams of filling every seat and inch of this room, envisions himself at the beautiful grand piano onstage, in front of hundreds of people. As they make their way down the steps, he notices a young man; he’s not much shorter than Ivan, and he’s sickly pale, with snowy blonde hair falling in waves over his golden eyes. He nudges Sua and whispers, “Who’s that?”
“Luka,” Sua replies, smoothing her skirt and sitting down, “He’s vice-president of the orchestra club. First chair violin. He gets all the solos, too. They say he’s a prodigy.”
Ivan takes a long look at him, watching as he saunters around the stage, casually leaning against the podium and scribbling down notes, analysing every person auditioning for his beloved orchestra. His face remains neutral; if someone’s impressing him or making him want to rip his hair out, he doesn’t show it. His lip remains quirked upward at the corner, a small, lazy smile amidst the flitting, sweaty expressions that his juniors are making. Then, at long last, it is Ivan’s turn to play.
Luka watches Ivan’s every move-from the cocksure way he climbs onto the stage, the steely determination within his eyes, to the cracking of his knuckles as he sits down on the seat of the grand piano. He bites back a laugh when Ivan runs a hand across the keys, porcelain and obsidian, wonder etched into his face. It’s almost endearing how music can melt even the sturdiest of men.
But then his fingers press into the keys, and Luka’s eyes widen infinitesimally.
Rachmaninov, he scrawls, haphazard and hasty, No. 5 in G Minor-Ivan, year 1.
And oh, the way Ivan’s hands fly all over the piano, not a single note off-key or out of place; a virtuoso of dexterity and harmony, as though he were born from music itself. The tempo changes perfectly, capturing a sort of tumbling urgency. His eyes are shut, lashes curled over his cheek, hands moving of their own accord. He’s only been sitting here for all of two minutes, and yet, he plays this piano like he’s been acquainted with it all his life: knowing, intimate. His feet press and release the pedals in an easy waltz, and with every count that goes by, Luka wonders if he’s watching Sergei Rachmaninov himself. As the music lulls to silence, he breathes out, then fixes Ivan in his vision.
“I’d like to meet you once auditions end, Ivan,” Luka informs him, simply. “Thank you for coming.”
There were no flaws to be found, at least, that’s what most people would think.
Luka is not like most people.
.
Ivan knocks politely at the door of Luka’s dormitory, a spacious single room that is reserved for third- and fourth-year students, particularly those in executive positions in clubs or on the student council. He hears his lilting voice, “Come in!”
He pushes the door open and sees Luka in a robe, blonde hair astray, a violin tucked beneath his chin. His fingertips remain on the fret, pressed into the metal strings, blued and calloused. Ivan sucks in a quivering breath, because Luka looks so elegant, so effortlessly intimidating; even off a stage and far removed from a symphony, he seems as though his violin could still the tide of a melody. Ivan exhales quickly and says, “You asked to see me last week- I’m-”
“Ivan, yes, I’m aware,” Luka interjects, putting his violin onto his stand. “Close the door behind you, come inside,” he gestures to Ivan’s hovering at his doorway, “Hurry up.”
And just as quickly as Ivan’s admiration flared, it dissipated, leaving tendrils of annoyance in its wake. Luka knows he’s prodigal and commanding, and uses it to his advantage-and whilst Ivan cannot comment on forcing his way through things with power, for he did the same, Luka is on a whole different planet.
Luka sits on his desk chair, in front of Ivan, who stands unbreaking in front of him. He crosses his legs, and Ivan tears his eyes away from the sliver of skin that he sees through the gaps of his robe. “I called you to discuss your audition with you in private.”
Ivan locks his gaze with Luka’s, whose eyes neither flicker nor dampen. No, they stare steadfastly into his, glinting with a promise and a challenge both, and curve ever-so-slightly at the waterline as he says, “You can join the orchestra next year, as long as you figure out how to play the piano by then.”
And Ivan sputters in response, form crumbling as his brows furrow and his mouth opens and closes over words that skid across his tongue and crash into his teeth. “What- Huh?”
“Do I need to repeat myself, Ivan?” Luka does smile this time, audacious and sweet; he’s taunting Ivan, and Ivan wants to punch him, squarely, smack-dab in the middle of his infuriating face.
So he gathers himself, swallows roughly, and replies, “No.”
“Good,” Luka gets up, swishes past him, and doesn’t spare Ivan another glance as he picks up his violin once again and says, so casually cruel, “You may leave.”
Ivan does so, but his hand wraps around the doorknob, and he lingers. Then he turns around and asks, loud so Luka can hear him over the sound of his warm-up exercises, “What makes you say that?”
Abruptly, Luka stops playing, cracks an eye open, and says, sharply, “Come again?”
“What makes you say that I don’t know how to play the piano?” Ivan repeats, now facing Luka fully. He takes a sure step forward, anger rising within him, “I’ve learnt for seventeen years, got into this snobby school on merit,” and crescendo, he’s staring down Luka now, a head taller, “And played far better than that sweetgum-haired girl, so-”
“The best way to learn music is not by playing, but by listening,” Luka replies, simply. “Now, back away,” he tips his chin up, hand tight around the neck of his violin, and looks up at Ivan, unfazed by his rage, his desperation. “You’re in my personal space.”
This time, when Ivan wraps his hand around the doorknob, he doesn’t linger-but he does make sure to slam the door shut on his way out.
.
“Mizi and I hate Luka,” Sua complained to Ivan at lunch that afternoon. “I’m going to strangle him the next time he chides her. She’s our only pianist- Why is he trying to chase her out?”
Ivan remembers the clank of their cutlery against the ceramic, the way it spun song around them when combined with the hum of their fellow students in the dining hall, and how it made him itch to play the piano. But they had classes after lunch, and Ivan wasn’t quite keen on missing classes, especially not when his teammate for their upcoming project, Till, kept doodling in the margins of his books instead of focusing on class.
He finds himself clutching his sheet music in his sweaty hands as he makes his way to the practice rooms, even though he swore not to play the piano for the next few weeks, because every time he does, he can hear it again: “The best way to learn music is not by playing, but by listening.” But it’s been two weeks, and he was in the middle of perfecting Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and the soft fruit of temptation is so much sweeter than that of rage, even more so when ripe and forbidden-
Then, Ivan stops short in front of one of the rooms.
Waltz No. 2, Dimitri Shostakovich. He could recognise it in his sleep, even if deaf or blind, through layers of heavy oak wood and muffled by air. It’s one of his favourite waltzes, and this violinist in particular-playing over a recording, Ivan presumes, because he can hear, faintly, the heaving drums and cellos-plays it beautifully. He inches closer, presses his ear to the door, and shuts his eyes.
He doesn’t need to wait; he was enchanted from the start, and was immediately transported to a different world, one swirling with soft blues and faded gold and white, curving and light like old Russian ballroom dancers. He can see the chandeliers hanging from the arched ceilings, feel soft velvet under his palms, and smell the wine, aged to perfection-
The music stops midway.
Ivan’s eyes snap open, and he clicks his tongue. The ballroom has disappeared, and the practice rooms of Anakt remain in its wake. He sighs, peels himself off the door, and then enters the room opposite. Maybe he’ll practice some of his old pieces, or progress further in Clair de Lune. Whichever one.
It’s on his twenty-sixth time out of thirty-even if he learnt it just by looking at the sheet, Ivan likes to play every new page thirty times at least, so that the notes carve themselves into his very core-that he wonders why on earth the other musician stopped playing midway.
His joints spark with every movement, but he doesn’t quit; when every ligament and tendon screams at him in pain, begging and tearing at him to stop, to rest, Ivan refuses, basks in the discomfort and ache, because love to him has always been something that hurts, that wrings his hands and legs and the connections between every vertebra in his spine until he has been exploited to the emptiest, until he has no blood left to give. Love has always been music, the resistance of ceramic keys as they slip into place, a plaintive note vibrating through the air; love has always been a song of pain, ever since his foster mother held him in her arms at the doctor’s office, and they heard it for the first time: hypermobility. It is what helps him play four-fingered chords and difficult pieces, and it is what makes him groan and writhe at night.
Ivan can never bring himself to stop in the middle of a piece, because he can never bring himself to snap, not once. He has always been one to push himself. To push and shove, in an act of mercy; to push and shove, in an attempt to strengthen-to push and shove, until the warmth weathers into numbness.
It is both a gift and a curse to bend so far as to break, but never once turn brittle enough to.
.
Luka doesn’t matter to Ivan. Ivan, all of 22 years old, a pianist, a musician, hardworking, dedicated, someone who doesn’t care about Luka, and apparently, not good enough for Anakt Garden, The Anakt School of Fine Arts’ Orchestra.
And yet, as he sits on the smooth leather stool in front of the piano, all he can think of is Luka’s golden eyes flitting up to meet his, his glimmering gaze from underneath his soft sunlight curls, and his butterfly-quick smile as he said, “The best way to learn music is not by playing, but by listening.”
It’s not like Ivan doesn’t listen to music, because he has to. He listens to music, finds it in everything he does and hears; he’s always listening to music, in a sense. He has to, and he wants to, and that’s how he’s even here in the first place.
He wonders if the violinist from yesterday would be someone that Luka would pick on the spot for his precious orchestra, if Ivan had to be a musician who makes people live his music for him to be good enough for Luka. He swears, up, down, and sideways, he swears that Luka doesn’t matter to him, and he doesn’t need the approval of some spoilt brat.
And yet.
Ivan groans, hands pressing into twelve keys at once, and the piano makes an unhappy, discordant noise. Mumbling, “Sorry,” Ivan scrapes the stool back and stands up, stumbling away from the piano and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Stupid- Stupid Luka, and his stupid words, as if he’s Mozart alive- Damn it, what more does he want?!”
It’s not because of Luka, but it is Luka, in a sense, because Ivan’s never been torn down before. Never. He’s never been told that he doesn’t know how to play the piano, and he’s never been called anything even close to ‘not good enough’. He knew what he was getting into when he joined Anakt-he knew that he would tumble from the very heights of musicianship to the lowest echelons possible, like Icarus falling-but it prods at him as though it isn’t something he wasn’t aware of. It’s not because of Luka, but the way he said it is what bothers Ivan so much, because it makes him wonder.
For the first time in his life, Ivan finds himself seated in front of a piano and entirely unsure of what to do, because he thinks that it may not be what he’s playing that lacks, after all.
It may be how he plays.
Clair de Lune stares back at him; only one page remains for him to meld into the shape of his hands. And so, he does-then he stops playing after the tenth time, takes his sheets off the holder entirely, cracks his knuckles, shuts his eyes.
He plays it from the beginning, but this time, he dreams of something-the moon, hanging above him, beckoning and fair; a gentle breeze winding through long grass, and a boy made of sunlight by his side, against the cradling earth, watching the moon sing them to sleep. He breathes through it, even when he ticks his ankle downward on una corda for just a fraction of a second longer, even when he adds a twinkling frill amidst the pianissimo nuance, like a star glittering in the night sky. He dreams, and when he does, he hopes that if someone else were with him, they too would see what he sees.
Ivan takes his hands off the keys, breathlessly, slowly. With a rough bob of his throat, he stands up, collects his sheet music off the floor, and begins cleaning up the practice room so he can leave. He’s never done that before-he’s never added his own spin on the pieces he’s learnt, because why would he? He’s always been good at delivering what was asked of him, and that is what got him this far, and he never saw any need to find his shape when it was far easier to conform to the models his teachers asked him to. His entire career was built on how seemingly effortlessly he can shift from Rachmaninov to Beethoven to Debussy to Tchaikovsky, on how he can make his audiences feel as though they are listening to Bach himself play for them. He’s never wished to add his name to a rendition.
Outside the practice room and in the corridor, Ivan hears Devil’s Trill by Giuseppe Tartini-and despite the lack of visual confirmation, he knows who it is instantly: the violinist from yesterday. This time, too, Ivan presses his ears to the door and finds himself in a different world, and then is abruptly ripped away from it, because the violinist stopped playing midway. Annoyance surges within him, but today, Ivan lingers for a minute longer, hoping that the violinist continues the song; it’s been so long since he listened to Devil’s Trill, and it’s always been one of those pieces that captures him, pulls him into its depths and whispers for him to stay, and today is no different.
And somehow, the music picks up from where it ended, flawlessly as though it never paused, not even for a second. When the piece finishes, rightfully so, Ivan’s hand moves to the doorknob, and he asks himself if he should go inside and see just who this violinist is.
But his hands are weak from practising, and simply holding his sheet music has his fingers tingling with pain. He files the idea for later, because even if not now, someday, he would love to know how they play so beautifully, and if he could get their versions of Waltz No. 2 and Devil’s Trill and-
For the first time, albeit briefly, Ivan wants to know how it would feel to make a piece his.
.
It’s at breakfast the next morning that Ivan stands in front of Luka, who holds a plate with a single croissant and some fruit, looking up at Ivan in utter confusion when he says, “I think I understand, now.”
Luka blinks. “Understand what, exactly?”
“The thing you said to me- About learning the piano by next year,” Ivan stumbles over his words in his enthusiasm, earnest as he continues, “What I was supposed to have learnt was how to make my piano playing sound like- Like mine, right?”
A smile spreads across Luka’s face-the tiniest of smiles, bordering a smirk; if Ivan were to reach, honestly, it seems a little condescending. But Ivan stands his ground, an immovable object weathering an unstoppable force, and Luka simply replies, “You should listen to Tchaikovsky’s Miniature Overture-”
“I have already,” Ivan butts in.
Kissing his teeth, Luka counters, “Let me finish. You should listen to Tchaikovsky’s Miniature Overture, then to Martha Argerich’s rendition.”
Ivan’s brows crease in apprehension, so Luka continues, side-stepping Ivan and walking past him, “They may sound the same, but they certainly will not feel the same.”
The words remain in the confines of Ivan’s skull, heavy and permeating, bleeding into his notes in Arranging and Mixing-of course, Till wasn’t paying attention again, but the man’s another genius in this school full of them, anyway, so Ivan isn’t too worried, and Till’s doodling has become something he’s fond of, now-and his guest lecture during Forms of Music. It eats and eats and eats at him, the way Luka had said it with such heavy certainty, despite his light, melodic voice; his petal-soft body brushing against Ivan’s like a knife’s edge. It consumes his every moment, and the minute he finds himself in the practice rooms that evening, he puts his headphones on and listens, really listens.
Tchaikovsky’s Miniature Overture makes him see crimson and white; an Edwardian manor’s windows lit up by orange fireplaces in gripping winter weather. The orchestra pulls him through the entire story-up, down, through every moment of pianissimo and nuance of forte. Tchaikovsky seemed to have wanted to cram the entirety of The Nutcracker into that singular suite, with its crisp, vital tempo that matches the thumping of Ivan’s own heart.
Then came Martha Argerich’s Miniature Overture, arranged and remastered just for the piano, and Ivan feels his breath still in the pipes of his throat. Because he is in the same Edwardian manor as before, with heavy crimson curtains framing the crystalline winter past the windows, but it’s different, somehow. They are the same lengths, and not a single thing changed between the two versions-the tempo is still fast-paced and tumultuous, and Martha Argerich’s talent oozes through every crevice between the notes, but it’s still different. Maybe it’s the way Ivan could tell that it was her from the rapid switching from forceful to soft, but not so fast that it felt abrupt. Maybe it’s because he felt as though he was seated near the fireplace and watching her play on a grand piano in the massive hall of the manor.
Luka was right. Ivan doesn’t even feel angry about admitting it, because Luka was-is-right. They may have sounded the same, but they did not feel the same.
Ivan removes his headphones and sets them beside him. On the floor of the practice room, polished rosewood cold against his bare calves, he stares at the pedals of the piano and aches again; he wonders what it would be like to play a piece and have someone say, Oh, that’s Ivan’s version, isn’t it?
He looks at his phone, paused at the very end of Martha Argerich’s Miniature Overture. Something in him twinges.
He’s always preferred to make his sheet music, half as practice and half because it was easier to identify and isolate each note by himself than to follow someone else’s arrangement, but this time, he wants to see if he could go past simple perfection. This time, Ivan wants to play a piece, an entirely novel one, and see if he can find himself in its unfamiliarity. He did it once before, with Clair de Lune, but Ivan never can take a chance on a fluke-no, he needs to do it again to believe that it is not impossible.
So, Ivan searches-Tchaikovsky’s Miniature Overture for piano, and then he adds, sheet music.
.
This time, when Ivan exits the practice room, it is 1 in the morning, and the violinist opposite is playing Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saens. Like all the times before this, Ivan finds himself glued to the door, and like all the times before this, the goddamned violinist stops playing midway.
And Ivan, worn down from practice and shaken from newfound want, barges into the practice room and yells, “For God’s sake, why do you keep stopping in the middle of your pieces-”
He stops short, stares at the man in front of him.
“Luka?!”
“Well, well,” Luka replies, with his quiet, stunning smile, reverent hands placing the violin back down on the stand. “Ivan. I thought the pianist opposite me was far more skilled.”
Ivan bristles, ears turning red. He exhales sharply and plasters a grin on his face, “I’ve been practising.” His aching hands grip his phone, and he adds, “And I did what you asked me to, today-Tchaikovsky versus Martha Argerich, that is.”
“And?” Luka asks, nonchalant and expectant, as though he knows the answer already, and he does.
“You were right,” Ivan can’t help the admiration surging within him as he looks at Luka’s self-assured form, shrugging at him, “They didn’t feel the same at all.”
“What did I tell you?” Luka replies, a statement masquerading as a rhetorical question. Ivan keeps his gaze on Luka as he bends to rummage in his backpack, as he asks the younger, “Oh, Ivan- Did you press the button on the side of the knob when you closed the door, by any chance?”
“Um,” Ivan turns around, then whirls back to face Luka, who is still folded into his backpack, “Yes.” Luka’s spine snaps upright, and he looks at Ivan, eyes wide with horror. Ivan’s brows furrow. He asks, “Why?”
“You fool,” Luka groans, facepalming, fingers digging into his curls, “You fool, Ivan, the button auto-locks the rooms after midnight- If you press it entirely, you can’t open the door from the inside- You just locked us in here!”
“I- Oh,” Ivan turns red. He feels like his face is going to explode from embarrassment. “Oh, crap.”
For the next thirty minutes, Luka tries calling his friends-Hyunwoo, a teaching assistant in Jazz, and Hyuna, his second-year sister and percussionist-but to no avail, and Ivan attempts to blow Sua’s phone up by calling her fourteen times in a row.
“Suck it up, Ivan,” Sua slurs, still half-asleep, “The warden wakes up at 5 AM- I’ll tell her then.”
“But-”
“Ivan, no,” Sua interrupts firmly. Through a yawn, she says, “I’m not waking up the warden at 1:37 AM. She’ll hang me from the chandelier by my ankles.”
“Sua, wait- Ugh,” Ivan sighs, and puts his phone in the pocket of his shorts. “The woman just doesn’t budge,” he offers Luka a sheepish grin, and Luka returns it with a blank stare from the floor of the practice room, so Ivan drops the smile and mutters, “Sorry.”
“It’s whatever,” Luka dismisses him. Ivan sits on the floor opposite Luka, near the door, unmercifully shut, and watches awkwardly as Luka begins to press a heat pad into his fingers.
They’re blue.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Luka scoffs.
Ivan flushes crimson as he realises he said that out loud, but wills his embarrassment into submission, and then blurts, “Why do you keep stopping in the middle of your pieces?”
At first, Luka stiffens, pinning Ivan with a clinical gaze, almost sharpened just enough to make him squirm. Then, he softens, and looks back down at his blue fingers, pressed to each other by the weight of his heat pad, and replies, “I have Raynaud’s disease. It messes with your circulation. My fingers get numb if I play too long, and it takes a while to get feeling back in them-it’s more efficient and safer to stop when they start to feel funny, and resume when they feel better.”
Ivan is quiet, and Luka continues, “I realised early on in Anakt that there was no point in pushing my body past its limits. Raynaud’s disease doesn’t listen to any of the boundaries you set for yourself. You have to listen to your body, and you have to take care of it-that’s what I learnt. So I focus on keeping myself healthy and taken care of, and let the rest fall in place.” Luka looks at Ivan and finishes, “That’s why I stop in the middle of my pieces. When I practice, at least. When I’m in concert, though, I play the full length, and then end up taking a week off,” he barks out a laugh, “But it’s worth it.”
“It’s always worth it,” Ivan argues, begging to differ, “You’re, what, 25? You’re nowhere near your prime, Luka- And people like us, we have careers that are so much shorter than the average musician- We should be pushing ourselves, working and burning and setting ourselves back alight, making a mark in the world while we last-”
“Who’s we?” Luka chimes in; it sounds interrogatory.
It’s Ivan’s turn to freeze, then thaw. In one fell swoop, he confesses, “I have a chronic illness, too. Hypermobility. I can play Rachmaninov, sure,” Ivan twists his lips into a smile, and Luka notices a single canine at the angle of his mouth, gleaming. “But it comes with a price-And I pay that price, every time. I never believed in stopping from pain, not when I didn’t have to-”
“Ivan,” Luka interrupts him, and Ivan stops. Again. It’s getting a little annoying.
But Ivan can’t help but feel a little sweet when the older boy asks, “Do you want a painkiller?”
Silence stretches between them, then Ivan nods sheepishly. The quiet sounds like a sonata as Luka beckons him to the other side of the room, and Ivan follows, scraping his palms against the rosewood floors to get up, and stretching his hand out for the medicine that Luka holds between his nimble fingers.
Then, Luka swats Ivan’s outstretched hand like it’s offending him, wraps his fingers around Ivan’s wrist, and tugs him to the floor. Ivan yelps, stumbling, before wrenching his arm out of Luka’s grasp and sitting down in front of him.
Luka chuckles, and Ivan thinks there’s something tender in his chest, in his throat, under his tongue, when he hears it. He watches, breath hitched, as Luka sits straight into a kneel, and his roughened hand slots under Ivan’s chin, tilts his jaw up; a thumb presses into his lip, draws his mouth open. Ivan follows, and follows, and follows, like he’s reading a song off a sheet. And when Luka pours water into his mouth and drops the pill inside, he questions, “Are you running out of time, Ivan?”
A rough swallow. Then, Ivan shoots back, “What do you mean?” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I mean exactly what I asked,” Luka closes the bottle, puts it aside, and starts to massage his aching, blue fingers with the heat pad. “Are you running out of time, Ivan? Because why else would you rush through your pieces? Through the notes of a suite? Don’t you have to feel every second, right to your bones, for it to be music and not simply notes in order?”
Ivan blinks, but Luka continues, still massaging his hands, still so light and casual, even in his deliverance of execution, even when he’s breaking down the mentality Ivan has carried and nursed for years. “The problem with your piano playing, Ivan, is that you are too fast. You are so keen on completing as much as you can before your body betrays you for good, that you forget to stop; to savour.”
“You’re on tempo, sure, but never in it. That’s why you still lack, even if you’re improving. That’s why you can only copy, but never create.”
Ivan’s mouth opens in wretched protest, but Luka is faster–he drops the heat pad and presses his warmed fingers to Ivan’s lips, jaw cupped between his hands, cradling. He pushes back against plush flesh and whispers, “Slow down, Ivan. Both you and your art will be thankful for it.”
And as Ivan blinks back at Luka, a hand gripping his slender thigh for balance, he looks up. “What happened to your personal space?” Ivan taunts.
Luka’s eyes flutter to his. “Shut up.”
Ivan tightens his grasp around Luka’s thigh, stilling. Luka, with his fingers splayed across his mouth, dipping into the divot of his lip, wire-roughened blue against blood-crusted red, gold clashing with obsidian, he grins. Luka notices that singular canine on display, teasing him, when Ivan asks, “And what about you, Luka?”
“What about me?” Luka murmurs.
“Are you running out of time as well?”
Luka smiles. This time, it is not light, nor is it casual. It is deliberate, it is genuine. He is a boy made of sunlight and song, and Ivan holds him and aches with a need to add his name to the other’s, just to hear how it sounds.
Luka smiles and then asks, “Aren’t we all?”