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Aku is five and a half years old, and the most darling, adorable, charming child on the planet—at least, according to Ivan. He has dark, steel-grey hair that’s always a mess, and bright green eyes. If you look closely enough, in the right light, you can see the tinge of red in them, too. His smile is brighter than the sun, and his laugh? A heavenly chorus on earth, or the closet thing to it. He’s rambunctious and all over the place, and kind to a fault. He likes vegetables more than fruits. He enjoys reading about space: planets, stars, meteors, astronauts, aliens, UFOs, you name it.
Every day, Ivan is awestruck that Aku—this little bundle of joy—is his.
Till, Aku, and Ivan are on a walk around their neighborhood. The sun has sunk low enough to the cast the sky into purples and pinks, and Aku points out every star as they twinkle into view above them. (“That’s not a star, dada, that’s a sad-lite!” “Ohhh, a satellite…”)
Ivan has to squat down a few times to see where Aku is pointing. It helps, somewhat, but he mostly just goes “I see it!”, and then Aku cheerily skips a couple steps ahead, and Ivan stands up and holds Till’s hand as they follow after Aku.
Glancing to his side, Ivan observes that Till looks peaceful yet tired. He changed out of his nursing scrubs before dinner, but the stress on his face never quite goes away. Till’s eyes fondly track Aku’s wandering movements.
Ivan smiles, and refocuses his gaze on Aku, too.
By the time they get back home, dusk has fully settled, and the sky is that odd greenish-greyish-blue that happens before the dark creeps in.
Aku yawns dramatically, tiny arms stretching not-so-high above his head, and Ivan helps him wash up and puts him to bed. When he’s done, he finds Till lounging on the couch. He slides up next to him, one arm curled around Till’s waist.
He presses a soft kiss to Till’s temple, then trails down to Till’s cheekbone, his jaw, the line of his neck.
Till doesn’t really respond.
Then Ivan notices—there’s a tinge of something sour in Till’s scent.
“Till?” Ivan asks, backing up. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s nothing.”
It wasn’t the first time Till had been uninterested—tired, stressed, just generally out of sorts and not in the mood; Ivan didn’t mind then, of course. And if Ivan was scent-blind, maybe he would’ve conceded the not-quite-argument there, letting them both believe it was just another one of those times. But he’s not.
“No, something’s up.” Ivan gets off the couch and kneels in front of Till, clasping their hands together. “Hey, talk to me.”
Till swallows. “I can’t.”
“Of course you can,” Ivan reassures. “You can tell me anything, Till, I love you.”
It suddenly looks like Till is about to cry. “That’s why I can’t. I—I can’t do this. Us.”
“What?” Surely, Ivan must’ve misheard. “Till, please…”
Tears start to fall, streaking down Till’s cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Till whispers. He slides his hands out from Ivan’s grasp, hugging himself.
Ivan can’t bring himself to move. Instead, he says, “Is it something I did? How can I fix this?”
“It’s not like that, I just—I just don’t feel it.”
“Don’t feel it?”
“I’m so tired, all the time. And it—we—don’t feel how we used to.” Till pauses. “I… I don’t know if I’m in love with you anymore, Ivan.”
Ivan removes his hands from Till’s lap. They just kind of hover, then, because Ivan suddenly doesn’t know where to put them. He fidgets with his wedding ring. It would be five years, soon, unless… He moves his hand slightly, and the ring catches the light, sparkling. It’s strange how a tiny sliver of metal can mean so much—and apparently, so little.
He blinks. Reality comes back into glaring focus.
“Ivan…?”
Till looks heartbroken, which doesn’t seem fair. Ivan is sinking. Finding words is almost impossible, because his emotions loop and loop and loop—his worst fears surface.
He asks the question that he’d convinced himself he would never have to speak into existence. (How foolish, really.)
“…Do you want a divorce?” The final word is like glass dragging through Ivan’s throat.
Till looks away. “I don’t know.”
Ivan stares at the love of his life.
“I don’t know,” Till repeats. He flinches, suddenly, and Ivan realizes that he’s letting out his scent too much.
Ivan stands.
“I should go,” he says robotically. And then, “I’ll be back later.”
He doesn’t know why he says the second part. He doesn’t know if part of him is hopeful that Till would be worried if he didn’t say it, or that Till would wait for him now that he has said it.
He doesn’t know if Till will be here when he returns.
That hasn’t been one of Ivan’s fears in a long, long time.
—
Ivan takes his keys, wallet, and nothing else, and leaves. He drives until he finds a hotel. It’s nearly deserted, with only a few other cars in the parking lot.
There are no sounds save for the din of the incandescent street lights, and the faint rumbling of cars on a distant highway.
Ivan thinks about nothing. About everything. About where it all fell apart.
His life, as he knew it, is slipping through his fingers, and he can’t figure out how to stop it.
Ivan has a picture of Aku in his wallet. In it, Aku is going down a slide, hands raised in the air, gigantic smile on his face. One of his front teeth is missing, but that just adds extra charm to his grin. Till had taken the photo no less than a month ago.
Ivan stares at it until his vision blurs.
He could leave. He could support Till from afar. He could choose to never go back to his home, with his family, and he could choose to never again feel what it’s like to be a walking corpse, torn soul from body, wretched, lost.
But, Ivan simply cannot bear the thought of not seeing Aku every day. So he makes a decision: he will do whatever it takes to make Aku happy.
Whatever it takes.
—
On the way back, Ivan stops by a 24/7 pharmacy and purchases the largest pack of scent blockers they have. He does his best to withhold his scent as he checks out, and the cashier saves him the dignity of at least acting like they don’t notice.
Ivan puts them on in the car. One on each wrist, and one of the large patches on the back of his neck. Applying the last one involves pressing the seal over his skin, his scar, Till’s scar, that he can still feel through the thin layer of silicone.
Flesh knows better than gold.
Permanence is only ever a guarantee when it hurts.
—
It had been a long time since Ivan had last bought scent blockers.
He had started in middle school, at the ripe age of ten, when Till had scrunched his nose and stuck out his tongue and complained that Ivan was “stinky.” Ivan had gone to his mother after school and asked if he smelled. His mother quickly put the pieces together, and introduced him to scent blockers. She had kindly reassured Ivan that he wasn’t radiating any particularly strong, obtrusive odors; rather, in her words, “Till has always been a little sensitive, hasn’t he?”
And, well, she wasn’t wrong.
Regardless, the last thing Ivan wanted to do at the time was scare Till off, so he started wearing scent blockers religiously. (There was one time he wore the same set for too long and fell ill. His mother scolded him—something about scent sickness, how your glands need to breathe, yadda yadda yadda; Ivan was too feverish to really process it.)
Eventually, the doctor confirmed Ivan’s secondary sex. To no one’s surprise, the golden child, star student, picture-perfect role model of a son was an alpha.
Till was unimpressed. He didn’t present until a few years later.
—
He gets back after midnight. Till is still there; Ivan can detect lingering traces of his scent. It’s as reassuring as it is depressing.
Ivan pauses in the foyer. Normally, after a late night, he would pull off his shoes and trudge upstairs, take a quick shower, and then cuddle Till to sleep.
He doesn’t do that.
He pulls off his shoes and walks quietly to the living room. He lies down on the couch. He stares at the ceiling until his eyes become too tired to stay open, and then he’s alone in the dark with his ghosts.
—
The next day is a Saturday. Ivan wakes up early to make Aku breakfast. (Saturday is Till’s only official day off, so Ivan has always made an effort to let Till sleep in. Most weeks, he’ll wander downstairs some time in the middle of the afternoon.)
“Dada?” Aku asks.
“Yes, Aku?” Ivan says.
“You smell empty.”
Ivan freezes. He turns around to see his child, casually stabbing at strawberry pieces with his fork.
“What do you mean?” Ivan asks slowly.
“Like the toof fairy took yours. Did you get chocowate under your pillow, too?”
Now, Ivan is even more confused. “What?”
Aku opens his mouth and points at the gap in his front teeth. He repeats, “Empty.”
It clicks. “Oh. I’m just wearing scent patches,” Ivan explains.
Aku frowns. “Why?”
“They prevent my scent from spreading and affecting other people.”
“But why?”
Ivan walks over to Aku’s chair and squats down, so he’s eye-level with his son.
“It’s for your safety. Think of it like I’m sick, and I don’t want you to get sick,” Ivan says. “One day, when you’re all grown up, we can have a talk about it. Okay?”
“Okaaay,” Aku sighs. He seems unsatisfied, but sated enough to let it go. “Will your scent come back? Like my toof?”
“I don’t know,” Ivan answers.
Aku glances around, and then whispers conspiratorially, “We can share my chocowate.”
Ivan laughs and stands, ruffling Aku’s already-messy hair. “It’s okay. That’s all yours, you earned it.”
—
When Ivan is not taking care of Aku (or Till), he’s at the office, taking care of paperwork and email threads and whatever else he can squeeze into the time between when he arrives at work, and when he leaves to walk Aku home. The more he assigns himself to do, the less his brain can wander. (His secretary seems both impressed and a little bit concerned at Ivan’s sudden, drastic uptick in productivity, but she doesn’t say anything.)
Stay on track.
Do your job.
Go home.
—
Things are going well—in the grand scheme of things, considering the spectrum of how well things could go given the circumstances—until one day, when Aku starts bawling his eyes out after school. Ivan had accompanied him home from school, as per usual, and everything went smoothly; Aku was, in retrospect, abnormally quiet, but he wasn’t giving off any strong signs of distress.
Ivan immediately kneels down to pick up his wailing son. Aku’s tiny hands cling to Ivan’s shirt.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Ivan says gently. He walks over to the couch and sits down. He massages Aku’s back and tries again: “What happened?”
Aku says something blubbery that Ivan doesn’t understand.
“I didn’t quite get that, could you say that again, please?” Ivan asks.
“—hitme,” Aku mumbles.
That catches Ivan’s concern. “Hit you? Who hit you?”
“My fwiend.”
“Your friend hit you?”
Aku nods and cries. “Mio. I donno whyyy.”
Ivan’s heart hurts. “Can you tell me what happened right before that?”
“I was just playing with my other fwiend,” Aku says, “and then Mio just hit me.”
Ah. Ivan grimaces, connecting the dots. He takes a moment to process and put together a warm, supportive response.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, baby,” Ivan says. “Mio made a big mistake. No matter what happens, hitting people is bad.”
“I don’ want Mio to hate me,” Aku says, with far too much despair for such a small person.
“Aww, Aku, I’m sure he doesn’t hate you.” Ivan cards his fingers through Aku’s hair.
Aku moves in Ivan’s arms, and Ivan loosens his hold to let him. Aku reaches his hands around Ivan’s neck, pressing his wrists against Ivan’s scent glands—but they’re covered, and the silicone offers no emotional support or comfort.
“…Dada?”
Aku retracts his arms and stares at him with big, shiny eyes. His anguish is almost tangible. It’s absolutely heart-wrenching, and Ivan has never wished more in his life that he was okay.
“I’m sorry, baby, I can’t help you,” Ivan says.
Aku starts crying harder.
Ivan internally curses, and he hugs Aku closer to his chest as sobs wrack through Aku’s tiny body. Ivan pulls out his phone, clicking his first speed dial contact.
“Ivan?”
“Hi, Till, I’m so sorry, but could you leave early today?” Ivan says quietly. “Aku had a rough day, and he’s really dysregulated right now. He needs to scent you.”
“Why don’t you do it?” Till sounds confused.
“I can’t,” Ivan says.
“What? Why?”
“Please, just,”—come home— “come back, Till.”
There’s silence, and then a quiet, “Okay.”
—
Till arrives around ten minutes later.
Aku is still hiccupy and tearful, and he immediately clings onto Till when he leans down to pick Aku up out of Ivan’s arms. Aku burrows his face in the curve between Till’s neck and shoulder. Ivan can sense Aku’s relief almost instantly, and among all the other emotions—the grief, the guilt—he’s grateful for that.
Till carries Aku to his bedroom.
Once Aku is asleep, Till comes back out. Ivan can smell his scent in full. It feels like it’s been an eternity since Ivan last bathed in Till’s scent, and something deep and raw in Ivan instinctively reaches for Till. He has to force that impulse down.
Till sits down on the armchair next to the couch.
“Why couldn’t you do it?” he asks.
Ivan chooses his words carefully: “It wouldn’t have helped.”
Till raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
Ivan looks at Till with tired, tired eyes. Why doesn’t he understand? Why hasn’t he noticed? Why has he fallen out of lo—
Ivan sighs. “I’m just sad, okay?”
Till’s eyes soften. Ivan hates it. (Ivan wishes he could hate it.)
“Do you want to talk about it?” Till asks.
Ivan huffs—not quite bitter, but at the very least soaking in the cosmic irony of it all. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I do still care about you. You’re one of the most important people in my life.”
Not enough. But Ivan can’t say that.
Till waits a bit, and then adds, “We don’t have to.”
“I don’t know what there is to talk about,” Ivan says eventually.
“Well, you’re sad,” Till says. “What will you do if Aku needs you, and I’m not there?”
Some defensive part of Ivan recoils at that; it feels like an accusation. That somehow the issues arising from all of this are Ivan’s fault. (Ivan can’t remember the last time Till was there to scent Aku. He hadn’t had to be there, because Ivan had been there, but still: Aku is Till’s child, too. Shouldn’t they share the onus?)
“Do you think therapy would help?” Till asks, switching approaches.
Ivan blinks at Till, who is waiting expectantly.
Ivan understands himself a little too well for therapy to hold any practical appeal. He doesn’t need to talk to someone about his feelings. That won’t do anything except waste money and time. He just needs the feelings to go away.
But Ivan can’t say that.
“How long?” Ivan asks, ignoring Till’s question.
Till stares at the floor. “A little while.”
“How long is a ‘little while’?”
“…A couple months, maybe?” Till says. “I’ve just been thinking. About us. We made sense at the time. At the beginning, I mean.”
And we don’t now?
“We had grown up together, and the chemistry was there. And then Aku, of course. But recently, now that I’ve gotten back into the swing of things, I guess I can’t help wondering how much of it was just hormones, you know?”
Ivan doesn’t know. He doesn’t know at all.
“I love Aku more than anything. And I wouldn’t trade him for the world,” Till continues. “Sometimes I just wonder, if he hadn’t been in the picture, if we would’ve…”
Till trails off, and Ivan chooses not to prompt him to continue. He’s not sure he can handle the answer. Is that what Till wanted? For them to not have happened?
Does Till want more than this—more than him?
“I don’t know,” Till repeats, for the nth time in their conversation that evening.
Ivan’s gaze drops from Till’s forlorn face to the hardwood floor.
He’d never considered the possibility that their relationship had been a byproduct of pheromones and natural instinct. To Ivan, it had always felt so right. He had wanted this for longer than he could remember, since before he knew the words to verbalize it, from the very beginning of everything.
The realization that their everyday comfort for the past almost three decades was not mutual is… catastrophic.
Ivan feels vaguely nauseous.
“What do you want to do, then?” he asks. Despite knowing that the words are coming from his mouth, they still sound distant. Like someone else is speaking. As if everything is submerged under water.
“I don’t know.”
Ivan is rapidly becoming very, very tired of that phrase. The weariness gnaws at his bones.
“What do you need in order to know?” Ivan says.
Till is silent.
Ivan eventually stands up. He gets a change of clothes from the bedroom, and takes a shower. When he returns to the living room, Till is no longer there.
Ivan switches out his scent blockers, lies down on the couch, and closes his eyes.
—
Time passes.
—
Ivan takes care of Aku and Till. It seems that Aku hasn’t noticed any change in atmosphere between his parents—or at least, not enough to comment on it. (Though, there are daily questions about when Ivan’s scent will come back. Ivan can only smile reassuringly and pretend, for all of their sakes.)
Ivan makes breakfast for everyone. Till takes his to-go, like he always does when he’s working a morning shift.
They go about their days.
Ivan drops Aku off at school.
He goes to the office, comes back.
He picks up Aku.
He prepares dinner.
He hopes—dreads?—that Till will be back in time to eat with his family, but more often than not, his seat stays empty.
Though Ivan would never admit it, it’s a little bit more manageable when it’s just him and Aku. Aku is a yapping machine, and is perfectly capable of and satisfied with holding a mostly one-sided conversation. Some days, Ivan leaves a plate out for Till to reheat when he gets back from the hospital. Other times, he waits for Till to return and prepares the plate himself. (Ivan loves him. Ivan loves him. Ivan loves him.)
On the rare occasion that Till is present, if Aku isn’t rambling, they talk about small nothings: how work was that day, what their friends have going on, the weather. Ivan has gotten good at small talk. It had never been much of a conscious effort with Till, until now. Every word must be carefully curated.
Always, though, Till seems tired.
(Ivan loves him anyway.)
Aku makes it a little easier. He always—somehow, inadvertently, in his silly ways—manages to make Ivan smile.
—
“Dada!”
There’s a series of small, rapid footsteps, and then Aku comes racing into the kitchen.
“Aku!” Ivan replies, matching Aku’s enthusiasm, albeit at a slightly lower volume. Till is a heavy sleeper, but Ivan doesn’t want to risk it.
Aku points at his mouth. “Toof!”
Ivan kneels down, and upon closer inspection, he can indeed spot the tiny point of a new tooth poking in through Aku’s gums.
“Wow! You’re like a shark,” Ivan says.
Aku giggles and grins.
“Are you going to show mama when he wakes up?” Ivan asks.
Aku nods vigorously.
“Alright, just keep it down until then, yeah?” Ivan says, smiling softly. “He’s almost as grumpy as you when woken up.”
“Hey!”
Ivan laughs, boops Aku on the nose, and stands up. “Come on. Breakfast is almost ready.”
—
Ivan’s routine adapts. On the days when he’s working remote, and the work isn’t busy, he starts sleeping more. Ever since he stopped sleeping with Till, he can’t seem to get a good night’s rest. He’s always tired; physically, emotionally, mentally. Sometimes, he even zones out in the office, and his secretary politely coughs to get his attention.
He doesn’t remember how he functioned without Till, before.
The desperate ache fades into more of a background hum. Always there. Lingering in the shadows, but not violently intrusive.
Ivan gets used to the echoes, the ghosts. They follow him into his dreams.
—
Ivan wakes up in a haze. Someone is shoving him over.
“How long have you had these on?” a voice—Till—asks. “Shit, shit.”
Ivan can barely make out the words through the heavy fog.
“You idiot,” Till says.
He goes on, but the words blend together, fuzzy around the edges. Ivan’s eyelids droop.
Till smacks him across the face.
“Don’t you dare pass out on me, dumbass, you have to stay awake,” Till says. “Just a few more minutes until the paramedics get here, okay?”
Till pulls at the skin around Ivan’s eyes, like he can manually prevent Ivan from drifting off. Till’s face appears above him.
Through the blur, Ivan registers the green of Till’s eyes.
“Come on, Ivan, stay awake,” Till pleads.
Drops of warmth land on Ivan’s cheeks. It’s confusing—Ivan isn’t sad. He’s not crying. The train of thought is derailed by another wave of pain cracking through his skull, and everything goes dark.
—
In their sophomore year of university, Ivan had stopped wearing scent blockers.
He had chosen to attend the same school as Till—much to his parents’ dismay, but Anakt had offered him a full ride, so they couldn’t complain that much. And it was still a good, perfectly respectable school.
It was more than worth the heated debates over dinner, though, when it happened:
One day, Till invited himself over to Ivan’s dorm. That had not been an unusual occurrence; in fact, it happened more days than not. Ivan left his door unlocked specifically for that very reason, safety be damned. What was different about that day, however, is that when Till got there, Ivan was in the shower. And when Ivan came out, towel wrapped loosely around his waist, hair still dripping, he had no scent blockers on.
He had taken his mother’s words to heart, you see—he let his glands breathe, when Till wasn’t there.
Except, Till was there.
Sitting on Ivan’s bed, staring at Ivan with a look that Ivan had never seen before.
Ivan had started to apologize, immediately rushing to his desk and digging through the cluttered drawers to find a new pack of scent blockers, when delicate fingers pressed against the back of his neck.
Ivan had gone still, completely frozen.
No one, save for his parents and doctors, had ever touched his scent gland. Especially not Till.
Ivan had turned around, slowly, like sudden movement could break the spell, but once he was finally facing the other direction, Till was still there. He was standing right in front of Ivan. His pupils were so dilated his eyes almost appeared black.
On that day, Till kissed him.
—
Till had always been Ivan’s favorite scent. Smelling him—no, feeling him up close, skin to skin, emotions flowing between their bodies like water, was quite possibly Ivan’s paradise.
It’s the precise opposite of an out-of-body experience; it’s an inside-of-body, inside-of-heart experience. At the most vulnerable, unholy depths of your beings, you are rooted and strong and safe, together.
It’s the closest you can get to sharing souls.
—
Everything was technicolor.
Vivid.
Bright.
…And then muffled, again.
—
Ivan wakes up to a steady, slow beeping, and the sterile smell of plastic and bleached cotton and rubbing alcohol.
It’s suffocatingly dark until he remembers how to open his eyes. Even then, the world is blurry—just nondescript masses of greys and whites. It takes a moment for things to focus again, and the first thing Ivan notices is Till.
Asleep.
Sitting on a chair next to Ivan’s hospital bed, head rested in his arms next to Ivan’s legs. His breathing is slow and relaxed.
Ivan is too exhausted to have much of a reaction. Though, maybe that’s a good thing.
He fades out again.
—
The next time he comes to, Till is already awake. He notices Ivan’s stirring immediately, and rushes to Ivan’s side. He makes to grab Ivan’s hand, but stops just before their skin makes contact.
There’s something nostalgic and melancholy about Till’s hesitance; he hasn’t been afraid to touch Ivan since they first got together in college. It almost makes Ivan want to laugh. That urge starts and stops in his head, because his limbs still feel leaden.
Till clears his throat.
“Ivan? How are you feeling?” Till asks carefully.
Ivan shrugs.
“Okay,” Till says. “Okay.”
The second time seems more like Till trying to convince himself. Ivan watches as Till stands up and fetches a nurse. (An on-shift one. Till is a fully capable nurse, after all. Ivan feels a little guilty for making Till spend even more time in the hospital, outside of his already-long working hours.)
The nurse runs some checks on Ivan, shining a flashlight into his pupils, checking his reactivity, noting down his blood pressure, temperature, and oxygen levels. After saying that Ivan seems stable, and should be okay to leave once he feels ready, the nurse leaves and shuts the door.
Till returns to Ivan’s side.
“Do you need to sleep?” he asks.
Ivan shakes his head. He’s tired, but not in a sleepy way. More like… half-dead.
Till’s eyes start to water. Ivan braces himself. He stares at his hands, where the IV drips burrow into his skin, the point of puncture hidden by tape. If he focuses on the physicality of the sensation, maybe he can avoid feeling any emotions.
“Ivan, I’m so sorry,” Till says.
Ivan inhales. Exhales. The beeping of his monitor accelerates slightly.
“I know I haven’t been a good husband lately, and I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how much of a toll work had been taking on me, and misdirected the blame. It wasn’t you. I was just stuck in this cycle of stress and sleep deprivation, and I—I’ve been in love with you my entire life, Ivan,” Till says, swallowing roughly.
That is not what Ivan expected. His gaze, eyes wide, snaps back to Till’s face.
“I don’t know if it’s the pheromones, or the brain chemicals, or the stars in the fucking sky,” Till continues, “and I don’t care, because it’s always been you, Ivan. It will always be you.”
There is warmth on Ivan’s cheeks, and he only realizes when a tear drips onto his hand, and he glances down.
“I’m so sorry that it took almost losing you to realize,” Till says through tears. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Till raises his arms, close to Ivan’s face. Ivan can smell him. He craves him.
“Can I?” Till asks.
Ivan glances between Till’s face and wrists. He nods.
Till moves closer and presses his wrists against the back of Ivan’s neck, and any wavering doubts Ivan had are subdued by the enormity of the warmth and comfort and love that washes through him.
The position is like a loose hug, and Ivan slumps forward into the gap. He’s missed this—missed Till—so much. He starts crying harder, and has to wipe at his face to clear his vision a bit. He shakes with the force of it.
Till holds him through it.
—
Till reduces his hours at the hospital. He now has two days off per week: Saturdays, and Tuesdays. Ivan reassures him that their finances will be more than okay; their salaries combined are still plenty.
They talk about other things, too.
Ivan tells Till that it wasn’t intentional. He would never leave Till and Aku, and especially not like that. He just forgot to swap his scent blockers out. It was a terrible overlap of Ivan’s low spirits, bacterial buildup from continuous scent blocker usage, and a silicone seal left on a few hours too long—just enough to push everything over. It’s incredibly fortunate that Till got home when he did; Ivan’s doctor said it was one of the most severe cases of scent sickness that he’s personally seen. When Ivan thanked Till, Till slapped Ivan’s arm, muttering something about, “Like I’d ever let you die, dumbass.”
Till, on the other hand, explains his change of heart. Well, perhaps, recentering of heart. He tells Ivan that taking a break from work, even for just the brief time that Ivan was in the hospital, was eye opening. He wasn’t overwhelmed by anxiety and concern for his patients, and had time to sit with his emotions. He came back to himself. To Ivan. To Aku.
Apparently, it was going to the park with Aku that really solidified it. Aku found an owl pellet and excitedly turned to show it to—Ivan, who wasn’t there. Till had been almost as surprised to remember that Ivan wasn’t with them.
Ivan was his other half, and there was something so fundamentally wrong with him missing.
Till had broken down, crying. Aku had hugged him. (Ivan surges with pride.) They’d visited Ivan afterward, and Aku brought the owl pellet with him. Unfortunately, Ivan didn’t wake up until the next day.
But when Ivan finally arrives home, and Till goes to walk Aku home from school, and after a teary reunion with lots of hugs, after Aku gets his fill of Ivan’s weak but healing scent, after a few more tight embraces—Aku excitedly shows Ivan his owl pellet.
—
They develop a daily ritual of sorts, where Till comes home from work and cuddles up to Ivan on the couch, pressing their wrists together and just watching Aku do whatever Aku feels like doing that particular evening. Sometimes, Ivan can feel Till’s stress from the day slowly dissipate. Sometimes, Ivan’s own fatigue lifts as they simply hold hands. Sometimes, they just sit there, letting the mundanity of it all waft through them.
But the love is always there, soft. Warm.
It feels like home.