Work Text:
“Ivan, arms up,” Till grumbles. Ivan’s neck is craned at an awkward angle, his head wobbling right above Till’s shoulder as if it suddenly became too heavy to keep upright. His eyes are barely open and his lips too loose, his smile stretched too wide to resemble his usual ones.
When Till meanly pokes his side with a finger, Ivan lets out a muffled whine only a spoiled puppy could make, but finally complies and lazily raises his arms just enough so Till can take his shirt off. There’s a haze draped all over his eyes, which makes the red speckles swimming inside them look muddled. In other words: Ivan is fucking wasted.
The second Till manages to wriggle him out of the turtleneck he’d put on for their night out and to slip him into a more comfortable bed shirt, Ivan’s head immediately drops on his shoulder like somebody just cut the strings that kept it standing upright.
“I’m never letting you drink with Hyuna again,” Till sighs, looking at the state he’s in. Ivan mumbles something unintelligible in reply. Tilting his head to look at his face, Till finds Ivan all but drooling all over the sleeve of his favorite shirt. Till blinks. He refuses to find this adorable. Nope. Dear god, Ivan really fucked up his brain beyond repair.
“Come on,” Till strays his gaze from Ivan’s face lest he do something embarrassing like bite down on his cheeks, so prettily flushed from the alcohol. “Let’s get you to bed already.”
Ivan is unexpectedly compliant under his hands as he’s made lie down on the bed– By the time Till has him tucked under the covers, his gaze is droopy like that of somebody already halfway into Morpheus’ embrace.
Till snorts at the sight, but it also ignites in his chest an odd, warm feeling. If he had to put a name to it, maybe it would be akin to nostalgia.
It reminds him of all the times he’s put Ivan to bed before, in all the years the man has spent glued to his side. From the many sleepovers of their childhood, when Ivan always swore he wanted to stay up for the whole night and then would inevitably fall asleep first, to all the times in college that Till has had to force his roommate to leave his desk and go to bed already, since the idiot never learned to take care of himself properly. Some things never change, he reasons—even the way Ivan’s lips part ever so slightly when he’s falling asleep, letting his snaggletooth peek out.
Till can’t fight off the fond smile that blooms on his lips, instinctively tugging at all the muscles of his face. To quell all the jittery feelings that are jumping around in his stomach, he allows himself to drag a hand through Ivan’s soft, unruly hair a little—Ivan immediately leans into the touch, rubbing against his palm, and Till’s stupid heart does a jump.
Ivan mumbles something that’s probably a request for Till to join him in bed, and Till hums. “I’ll grab a thing from the kitchen and then go to sleep too, okay?”
He has to prepare a glass of water and some painkillers by Ivan’s bedside for tomorrow, because he just knows that waking up won’t be a pleasant experience for his poor head. Ah, speaking of waking up, Till has to prepare another thing before bed.
“Ivan, give me your phone, I have to set up your alarm for tomorrow,” he says. Ivan has always been extremely attached to his routine, and Till knows that accidentally sleeping in could ruin his mood for the whole damn day—so Till has learned to adjust.
Ivan drowsily searches in his pockets—it had been too much of a chore to get him to change out of his stuffy shirt, so Till had decided the pants were comfortable enough to sleep into for once and gave up on swapping them with pajamas—and finally finds his phone. He moves to hand it to Till, only to freeze just before the man can grab it, as if Ivan suddenly realized something.
“Wait,” Ivan says, his words slightly slurred. If Till were to pay more attention, he’d notice a tinge of panic in his tone. “You can’t have my phone.”
Huh?
“What do you mean I can’t have your phone?” Till asks, suspicious, his eyebrows furrowing. Ivan has never had any issues handing Till his phone– He even proudly showed him how a third of his storage was (and still is) taken up by a folder of pictures of him taken without Till noticing, once. So what the hell could be in there that has Ivan clutching his phone so protectively against his chest, as if he’s guarding the darkest of secrets?
“Why can’t I have your phone, Ivan?”
Till has no idea what face he’s making, but it makes Ivan drop his gaze on the sheets.
And, okay. Till is a normal guy, he’s well adjusted, he’s secure in his relationship and shit. He knows his boyfriend loves him, probably even a little too obsessively to be considered sane by the majority of the population—and that’s exactly the issue. What fucking crazy thing did Ivan pull this time that he can’t even show Till?
The options quickly pile up in his slightly tipsy and severely sleep deprived mind, each one worse than the other. Did Ivan create another secret social media account to post thirst edits of him? He wouldn’t dare. Right? Yeah, he totally would, wouldn’t he. No, fuck, maybe he actually went through with his stupid newest obsession and bought a thousand of those stupid rhinestone sticker sheets for bedazzling? Or is he hiding another pic of Till’s dick that he took while he was showering and doesn’t want to delete? Wait. What if Ivan bedazzled his dick?
“I can’t give you my phone… ‘Cause then you’ll find out about the engagement ring I bought for you. And all the pictures I took for Mizi. And all the plans I made in the groupchat…”
Hold on. Stop. Rewind. What?
Till blinks. Ivan’s head has fallen into his hands, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s drunk and unsteady or because he realized just what he let spill. The phone he was clutching so protectively a few seconds ago has been dropped on the bed—and Till is positively self-combusting. He can feel his heart beating in his fucking ears. He’s pretty sure his jaw has fallen and he can’t even bring himself to close his mouth again. What the fuck?
“And you can’t find out. Because then it’ll ruin… the surprise,” Ivan slurs out slowly as he raises his head again. There’s a dumb little smile sitting on his lips now. Till needs to kill him.
Ruin the surprise? Till wants to scream. Didn’t Ivan just spoil it himself?!
Till’s voice is merely a rattle as he utters out, “What do you mean, engagement ring?”
At that, Ivan’s face crumples in on itself– It’s akin to looking at a crushed flower. “Wait, you weren’t supposed to know,” he says, voice suddenly wet.
But because the last of Till’s functional braincells have apparently just resigned without prior notice and he also thinks he’s going to have a heart attack any second now, he dumbly blurts out, “What is it that I wasn't supposed to know?”
And that opens the floodgates. “That I was going to propose to you. That I… have wanted to do that since, ah. Probably since you came up to me for the first time as kids and told me I was making a weird face,” Ivan confesses, his bottom lip wobbling. His gaze is locked somewhere faraway, as if he’s not even conscious of what he’s letting spill out of the tight seams he usually fastens over his heart. It would be fascinating to witness him being so open, for once, if Till wasn’t actively going through cardiac arrest at the moment.
“I really want to eat you, Till, did you know that? I want to lick you all over and taste your blood and bite on your bones, just a little though. I want to keep waking up next to you every morning forever. Do you think you would eat me too if I asked nicely? I’ve always dreamed of making a house right under your ribs– You wouldn’t even notice it, I can make myself small and it wouldn’t bother you, I swear. And I– I really love your voice and the way your hands move when you play the guitar and how you look under the stage lights, and your sweat, and the way your teeth gleam when you smile and your energy after every show. And. And like. Do you know I love whenever you cook? You burn things but you always put so much effort and care in it and you– It’s like trying to look at the sun, sometimes. You’re so… blinding. I can’t seem to ever stop looking. I think I’d really die, if I ever did.” The slurring has gotten worse with every new sentence, yet every word strikes Till like an open slap on his face.
“I want all of this and so much more and it’s never enough and I’m so greedy. And I want it forever. But now I ruined it,” Ivan whines, his tone heartbroken as he drags the words. He sniffles, and it’s quite pathetic, and it shouldn’t feel like a terroristic attack against Till’s arteries, but he thinks that he’s going to genuinely have a stroke.
“I don’t even know if you’d want this. Me. Do you? Want me?” Ivan keeps rambling, and before Till can pick his jaw back up from the floor to answer, he says, “Would you even love me if I was a centipede?”
Pause. Till has experienced an array of emotions and whiplash over the course of the last like ten minutes that no human mind would be able to withstand, so forgive him for sounding so confused but— “Isn’t– Isn’t it supposed to be a worm?”
Ivan frowns. “But I like centipedes. Why would I be a worm?”
Ivan must be going insane. But Till must be insane too, because he finds himself actually arguing back. “Why would you be a centipede?”
“Because–” Ivan sobs. Fuck, is he actually crying now? “I like centipedes,” his voice cracks, and it’s genuinely so pathetic and stupid, and there’s actual tears gathering under Ivan’s lashes and Till suddenly feels like the worst scum on earth.
“Ivan– Ivan,” he sighs, rubbing his fists against his eyelids as if that could make his exhaustion go away. He lets out another loud sigh, and it honestly makes a quite depressing harmonization with Ivan’s sobs. What a fucking day.
Till drops his weight on the side of the bed, reaching for Ivan’s face and holding it as gently as he can inbetween his hands. He dries away all of Ivan’s tears with his thumb and tries to find his voice again. “We’ll– We’re talking about this tomorrow, okay? Don’t even think you can get off so easily after. Whatever this was. You insane weirdo.” His voice is shaking and so are his hands. He hopes Ivan is too drunk to notice.
Ivan sniffles but he nods, and despite the whirlwind of emotions that the man has put him through tonight Till can’t help himself and goes to kiss the point of his nose– Sue him for being weak to cuteness, whatever. “Just– Go to sleep now, ‘kay?”
The words and the touches seem to do their job alright, because it doesn’t take much longer for Ivan’s soft sobs to ease into the heavy breaths that betray he’s fallen asleep.
After checking him over to make sure everything is okay, Till sneaks out of the bedroom. The second he closes the door behind himself, Till drops to his knees right on the floor. He subconsciously grabs his face between his hands, and finds it so hot that he could be bursting into flames any moment now. What the fuck?!
Ivan has been planning a proposal? He wants to propose? To Till, of all people? He wants to scream but he can’t, because it’s fuckass o’clock in the night and they have neighbors and the whole reason for him freaking out is literally dead asleep right behind the door, and Till feels like he’s actively exploding.
Leave it to fucking Ivan, to get wasted and spill the beans on his most guarded secret and then leave Till to deal with the aftermath as he peacefully fucks off into dreamland. How is Till even supposed to sleep at all, now?
He groans. Loudly. He deserves at least that, since his stupid fucking future husband just left him all alone in such a mess of his feelings.
God, he should've recorded everything Ivan said. At least he could’ve cheered himself up with the knowledge he had at least gotten away with some future blackmail material. (Maybe he could've shown it at the ceremony and witnessed as Ivan’s ears gradually turned more and more red.)
Dragging a hand down his chest as if it would do anything to help to calm his racing heart, Till finds that he's smiling like an idiot. Fuck, he's doomed, isn't he? Though, to be honest, he’s been doomed for a long time already.
In the darkness that coats their apartment, Till stumbles into the kitchen and blindly searches for his phone. Once he finds it, he makes sure to set the alarm for tomorrow himself.
After all, he has to wake up before Ivan can remember everything that happened tonight and decide he fucked up and freaked Till out or whatever and try to run for it and or throw himself down the window. Once he has Ivan backed against a wall, Till will make sure he regrets all the heart attacks he put him through in the span of a single hour. And then– Till is going to tell him that of course he's going to love him even as a centipede. Forever, if he'll actually have the guts to ask. Idiot.