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Something is wrong with Till. A broken bone healed incorrectly. An organ splintered, a muscle tore, his lungs started improperly taking air in—something. Looking at Ivan leaves him unable to tear his gaze away. It's like someone has forced him to undergo surgery to keep Ivan trained in his line of sight or otherwise a bomb inside of his ribcage starts counting down, inevitably promising to blow him into smithereens.
Mizi begrudges that Ivan was the one to live and not Sua. She doesn't show it often, but it reflects nonetheless in her tone, the way her tongue curls around certain syllables. "Till, maybe it's the fact that—"
"Don't," Till says.
"You don't appreciate what you have," Mizi says. Till's jaw tightens. Her expression softens, sliding into something that guilty. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. Should I leave?"
Yes, Till thinks, wanting to hold Ivan's limp hand but fearing the temperature it might be if he does. He's always at a crossroads these days. Can't make a single fucking decision. Everything seems to paralyze him. Like he's a prey animal. One of those useless humans who get ground into paste and served on luxurious platters for uncouth aliens. This slab of meat under the human bicep is called the brachialis. Please enjoy!
Mizi stays for a moment longer before she stands up and squeezes his hand. It's warm. Her touch makes Till sway in his seat. He feels delirious. Feverish.
"You should get some rest," she says, then she exits the room, leaving him alone with a body.
Till doesn't. He sleeps in half-hour intervals, slumping uncomfortably in his chair. He wakes up in a cold sweat with a crick in his neck, rain and gunshots ringing in his ears. That's how he spends most of the time while Ivan sleeps. Some people come by to offer him sheet music, paper and pencils, gadgets that hurt his eyes to look at. People view them—the survivors of the stage—as some kind of other species. Something to be equal parts in awe and wary of.
Then, one day, Ivan wakes up.
The first time they have sex, it happens completely by accident. That's how Till justifies it in his head later, ready to blurt out that exact excuse if anyone asks.
Two weeks after Ivan wakes up from his medical coma, he is permitted to wash himself rather than receiving sponge baths from the nurse who is obviously infatuated with him. He slings a towel over his shoulder and says, "When was the last time you showered?"
"Fuck off," Till says.
Ivan stares. Till stares back for a few seconds before he cracks. He stands up, grabbing a towel of his own. "If you so much as turn your head in the stalls—"
"You'll do something drastic to me, I'm sure," Ivan says, dryly, then they head to the showers together.
Being allowed to shower on the rebel base is a strange experience. No hoses. No alien attendants to stroke their bodies from head to toe. No fancy nozzles, no concoctions tailored to their body type, and definitely no cameras intended to capture photos for stage merchandise. Till has already gotten used to it but Ivan is experiencing it for the first time.
"There's really no—?"
"None. Don't ask either. People will call you stuck-up and spoiled if you do."
"Fascinating," Ivan says, turning the knob. Water spurts out, creaking at first, then it gushes. Ivan strips with halting movements. Right. The shoulder injury.
"Move. I'll do it," Till blurts before he can think better of it.
Ivan freezes. "What do you mean? Do what? What are you doing?"
"Your shirt." It's a good thing Till hasn't turned on his tap. Someone yelled at him for that, too, something about wasting resources. He pads over to Ivan's stall, carefully tugging the hem of Ivan's shirt up his torso and over his head, maneuvering so that Ivan doesn't have to strain. Till thinks about kicking his shin before he decides it would be a bad idea. "Ivan. You need to move your arm."
After a long moment, Ivan does, staring hard at the ceiling. Till squints at it. It's smooth and beige, just like the tiles. Weirdo.
"You can shower now," Till says, handing the shirt back to Ivan.
Ivan gives a stiff nod. Could be a neck injury. Till should inform the medic, just in case. Till was in charge of moving Ivan's body to prevent atrophy, but he's never been particularly good at following instructions. He had taken notes and lost them three days in. He can't remember if he moved Ivan's neck around or not. Fuck.
Till's eyes slip down to where white bandages are wrapped tightly around Ivan's torso. It's similar to a concept for a photoshoot Ivan had ages ago, sometime after graduation and before the stage. The theme was something absurd, like the pain of pet-humans or vulnerability or whatever. In it, Ivan had been wrapped with the same kind of bandages, artfully concealing bits of his body—groin, chest, parts of his thighs. Everything else was bare. Ivan's expression, for once, wasn't overblown. He looked empty. Till had seen the posters everywhere and wanted to tear all of them down, but there were too many. The aliens loved the shoot. Revolutionary, they called it. Giving the pets a sense of relatability. Something they've never seen before.
The difference between the shoot and now, though, is muscle mass. Ivan has lost a lot of it. He didn't eat well before the stage—not many of them did, really. Add the wounds on top of that. It's no wonder that Ivan's bones are jutting out of his skin. He's still broader than Till, but that's not saying much.
Till's fingers itch. He lays his hand on the bandages. Ivan's back is firm. It's warm.
He doesn't realize Ivan isn't breathing until he speaks, voice notably strained. "Till," he says. "What are you doing?"
Pulling away is the right thing to do. It's the uncreepy, normal, not-Ivan thing to do. Instead, Till steps in closer. The water bounces off his toes.
"Till," Ivan says.
"Turn around," Till says.
When Ivan doesn't move, he slides his hand up to Ivan's uninjured shoulder and pulls, soft and careful. Ivan follows like a puppet. Till raises his eyes to Ivan's face. His pupils are blown. He looks down, examining the bare skin of Ivan's stomach, then he goes lower still to his groin. Ivan is hard.
"Are the bandages waterproof?" Till asks.
"What?" A short pause. "Yes. Why?"
In response, Till grabs Ivan's cock. He gives it a clinical stroke, but the reaction is immediate: Ivan folds over and leans against the side of the stall, shuddering. Fucking idiot. He's not supposed to do anything strenuous with his left side. Till tugs him in closer, makes him lean his head against Till's shoulder instead. Ivan's breath is hot against his neck. Till shivers.
"Till," Ivan says. "What are you—"
"Shut up," Till mutters, stroking his cock again. It's slippery and wet, but that's fine. He knows how to do this. He's done it dozens of times. It's easier when it's another human. The size is manageable. Familiar equipment. Till has jerked off a couple of times himself.
Has Ivan? It's difficult to say. Ivan doesn't seem like the type, too uptight and composed and rigid about anything that's not in his schedule, but whatever. Till is not going to think about this. He swipes his thumb across the head, watches precum ooze out of the slit.
"You're sensitive," Till notes.
Ivan lets out a broken laugh. "That's all you have to say?"
Till tightens his grip; satisfaction wells in him when it tears a moan out of Ivan's throat. Stroking at this angle is more uncomfortable than he thought. He picks up the pace, wrist cramping. "Do you want me to say it's big?"
"Compared to whose?"
"No one's. Nothing. Are you going to cum or what?"
"I don't understand," Ivan says, and it's the last thing he says before he breaks off into a loud moan that he buries in Till's shoulder, drooling into Till's shirt. Cum spurts out of his cock, gets all over Till's hands. The water beats down on the both of them, washing the mess away. Ivan's cock gives one last twitch before it goes soft. He remains irritatingly big. Till lets it go, then he steps backwards. Ivan lifts his head.
His cheeks are flushed. He looks almost rabid, eyes too bright.
"Is this something you always do in the showers, or am I special?" Ivan murmurs.
Till flushes. "It—it's nothing. Wash up. I'm done helping you." He scurries into his own stall and undresses quickly. A thought occurs to him when he's halfway done toweling off. "You're not using your injured side, right?"
There's a short pause. "What would you do if I was?"
Something lurches in his body that makes him stumble into Ivan's stall. He rips the curtain to the side. Ivan blinks at him, soap running down his temple.
Left arm down. Manipulative, lying asshole.
"I'm beginning to think you acquired a habit of voyeurism while I was indisposed," Ivan says, after a second.
"I'm going to tell that clingy nurse you were straining yourself," Till snaps.
"Mel? She's sweet."
Mel? Here Till was, thinking other people might've been taking advantage of Ivan when he was weak and injured. All the while Ivan's been cozying up. Dialing up the charm left and right. Fucking Mel?
"Screw you, Ivan," Till snarls, stomping away.
Till intends to stew in his anger until so much time has passed that he has forgotten why he was angry in the first place so he can awkwardly crawl back to Ivan or until Ivan flounces up to him like they never argued in the first place. Usual routine. However, the opportunity never arises. He makes it one hour in his room alone before images start invading his head: Ivan's body lying still on the stage, Ivan's blood soaking his feet, Ivan's empty gaze staring distantly at nothing. Till throws up his dinner and goes on a hunt.
Ivan is reading something about gadgets when Till crashes into his room. "Hello," Ivan says, confused by his presence.
"Move," Till says. Ivan blinks. Till gestures impatiently to the bed. "I'm going to sleep here."
Ivan nods as if this is a given. "You're going to explain yourself to Mel when she comes in."
"Why?" Till says, grabbing one of Ivan's pillows. Ivan grabs the other pillow and slides his legs out from under the blanket. Till narrows his eyes. "Ivan. Where are you going?"
"The floor, I assume."
"You're not doing that."
"What will I be doing, then?"
"Sleeping here. With me."
For a long moment, they stare at each other.
"Here," Ivan says, slowly. "To clarify, on the bed?"
"Yeah."
"This bed?"
"Yeah?"
"This bed, with the two of us," Ivan says. To demonstrate the width of it, he swings his legs back up and lies down. His stupid fucking big body. He's hogging about 75% of the space, but it's fine. Till has slept in worse places.
Irritated, Till slides into the bed, jamming himself under Ivan's armpit on the uninjured side. There is a very real risk that he might fall off in the middle of the night, but Ivan has always been a very still sleeper. It will only be Till's fault if he falls. If he closes his eyes and listens to the sound of Ivan's breathing, he can convince himself that they've magically turned into kids. They used to sleep together this way a long time ago, back before everything went wrong. Till turned around at the fence under the meteors and Ivan stopped coming after that. Till had been too—scared or guilty or mad or whatever—to ask why.
Till flips the blanket over himself and curls away from Ivan. "We fit. Turn the lights off before you sleep."
Ivan doesn't say anything. He doesn't move. There is not a single rustle of blankets. Then, finally: "Good night, Till."
The lights flick off not long after that.
Till doesn't fall off of the bed on the first night. The second night, rain thunders in his ears so loudly that he wakes up gasping for air, choking, and Ivan talks nonsense for an hour before they both fall back asleep. The third night is more of the same. By the fourth night, Till is exhausted and furious with himself. He says, "Fuck this. I'm not coming back."
"Because you don't sleep well here?"
"You know that's not why," Till mutters.
Ivan's expression goes from amused to irritated in an instant. His eyebrows smooth out. It's like he's flipped a switch. All bets are off with this Ivan. "The misplaced guilt was charming at first, but now it's irritating."
"It's irritating?"
"Believe it or not, I don't enjoy being the source of your endless misery."
So you got yourself shot four times instead? Till almost says. He bites it back. Ivan reads it in his face, though; his smile becomes warped and cruel. It's the look of a kid who's about to trample on something just to see what comes seeping out. Bones, blood, brain matter.
"If you want to be miserable, pick another reason," Ivan says. "I'm sure you have dozens. Comforting Mizi sounds ideal. She's been pretty lonely."
He can't punch Ivan. Till grinds his jaw and manages to say, "You're sick."
"No, you are. You're using me as an excuse."
They've never talked about it. The kiss. The choking. The sabotaged scores. He wakes up seeing Ivan's slack, sleeping face on the other pillow and the only thing that keeps him from throwing up, again, is the fact that he can feel Ivan's faint breath on his nose. Till means to surprise him into honesty. Shake him awake and ask him why. What was going on in his head? Does Ivan even know himself? Till needs to know.
Then Ivan wakes up and Till thinks, Well, I can't ask today. It doesn't seem like the right time.
Now, though, their unspoken conversation hangs in the air.
Ivan reaches out. Lays a hand on his neck. Till stops breathing. Ivan's expression morphs. He drops his hand and turns away. Till touches Ivan's neck, feeling his pulse skitter under his skin, dizzy. Shaky. He leans his head against Ivan's back and tries to remember how to breathe.
"There are various rebel camps scattered around the universe," Ivan says eventually.
Till manages a tiny nod. "Mizi said so."
"Do you think we should be in different ones?"
"No."
"Till."
"Shut up. We—" He needs to phrase this right. When Hyuna first met him, she told Mizi that Till looked like someone who had escaped from the stage. He asked her what that was supposed to mean. She said, You look flighty. Scared. You haven't really left the place yet. Till understood what she meant. The thing is, Ivan is the same, he just doesn't look like it. If Till was predisposed to run, Ivan was predisposed to bite and tear into the nearest living creature with his teeth, himself included. "We grew up together," is what Till settles on, lamely. "We can't be separated now."
Ivan barks out a laugh. "Suddenly you're sentimental?"
"Think about Mizi." Ivan doesn't respond. Till tries to elaborate. "She wouldn't want either of us to be far away. Right? After all we've gone through."
"Well," Ivan says, after a long moment, "if it's for Mizi."
By unspoken agreement, the nightly arrangement continues. Till's nightmares taper off three weeks in. Not long after that, they start having sex again. It is, as always, Ivan's fault.
"I don't think it's fair to blame me," Ivan says. Patented lie. He's the one who woke up with his dick pressing insistently against Till's ass. Prepping himself is too much work at fuck-all o'clock, not to mention the embarrassing concept of asking anyone for lube, which means Ivan would have to settle for a half-assed handjob. Till spends an undetermined amount of time trying to get Ivan off before he loses patience.
"Did you lose feeling in your dick in the past two weeks?" he demands. "Why aren't you done?"
"No one said you had to do this," Ivan says, breathy. The breathiness is clearly not an indicator of his orgasm; the motherfucker's been breathy since they started and Till's wrist is tired. He has a vague concern that his hand is going to smell like Ivan's dick at all times if he has to jerk it for a single minute longer. Desperate measures. Till huffs and tosses the blankets to the floor, shimmying down to Ivan's cock in short order.
The past few times they did this, Till hadn't gotten a good look. They've had inspections before, obviously; merchandise had to be examined. Till wasn't in the same room as Ivan—their serial numbers were too distant—but all the boys who did came out whispering about Ivan's specs. Broad, muscular, and big there too. At the time, Till resolutely refused to think about it.
Well, now he's thinking about it. It's huge up close. His tongue darts out to lick the precum beading at the head. The reaction from Ivan is instant. He groans and bucks his hips, fists curling in the sheets.
"Till," Ivan pants. "Get off. You don't like this."
"Who does," Till mutters, swallowing him in one go.
The gag reflex the aliens trained out of him doesn't make a reappearance, thankfully. It requires little effort to slip into the motions, bobbing his head, swallowing saliva. Ivan has a high body temperature. The sweat beading at the back of Till's neck is made worse by Ivan's hands gripping his head. Till is no good at blowjobs. Never was. The only thing he's good for is sitting there and taking it, so that's what he does, letting Ivan thrust his hips and fuck his face until the heat of his throat does the trick. Ivan cums in Till's mouth with a muffled groan, so quiet it's barely more than a sigh.
There are no tissues handy. The idea of having to change the sheets and explain their situation to whoever is in charge of laundry is an unpleasant prospect. Best to swallow. It goes down like protein sludge or something equally foul.
"You could've spat," Ivan says, studying the grimace on his face.
"Too messy." Till stands up to go wash his hands and brush his teeth again, but Ivan's hand on his wrist stops him. "What?"
"You're aroused," Ivan says. Till's face colors. He shifts and tries to tug the hem of his shirt lower, but it's no use. Oversized as it is, it can't hide the fact that Till's dick is hard.
"It's fine. It'll go away."
"I can help you take care of it."
"No," Till says instantly. Ivan's expression flickers. Okay, maybe that was too drastic. He tries rephrasing. "I mean, it's okay. I don't—I'm just going to—"
"You're going to sleep like that?"
"I'll take care of it in the bathroom," Till hisses, mortified.
"That doesn't seem fair."
Something about that sentence is off in a way that Till's too tired to parse out. Still, it's not…untrue.
"Don't touch me," Till says after a moment of indecision. "You can watch, I guess."
The strange expression on Ivan's face doesn't clear up, but he nods. "Okay."
This isn't Till's first time being watched, not even being watched by Ivan, but it is the first time that they've been alone without aliens or cameras or what have you making the experience a thousand times worse. Till settles on the bed and takes off his pants—too much of a hassle to keep them on. Then, his standard procedure: stroke, keep your eyes closed, don't think about anything.
The last part is an issue. Ivan's gaze is a physical weight pinning Till down. The sensitivity of his body reaches a peak. He's starting to get too loud with it, so he bites down on the collar of his shirt and jerks himself off desperately, willing this to end, willing Ivan to stop watching. Ivan doesn't.
At the last moment, Till opens his eyes and meets Ivan's eyes, dark and intensely focused, and it's that expression that makes Till cum with a tiny cry.
They keep having it. Sex, that is.
Ivan keeps getting aroused at random times and something possesses Till's body to get him off with his hands or mouth or, on one notable occasion, the bony flat board of his chest. Then Till gets aroused and Ivan watches him get off without laying a single hand on him. Sometimes watching Till get off makes Ivan aroused all over again and the cycle repeats for longer than is strictly necessary.
Those are the good days, though. On those days, Till goes to sleep feeling satisfied and light, not thinking of anything at all.
The issue with having so much sex so consistently is that the arousal doesn't stay contained to reasonable hours like the middle of the night. Sometimes, they come out of training and Till glances down to discover that a jog around base has given Ivan a boner. Like a fucking teenager.
He drags Ivan to the supply closet and slams the door closed behind them, shoving Ivan into a shelf. Supplies go tumbling down. Ivan laughs, delighted. He's always been crazy in the head about Till starting fights.
"You're ridiculous," Till snaps, dropping to his knees. The laughter stops. Fucking asshole. He pulls Ivan's pants down and blows him, relishing in the muted noises of Ivan's pleasure.
Ivan has gotten into the habit of rambling during sex. Today, he's talking about Till's skull. "I could study your brain for a thousand years and I still wouldn't understand how it works," he says. Till pops off his cock to ask what the fuck Ivan is talking about and it's just his luck that Ivan chooses that exact moment to spurt all over Till's face. "Sorry," Ivan pants. "I didn't mean to do that."
"Don't lie," Till groans, frantically shoving a hand down his pants. Something about this—being used by Ivan, feeling Ivan's cum on his face, hearing Ivan's insanity, whatever it is—has him leaning his head against Ivan's thigh and coming within three strokes.
Afterwards, Ivan wipes the cum off the floor with a rag. As for Till's face, he uses his hand, contemplating the spend on his palm.
"Whatever you're thinking, you better not," Till says, crinkling his nose.
"You can be so uncharitable sometimes," Ivan says, finally wiping it on the rag—and that's when the door slides open. Till's head whips up to meet Mizi's wide eyes.
Humiliation ices over his body in an instant. Bile presses at the back of his throat, though it's been a day or two since the last time he ate. Mizi runs away. Ivan's hand is on his arm. "Let go," Till chokes out or something like that, then Ivan grabs his face.
The urge to vomit intensifies. There is no rain, there are no gunshots, it's just Ivan gently rubbing at his face with a disinfectant wipe. Ivan lets him go after that, quiet voice saying words Till can't hear. Till gives him a vague nod and turns heel to chase after Mizi.
She's fast. Till has no stamina. He never did, but he's gotten worse since they arrived at base. Till's lungs are burning; he's out of shape. She's crying at a dead end. "I'm sorry," she's saying. "I'm happy for you, I am, it's just—it's so unfair—"
"It's not what you think," Till blurts. "I swear. Can you let me explain?"
"It didn't—? Till. I'm not an idiot."
"Please don't cry."
"I'm not crying," she says, voice thick. "God, this is embarrassing. It's okay, Till. I'm not— I'm happy for you. Honest."
"Can you look at me?"
Mizi, after a second, lifts her head. Her eyes are shining with tears. A weight crushes the air out of his lungs.
"It really isn't what it looks like," he tries.
"You don't have to lie."
"I'm serious. We have an agreement. An arrangement. We're comfortable with each other, that's all."
For some reason, that makes the tears spill over her cheeks. "Sua and I did too. It's okay."
Her and Sua were different. They had something sacred. Hallowed. Till knows that now. He shakes his head furiously. "No. Ivan and I don't…We don't feel that way about each other. We're not like you and Sua. Trust me."
"But you have sex," Mizi says. Till winces. "Doesn't that mean—?"
"It's not. It's…" He struggles to find the word for it. Comforting? Familiar? "Convenient," is what he settles on because it's true. It's convenient for his fucked up headspace that he can feel Ivan's body and the warmth of him and know that he isn't a corpse due to be chopped up and sold to the highest bidder. He's certain that Ivan finds it equally convenient to get himself off on a daily basis. "It's just something we both need."
"Oh," Mizi says. She slides to the floor, exhaling slowly. "Oh."
Carefully, he sits down next to her. "What's wrong?"
"I'm not your Provider. You don't need my approval."
"I know."
It's hard to put into words what Mizi is to him now. The part of him that loved her and craved her attention and wanted to make her smile is still inside him. But it's not as colorful and all-consuming. It's just faded, along with the rest of him.
"I don't know," Mizi says quietly. "I think I feel sad, but I'm also relieved. I don't know why and that's frustrating. Does that make sense?"
Till gets it, kind of. "Yeah, that makes sense."
"I feel mean."
"You could never be mean," he says. Mizi beams at him, leaning her head against his shoulder. It's the first time ever they've been so close. Till's face warms, but he lets her be, watching her fingers twist around and around a stray thread on her sleeve.
After a while, she says, "The arrangement between you two. Is it a secret?"
"I think so," Till says. They've never talked about it. They don't talk about anything of substance, really.
"Is Ivan nice to you? I mean, I know he's nice, but he seems a little different from how I knew him in Anakt Garden."
"I don't know if nice is the word for it."
A week ago, Till watched a group children watch their recorded match. He knew that it was famous for what people thought it represented. Rebellion, love, whatever.
"So courageous," a kid whispered, eyes fixated on Ivan's hands tightening around Till's throat.
Till had run away from that wing so fast, he barely felt his body move. He crashed into Ivan's room, half-animal. He lost his shoes at some point. Ivan's eyes flicked to his bare feet, then up to Till's face. He slowly lowered his book on the table and sat down on the bed.
"Do you need to touch me again?" Ivan asked. Till nodded.
Ivan let him touch until the nausea settled. It was only later that night, with Ivan sleeping beside him, that Till processed the whole interaction. Ivan's quiet obedience, the pliancy of his body, his empty expression.
After that, people stopped watching the video. He assumes Ivan had something to do with it. It's one of the many things Till doesn't ask him about.
"I see," Mizi says.
"Please don't make it a thing," Till says abruptly. Mizi removes her head from his shoulder to blink at him and he feels weirdly adrift without her weight. He picks at a blistering callus on his finger. "Me and Ivan, I mean. Like, don't tell other people about it."
"I wouldn't do that," Mizi says, hurt.
"I know. I know. Just. You know?"
Mizi nods. "Okay. If you say so, Till."
For lack of anything better to do, he walks her back to her room. She seems lost in thought, so he leaves her to it, offering a quiet, "Good night," when they part.
Then Mizi does something he never expected: she leans up and gives him a soft kiss on the forehead.
"Thanks, Till," she whispers, and smiles. "I missed talking to you. Let's see each other more, okay?"
Numbly, Till nods, and she vanishes into her room.
Till doesn't even remember how he gets to Ivan's room, but he certainly hears it when Ivan says, "Did the two of you have sex?"
Till snaps out of it. "What?"
"You and Mizi."
The rage hits his head so fast, Till stumbles when he crosses the threshold. "Say that again."
"Did you have sex with Mizi?" Ivan says. "I know you've always wanted to."
"What the fuck, Ivan?"
Ivan doesn't bat an eye at Till looming over him, shaking, because he has never once given a fuck about Till's feelings and he never will.
"My apologies. I should have asked if you kissed her. You like to take things slowly with the people you like. Tell me you at least used tongue."
Till's fist slams into Ivan's cheek before he can think twice. Ivan rolls with it. The retaliatory punch knocks Till back. The pain is blinding and immediate. Till crashes to the floor, tearing up. Ivan thumbs at the corner of his mouth.
"All this over a kiss?"
"Mizi thinks you're nice," Till manages to say. "She thinks—she thinks of you like you're some stand-up guy, and this is how you talk about her?"
"I don't believe I said anything untoward."
Till leaps up and tackles Ivan off the bed, sending them both crashing to the floor. The wrestling and grappling is familiar. What's different is the sensation. There is more weight to their punches. When Ivan slams him against the ground and pins an arm against Till's throat, it's a real struggle to breathe. Till kicks and flails, but it's no use. Ivan has him trapped.
Till snarls. "Let go!"
"Show me what you did," Ivan says, leaning down but not touching Till anywhere else, never touching him anywhere else. Till snaps, biting at Ivan's neck. Ivan laughs. "You did that to her? I'm surprised."
"I didn't do anything."
"But you wanted to, right? Let's not lie to each other. Tell me. When she had her head on your shoulder and cried about her dead girlfriend, you wanted to touch her, didn't you? You wanted to comfort her and say something like, Forget about her. Think about me. Give me a chance." Till gets an elbow free and he slams it into Ivan's jaw, but Ivan pins that arm too and leans in, whispering hot in Till's ear. "Or did you really not think of anything? You kept your thoughts pure and untainted for her? You must have used all your courage to clutch her hand and embrace her—"
"Shut up—"
"Mopping up her tears. Singing her that sweet little love song that you wrote back when you were a teenager. Do you have a recent composition? Do you write nowadays?"
"Shut up," Till chokes. He hasn't written jack shit since their round and Ivan knows it. They spend all fucking day together. What the hell is Ivan talking about? "You—stop it, Ivan, I mean it. What the hell is your pro—"
"Mizi thinks I'm benevolent, but you don't."
"You do this sort of shit to me and you expect me to think that you're a nice person?"
"You punched me first."
"You started it," Till yells, fully aware that he sounds like a child and unwilling to do anything about it. "Why are you so upset?"
It's the last sentence that makes Ivan freeze and loosen his grip. Till watches him warily, waiting for another ambush, but it doesn't come. Ivan's expression—his eyes are empty again.
Something curdles in Till's stomach.
"You're right," Ivan says, smoothly. It's his PR voice. His pet-human show voice. Trained dog. He stands up. "There's no reason for me to be upset, is there?"
Somehow, he has misstepped. Till doesn't know how, but he has.
"Ivan," Till says. He pushes himself to his feet, frowning. "I'm the one who should be pissed off."
"I'm not angry."
"Yes you are. If you wanna hit me again, just hit me, alright? Don't do this."
"I'm not going to hit you."
"Can you—" God, talking to Ivan is like talking to a programmed robot sometimes. "Can you talk like a normal person?"
Ivan smiles. What the fuck, Till thinks.
"You know what's funny," Ivan says. "I received lessons on how to talk like a normal person. While you and Mizi and Sua and our classmates were in supplementary classes for creative enrichment, learning how to dance and sing and play instruments, I went to different classes."
Till doesn't see where Ivan is going with this. "Okay?"
"I thought it was deeply unfair. How did it make sense that everyone got to participate in activities that would increase their chances of survival on the stage, but not me? What was the point of learning how to smile or talk like a normal person? Not to mention, I already practiced on my own. I attempted to smile and talk and behave normally. I thought it our teachers wanted to sabotage me, forcing me to waste time on unnecessary things, that even they wanted me to die. I may have been a star student who they fed and bathed and clothed, but at the end of the day, I was still vermin and I would always remain that way."
Till stays silent.
"The staff thought it was Unsha who taught me to act so abnormally. It wasn't. The aliens estimated my age at seven or eight years old when I came into his care. I've been this way for as long as I can remember. Don't you recall?"
Till's voice is hoarse. "Recall what?"
"When we were kids," Ivan says. "The first day we met, you called me weird."
Till remembers. Ivan was smaller and quieter than the rest of them, prone to staring at people for too long without blinking or moving. He had no sense of personal space. "Because you were."
"Really?"
"One time you stole my pencil and you tried to eat it when I asked you to give it back."
"I see. When you met Mizi, what was the first thing you said to her?"
"Mizi?" Till asks, thrown.
He can barely remember a time when Mizi wasn't around. She was the first one to enter the garden and he was somewhere around number three or four. He thought they were fated. A young boy and a young girl, just like the stories their teachers told them at night. He probably said she was pretty and she probably smiled at him and said thanks. It was a long time ago.
"Why are you asking me about this?"
Ivan studies Till for a long moment. His stare is throwing the rotation of the planet off-kilter. Till's center of gravity lurches.
"No reason," he says. "I'm going to get something to drink. Excuse me."
It's not just Till's imagination. After their fight, something shifts, although on the surface, nothing changes. They still share a bed, have sex, eat together, and spend every waking moment together, which doesn't go unnoticed. Dewey calls him a duckling.
"What's a duckling?"
"God, you pet humans make me fucking depressed," Dewey says, walking away without answering the question.
It grates at Till enough that he asks Hyuna for access to the database. She stares at him until he cracks and tells her why and she laughs so hard that he feels prickly and hot with humiliation. She coos. "You really are. Little duckling, huh?"
"I'm an adult," Till snaps.
"Sure," she says. She shows him the page on ducks, round, yellow creatures with too much fluff that went extinct back on Earth centuries ago. They look defenseless and naked. In the picture Hyuna shows him, there are a trail of ducklings following their mother.
Till scowls. Hyuna's grin widens like an alien who's just finished feasting on the bones of an inferior pet.
"See?" she says. "Identical."
Till tells Ivan about it later that night along with other tidbits of trivia from a book on human animals that Hyuna gives him. It's worn and tattered with some of the ink long rubbed off, but it's a wealth of knowledge he's never had. It feels like heresy. At Anakt Garden, this type of book would've been burned. Any pets caught with it would have been sent straight to the scrap pile. Holding the tome sends a thrill down his spine.
"I don't get why they called me that," Till says, caressing the picture. "Ducklings follow their Provider. You're not my Provider."
On the bed, Ivan makes a vague noise of agreement. "True. Providers don't have sex with their Creations. We're something else."
"Like what?"
"Does it matter? There's no need to put a name to it." Ivan offers him a bland, humorless smile. "Life is fleeting."
"What is that supposed to mean in this context?"
"I think the odds are high that we're going to die before we ever find a name for this. Maybe there used to be animals like us, but will we ever come across them? Be realistic, Till."
In response, Till throws the book at Ivan's feet and hurries out of the room, eyes stinging. Ivan and his fucking fatalism. What was Till expecting, honestly?
He spends the rest of the week locked inside the archives, flipping through page after page about Earth's species and fauna, but Ivan is right. Nothing seems similar. It's frustrating to know that Ivan's accuracy rate remains the same outside of the garden. Know-it-all asshole.
Till gives up the search, comforting himself by putting Ivan on an impromptu blowjob ban. Only subpar handjobs for him.
"Is this about the ducks?" Ivan asks, wiping up the cum on Till's thighs.
Till bites him on the ear, hard enough to leave a ring of his teeth on the shell. "No."
"As expected."
"I just said it wasn't."
"Everything you say is the opposite of what you mean but only when I'm involved."
"Cryptic asshole," Till mutters, curling under the blanket so that Ivan can't tease him for the way his cheeks have gone pink.
Time passes. The Duckling Saga, as Dewey dubs it with a cackle, becomes another topic to be ignored. Till could make a game out of it at this point: the forbidden phrases challenge. First to five gets an extra voucher for the mess hall.
The state of affairs between them is never good, but it never becomes catastrophic enough to warrant a guaranteed disaster event conversation. Planet-ruining. Gravity-warping. Black hole forming. Etcetera. The sex continues, the constant touches, arguing for appearances' sake, the push and pull, the biting, the petty theft, the teasing—all of it adds up to a routine that settles Till's nerves one day at a time.
It's still odd being outside and free. Like it's something that's happening to someone else who happens to be inhabiting his body, and when they leave, so too will the freedom and the experience of being outside. Any day now, Urak will knock on the door of the base and demand that Till return upon the pain of death. Barring that, he would order his cronies to drag Till back in by force. All of this will have been a brief but wonderful dream.
Mizi, ever the optimist, tries to convince him it's real. "If we don't have this, then we have nothing," she says. Well, maybe not so optimistic anymore. "The least we can do is learn to appreciate it. Getting a chance to live has to count for something."
"Right," Till says.
Armed with Mizi's nugget of wisdom, Till learns to live in the present. Philosophical shit. It becomes easier.
Then Ivan gets recruited for a mission and everything promptly goes to shit.
"What do you mean you're leaving?"
"The statement itself was explanatory." Ivan doesn't stop packing his shit long enough to even look at him, which fills Till with such a blind rage that he stomps over and grabs the bag, hurling its contents against the wall. Clothes go flying along with toiletries, weapons, and the like. Ivan looks at the mess, dragging his eyes towards Till with an impassive expression. "I was almost finished."
"Answer my question."
"It's safe, if that's what you were wondering about."
"Why do you have to go?"
"Because I'm the only one who knows how to work the locks," Ivan says, like Till is a very stupid child. "They lose their function with distance. Therefore, I have to show them how it's done. Do you understand now, or should I say it again more slowly?"
"But," Till says. He knows he sounds whiny and petulant, and—fuck it—he is. That still doesn't mean Ivan has to offer his neck on a silver platter. "Why do they have guns if they can't just shoot the doors? Why do you need to pick the locks? You don't need to go. Stop trying to insert yourself into everything."
Ivan smiles at that. "I'm not inserting myself into anything."
Till goes red at the insinuation. "Shut up. That's—you're not going to distract me with that shit."
"And here I thought I could slip away in the middle of the night while you were passed out after orgasm."
"Don't fuck with me. What the hell is wrong with you? Can't you take anything seriously?"
"You are the only person who thinks I don't take things seriously." Untrue—Hyuna thinks Ivan is full of it more often than Till does. Ivan corrects himself as soon as the thought occurs to him. "Well, one other person does, but my point still stands. I can always escape if disaster strikes."
There are four scars in the shape of starbursts on Ivan's body that beg to differ. "You know what your problem is," Till says, blood boiling at the memory.
"I can only choose a singular problem?"
"Stop saying stuff like that."
"You don't actually have the right to tell me what to do just because we happen to have a convenient sexual arrangement, Till." Till's mouth snaps shut. Ivan smiles. "What? Those were your words."
"Are you mad at me?" He cringes. "Fuck. Wait. No. I didn't mean it like that."
"How did you mean it, then?"
"You're treating me differently."
"Of course I'm treating you differently. We aren't under constant surveillance and I don't have incentive to be on my best behavior. Are you disappointed?"
"Like you were ever on your best behavior with me," Till snaps.
Asshole stealing his shit every year on his birthday, intruding on his personal space, asking to touch tongues, licking Till's spoons while Till went to the bathroom. Every damn day, Ivan would start something with him.
Ivan's fucking selective memory. Only remembering what he wants.
"You have no idea," Ivan says.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That's your problem. You're clueless. I've been on my best behavior with you for years, and—" Ivan cuts himself off, bending down to snatch the bag off the floor. Till frowns as Ivan shoves his clothes back in, not bothering to fold them. Uncharacteristic. As Ivan goes on, voice placid and measured, his movements become erratic. "You would run if I showed my hand. You did, actually. I'm happy to pretend that I'm a well-behaved pet if that's what puts you at ease, but I have to say that it's unbelievably grating that you call me an unruly mutt when all I do is lick your feet and jump at your command."
"That is not what you do," Till says, incredulous.
"Isn't it?" Ivan says. "I strip when you tell me to, I get you off when you're in the mood, I let you share my bed and give me the cold shoulder the next morning when you have a bad dream about a girl who will never love you back."
"I don't dream about Mizi," Till snarls.
"Yes, because she's innocent and pure-hearted. Unlike me."
"I never said that. Quit twisting my words."
"I'm not twisting anything." Till opens his mouth to argue and this is Ivan's last straw. He drops the bag, crosses the room in two long strides, and cups Till's face in his hands, grip so tight it's bruising. Till stops breathing. They stare at each other. Till's head spins. Ivan's eyes flicker down to his lips. Then, he leans in.
Panic seizes Till's body. The sound of rainwater floods his ears and dunks him under. Renders him blind. Freezes every last nerve. There is a loud animal wheezing out its death rattle. His wrists ache.
From a long distance away, a figure that resembles Ivan nods.
"That's what I thought," Ivan says, exiting the room with his bag.
When Till wakes up, Ivan is gone. In his absence is a note written in his neat script.
Mizi will be safe, is all it says.
Six hours after Ivan goes missing, Mizi walks into Till's room and takes off her shirt. There's a scratch on her cheek that has been plastered over. She swings a leg over his lap and settles her weight on his thighs. "You can touch me," she says graciously.
"I don't understand what's happening," Till says, and that's when he receives the second kiss of his life. She's experienced. Her tongue winds around his, arms slinging over his shoulders. She's soft everywhere with the wiry sturdiness of toned muscle beneath.
She breaks away when the lack of response is too obvious to ignore. "Are you okay, Till?"
He's going to pass out, maybe. Vomit. Have a heart attack and die. Black dots burst in his vision. "Mizi," he manages. "Can you—"
She tries to kiss him again. The third and fourth kiss are shorter, but this is all Till can handle. She goes tumbling onto the bed. Till fumbles for her shirt, haphazardly throwing it over her head.
"Is it my hair?" Mizi asks, under the blanket. Her head pokes out. Till sits back on the bed, hanging his head between his hands. She pats his back. "I can wear a wig if it would make you feel better."
"I don't understand why you're doing this."
"Ivan and I talked."
"Okay," Till says. He stands up. "Can you excuse me?"
"Are you coming back?"
"No," Till says, stumbling out of the room.
He almost makes it to Ivan's room, then the strength leaves his legs and he has to crawl the rest of the way, chest heaving so hard it feels like his lungs are trying to fighting to escape his body. Till cannot imagine how Mizi and Ivan's conversation might have gone, but it's clear that this attempt at sex was an inheritance of his will.
Mizi, my dear friend, Ivan might have said, suited in his tactical armor with a gun in his lap. I need you to do me a favor when I inevitably die on this fucking mission I said I wouldn't die on. You need to go have sex with Till. Can you do that? My presence will have left him in a sexless vacuum and he's an insatiable nymph who needs orgasms to remain sane. You can do that for me, right?
Since the ship returned without him, they must have confirmed that he was shot straight in the fucking head. Someone should've picked up a piece of his skull and handed it to Till as a souvenir. That way, Till could rest peacefully knowing that this was the end, that there was no such thing as hope or Ivan clawing his way back to the living world like the stubborn insect he was. Till picks himself up and heads to the command room. No one gives it to him. No one says anything. Fucking sons of bitches. Hyuna sighs and lays down her tablet. Louder, Till repeats himself: His body. Did you take anything at all?
"We don't know where he is," Hyuna says. "Dead, alive, in pieces. We don't know. He crushed his transmitter."
What the fuck do they know? Does anyone think Ivan is alive? Is anyone hoping for that? The brief image of Ivan strapped into the experimentation chair flashes in his head. Till staggers out of the room and vomits all over the bathroom floor, spending an indeterminate amount of time trying fumbling at his own chest to check for holes. He comes up with nothing—his hands press against sturdy bone. He is, against all odds, unharmed.
Till wonders how Ivan died. Was he stabbed? Shot? Did he lose a limb, get caught in the endless vacuum of space and choke to death? Did he die bloodless and pale? Did anyone close his eyes?
Ivan has to be dead. The alternative is so much worse.
"Be dead," a voice mutters. "You better be dead. You better not come back. You have to be dead."
"What an awful thing to say," Ivan's voice says.
Till, face wet, looks up. Ivan is leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed, looking a bit worse for wear. There is fresh gauze wrapped around his wrist. He has a new bruise on his cheek.
It's the kind of hallucination his mind could come up with. Till doesn't trust it at all.
"Tell me something I don't know," Till rasps.
Possible Hallucination Ivan contemplates the order. "I commandeered an alien ship to make my return," he says. "It was easier than I thought it would be. Do you want me to take off my shirt before or after we clean up the vomit?"
This fucking asshole. Infuriated, heartbroken, grieving with nowhere for the grief to go, Till stumbles into the shower. Ivan's footsteps follow him.
Ivan rubs soap over his body, hoses him down, scratching lazy circles in Till's scalp. Till drops his head onto Ivan's shoulder, hooking their fingers together.
Ivan has new calluses. The nail on his fourth finger is chipped. Could his mind make this up? Till doesn't know.
"You seem real," Till mumbles.
"Perhaps an adjustment period is needed," is the only thing Ivan says in response. Till falls into a fitful sleep for the first time in days, clinging tightly to Ivan's warm body.
Following Ivan's triumphant return, Till accompanies Ivan in and out of meetings, interrogations, and temporary stays in jail. Hyuna doesn't take lightly to betrayal, which is what she calls Ivan's stint in enemy territory.
Isaac appears on the morning of the second day of holding, supremely unimpressed by the way they're curled up on the mat together.
"I don't think I really support wrongful imprisonment," he says.
Till glowers, shifting so that Ivan, conked the fuck out with a line of drool trailing down his chin, is out of his view. "I'll commit a crime, then."
"Don't do that. Just come out. You can pine at the bars like a normal person."
"I'm not pining."
"Till. Just—get out of there. You're scaring off the guards."
"I'm scaring them off?"
"Yes, you. You've turned into a real nutcase. Don't look at me like that. You know it's true."
It might be true, but giving Isaac the satisfaction of admitting it is irritating. Till lets his silence speak for him, then he turns to lie back down on the mat. Ivan has lost weight in his face. One or two stone, maybe.
"Pet humans," Isaac mutters before his footsteps trudge away.
Ivan wakes not long after that, going from asleep to alert in one blink.
"You should have left," he says, voice hoarse with sleep.
Goddamn hypocrite. "I don't want to hear it from you."
The cell is dark. Jails don't get much in the way of light after the sun goes down on this planet. Till reaches out to trace what expression Ivan might be wearing. Business neutral, he decides.
"Till."
"What?"
Pain bites into the base of his thumb. Ivan's teeth. Till hisses and rears back to headbutt Ivan, which he immediately regrets after he remembers what a thick fucking skull Ivan has. Ivan is laughing, unfazed.
"You're such a jerk, you know that?" Till mutters, massaging the pain out of his thumb. He already knows it's going to leave marks. Damn leech.
Ivan says nothing in response. This is the last conversation they have before they're released.
In their absence, someone has cleaned up the mess. Ivan eyes the lamp on his bed stand with a discerning gaze. "Did you break the old one?"
Till has a distant recollection. He's just not sure if it was a light fixture or a window or Mizi's old glasses. Something. Likely the lamp. "Yeah," he says after a second. "What about it?"
"What about my lamp was so offensive to you?"
"It wasn't—"
"Was it the color?" Ivan asks, sounding genuinely curious. "The shape? The intensity of the light? The antiquated style?"
"It was an accident, okay?"
"I see. On that note, I've been given permission to relocate to another planet."
Till stares, stunned.
"Well, to be more accurate, I've been exiled," Ivan says.
"You what?" Till demands. What the fuck does that have to do with the lamp? Horror fills him. "Because I broke the lamp?"
"No. Because I broke rank, defied orders, compromised the safety of the mission and its members, and nearly revealed the location of our base to every hostile satellite within orbit."
"That doesn't mean you should get exiled."
"Exile was a kinder option. Hyuna initially suggested execution."
Till jumps to his feet, enraged. He makes it three steps to the door before Ivan grabs his hand and throws him back into bed. Ivan leans over him, eyes too wide and rabid.
"When will you go back to normal?" he asks, low. He snatches Till's face with one hand and pushes up Till's upper lip to expose his gums and teeth like a pet on auction. Till drools and tries to snap at Ivan's fingers, but Ivan's grip is unrelenting. "I expected that within six months, you would snap out of it. It's been eight. This is pathetic, even for you and your subpar mental resilience. What do I have to do? Going on the mission was a mistake, I see that now. Should I get shot again, or would that make things worse?"
Till sees red, slamming his knee into Ivan's gut. Ivan takes the blow without so much as a flinch. Till keeps at it until his knee strikes somewhere that loosens Ivan's grip. Ivan avoids the last kick, rolling away. Till spits in his face, pushing himself up to his elbows.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" he snarls.
Ivan wipes the spit off with his sleeve. "I asked you first. Everything about your behavior since we landed has been so uncharacteristic that for several weeks, I contemplated asking the medic to check for parasites. Deteriorating brain function. Perhaps you endured blunt force trauma mid-rescue. The second time we had sex was when I decided to do it. There was nothing wrong with you physically."
"Of course there's nothing wrong with—you checked?"
"Obviously. The medic said it was psychological. That made sense. You were always exceptionally frail in that regard. All this time has passed, and nothing I do seems to work, so—"
The pieces click into place. "You," Till says slowly, "got yourself exiled. On purpose."
"Yes."
"You stranded yourself in the vacuum of space without reinforcements—"
"The vacuum of space is an exaggeration," Ivan says. "We were on another planet."
"Vacuum of fucking space," Till says, louder. "You crushed your own transmitter and almost got yourself killed and made me—made me think—all because you thought that would—that it would fucking reset me?"
Delicately, Ivan says, "I wouldn't put it that way."
"Yes or fucking no," Till yells.
"Yes," Ivan says, and Till can't help it, he really can't, he has to squeeze his head between his hands and laugh and crouch on the floor because what the fuck. Seriously. What the fuck? He almost got Ivan killed not once, but twice? Both times because it was Ivan's last-ditch effort at making Till normal again? He wasn't normal for their sixth round, he knows that. He never could have imagined Ivan's reason might have been this.
And here Ivan is, doing the same shit over again.
Why not? It worked the first time.
Fuck. Fuck.
Ivan crouches to be at eye level. "Till. Calm down."
"You want me to calm down," he manages, on the verge of hysteria. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? What the fuck, Ivan?"
"I told you why. Why didn't you have sex with Mizi?"
"I'm going to strangle you. That would make me feel better. Crushing your windpipe with my own hands."
"Would it really?"
"Fuck you," Till says, choking on his snot. "You are so fucking annoying. What did you say to Mizi?"
"Are you not interested in her sexually? Repression can't be good for—"
"Ivan."
After a long pause, Ivan says, "I told her that on the off-chance that something went wrong on the mission and only she made it back, she needed to take care of you. She asked how."
"What did you say?"
"I told her that she could close her eyes and imagine whatever she wanted whilst riding you. I was certain you wouldn't mind."
"Go fuck yourself," Till says. Ivan nods, like this response was something he expected. That's the biggest problem with Ivan. Always thinking he knows everything. He doesn't. Asshole who needs to be put down a peg. Till wipes his face and glowers at Ivan. "You know what I was thinking about during our round?"
"You were miserable, heartbroken, and you wanted to be put down like an animal because Mizi was gone?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"I couldn't fucking believe that you stole another thing from me," Till says. Ivan has the audacity to laugh at that. Till's temper flares. "I'm serious, asshole. For the first time in this miserable goddamn life, I was ready. I was up against you, Mizi was gone, and if I killed you to survive, Luka would've been next and I probably would've died anyway. I would've killed you for nothing. Fucking miserable. I didn't want to do it. You stood a chance."
"Unlikely."
"Shut up. You could've—"
"I didn't want to win."
Till swallows. "If it was Sua," he tries.
"If Sua had been my opponent, I would've bid her farewell and hoped that she wouldn't begrudge me too much," Ivan says. Till's breath feels shaky in his ears. Ivan continues, merciless. "If I went up against Mizi, I wouldn't have spared her a second thought, perhaps aside from how it would affect our round. That would've been the worst case scenario, but there is not a single chance that in any universe, I would have gone on to win the competition as long as you were in the game. It would have been meaningless. Do you understand?"
It isn't the first time that Till has been thankful for Hyuna and Mizi for impeccable timing, but it might be the first time he's felt it with such intensity. He's winded. Dizzy. "Did you know?" he asks. "On the stage. Before the explosions. Did you think—" No need to answer that question, actually. Till already knows. "You thought you were going to die. And you kissed me."
"Knew."
"What?"
Ivan waves a dismissive hand. "I didn't think I was going to die. I knew."
His punch is reflexive, but weak. Till nails him once in the gut, then another time in the face. It's not like he needs it for anything, anyway.
"Did you even give a flying fuck about what I wanted?" Till asks. Ivan rubs at his cheek. Tears prick at his eyes again. "You're so selfish."
"As if you ever considered what placing your life in my hands would do to me."
"Don't pretend to be noble."
"Despite having perfect pitch and impeccable hearing, you seem to have a difficult time with comprehension," Ivan says. "Should I put it into plainer terms?"
"Don't you dare say you love me," Till snaps.
"Would it make you uncomfortable?"
"It's not how you feel."
"You're right," Ivan agrees, soft. "What I feel is much worse than that."
Like anything could be worse than love. Till tells him so, ears hot. Ivan laughs. Till is an expert in all areas of romance. He has written dozens of songs and drawn a thousand pictures in its name. He's spent all of his cognizant years surrounded by it, breathing it, living off it to keep going another day. Ivan knows nothing.
And yet, Till would've died for Mizi if she asked. Ivan did it without question. Sua, too. Maybe there was something in all of them that made them act this way. It's so simple that a child could figure it out.
"If there's a meteor shower again," Till says, "take me to go see it."
Ivan blinks as Till approaches him and pushes him down against the floor, unbuttoning his shirt. His hands settle on Till's hips. "Are you going to run away again this time?"
"Take me and find out," Till mutters, leaning in to initiate for the first time.