WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TITLE?!
anyways. this is a wip. might post on ao3 idk depends on the weather
also this is an ivantill fic. if u didnt read the tags. which. yeah tags are important idk what to say to follow that up
summary:
Basically, Till draws Mizi until he can't.
Which is weird, because he's liked her for, well, forever.
...well. Until he doesn't, and he starts to draw Ivan instead.
(p.s this is a teensy weensy bit long)
(p.p.s this is unbetaed because my beta's computer broke...rip beta)
(p.p.p.s literally most of this fic is written either on my notes app on my phone or my google docs on my laptop in the dead of night.)
Till’s muse is Mizi. She has always been pencil lines on Till’s sketchbooks, pink paint and warm colors on his canvas.
Till’s muse is Mizi, so he doesn’t quite understand it when her image starts to get foggy and gray under the eraser’s influence, over and over again, until he’s just staring at a blank page once more.
He doesn’t understand—Mizi is still just as pretty as she was a few months ago, with her cotton candy hair and lemon green eyes. She is still just as bright, lighting up wherever she walks. So why is it impossible to draw her all of a sudden?
Till has always liked Mizi, so it can’t be that he somehow just—stopped, can it?
It’s just an art block. That’s all there is to it, really. Perhaps it is not a Mizi problem (not that it ever is—Mizi isn’t to be blamed for his mistakes, obviously) but simply a “my pencils and paints refuse to listen to me and I am starting to hate art once more” problem.
Still, Till hunches over his sketchbook for another two hours.
He ends up with a wrinkled page and a drawing that looks like slop.
He rips the paper out of the book’s binding. The other side didn’t really have anything of any value either—it was a drawing of a girl that was supposed to be Mizi, it seemed, but her face was all wrong.
Till groans.
“Till, are you done yet?” Ivan laments from somewhere behind him. His chin hovers over Till’s shoulder, who flinches at his voice. He shouldn’t be surprised at this point. Ivan haunts his every presence.
“What do you want?” Till focuses on crumpling the paper into a ball and attempting to throw it into the recycling bin on the opposite wall. He misses.
Ivan hums infuriatingly, flashing his stupid perfect all white teeth smile. The warmth near Till’s shoulder subsides as Ivan hops over to the discarded paper ball and returns back to Till’s side. Till leans back on his chair until all he can see is Ivan’s unfairly perfect face.
Ivan unfolds the ball until it’s just a wrinkled piece of paper. “Is this supposed to be Mizi?”
“Shut up,” Till screeches, hands going for the paper. He makes a wild grab for the (can he even consider it a drawing, with how horrible it is?) thing, but Ivan stretches out one hand to impede his path.
“It’s good,” Ivan says, tone blank and devoid of any emotion. “All your drawings are beautiful, you know…even this gray blob over here.”
Ivan taps the other side of the paper while saying the last part.
“Those are eraser marks,” Till deadpan, but his face still goes red at the praise, even if Ivan is toying with him.
Ivan shrugs. “Still better than what I could do.”
“Obviously. A rabbit could draw better than you with their eyes closed and feet bound.” Till rolls his eyes and slumps back in his seat. Ivan nearly lands in his lap, but Till pushes him to the side just in time.
He still lands right next to him, though, just like he always has since they were kids.
They both barely fit in the constricting chair, especially with Ivan’s build. Till wonders if he would be forgiven by their neighbors if he started to screech uncontrollably at Ivan until he fucked off to annoy someone else.
“I bought you new art supplies,” Ivan says.
Nevermind. Till supposes Ivan can stay a bit longer, just as he always has.
“Where are they, then?” Till grumbles.
“You wanna guess?” Ivan grins again, cheek smushed into Till’s shoulder. Almost his entire lower half is off the chair so he is able to accomplish that feat.
Till shoves Ivan as far away as he possibly can in their enclosed space. Ivan slides back up in the seat, sitting properly, now. He takes back his earlier statement. “Fuck off.”
Ivan has the audacity to giggle as he swivels the chair around.
“Stop that,” Till commands. Ivan keeps spinning. Till is reminded of the time he was sentenced to the teacup ride with the guy at a festival, once. After Ivan decided to spin them at hell’s pace, (and after Till screeched loud enough for the next town over to hear) Till threw up on Ivan’s shoes.
Ivan stops spinning after a few minutes of Till staring at the back of his eyelids. Ivan brushes Till’s bangs behind his ear, his touch burning him wherever it traces.
“Are you okay?” Ivan asks, his voice soft.
Till contemplates turning away. Nodding yes, claiming his gift, and tossing Ivan out.
“I can’t draw her,” Till clarifies, “Mizi.”
If he were to push Ivan away, he would only come chasing after him harder until Till was backed into a corner.
It’s annoying, but it’s nice to have someone care that much about him.
“It’s so fucking infuriating. No matter what I do, I just can’t draw her anymore. It doesn’t make sense,” Till says.
Ivan hums, picking at Till’s piercings. “Have you tried to draw something else, for a change?”
“I’ve always drawn Mizi,” Till says in lieu of a response.
“And maybe that’s why you can’t right now,” Ivan reasons.
When Till doesn’t say anything, Ivan chomps down on his ear.
Till screeches when Ivan doesn’t move his mouth, but Ivan’s words bounce around in his mind.
No. He shouldn’t need to draw anyone else, though. He’s always loved Mizi, hasn’t he? So as long as he loves her, he doesn’t need to look into it. It’s a temporary thing, this art block.
“Sua and I are dating!” Mizi announces.
They’re at their local diner, which has become their designated hangout spot since freshman year. Mizi and Sua sit on one side, while Ivan, Till, and Hyuna and Luka sit on the other. (Sua had forcibly squished them into the space.)
“Congrats! I assume Mizi told you!” Ivan chirps, clapping his hands together twice.
“It was about time!” Hyuna laughs heartily, grinning.
“Can we move now,” Luka complains.
“Nice,” Till says, offering a thumbs up.
He likes Mizi, right? So he’s supposed to be jealous, because he likes her. There’s supposed to be bile rising up his throat right about now and he’s supposed to feel horrible, because Mizi is his one and only just as she is to Sua.
But there isn’t.
He moves back to where he usually sits beside Mizi on the inside, near the wall. Because Sua refuses to let Ivan squish her off the edge with “how fat he is” (to which Ivan responds with “how fat my ass is, you mean”) Ivan sits right across from Till. (“I must be as close to you as possible,” Ivan claims, grinning.)
He and Ivan engage in their usual foot-war while conversation surrounds them as they order. Ivan always gets the sweetest milk tea possible with buttermilk pancakes—which he gets even now, Till notes, even though it’s three in the goddamn afternoon.
Ivan hooks his foot around Till’s knee and slams it into the wall, keeping it there even as Till thrashes his leg. When he looks up to glare at Ivan angrily, Ivan’s gaze is already locked onto him.
It should be creepy, with how often Ivan stares.
Till can’t seem to find it anything but comforting. It would be weirder if Ivan stopped or simply just didn’t.
“You okay?” Even amongst the louder chatter, Till can still hear Ivan’s whisper.
“Of course I am.” Till knocks his knee against Ivan’s foot, escaping from the prison. “Why wouldn’t I be, dumbass?”
Ivan’s gaze traces the outline of his eyes and nose and mouth and reaches deeper to try to wrench an answer out of Till.
What can Till say, though? “Hey, so you were actually kind of right and this crush that’s been my anchor to everything, this unchanging thing I could always rely on, actually changed and I don’t know why or when and I didn’t even notice, somehow? Which is really weird because you also didn’t notice and you know me better than I do so if you did notice why the fuck didn’t you tell me?? And honestly I’m probably on the edge of a breakdown or something but I’m just gonna focus on how your leg hits mine, thanks for always being here.”
Like hell he’d ever say that.
Ivan doesn’t move his eyes away, but he takes his right sneaker off and brushes Till’s thigh with his right foot and he shrieks so loudly that if their group had not been here at this abnormal time and had not come here every week for the past year or so, they would have been permanently banned.
Ivan stacks his foot on Till’s thigh as Sua glares at them. Luka is still too busy staring into Hyuna’s soul, or something along those lines, to care at this moment.
“Can you quiet down?” Sua snarks. Mizi giggles.
Their usual waiter, Acorn, is actually an acquaintance of Till’s (and therefore one of Ivan’s friends, and therefore Mizi knows them, and therefore Sua knows of them, and therefore Hyuna and Luka know him too. But also, Luka is some kind of all-knowing sociopath who knows everything about everyone, so there’s also that) who used to have a crush on Sua, according to Luka, but is now dating a guy named Marty. (Who is also a friend of Ivan’s, so by extension, also an acquaintance of Till’s. For some reason, everyone Ivan knows might as well know Till for how much Ivan seems to talk about him. Most of them know Mizi and Sua and some of them know Luka and Hyuna, but Till is convinced that when Ivan introduces himself, he always includes Till because without fail, every single person who has even just talked to Ivan seems to know about him, too.)
Acorn hands them their drinks. A coffee for Till, Ivan’s deadly sugar concoction, Luka’s lemon water, Hyuna’s iced tea, Sua’s herbal tea, and Mizi’s milk tea. Till just realizes Mizi’s ordered the same thing as Ivan, just without pearls. He wonders how he didn’t notice that earlier.
Ivan’s foot digs deeper into his thigh, suddenly, and Till refrains from the urge to empty his coffee into Ivan’s face. He recognizes Acorn chatting mindlessly in the background with Mizi as he angrily hisses, “What do you want?”
“I can’t believe you drink your coffee like that,” Ivan says, grinning.
“You literally always say this.” Till glares at Ivan, “it’s not my fault you’re a fatass who can consume three times the amount of sugar compared to the average human.”
Ivan reaches over and pinches his cheek.
Till keeps glaring. Ivan sticks his tongue out. Till seizes Ivan’s hand and pushes it back towards him before taking a sip of coffee, finally refocusing on his surroundings, where Acorn is making conversation with Mizi, now.
“Ah, that reminds me!” Acorn exclaims. “Mizi, why didn’t you ask Ivan or Till to help you confess to Sua back then, since they also know her?”
“Huh?” Mizi blinks, “Ivan helped me a little, but why would I do that?”
The coffee is good, just as it always is. Till wonders if he should just drink it all in one go. Maybe in two goes?
“Because they’re dating, of course!” Acorn says.
Till, mid-swallow, chokes on his coffee, and slams it back down on the table. Horrible, wheezing coughs take over his body as the liquid goes down the wrong pipe. He leans over and bonks his head on the table as everything around him goes static as he focuses on trying to eject the drink from his lungs.
Finally, he looks up, coughing stopped, to see Acorn blinking at them owlishly. Hyuna is cackling, Sua looks murderous, Luka looks amused, and Mizi’s desperately trying to hold on to the remnants of her poker face. Till refuses to look at Ivan.
“You’d think,” Hyuna says after she’s done.
“No,” Till says. “I’m, uh, straight.”
He’s straight because he likes Mizi. Or liked Mizi. Whatever. Same thing. Or something. He doesn’t really know and he’s kind of too tired to find out at this particular moment in time. He dumps the rest of the coffee down his throat while he still can and pointedly does not look at the man across from him.
“Awwww, Till, do you not love me?” Ivan’s voice says. Till literally feels a vein bulge. “C’mon, Till, give your boyfriend a kiss-”
It’s so obviously fake–a statement made to piss him off. Does Ivan really think Till can’t tell? For fuck’s sake, he’s known this guy for more than a decade.
“Shut your mouth, Ivan.” Till, once again, does not look at the guy in question. He also pointedly ignores the sudden warmth in his cheeks and forcibly wills it to go down. It doesn’t work, so he just prays no one notices. He refocuses his attention on Acorn.
The guy is gaping. His expression is twisted into one of utmost confusion before he recenters his face. “Huh,” Acorn says, quietly, and then, “HUH?! BUT-”
Acorn stops. He looks at Ivan, whose gaze is locked onto Till’s–Till can feel it through the very marrow of his bones. He once again fights every cell and atom in his body so it won’t turn to face him. He feels Ivan’s foot kick his ankle.
Acorn looks at Till, who is distracting himself by staring into Acorn’s soul. He looks at Ivan again. Sua looks like she wants to commit suicide. Mizi is running her hands through Sua’s hair, also looking at Ivan. Hyuna is still giggling at Acorn’s expression. Luka appears to be chugging his water.
“Cool,” Acorn says, running out of words to say. Why the fuck is Ivan still looking at him. For once in your stupid life, Ivan, Till thinks to himself, can you stop LOOKING AT ME YOU FUCKWAD??????
Ivan slams his heel into Till’s foot. It hurts like hell. It reminds him of their school days, when they’d get into fights on a grassy lawn, rolling around in the grass.
Till slams his foot directly onto Ivan’s toes. He doubts it hurts that much. Ivan always won their fights.
It’s a stupid statement made by Acorn, by all people, so it’s really not anything. They go on, they eat their food, they talk and they congratulate Mizi and Sua once again, and everyone’s happy. Everyone’s content.
Till, for some stupid reason, can’t get what Acorn said out of his mind. It sticks to the back of his head on his way home with Ivan, it writes itself on his walls and ceiling as he tries to sleep.
He and Ivan share an apartment just a bit off campus. It’s nice. It’s a comfortable size, the shared rent is fine (especially with Ivan and Sua’s nepo baby money; it took all summer to convince Till to leech off of their parents’ money, too) and it’s familiar, with Ivan inside. Whoever wakes up first, which is usually Ivan, cooks breakfast, but sometimes Till pulls an all-nighter and Ivan still cooks. Either Till cooks lunch or they go to the diner with their friends, and Ivan and Till swap turns cooking dinner or ordering takeout.
“Till,” Ivan says while unlocking the door to their apartment, “You’re okay?”
“Why do you keep asking me that, dumbass?” Till asks, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, don’t you like Mizi? And now she’s dating Sua?” Ivan says.
“Which you knew would happen,” Till drawls, “I’m fine.”
Ivan’s silent as they walk into their apartment.
Till, for the fifth time in three minutes, throws a pillow at the wall.
He needs to draw.
Till fumbles out of bed. Ivan and him are roommates–he thinks that even if they weren’t, Ivan would still find ways to terrorize him day to day. He hopes Ivan’s asleep–he would get barrelled by questions if he wasn’t with incessant poking, and Till really doesn’t want to do that.
He reaches around for the light at his desk, then takes out his sketchbook. Jagged edges of paper protrude from the spine from where he’s ripped out failures of drawings. He’s nearly done with the sketchbook, now–he’s on his final pages. Nearly a third of it is ripped out from the past few months of unsuccessful portraits of Mizi. There’s a few mindless sketches here and there on some of the pages near the middle of the sketchbook, while the beginning is also filled with drawings of Mizi. The rest of the portraits of her are okay at best. They’re her, yeah, he supposes, but they hold not nearly enough soul. They’re simply harsh pencil lines.
Some of them barely look like her. Maybe this is when he stopped liking her. He wonders how he didn’t notice, why he clung onto this illusion even so long after it ended.
“Have you tried to draw something else, for a change?”
Till doesn’t want to think about it, so he doesn’t. He just picks up his HB mechanical pencil and draws. He fills up the remaining sketchbook pages mindlessly. He climbs back into bed as soon as he feels his eyelids droop.
When he wakes up, it’s around noon. His sketchbook is on his desk.
Pictures of Ivan decorate his last pages. They’re anything far from perfect, but they’re the best he’s done in ages. He even got his smile right–the one that made Ivan’s eyes crease and made him look unbelievably fond.
Till doesn’t think about it yet.
He adds the red to Ivan’s eyes and fixes his hair. He adds his snaggletooth.
He dates the pages. He stuffs the sketchbook into the drawer of completed ones. He reaches out and rips off the plastic from a new one Ivan bought him a couple months before. Till places it on his desk and leaves it there for the time being.
There’s a note on the fridge from Ivan, to Till. He went grocery shopping since there was nothing in the fridge, and would make sure he purchased the spicy instant ramen noodles Till liked.
Till stares at the note and the little kaomoji next to Ivan’s name for an embarrassing amount of time. He wonders what’s wrong with him as he leaves the note taped to the fridge.
Ivan was right, Till thinks as he glances around the refrigerator. It’s mostly empty except for a few leftovers and fruits and a half-finished carton of milk. He uses the last of their eggs to make scrambled ones, and eyes the empty chair across from him.
“Because they’re dating, of course!”
Till furrows his brows. Why is he still thinking about that? Well, more accurately, why had Acorn thought that? Till wasn’t uncomfortable with it, or anything, he guessed. It’s not like he wanted it.
To date Ivan. Till wondered how that felt.
Well, he’d be a little annoying shit. He’d follow him around anywhere, cling onto his clothes and nip on his skin and piss him off. And he’d buy him random annoyingly thoughtful gifts all the time. And he’d steal his stuff and send him all over the place. Just like usual.
Wouldn’t Ivan show affection, too, though? Wouldn’t he sneak in kisses just because he could? Latch onto him in sleep? Tell him he loved him whenever possible?
Till’s thinking too much about this.
It’s because he pities Ivan’s future boyfriend. Yeah. That’s it. Really, only Till can stand him at this point. No one else possibly could with how little time they spent with him compared to Till.
Yeah. Till pities them.
He does. That’s it.
Why the fuck did he pick an art major, Till thinks as he stares at the foreboding assignment in front of him.
He should have dropped out as soon as he was forced to draw the same subject over and over again. His Mizi-Art-Block had started shortly after he entered college, he presumed, so he chose a guitar instead. His fingers ached for days.
After careful consideration and a deep, long dive of his memories, the Mizi-Art-Block started in his freshman year of college. He supposed this was about the time he started liking the idea of Mizi more than the real Mizi. (Which brought up the question of did he ever like the real Mizi, which he didn’t want to think about.) However, his drawings were mostly unaffected–he just wouldn’t want to draw her a hundred times, at that point.
(High School Till would, but High School Till was a bit crazy in the head.)
He was in his sophomore year, so sometime over the course of the summer–probably when he was hanging out with Ivan (hey, actually, Ivan and him spent that summer almost always together–that was kind of weird, wasn’t it…nah, that’s just Ivan, Till thought), his crush on Mizi faded.
Anyways, the assignment.
It was a charcoal animation.
He started the assignment right after having dinner with Ivan, so at around seven or eight.
It was two in the morning.
He had two seconds of animation and seven frames done.
Just as he finishes Frame #8, Ivan bursts into his room. The door opens to reveal an amazing scent drafting in from the kitchen.
Till must stay strong.
“Hi, Till,” Ivan says through a mouthful of instant ramen noodles. They’re Till’s favorite brand.
He’s going to murder Ivan in his sleep.
“What,” Till responds, cranky.
“Say aaah,” Ivan’s suddenly five inches away from him and raising chopsticks in front of him. Till turns away and adds Frame #8 to the animation.
He glances at Ivan. His hair is messed up and he’s grinning at Till. His lips look soft. He wonders how it would feel like to kiss him.
(What the fuck. Is that thought from sleep fatigue? Did the Mizi-Art-Block affect his brain this much?)
His lips part unconsciously.
Ivan’s chopsticks shoot into his now forced open mouth as he guffaws. Flavor explodes on his tongue. Ramen is stuck on his chin after Ivan’s assault. He tries his best to glare, but he hasn’t had this brand in a long while, and he’s kind of hungry, so all he can do is look up to where Ivan is still smiling.
“Is it good?” Ivan asks. Till swallows.
“Fuck off,” Till says.
Ivan’s hand touches his chin and raises his face up to meet his eyes. Till can see the stars in them. His breath stutters. Ivan swipes his index finger from one side of his chin to another, and it touches his lips.
“Ta-daa!!” Ivan chants, breaking the spell, though Till is sure the flush on his cheeks from that interaction is still there. Ivan raises a single ramen noodle from Till’s face and drops it into his mouth. “Take a break, Till.”
Till doesn’t know what the fuck just happened, but he stands up and follows Ivan to the kitchen in his stupor.
They’re hiking. Till is dying.
He desperately needs water. No, Ivan, it doesn’t matter that he had just chugged down an entire bottle of it twenty minutes ago. Fuck off.
“Rest stop!” Mizi chants. At least Luka looks worse than he is. Luka’s hair is plastered to his face and he looks like a corpse as he lays down.
“Ivan, let’s go get snacks!” Mizi says.
“I’ll take care of Luka.” Hyuna waves her empty water bottle. “Hey, Sua, can you refill this for me?”
“Ouhhh, Till, refill these too!” Ivan chirps, pushing five giant water bottles into his hands. One is his, which he emptied into his throat about an hour before. One is Ivan’s, which he drank half of. One is Mizi’s, judging by all the stickers, which still has a bit of water in it. One is Sua’s, which is about half full, and one is Luka’s, which is completely empty.
Till glares at him from over the armful of metal water bottles he has, but he guesses Ivan did let him drink from his water bottle. So.
“I hope you break your arms,” Till says, and marches off to the water station, Sua close behind him.
“I LOVE YOU TOO, TILL!” Ivan screams. He can hear Hyuna’s laughter.
He feels his ears warm up. Sua groans from behind him.
“So,” Sua says while they’re refilling the waters, “You don’t like Mizi anymore, right?”
Sua seems to be looking right through him. Till suppresses a stutter as he says, “Nah. I got over her, uhm, a long time ago, I think.”
“Hm,” Sua hums. “Anything else?”
He turns off the nozzle as Ivan’s water bottle nearly starts to overflow with water. “Uh, not really. I promise I’d never hit on Mizi or anything. Even if I tried to, she’s too in love with you to notice.”
Sua smiles a bit at that, holding Mizi’s bottle up to the nozzle on her side. “And Ivan?”
“What about him?” Till’s filled Ivan and Luka’s waters, while Sua has filled hers and Mizi’s. He holds his to the nozzle and gulps it down as soon as it reaches the halfway point before letting it fill up again.
“He has polaroid pictures of you everywhere,” Sua says, “You have polaroid pictures of him everywhere.”
“And?” Till scoffs, watching the water near the opening of his bottle.
“There’s a picture of you in his wallet. He has a clear phone case just so he can put you in it. He keeps them in all of his bags and you take up most of his phone storage,” Sua says. “He’s in your phone case too, isn’t he?”
Hearing the stuff about his photo makes his insides clench and fuzz weirdly. It’s kind of a nice feeling.
“So?” Till asks, turning off the nozzle and tightening the cap. Sua is holding two water bottles–presumably hers and Mizi’s. He guesses he’ll lug the rest.
“Did you ever keep a photo of Mizi?” Sua asks.
“There should be a lot on my phone. Well, there were a lot of really bad ones that I deleted last year,” Till replies. Where the fuck is this conversation going–and oh, shit, these things are heavy. “I kept the good ones for reference.”
“So each summer,” Sua summarizes, “You and your best friend take a hundred photos of each other-”
“Ivan takes them-”
“-and you keep each one of them stored in safe spaces, and during those summers, when you liked someone,” Sua says, “you kept only the good ones on your phone, for reference.”
“I wasn’t as close to Mizi,” Till says, “Ivan is like a leech who feeds off my very existence. Mizi and I were on opposite sides of a river. Or something. An analogy like that.”
Damn, these bottles are heavy.
“Do you still draw Mizi?” Sua asks.
“No. She never turns out the way I want her to anymore,” Till sighs. “Honestly, the last person who did that was probably-”
Coloring in the red in his eyes. Adding his snaggletooth on a few side profiles. Adjusting his bangs. Coloring in his hair.
“Probably?” Sua prompts. Till’s about to respond when-
“Till! Sua!” Ivan yells, running towards them. He lifts the bottles off of Till’s arms, which start to ache as soon as they hit his sides. “Me and Mizi got a lot of snacks, but we got back quick. Figured you needed some help.”
“You mean you wanted to be with Till,” Sua drawls. “I wonder what sin I committed in my last life to get stuck with a brother like you.”
“Sometimes I wonder if the devil himself created you,” Ivan shoots back. He turns to Till. “I’ll race you. Winner does the chores for the rest of the month.”
He’s already gone by the time Till processes the words. “Oh, shit–IVAN, YOU ASS–GET BACK HERE! SHIT!”
Till’s panting by the time he reaches the circle of benches Hyuna, Luka, and annoyingly, Ivan, are sitting at.
“Fuck you,” he says to Ivan, drinking from Ivan’s water bottle just to spite him.
Ivan hands him one of his favorite snacks. He steps on his foot for being so agitatingly thoughtful. His heart hammers in his chest.
“Ivan,” Till says, recounting his conversation with Sua, “I think Sua thinks you’re in love with me or something.”
It’s silent for a few beats, but Till swears he hears Ivan mutter, “or something.”
But maybe it’s just the wind…or something.
“Hm. I don’t know. Maybe she thought you were in love with me,” Ivan says. Till stomps on his foot.
“As if.” The words feel like sandpaper in his mouth. Ivan takes a moment longer to crush Till’s foot than he usually does. The phone in Till’s left hand burns, and all he can think about is the photo of Ivan mid-laugh stuck to the back of it.
When they’re back in their apartment, Till sets his phone face down on the table. He extracts his phone case from it. He gingerly peels the back of the photo off of the device. Ivan had stuck some white sticker thing on the back of it the day they took the photos. Now, it was colored gray from use.
The photo has Ivan tilted slightly away from the camera, standing directly in front of the setting sun. The light behind him reflects off his hair and casts shadows on his face. He looks ethereal. His hand is curved, facing downwards against his mouth as his face is split in a lopsided, open smile. His eyes are barely open, and he’s leaning over from laughing.
Till is not a photographer, so the photo is slightly shaky. He hates his past self for that.
His mouth still goes dry at the image. He bitterly wonders how one of Ivan’s fangirls would react to it.
Till thinks it’s his favorite photo of Ivan.
When Till opens the door to Ivan’s room, Ivan is pulling on a shirt, his back muscles stretching. Till’s face warms from the sight.
Which, now that he thinks about it, is slightly odd.
He pushes that thought to the back of his mind for later inspection.
“Till?” Ivan hums.
“Do you have that, uh, sticky white thing-” Ivan’s eyebrows raise suggestively. Till glares at him. “No, not like that, you freak. The stickers. You know, we used them to stick the photos we took last summer to anywhere we wanted? Do you have more of them?”
Ivan opens a drawer and takes out three of them. “Whatdya need them for?”
“I unstuck the photo just now and need a replacement sticker,” Till explains as Ivan follows him to his room. Ivan peers down at his desk which now holds his phone, phone case, and photo of Ivan.
“I didn’t know you still kept it,” Ivan says, soft. Till likes his voice best when it’s like this. It makes him feel nice.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Till scoffs, “It’s a good photo. Don’t get in on your head at that, dumbass. I was the one who took it.”
It’s not really the photo being good that makes it so valuable, though. It’s the expression on Ivan’s face. He looks free, there in front of the sun, behind the camera. He’s so…happy.
Till doesn’t mention that, though.
Ivan smushes his cheek against Till’s. “Didn’t say anything.”
He licks Till’s face. Till starts screaming again.
Till buys a canvas. He doesn’t really know why.
He supposes when someone (probably Ivan) inevitably asks why he bought it, he’ll just go, “It called out to me in the middle of the art store, chanting my name. I couldn’t bear to leave it there.”
(Kind of like the first episode of Madoka Magica. Exactly like that. Oh well.)
So, when Ivan asks him, “What are you going to do with the canvas?”--
–he very intellectually declares, “I’m going to paint a portrait to redeem myself.”
What the fuck, Till. Where did that come from??
“Do I get to see it when it’s done?” Ivan grins.
No, because it’s not going to be done. When’s the last time he successfully painted a portrait and it turned out the way he wanted?
“Whatever,” Till replies.
What the fuck is he doing. Is something wrong with him? First, there’s the weird body reactions to Ivan, and then this weird word vomit thing that’s going on right now. Why is he so nervous around Ivan right now? He’s known him forever. He was there when he shoved a bug up his nose when he was seven, for fuck’s sake. Or that time he ate dirt. And mud. And grass.
…how is this loser popular? Till thinks, distantly. Why is he so fond of this dork?
“Thaaaaat meaaaans yesssssss!!” Ivan sings, “Can I be the first to see it?”
“No, idiot, I’m the first to see it.” Till rolls his eyes. “...you can be the second, I guess.”
“Heheheh,” Ivan nefariously giggles, “I’ll be the first to see.”
“...did you hear me just now?” Till grumbles, but lets Ivan pull their bodies flush together anyways. Every spot where their bodies meet burns.
Till barely managed to finish the animation on time, but it turned out okay, in his opinion. There were a lot of spots he definitely could have improved, but he was running on three hours of sleep and two energy drinks, so. Yeah. He didn’t really want to fuck with his mind beyond that.
School lets out for the holidays, soon, so he supposes he could work on it during that period of time. He guesses. If he feels like it, maybe.
Ivan, Sua, Mizi, and Till run back to their hometown where they were raised. Hyuna and Luka grew up elsewhere. Till’s heard about Hyuna’s brother, though, who attends college abroad, in a different country. He’ll have to ask about him later.
They take the train. Sua and Mizi sit on one side of a four-seater while Till and Ivan sit on the other side. Ivan and Mizi are pressed up so close against Till and Sua that if they wanted to, Luka and Hyuna could probably slide in as well, if they had come. Eventually, Till pushes Ivan off of him, and with the lull of the train, Mizi and Sua end up asleep against one another.
Till and Ivan listen to music on the ride. They share a pair of ratty, wired earpods connected to Ivan’s phone. Till gazes outside the window, and Ivan reads a novel.
Eventually, Till ends up dozing off in the space between the window and Ivan, who’s watching him when he wakes up. Which isn’t a big deal, because it shouldn’t be. Because what’s wrong with that? Yeah. Yeah…yeah. Yeah.
(It sounds awfully like he’s trying to convince himself of that. Which, well, he is. Admittedly. Because something in his heart does something when Ivan looks at him like that. Which is weird. Because it’s not like he likes Ivan. Right?)
(He finds out Ivan removed the earphone from his ear shortly after he dozed off. It makes him feel a little funny. Which. Well. That’s. Yeah. Weird. Weird as hell.)
Before he can think too much on it, Sua announces that their stop is next and they spend the next three minutes tidying up their bags, unplugging the earphones from Ivan’s phone.
(PUT SCENE OF MOM + TILL REUNION HERE)
Till’s going to prove to himself that he’s straight.
In the safety of his childhood bedroom, he flips open his new sketchbook. Art is made out of feelings, isn’t it? So…
It’s almost muscle memory. Ivan’s sharp jawline. The outline of his nose. The crinkle of his eyes. The upturn of his lips. The little annoyingly cute snaggletooth of his. The highlight in his hair.
He doesn’t take another look at it after the rough sketch. He flips the page and takes his phone off its case once more and stares at the photo of Ivan under the light of his desklamp.
He looks at it, and draws again. He draws until his pencil is dull and his eyelids start to droop, and he wakes up to the call of his mother’s voice.
He looks at the sketches of his best friend of fourteen years.
It isn’t like how he used to draw Mizi. It’s far from it.
He doesn’t know what he was trying to do, but Ivan still looks beautiful as messy pencil lines.
ok bye thx for reading <3