Chapter Text
Going to Ivan's house was probably a bad idea. It was bad enough that Till had succumbed twice to Ivan's pretty voice and warm hands in public, but to toddle after Ivan's car keys was an entirely different level of fucked up. He and Ivan didn't even have anything special. Ivan saw him as a fresh piece of meat on the hook, and Till was just desperate enough sometimes to land right in his mouth. Not all the time, though. Not even most of the time.
Now, he didn't even think about Ivan anymore. His art gallery deadlines had finally come and gone. He spent two straight weeks spending every night in the studio, adjusting brush strokes and flecks of paint until his pieces were perfect. He had worn the same pair of paint-specked jeans for a number of days now, and somewhere around two days ago he stopped caring about the chemical stench. At some point, Mizi and Sua had dragged him, quite literally kicking and screaming, from the 24/7 studio room.
“No!” he screeched, clawing at Sua's iron grip, “I was so close, let go of me, you fucker!”
“Come on, Till,” she sighed, hoisting his arm further up over her shoulder and making him wince. “You haven't eaten in days. Mizi is worried about you.” Mizi, looking radiant and wonderful as always, nodded and made her prettiest puppy eyes. Till had to squint against the brightness radiating from her features. She was so earnest, or at least she was acting like it. She was probably acting. They were both manipulative, and Till should never trust them.
“But Sua–”
“You idiot,” Sua warned, her fingernails gripping his arm through his sleeve. “Shut the fuck up before I make you. I'm already making you eat and shower; god you smell like shit.” She wrinkled her nose. “Is that Ivan's cologne?”
Oh boy. Till slumped into her and took the loss. Oh well. He could finish his painting tomorrow.
He hoped he would look back on these days fondly. Every bad day was a part of his process. Every feeling of hopelessness and exhaustion was reflected in his pieces, and he felt a sense of pride that everyone viewing them could see just how many hours he slaved over them.
The bags of his eyes were darker than the night outside, and he had been wearing the same hoodie for three days in a row, to go with his crusted, crumpled jeans. And it was Ivan's hoodie. God, the last thing Till needed was to remind himself exactly why he had Ivan’s hoodie. After Mizi and Sua dropped him off with a fresh container of pad thai from the restaurant on the corner, he stripped the offending article of clothing off of his torso. It landed in the hamper on top of a band tee and a pair of Ivan’s boxers, and Till did his damndest to ignore all of it. Tomorrow was the big day. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by visions of Ivan’s stupid face and Ivan’s strong arms and Ivan pushing his calves to his cheekbones without a care in the fucking world.
Till rubbed his eyes until he felt like he would pass out. That ought to teach his traitorous brain a lesson. He shoveled spicy noodles into his mouth while he watched some inconsequential YouTube video documentary about cryptocurrency and meme coin, and he didn’t feel bad about it. After learning entirely too much useless knowledge, he flopped backwards into bed in just a tank top and underwear, falling into a dreamless void of sleep that ended all too soon, at promptly six in the morning. His alarm blared, and he threw his phone onto the hardwood floor of his bedroom with a whine. He thought he would be excited for today, goddammit, he was supposed to be celebrating! He sat up on his mattress, his mouth dry and his head pounding, and he blindly groped around for the nicer clothes in the back of his closet.
A long shower and change of clothes later, Till was buttoning a dress shirt and slipping a blazer over his arms. He fastened his tie just loose enough for people to tell he was purposefully trying to be more casual, and he popped the top couple of buttons open. He had just finished lining his waterline with black, and he pushed his hair back from his forehead when he heard a knock at his door. Surprised, he peeked through the crack to see a sight that gave him a strong dose of deja vu. A blur of pink and white shoved its way into Till's apartment, shortly followed by her shadow of black and teal. Till's eyebrows furrowed as he clasped a third necklace around his neck.
“Girls,” he greeted, teeth grating. “You two are dressed nicely. Get the hell out.”
“Till!” Mizi cheered, looping her arms over Till's shoulders. She wore a cute, frilly thing, something that would definitely make past-Till drool a little and flush warm. Now, though, he was more attentive to the fact that her cardigan’s pink color complimented her hair nicely. He might pick out a color palette like this one day, if he ever decided to get into pastels. Sua wore a bracelet with a charm that matched it, anyway, and matching couple’s bullshit was a boner-killer. Till would know. Till had too much experience with being the odd one out.
“You look so good! I've never seen you in a suit before.” Mizi pulled on the knot of his tie and grinned. “Wow, so sexy.”
Till pushed her away, his face bright red and scrunched up. Sua, although she rolled her eyes at Mizi’s teasing, nodded her approval.
“Not that I ever disagree with my Mizi,” Sua murmured, and Mizi grinned up at her from the couch, lovestruck, “but you look good, Till.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Till huffed their praise away, but his heart fluttered at their attention. They knew that he likely needed a hype-up session before he went to the gallery on campus, and it touched him that they were so willing to surprise him with a visit like this. Mizi swirled some mystery liquid around in her water bottle just to make Till balk.
“Relax, Till!” she cackled. “I would never get you drunk before your big day.”
“You would,” Till moaned.
“I would.” Mizi winked and shrugged her shoulders playfully. Till adjusted his clothes with a snort and moved past the girls to grab his bag. He missed the way they caught each other’s gaze and how incredibly proud they both looked of him. Of course, Till didn’t need any more ego-boosting today, but it was obvious that he put an incredible amount of effort into this project, and that was something to be proud of.
“I was thinking, instead of blacking out,” Mizi started, letting Sua hang on her arm and nuzzle her face into the skin of her shoulder, “maybe we should go to that new coffee shop you’ve been looking at? Drinks on me!”
Till’s eyes, usually angular and sharp, softened into goo the moment Mizi mentioned something he enjoyed. He was infinitely weak to being noticed; not to say that he thrived off of attention, but the moment someone pulled him from his own little world where he was all alone, he felt like he was truly alive. All of the girls’ past manipulation and trickery were null and void as soon as they bought him a snack. They most likely knew this and used it to their advantage, and Till knew that, but hey, he got a free coffee out of it, so they could suck it.
As they let Till lock his place up and started to walk to the bus stop, Mizi and Sua chatted idly about future projects and upcoming holidays. Till sipped at his coffee and got lost in his own head, watching both the girls’ feet and his own as they walked along. The concrete slabs of the sidewalk made a repeating pattern that was soothing Till’s mind — since when did he need soothing? Mizi and Sua’s conversation faded into vibrations that thrummed against the insides of his ears, and Till could suddenly hear nothing more than the rush of blood in his skull, the panting of his breath past his lips. He was nervous, and it was just now hitting him that he was terrified of the feedback he was about to receive.
His steps turned shaky, then uneven, then stopped entirely. Sua glanced over her shoulder at him. Till swallowed, thumbing over the strap of his bag. What if no one liked his pieces? Scratch that; that wasn’t even the worst case scenario. What if no one even cared? What if they glanced over at his work and bumped their eyes over to the next thing, the next sculpture, the next fucking copy-paste of Michaelangelo? Till, eyes wide and mouth drawn into a firm, tight line, stared at one of the cracks in the sidewalk and willed the thoughts away. It was getting hard to see through the haze of tears shifting and swirling over his eyes, the surface tension of them threatening to spill over his lash line. He fucking sucked. Fuck him for not being a good enough artist to at least have confidence in his pieces. Fuck him for not being able to finish the coffee Mizi bought for him because his stomach was too upset. Fuck him for not even being able to afford looking decent for once on the only day that ever mattered in his whole goddamn miserable life.
And fuck him for not being enough of a man to deal with it.
Just as the first tear pricked over his bottom lashes, he felt the vague, warm shape of a hand press onto the back of his. He suddenly felt the tension on the back of his knuckles, how he was gripping his fingernails into the strap of his bag in a subconscious attempt to ground himself. He felt a pinch on his bottom lip, too, from his teeth pulling and snagging against the skin there. He looked up from the crack on the ground, barely managing to make eye contact with Sua from the sheer humiliation of it all. Here come his friends, ready to comfort him again because he couldn’t keep himself in check.
God, he was awful.
“Hey,” Sua said. Her voice was even. There was no trace of pity or remorse, and it was casual, like Till had just caught her eye on the way to classes. It sobered him up.
She smiled at him, softly, and the expression itself left no room for Till to overthink anything. Mizi looked back at them, confused. She likely hadn’t seen Till stop at all. Letting her hand drop to her side, Sua turned back to grab Mizi’s arm to keep walking, and she pulled her girlfriend along to keep her from being too nosy. “Let’s go. You’re going to be late.”
Till sniffled, grateful for the privacy and the fact that he hadn’t cried most of his mascara off.
---------------------------------------------------
The showing went as well as he could have imagined. Mizi and Sua cried all over each other when they saw Till’s pieces displayed alongside each other, and Till grimaced and tried not to act like he was touched. He watched people take pictures of his favorite one. He watched people’s first reaction to the messiness of it, how their eyes widened and their head tilted like they were trying to read for the first time, and how it inevitably dawned on them that these weren’t paintings to be deciphered, but to be simply appreciated.
All in all, Till was over the moon. He could’ve left the gallery skipping if it didn’t make him look like a toddler.
He had plans for the night. He had plans for the night that he’d been putting off for a long time, and they involved a trip to the convenience store, ordering food off the delivery app, and fishing the vibrator out of his bedside drawer. Tonight was a night for celebration, and Till was going to fucking celebrate. He was celebrating, and he was celebrating without people because his social battery was basically empty. Unlike his vibrator. He charged it last night.
He waved goodbye to the girls on the way to the bus stop. They looked silly, their faces streaked with makeup. He had never seen somebody cry so hard over paintings before, but he couldn’t deny that he felt loved. Even if Mizi could probably cry on command, she loved him, and it made Till want to cry, too. But fuck that, today was a day for not crying! Or maybe it was for crying…for different reasons. God, Till had to get a couple orgasms out of him.
He only got this way after denying himself for too long. For almost a month, he had locked himself away with his artwork and barely slept; obviously he wouldn't have the time or energy to jerk off. It reached a certain point, though, where his mind wouldn’t focus on anything else. He would spend whole lectures fantasizing about being pinned against walls — or pinning someone, Till liked being in charge, too, okay? He would walk to class and jolt if his jeans caught him a certain way. Shit, if it got bad enough, Till would start to feel his stomach tingle just from getting ready to shower. That was just embarrassing.
As he shook his head against the heat blooming on his cheeks, he shouldered the gate to campus open to start walking to the bus. Through his headphones, he heard the roars and gurgles of old, rustbucket cars zooming by, no doubt trying to beat him to the crosswalk he had to take. He frowned, but he perked up when he heard the purr of something sleek, something a little sexier than a 2009 Honda Civic. Till had a little bit of a thing for sexy cars. They were a weak point, alright? A man can like his pretty toys.
His appreciation turned to horror when the sound idled close too him, too close to him, right fucking next to him and he whipped around, fists curled, ready to tell this loser catcalling piece of shit off. He was met with a bike, and it was a nice one, all sleek curves and dark crimson highlights along the edges. There was a helmet that was attached to a wide set of shoulders, attached to these wonderful, long legs and don’t blame Till for looking . He was all wrapped up in this tight turtleneck and jeans that showed just a sliver of ankle when he shifted over to rest his foot on the ground. All of the scolding words fell out of Till’s head. Raw heat zinged up through his brain to replace them.
The rider removed his helmet, and Till caught just a glimpse of a mop of dark hair and a flash of tooth. Nevermind. The words flew back to him.
“Ivan, you fucking jerk,” Till definitely did not pout. Ivan was ruining his fantasy of spying a smoking hot motorcyclist on the road. This guy actually sucked. He popped into Till’s night at the worst times and fucked everything up. Since the last time they were at the club, they had texted a little and met up sometimes to chat and make out — Till shuddered at that memory — and every time, Till insisted it would be the last. Every time, Ivan found some measly excuse to invite himself back in. Ivan sucked . Actually. And he was so old! Too old for Till, who basically had his whole life ahead of him. Ivan was just rich and annoying. That doesn’t count as having a life.
“That’s rather cold,” Ivan hummed, kicking the stand of his bike out. Till ignored the way his chest seemed to swallow the fabric between his pecs. “Heaven forbid I come to congratulate you on a successful showing.”
Till eyed him, suspicious as always. Yeah, he goes to Ivan’s shows every once in a while, so Ivan had some sense of obligation to return the support. And yeah, he had texted Ivan the date and time of his show, but he didn’t expect Ivan to actually show up! It wasn’t like Ivan to actually care about his life, right? Till kicked at some invisible dust on the ground, and Ivan leaned down purposefully just to get a better look at his face.
“So? How was it?” Ivan murmured, barely audible over the hum of his bike.
Till stuck his tongue out at him. “You would know if you bothered to show up.”
Shit. Till had already fucked up, letting disappointment bleed into his response. Ivan was like a shark in water: always two seconds away from spying fresh meat. Ivan’s mouth curled up on one side, and Till knew he had caught it, which meant he was doubly screwed. Not that Ivan ever didn’t catch something, anyway, but Till could always hope.
“Nevermind.” Till whipped his head around, fully intending on heading home. He wouldn’t let Ivan sour his attitude, not today and not ever again. Ivan tutted at his teary eyes. He didn’t even have to grab Till anymore to make Till stop in his tracks. Till’s eyes slid back to his, unwillingly. He honestly didn’t have much of a choice anymore when it came to Ivan. His body just…did weird things, even if he didn’t want it to. Like now, he wanted to go home and scream into his pillow while he humped the head of his vibrator, but he was busy looking at stinky rotten Ivan instead, and that pissed him off.
“What,” he snapped. “What do you want.”
“I’m sorry,” Ivan purred, and it was saccharine and beautiful the way his smile sloped and his eyebrows furrowed inwards. Till swallowed, trying to convince himself that it was still worth it to walk home. Or that Ivan was lying. Both of those things were true, but Ivan shifted one of his thighs back onto his bike and all of it flew out of Till’s head.
“Hop on. Tell me all about it.” Ivan grabbed his spare helmet out of his backpack, like he knew Till wouldn’t, couldn’t, say no, and Till huffed like it was really a decision to make. Till swung his leg over the body of the bike, barely missing the red-hot exhaust pipes, and Ivan tsked at his clumsiness while he adjusted Till’s helmet and made sure his bag was secure.
“Hurry up,” Till grumbled, face flushing at the attention.
“Hold on, doll. I’ll get us home fast.” Ivan turned around, humming something under his breath as he kicked the stand back up. Till looked at him through the tinted visor, and Ivan’s figure almost seemed smoky through the plastic. He was almost not regretting this. Ivan was warm and solid and nice against his front.
Ivan revved the engine and tilted the bike forward onto the front tire. Till startled with a yelp, tightening his hands around Ivan’s middle. “Fuck! You jackass!”
“I told you to hold on, Till.”