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With a jolt, Ivan regains consciousness while they are removing his brain. He stands but his body stays put.
“Hah,” he breathes out, walking through the segyein holding his brain and feeling it shiver. Beyond that, it doesn’t react to him.
While he was alive, Ivan sometimes encountered spectres, poltergeists, and other spirits in his books. Mizi too loved telling ghost stories.
He steps out of the segyein and turns to stare down at his body for a few moments, understanding what this is. Of course this would happen to him.
Amused, he watches the operating segyein stitch his head back up, his corpse bound to the chair with restraints. It’s all so absurd. The care with which they attend to his vessel while they understand nothing of substance about his ugly insides or the few things that brought him joy.
Most seemed to agree he was handsome. He was well-loved by his fans and the brands that employed him to model. His body served its purpose but looking down at it now, he feels nothing. Numbness tinged by mild contempt as he takes in his former appearance they work so diligently to maintain. A broken puppet in stately attire.
It kept Till alive, then it expired. Ivan walks through the closest wall in search of him.
Out in the hall, it becomes clear he’s on one of the lower levels, well beneath the stage. The tunneled shape of the walls is distinct down here, but more than that, he can sense Till’s presence far above him.
He sees guards walking to the elevator and could easily follow, but he’s not bound to the material world anymore and so opts instead to rise. Once he floats up through his second ceiling, he starts to enjoy it, even—no longer having to pretend to be like everybody else.
Finally, he reaches the level where the contestants are housed and glides down the hall. He can feel Till’s energy. It’s quite a bit more frenetic than Ivan would have expected. He’s upset. But he won, and now he has the chance to beat Luka and find Mizi. Isn’t Till happy he won?
Hoping he’s merely sensing incorrectly, Ivan zooms through the door to find Till muttering to himself and pacing like a caged animal. He’s barefoot, his blood-stained shoes by the door.
On instinct, Ivan approaches, wanting to remove his collar even though it’s impossible for him to touch Till like that now. At the very least, he can determine if he left behind any marks. Ivan had tried hard not to grip him too tightly.
When he gets close, however, Till turns to him and starts, his shoulders jerking upwards. “What, haunting me already?” he asks, laughing sharply. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Till’s striking eyes remain fixed on him even when Ivan takes a few steps over. Alarmed, he looks down at the desk and finds Till’s copy of the lyrics for their song. He’s scribbled all over the page—violently, like he’d wanted to scratch everything out—but there’s an eye amidst the scribbles.
Till is a talented artist. It’s clear that it is Ivan’s eye. Ivan struggles to fit all these disparate pieces together.
And then there’s the matter of Till speaking directly to him, which he continues to do, thwarting Ivan’s ability to pretend it isn’t happening. “No, I guess you wouldn’t since you—you—” He can’t seem to say it, what Ivan did. And he’s still addressing Ivan like he’s actually here. Like he can see him. “Why’d you do it, huh? Why would you do that?”
Ivan opens his mouth and closes it. It is not often he is lost for words, but then, he is dead now.
“Can you even talk? God, you’re not even here. I’m just crazy,” Till moans. “You know he’s gonna kill me, right? Fuck, why do they even let senior citizens in this thing?”
Even as restless as he is, he drops onto his bed right then, as if his legs can’t stand to hold him upright a moment longer. He is weary, just as he was on stage before Ivan took action, but there’s something else—a type of desperation Ivan has never seen on him before.
“What do you want?” he croaks, his long, sodden hair hanging down as he looks up at Ivan. “Why are you here?” Then, more quietly, he asks again, “Why did you do it?”
“To save you,” Ivan says, frowning.
Till frowns back, or rather he furrows his brow and squints. “I can’t hear you. Mouth it again. Clearer this time.”
Ivan moves closer to him, something scraping inside of his chest when Till shifts back on the bed, obviously afraid.
“To save you,” he says again, enunciating clearly so Till can read his lips.
“Save me…” Till repeats back, like he’s trying to digest the words. When his lip wobbles, Ivan is struck by the desire to smooth it out with his thumb. “You'd never even think about if that’s what I wanted, huh?” he asks quietly. At that, Ivan is truly lost.
“She’s probably alive,” he argues. “You could find her, be free together. Why wouldn’t you want that? Is that not what you’ve always wanted?”
“I don’t know anymore. Maybe I didn’t want to kill you. Maybe I was tired of fighting.” Ivan could have guessed that last point but that he factors into Till’s calculus at all that has him off-kilter. “What does it matter now, I guess. You’re gone. I’m just seeing shit.”
Briefly, Ivan wonders the same for himself. In some of the literature he read, there were descriptions of life flashing before one’s eyes before death, or even the afterlife described as such in some instances. A reel of highlights and lowlights that cannot be turned off. Or a hell where one’s worst nightmares play out over and over.
But Ivan knows himself well enough by now, now that he is dead. He could never conjure up a Till so beautiful and broken on his own. This is the real Till, devastated and angry and demanding answers from him, answers that Ivan doesn’t have. In all the time he spent playing out the different outcomes, he never once expected this.
It’s not strictly painful enough to be hell either, because being able to watch Till but not affect him in any way that might endure—that was the best of what he had in life as well.
No longer able to hold back, he bends down and reaches for the collar around Till’s neck, removing it with ease. It doesn’t even register how strange it is that he can do that until Till gasps and brings his hands up to his neck, staring at Ivan with wide eyes, just as he did when Ivan fell dying.
“You can touch things?”
Ivan shakes his head. “Only you,” he says, bringing a hand down to Till’s face to confirm. His gaunt cheek is really there, right beneath Ivan’s thumb. It stops at the surface and does not sink through. When he strokes Till’s cheek, Till shivers.
“Cold?” Ivan asks, but Till shakes his head.
“No. I don’t know. It’s a weird feeling.” Till’s brows knit together like he’s trying to place it. “Reminds me of the fake wind on my face at Anakt. Like nostalgia or something. It feels like a time I can barely remember. You know? Like it’s just on the tip of my tongue but I can’t get at it. That’s what you feel like.”
As he speaks, his eyes well up with unshed tears and Ivan can’t hold himself back, leaning down to wrap an arm around Till’s lower back, ducking his head down to press his cheek to Till’s forehead. It’s the sort of comfort that is chiefly for him, the kind he used to only take when Till was unconscious. Even in death, he is selfish about Till.
When Till puts a hand to his chest like he might push him away again, Ivan grabs his shirt and hoists him up. Till is full-on sniffling now, trembling. He stares up at him with his eyes blown wide, afraid. Afraid of Ivan. What he has become. What he’s always been. Only now can Till see. Ivan expected to be long gone before he did.
“The thing you did with your mouth,” Till says, voice unsteady and quavering. “The girls used to do that on the cheek. Why’d you put your lips on mine? What did it mean? You can’t—”
Ivan’s eyes unfocus under the inquisition. He doesn’t know what it meant. It shouldn't matter now anyway. He’s supposed to be gone. Staring down at Till’s backside, the needy arch of his spine as he gazes up into Ivan’s checked out face and holds back tears, Ivan feels heat suddenly, warmth in his center, radiating outwards.
There are fingers, too—Till’s fingers grasping at his thigh, sinking through him at first until Ivan consciously presses his leg back against Till. Finally, his searching fingers latch onto the seam halfway between his groin and pocket. Only then does Ivan realize even in this form, he has found himself in a predicament he often found himself in in life, around Till. Erect and wanting, blood pulsing through his needy and perpetually neglected length. In an attempt to grip onto him more tightly, Till’s hand bows in and brushes against it.
“What the hell!” he exclaims, looking down, incensed confusion creasing his face but he doesn’t remove his hand. “How do you even—Is that what you fucking wanted? Is that why you did all that?
“No,” Ivan stresses even as his cock throbs persistently, undeterred by Till’s upset. “You misunderstand.”
“What? Underpants!?”
Frustrated, Ivan shakes his head vigorously. Has Till ever even tried to understand him?
“Well, maybe this is why you’re here! Maybe this is your unfinished business! Like in M—her stories,” he corrects, looking chastened but no less determined. “Huh? Is that it? Lemme just—get rid of that thing and you can stop haunting me, and then I don’t have to haunt you back when Luka kills me!”
He starts unbuttoning his pants and dragging them down his slender legs, skinnier than Ivan remembers them being. He’d made himself sick with grief in the weeks leading up to their round, all for the love of Mizi who was so bright and loveable that she was probably still alive. Not like Ivan, and yet he’s the one Till seems conflicted about, and not Mizi.
This is all wrong. He shouldn’t still be here. He was supposed to die in Till’s stead so Till would get his spark back and win the whole thing. Maybe sometimes he would think about Ivan, and the superficial mess of feelings he held for Till. It wasn’t supposed to work its way inside him and twist him up the way Ivan was twisted.
But Till just keeps reasoning with himself that this is what needs to be done. “And better you than them, right? If I manage to live, like—Fuck, I don’t know—if Luka has a heart attack on stage, it’s not like they’re ever gonna leave me alone!”
It’s like he feels the need to give something up that will make Ivan’s life a fair trade retroactively. At the same time that Ivan wants everything, pulsing impossibly between his spectral legs at the thought, he does not want anything from Till. This shouldn’t be a transaction.
Need wins out anyway, his and Till’s, because Till’s pulling off small black underpants and baring himself to Ivan and he’s so pretty down there, the hair cowlicked like that on his head. He goes in where Ivan sticks out, the whole area glistening and rosy. Now that the offer has solidified, he can’t imagine not being inside Till.
“C’mon,” Till urges, holding himself under his knees and pulling them out to the sides, putting his slick pink opening on display.
Ivan wastes no time in unzipping his translucent white pants and hauling himself out, moving between Till’s legs so he can nudge himself to his entrance. Heat and wetness radiate off Till and reach Ivan somehow, and he presses his tip between those folds, sinking in as into quicksand. He looks at Till’s face, committing his concerned expression to memory before Till catches him watching and scowls.
Till’s attention keeps getting pulled down to the place where Ivan’s shimmering length kisses his damp entrance, though, like the novelty of the act makes him forget he’s upset with Ivan.
“I can feel it,” he breathes out, reaching down to spread himself apart and opening his legs further, a clear invitation.
“Can you,” Ivan replies distantly before pushing inside in earnest, spurred on further by the choked moan the act elicits from Till. He can feel it too, the suffocating embrace of being inside of Till, which should be existentially perplexing, but he can’t care about that when Till is crying out more beautifully than anything Ivan’s ever heard, his tight walls squeezing him for all that he’s worth. His voice is high, lilting in a series of rhythmic whimpers, and Ivan can’t stop staring at the way his brows knit together from the effort of taking him.
“Does it hurt?”
Till shakes his head, still staring down at where they interlock and holding his lips open around Ivan’s encroaching length. “Feels weird. There’s pressure. Ungh.” He groans when Ivan presses in further. “They do this to me,” he explains through gritted teeth, “put probes in me. To see if I can ‘bear offspring’. Fuck knows what they wanna fill me up with.”
Despite this chilling pronouncement, he does not ask Ivan to stop, nor does he attempt to wriggle away. He stays put, more obedient than Ivan has ever known him to be, lightly tapping himself between the legs above where Ivan is penetrating him. He can feel Till pulsing around him in sync with those taps. The hot tight clutch of Till’s body is the closest he’ll ever get to paradise, but ever greedy, Ivan wants more. He wants to know everything.
“Do they do that to you too?” he asks, staring at Till’s nimble guitarist fingers as he plays himself adeptly.
“No, I—found it accidentally. On my own. They don’t care if it feels good,” he says bitterly.
“It feels good?” Ivan asks, batting Till’s fingers away so he can mimic the motion himself, finding something like a small button there and swirling the tips of his fingers around it.
In response to Ivan’s clumsy touch, Till lets out a strangled cry and his inner muscles suck Ivan in further. He’s so enthralled by Till’s reaction that he doesn’t even notice how quickly he’s being pulled in, the quicksand taking full effect ‘til his balls are pressing into the space between Till’s holes.
It’s so intimate, not least of which in the way Till is choking on his own breath while he tries to adjust. He hasn’t looked at Ivan since Ivan started pushing inside in earnest, too preoccupied with watching the process or squeezing his eyes shut as he gets used to it. But now he looks up through his fair eyelashes, almost guarded in stark contrast to the lewd way he’s holding his cunt open for Ivan’s cock.
It is Till’s contradictory nature that drives Ivan so wild so it can’t be helped when he jerks his hips forward to press inside him deeper, at an angle that seems more pleasurable for Till if his high-pitched moan and the pulsing of his walls are anything to go by. He feels that same pulse in the button above Till’s opening, Till throbbing all around him.
“Oh,” Till works out, “fuck, stay put.” He tries to wrap his ankles around Ivan’s lower back but lets out a frustrated growl when they just sink through. When Ivan reaches down and places them there, though, they stay.
“Only you can make us touch,” Till observes, noticeably affronted by it even as he crosses his ankles, anchoring Ivan in place. “I can’t do anything.”
“You’re doing plenty,” Ivan assures him but Till only huffs and lets his knees fall out further to the side.
Since Till didn’t tell him how long to stay put, unable to resist any longer, Ivan swivels his hips back, dragging his cock out a few inches, and then jerks them forward to shove his length back in, hitting deeper than before. After a few moments, Till lets out a muffled scream like it took that long for his mind to register that Ivan had begun. Till’s cunt grips onto him tightly as if to deter him from moving again, but nothing could at this point.
He’s wanted this since before he knew what these feelings meant, wanted to lie with Till in the grass and touch him everywhere. Now he can, but who knows for how long? He can’t squander this.
So he wrenches himself out and drives back into him over and over, determined to feel him to the fullest. With his hands over his mouth, Till stares wide-eyed between their legs, but doesn’t stop Ivan from running his hands up under Till’s shirt and feeling his puffy nipples with his fingers until they harden into hot pebbles.
This alongside the ruthless thrusting has Till gasping for air, so deliciously pink in his cheeks and ears, up on his belly, all around his entrance where Ivan spears him open. Ivan longs to know if his chest is just as pink and inviting.
“Take off your shirt,” he orders and Till does it quickly, moaning under his breath.
Why is he obeying? Is this an extension of how he felt on stage, like there was no point in fighting any longer?
Once Till tosses his shirt aside, he’s completely naked, his nipples catching Ivan’s eye just as much as his bashful demeanor. Frowning, he attempts to cover them by folding his arms over his chest but it only makes them stick out all the more.
Without a further thought, Ivan ducks his head down and sucks the left one into his mouth, savoring the salty taste of him, the sudden clench around him and the high whine that rings out.
“Ivan,” he groans, bracing his hand over the back of Ivan’s head, holding him in place. Ivan takes that for the invitation that it is too, grazing his teeth over the nipple to drink down Till’s cries, sucking and licking with feverish desire.
The increased pulsation around his cock reminds him of that button, and Ivan resumes tapping and swirling his fingers around it as he switches to the other nipple, caressing it with teeth and tongue and hungry lips.
The throbbing around him is reaching a new peak, and when he looks up, he is greeted by the sight of Till’s eyelashes fluttering, his teeth digging into his lip. He is arched so immensely that Ivan sees all this upon the planes of Till’s face, largely perpendicular to him at this angle.
Not wanting to stop tapping at him or biting at his chest, Ivan moves his free hand to splay against Till’s lower back, tilting his pelvis up ‘til his thrusting cock is hitting his front walls more now.
“F-fuck—” Till starts, sinking back against Ivan’s hand like he’s trying to fold away from the cock pounding into him, but Ivan won’t let him. The spasming around Ivan’s length makes it clear that he’s about to reach his release.
With a sharp cry, it breaks free from him and Till’s spine pulls taut like a bow. Ivan is unable to tear his eyes away even as he is being squeezed so hard that he briefly forgets he’s dead.
It’s all so immediate, and Ivan can’t stop plunging into Till the whole time he’s quivering desperately around his length. Even when the spasms subside, he keeps up his pace, filling Till without mercy or reprieve until he’s sniffling and trying in vain to shove Ivan’s hips away. His fingers just sink through.
“Ivan,” he whines. “It’s too much. I don’t want it hard. Can’t we go slower?” With alarm, Ivan stares at Till’s face as the first fat tear rolls down his cheek. “Can’t you just stay in me?” he pleads.
Till wants that? Why does he think he wants that? All the death and abuse he’s been subjected to must have him confused. But Ivan can pretend if that’s what he needs.
“I’ll stay as long as I can,” he assures Till, since it’s all he can promise. A sob erupts from Till’s throat at that but it’s the way Till curls his lower half up onto Ivan’s cock that truly shocks him.
He does it again, moaning brokenly as he rocks himself up against Ivan, taking him deeper even though he was just pleading to have it gentler and slower.
“Ivan,” he cries softly, “please.”
He wants to ask Till what he needs, wants to make Till articulate it, selfishly wishes to have known once in his life what Till sounds like when begging him for gratification, but just as he was selfish when dying, Ivan chooses to be selfless now. He rolls into Till at a languid pace, tucking his damp hair behind his ears, brushing it up off of his forehead.
Till takes the initiative again, winding his arms under Ivan’s arms and wrapping them around his back. His wet nipples press against Ivan’s chest and suddenly Ivan is overcome with the desire to be naked too, so they can be bare chest to bare chest. He wishes he were really here instead of just a remnant of his former self, even if it feels so real, watching the unbelievable—Till coming undone for a second time beneath him.
He imagines having left Till behind when they fled together, strategizing to rescue him in the nick of time, before they could hurt him the way he saw them hurt him in the karaoke bar. He wouldn’t have been able to leave his side, though.
There’s no point in fantasizing about what might have been. Ivan is lucky to have just this; accepting that, he drops his head to Till’s shoulder, clinging to his warmth and the sound of his breathing.
“Close again,” Till exhales. “Are you? Can you even come?”
Lifting up so Till can read his lips, Ivan croaks out, “I’m not sure I should try. What if I disappear?”
Shaking his head, Till tells him, simply, “Don’t.” Like it’s that simple. And for all Ivan knows, it might be. “I just wanna know you feel good. Is it any good?”
“The best I’ve ever felt,” he replies honestly.
“It does feel nice, huh,” Till mumbles. “Wish you were doing this to me all those years instead of punching me and taking my shit.”
If his chest didn’t feel like a lead balloon, he’d laugh at that. Things could never have been so simple, though. Till wouldn’t have wanted that from him. With a pang, Ivan starts up a slow grind, wrapping his arms around Till’s head and pressing their foreheads together so he can hang on Till’s every breath. In this form, Ivan doesn’t need to breathe, but he makes a conscious effort to pretend they’re inhaling each other’s breath. Till must like it because he starts pushing himself up onto Ivan’s cock in time with his downward thrusts.
His moans come out as a continuous guttural sound, like he can’t hold them back. He’s so close that Ivan can almost taste him. It’s Till who lifts his chin to try to kiss him, but Ivan has to choose to press down into him for them to collide, which he does instantaneously. It had been so frenzied getting to kiss him on stage for the first time; now he really can savor Till—the bittersweet taste of him, his timid attempts at reciprocation, how easily he loses his breath.
When he reaches down to touch himself between the legs, Ivan licks into him more deeply, wanting to drink him down as much as possible. If he had a choice, he would pin Till’s wrists down and try to make him come from being penetrated alone, but Ivan is acutely aware of the sound of others coming down the hallway and does not want to disappoint Till. He reaches his hands down, too, to Till’s nipples, making him pant into Ivan’s mouth. When he breaks this time, it’s without a word, only a silent cry, and seconds into tipping over, the frantic clench of him pulls Ivan alongside him, the pleasure searing and terrifying.
For a few seconds, all he knows is blinding white and he expects that it’s over, making Till climax twice being his unfinished business or whatever it was. If Till isn’t too ashamed to tell it, Mizi will love the story. But then Till’s panting returns, his dewy, flushed face, and long, damp hair spread out around him like a halo.
Those outside are soon approaching though, so regrettably, Ivan pulls out, nearly thrown off his course of action when he sees his glowing cum spilling out of Till. Dazedly, Till touches himself between his legs and looks at his fingers.
“You really came,” he says, astounded.
There’s no time to talk about it. Ivan puts Till’s black underpants back on him, sliding them up his spindly legs and setting them down on the bed. A wet spot emanates from them and Ivan resists the urge to put his tongue over it, instead putting himself away, covering Till with his body, and clutching his face. He kisses him hungrily until he is taken away from Ivan. They pull him clean through Ivan’s body and he wails, “Already?”
The segyein treat him far worse than they did Ivan; they always have. Ivan watches them yank a black tank top over his disoriented head, and a torn green one over that, then make him step into baggy tan pants with a garish red dip dye on the bottom. How crude, Ivan thinks, half-amused.
But Till turns to him, wrecked and full of tears yet to fall. “Ivan, please,” he begs, “don’t leave me. Please just stay!”
The segyein murmur among themselves as they run a comb through his unruly hair, but Ivan walks right through them to embrace Till. ‘Til the end, he could say, or you are the only being that matters, or even I love you, but Till can’t hear him. His eyes are forced closed by the two jabbing at his face with brushes and pencils.
Ivan communicates the only way he knows how, then, rubbing his nose against Till’s hot cheek, resting his forehead against it. Till’s falling tears go clean through his body.
When they drag him away again, Ivan follows, trying to smile when Till looks back at him with trepidation. He thinks about the way Till’s eyes looked as he was falling and can’t help but remember what he said to Sua all that time ago. Still, it’s different. Ivan knows it’s different.
No matter what happens, he will be there.