Love as an act of Rebellion

Till who's looking at him like...

Like...

(I tried to warn him. I tried.)

He slowly backs away himself, back pressing against the door. A cornered, feral, animal, not entirely sure how to act. His heart is racing, his chest hurts, feeling like it's going to burst through his chest.

He doesn't understand, he doesn't understand.

(No, I do.)

He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Instead, he takes some of the fallen bandages from the first aid kit, using his foot to push them over toward Till, silently watching him from the doorway. A cat unsure if it should run or not.

Then another. And another.

In the quiet, Till can just barely hear himself think.

He blinks, and he sees Ivan staring back at him, mirroring the fear and pain that he feels.

Till glances down at the bandages on the floor, sitting innocently among the flecks of his blood, only long enough to decide that’s not what he wants right now.

But he doesn’t know what it is he does want.

Such a short and sweet time, he should have gone down the drain when he could. Ever monstrous, even now, that he thinks of himself first, and how he caused this.

He crouches in front of Till, reaching up and grabbing at Till's hands, pulling them, hard, minding his finger. Placing them on his own throat.

"Stop it."

He jolts, reacting instinctively as he brings his leg up and smashes his foot into Ivan’s chest.

Falling backwards onto the floor from the force of his kick, Till scrambles backwards until he hits a wall. He shoves himself into a tiny corner of the bathroom, chest still heaving. Bringing his knees to his chest, he tries to make himself as small as possible.

He releases his breath in a sob, tears running down his face and stinging the new cuts on his neck.

Eyes wide, Till stares at Ivan with an expression he’s never worn around the other man—an expression that’s so rarely seen on Till’s face, even when he looks up at his Guardian, who would hurt him so mercilessly.

He stops, the faucet still running, drowning out his thoughts as he stares into the drain. He wishes to crawl into the drain, to preserve this moment, for the rest of his life. But the sounds on that stage feel so far away, and he...

"For...me?" He can't stop staring at the drain, watching the water go down the sink. Exhaling, he shuts the drain off, moving to press the wet cloth into Till's wounds on his neck, maybe rougher than necessary.

"Then,"

"If it's for me..." He wipes away some of the blood, pressing on the wound and pulling his hand back, licking at the fresh blood on his fingers, so reminiscent of their childhood, wiping the wound once more, and pulling out the disinfectant. He presses it into Till's neck, knowing it'll sting.

Color bleeds from his world—all except for the red of Ivan’s burning eyes.

The image of the Ivan in front of him overlaps nauseatingly with the visage of the man who torments him—the one who taunts him and asks him to say the things he never got to say while stealing his voice from him.

Ivan’s hands on his throat—burning and itching and itching and itching.

His voice is trapped somewhere in his throat. His shoulders raise slightly, and then he nods his head, brow furrowed as he tries to find his own words.

"Yes."

He stands up, tugging Till with him, head tilted toward the bathroom so he can start pulling out first aid supplies. He tugs Till along because he's not running away, he's just moving their location. Gesturing for Till to sit on the lid of the toilet, he pulls out the first aid kit, and starts setting things out.

"Music is important to you." It's not a question. Till expresses himself through art, his feelings his emotions. Till learned about Black Sorrow from his interview, but Ivan heard Unknown on the stage. Even if those words weren't for him, even if Cure isn't for him, he still wants to hear the end.

A small object that looks like a large metal clasp is taken out, "For your finger," it's better than what he would normally use, or scrounged up, but he recognized what it was for. Taking Till's injured hand, he puts the object on it, keeping the finger stabilized.

Till smooths his fingers over Ivan’s shoulder in wordless apology—in gratitude—before shoving him without any real heat behind it, tsking in irritation.

“Not talking about me,” Till rasps. “Talking about you.”

He jolts like Ivan’s question sent ten-thousand volts of electricity to his spine. He might even have been furious if he wasn’t so surprised. So distraught.

How could Ivan even say that to him? How could he even question that? Till’s mind might have been too addled to take in everything that was happening when they sang together, but wasn’t Ivan listening to the lyrics that Till was singing? With Ivan? To Ivan?

“Course it’s important to me,” Till whispers, even quieter than before. “Wrote it with you…”

He understands, though. Having to fight that urge ingrained inside of you, having a reaction you don't wanna have.

"Ain't always planned, that's for damn sure. I find two things help with that sorta thing."

“Th-thanks… I’ll keep that in mind…” He says, genuinely.

He’s done plenty of the first. If nothing else, Till has always found that immersing himself in his work to be a good distraction from his problems. The second…

‘Till!” A roadie waves to Till from the stage door. ‘This amp isn’t working again!’

“Oh shit, that’s me. I gotta go—” Dropping his cigarette and stomping it out with the heel of his bare foot, he starts hurrying over before he stops short and turns around.

(It's so monstrous, I'm so monstrous.)

He's crying himself, and he can't express himself appropriately, and he can't understand why he's crying. He's grateful for the first time that he doesn't understand, that he can't explain it to Till, because maybe then he can still keep a sliver of his mask on, the one that hides the ugliest parts of him, the parts that he can't change. He's not sure he wants to.

So when Till speaks again, he can't help but smile weakly at it. The familiarity of it among the new. Injured Till looking up at him and only him with his infirmity.

"I'm okay."

His tears frame his smile as he sits up, shaking his bangs back into his face as soon as he can, boyish charm at odds with the red rings about his eyes, his 'injuries' not even comparing to Till's. Wiggling up, he grabs Till's hand, leaning forward, looking at it, and then looking up at Till.

"It's gonna hurt," he says, with that same weak smile, eyebrows raised. "But I can fix it." He can, and he hopes Till understands that, he'd learned a lot about this sort of thing, not only here, but in his life before Anakt.

...But he thinks he’s starting to.

He wants to trust that Ivan doesn’t want to hurt him—that they don’t want to hurt each other—any more than it takes for them to understand each other.

Till grits his teeth in preparation for the pain, determined not to let out a single sound lest Ivan feel he’s to blame when he’s just trying to help. Till did this to himself, and now that the haze of fear and anger has largely faded, he can see how the choices he made while clouded with his emotions have hurt Ivan too.

Insistently, Till pushes Ivan’s bangs back away from his face, not letting him hide. But Ivan has more he can hide behind than just a curtain of black hair. He gently tilts Ivan’s head to make eye contact with him, so intense that it’s painful.

Rolling the words he wants to say around in his mouth, Till tries to find his voice. Maybe it’s not the best time to bring this up again, but Till was never one to let go once he’d sunk his teeth into something. At least now neither of them seems up to screaming at each other anymore.

He can't lose. He has to keep fighting, and he HAS to be strong. He can't be weak.

Still, Sun looks at Till, head hangs low, but he looks at Till with those big golden eyes.

He did like spicy food. He liked food a lot. He hasn't had the chance to try many great ones. Not until he came here, and this smells absolutely divine.

"Mmm. You're right," he starts with a nod. If he's going to get stronger, he'll have to start by eating.

He picks up his spoon and uses it to scoop up some tofu, kimchi, and the soup with it, and the food goes into his mouth.

He doesn’t say anything. What can he say? Till knows what it’s like to have to fight for everything you have. To know the pain and punishments that come with losing.

While he’s heartened to see Sun eat, the feeling of uneasiness remains, and Till lapses into thoughtful silence.

“Hey,” Till says after a while, “I wanna show ya somethin’. Would you mind comin’ with me?”

———————————

“—So the big guy here is the bass drum,” sitting on a stool in front of the drum kit, Till presses the foot pedal to make the large drum on the floor sound off. Boom boom. “An’ this guy here is the snare,” Till uses a drum stick to rap the snare drum. Snap snap.

“These three other drums are the toms,” Till hits each of them in turn. Bom bom bom. “And finally, these are the cymbals and hats.” Crash crash tick tick.

“When you play different combinations at different times, you can do stuff like—” Till plays the first few bars of a simple, but catchy beat using only the bass and snare drums. Boom boom snap. Boom boom snap. Then, taking both drumsticks in hand, he offers them to Sun.

The gumiho was picking berries in the woods, humming to herself when a nice tune reached her own ears. It wouldn't be Hansol if she continued doing her own thing, being the nosy-nosy woman that she is.

Sukuna can wait.

He flushes bright red, mortified not only to have been caught singing to himself, but singing a song he’d written about his embarrassing feelings.

“S-s-s-s-s-s-seonsaegnim!” He practically squeaks, using the teacher’s formal title. He’s been to her dojong a few times with Ismael, and has nothing but respect for small women who can kick his ass.

Definitely too much respect for him to daydream about taking a nap while hugging one of her fluffy tails…

Klaus nods, sparing the poor boy if wanting to see the one he had already drawn. He can tell (and hear) how hard he is being to himself about failure and art.

"Sure!" And so, he stands still. He's worked as a model for Eiden, so he gets some of the stuff down. Just don't move, right?

“Y-you don’t have t’ stand like that on my account. It looks kinda… unnatural anyhow. What about how you were sittin’ before? I liked that one better. You looked… peaceful.” ‘Angelic.’

Having something to do with his hands seems to calm Till down a lot. He sticks his tongue between his teeth as he sketches.

For a second, the CRT thought maybe the young man thought he was looking at someone else, mistaking him for someone else. But the more familiar he got, the more specific, the dimmer Tenna's screen became.

"Till, I'm not going to hurt y--did you really think I'd ever want to hurt you?? I, don't even know what you're talking about? When have you not been nice to me?"

Horrified, the man begins to shrink until the top of his casing was no taller than the average person in the room. Quickly and urgently, he moves his hands in a 'let's go' motion, speaking again when they left the place.

…Oh shit. Is he doing it again?

“I-I didn’t mean t’ imply you were a bad person or anythin’! I know you didn’t kill that guy you pretended t’ throw in the hole, so… I dunno, I guess I just thought… Why wouldn’t you wanna kill me? That’s just what I’m used to from guys like you, y’know?”

‘Perform?’ Surely Till heard the man wrong. The only times he’s gotten up on stage in this world have been a complete disaster.

“You mean like… come help set everything up for a performance? Sure.” Till accepts eagerly. Despite what Tenna says, he still feels like he owes the TV something. “Are you gonna have Ivan on again?” Speaking of Ivan…

"Oh, thank you. I don't need to catch any more scars to my face!"

He's nervous, in a way that reminds her of the children just seeing her other usual mode of mobility for the first time (but, he's too big to be pulled into a lap for reassurance that she's just fine). So, her method of disarming the situation is to make a jab at her own expense, a note to the marking from her unfortunate clattering down many more stairs than a small child at the time should've ever taken.

"Would you like to take a walk with us? Nazeneen knows the area here well, but I don't think we'd be unhappy for company."

“Yeah, I hear ya.” Till idly runs his fingers over the bullet wound scar on the side of his neck. “There’s a saying I’ve heard… ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ I think? Well, I think that sometimes it just leaves ya with scars.”

Some of Till’s anxiety dissipates with her joke, and he steps in line to walk beside her nervously.

“I-I don’t mind, but I can’t promise ya good company… I’ve never been so great with—” Till gestures vaguely, “Talkin’. My name’s Till.”

He glances sideways at her, noticing how much effort she has to put into moving.

“Your little finger stunt is hardly threatening, by the way.”

What was Till asking him to do, chop it off or something? Aurelius sighs internally and shifts—and the aforementioned purple ribbon slips out of the basket as he moves, falling to the ground with a distinct clatter.

“What’s this…? Her name…? St-Stellaris Magnifico U-Universalis— Yeesh, what a mouthful… Good thing they don’t brand pets with their names here…” Sympathetically rubbing the silver branding of his name on his neck, Till turns the tag over to continue reading.

“'If found, please return to Veoc—' Oh! Hey! This is great! I know this guy!”