@fatealtered Ivan had been watching him for the better part of ten minutes. Not that Till had noticed — or, more accurately, not that Till had acknowledged it. He sat slouched at the opposite end of the narrow bench, one knee drawn up slightly as he balanced a battered sketchbook against his thigh. The pencil between his fingers moved in quick, irritated strokes, scratching hard enough across the paper that Ivan suspected the next page would bear the bruises of whatever Till was drawing. Ivan leaned forward, elbows resting loosely against his knees. His gaze remained fixed upon Till’s profile: the stubborn downturn of his mouth, the faint crease between his brows, the unruly strands of silver hair falling over his eyes. Every few seconds, Till’s lower lip would catch beneath his teeth in concentration before being released again. the displeased curl of his upper lip, or the brief flashes of teeth that appeared whenever irritation sharpened his words.
Ivan’s attention followed the motion each time. he always had this pull towards till. wanting to observe him. to know what he thought. he was so different. Ivan had always silently stared. though a thought had followed him for several days now, persistent as an itch beneath the skin. He had overheard the others in anakt garden discussing it in hushed, excited voices — some ridiculous trend, apparently. Leaning close. Touching lips. Seeing who pulled away first. Ivan had initially dismissed it as another pointless attempt to imitate emotions.
“Till.”
His voice slipped into the quiet with deliberate softness. Ivan waited until he had even the smallest fraction of Till’s attention before pressing the pad of his index finger against his lower lip. His mouth curved around it — not quite a smile, though amusement glimmered unmistakably in the rusts of his obsidian hues.
“Can we try that?” Ivan tilted his head toward him, though his gaze never left Till’s face. Ivan tilted his head, dark hair slipping over one eye as he studied the other boy’s profile.
“That thing everyone’s been talking about,” he clarified. His fingertip dragged thoughtfully along the plush center of his lip. “Touching our lips together.”
Ivan's person had disappeared to Till.
The cruelty of the fact didn't mean anything. It was the way he worked, and the way he assumed everyone worked-- albeit, he'd never actually noticed anyone in such a state of focus. Occasionally, another kid would put their head down and fiddle with something religiously, or stare off with no expression -- what happened in their minds beyond that was their business, so he ignored it, usually. He was too bubbled in his own world to care.
Ivan was someone who did that, too. Usually, though, his eyes in that kind of state seemed to lock onto Till. This fact was background noise to him for the most part. It was easier to assume, unless he was already in a bad mood, that he was being stared through, the way he himself could do to others when he thought hard enough.
Again, what happened in their minds was their business. For him, when he wrote music, everything in the world became notes. When he drew, everything in the world became lines. If he stopped to wonder what happened in Ivan's mind when he focused like that... well-- the fact was, he didn't. Not really. Not often.
Right now, though, it was fine. Ivan's stare wasn't being thought about even a little ; it was being translated. In the quick glances stolen when Till's head lifts, he feverishly dissects every shape and color and crease and lash, and immediately brings it down to the page, scrambling to capture it all as quickly as possible ; the garden's artificial sun was mostly west of them now, the light hit the upper left side of his eye, slightly more toward the middle, but edged around the cornea with a slight curve. His eyes were almost black, but his lashes and brows seemed darker, and his irises almost always caught more light- now was no different. A strand of hair was cutting through right where the upper lid started to dip on the inner side. Another, thinner one just to the right of the iris. The rest of the hair hits about 5 millimeters from the outer edge. A little bit of light is catching on the hair here.
When he drew, he didn't tend to fixate on fine details like this. He was better at capturing impressions -- at taking a glance and a feeling, and using only that to fuel what he made next. That was why, ten minutes ago, he'd started with a scratchy outline of his friend's full-body posture ; it graduated then into an attempt to copy his facial structure, mostly from memory. Only then did he start sinking into this kind of detail. And at the same time, Ivan, the person, had gradually disappeared. If you asked Till, he would blame him for it, for being still enough to allow himself to vanish like that.
Because in this time, he'd forgotten what a weird, irritating person Ivan could be.
"What the hell!?!?" He'd jumped back and dropped his pencil, flicking his hand as he came back to himself. In huge part, he was pissed off because the sketch was still so unfinished ! The rough outlines were placed and a bit of inking had been done, but there's no way he could finish it now! Not after knowing -- "That's what you're thinking about!?!?"
It was only then that he realized that today, Ivan had been looking at him, and he felt something like... what he could only guess was claustrophobic, or something.
He scooted away and lifted his hand further, letting it ball up. Not like a fist, but more like.. if it could gather up the surge of distracting emotions from just now, crumble it up, wind back, and throw it away--
"Gross. No way. It looks gross. Why would you wanna do that??"
