Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

Till pushes and shoves his way through the crowd, and no, he doesn’t care if he gets called an asshole for it. People already give him weird looks the minute he steps foot inside the classroom. So he doesn't care, and it’d take a lot of fucks for Till to give to even start.

Because some nobody—in actuality, one of the most popular guys in school, but Till never paid attention to him before this—just had to go and ruin the last few months of his relatively peaceful senior year.

“Move,” he barks at some rattled-looking girl, and she, along with the rest of the cafeteria, make way for an angry Till, face twisted in rage, rivaling a rabid dog’s.

“Hey, you!” That red varsity jacket is an eyesore, and to make matters worse, the guy doesn’t even acknowledge him, too busy entertaining some nameless faces Till could care less about. So, wasting no time, he hauls the guy back by the collar, earning a surprised ‘ack!’ and a collective head-turn.

All eyes on them. Till has a one-track mind, luckily. “Uh,” the idiot points a finger at himself, “you mean, me?”

“Yeah, no, who the fuck else?!”

“What did I do?”

“You know exactly what you did, asshole.”

“Um…” Said asshole laughs awkwardly, sending his friends SOS signals, please help me asap, haha. “I don’t? Sorry?”

“Don’t apologize when it already happened,” Till snarls. “It was you, wasn’t it? The one who posted that video?”

Ivan, hearing that, snaps his gaze to Till, taking him in with newfound consideration: heavy eye bags—whether makeup or genuine, it’s unclear, but they're pretty hard to forget—and decked out in dark clothing and a neck-turning array of piercings and chunky bracelets.

“Oh.” Slow recognition flashes through his eyes. “That?”

“Delete it.”

Ivan takes a step forward, and Till immediately backs up. He smiles, like he’d just stumbled upon something rare and exciting. “We were both drunk, though. It was just a game, Till. No need to get so worked up.”

But it’s different when Ivan brushes it off like it’s nothing, versus when Till tries to walk off the entire student body’s bug-eyed stares on a Monday morning. It pisses him off. He wants to take it out on the problem.

He shoves Ivan back. The guy, being the football player he is, doesn’t budge, and even has the nerve to laugh. Till feels something break.

It’s only mere moments before he’s on top of Ivan, beating the shit out of his pretty face for all his fans to see, to open their eyes to just how pathetic and nasty he truly is, that horrible personality beneath a carefully crafted picture-perfect image.

Therapeutic, is how he’d describe it, every collision between his split knuckles and Ivan’s bruised cheek. A delirious laugh bubbles up in his throat before a thick fist drills itself into his nose, sending his head bobbing backwards, blood spurting everywhere.

On his own clothes, and upon taking a hazy look down, on the white sleeves of Ivan’s varsity jacket. Only one word occurs to him: shit.

Then he’s promptly knocked out, lying motionless against the cafeteria floor, and burdened under a million unblinking stares.

—

It truly is the walk of shame, turning up to school the next day with a busted lip and a cast over his nose. Even the hairs on his nape stand on end as he stops by his locker between periods.

His beautifully decorated locker, an hour spent after school pasting pictures of Mizi—those that he’d drawn in class, boring holes into the side of her face; he’s not that much of a stalker—inside it.

“Hey.” A voice to his left, not important and annoying. “Hey, Till, look at what you did.”

Till slams his locker shut and turns to leave, when a hand on his shoulder stops him.

“You see this?” Ivan points to his black eye, and Till, unapologetically, barks out a laugh. The jock huffs and shakes Till to get his point across. “You did this to my face. Was that really necessary, Till? We could’ve talked it out somewhere more private and avoided this whole mess.”

“Hell no.”

Ivan’s mouth settles into a straight line. “You know there’s another video of us.”

“Oh, really— shit, of us fighting?”

“Yeah,” Ivan sighs, “and it wasn’t my fault this time.”

Till’s gaze darkens, and he looks away before he acts on another impulse to close his hands around Ivan’s throat. “So it’s my fault?”

“The first time wasn’t mine either. Or yours.”

“Yeah? But what about now?”

Ivan thinks for a moment, then ominously, his eyes glimmer. “You shouldn’t have done that, Till.”

Till scoffs. “Well, I did. What’re you gonna do now?”

“For one,” Till flinches when Ivan towers over him, hands shoved into his jacket’s pockets, which doesn’t mitigate the chill creeping down his spine at all, “I don’t feel very much inclined to help you, since you messed up my face and my favorite jacket.”

Always caring about his appearance, Till could gag, but Ivan keeps talking in a low voice, and it only dawns on him that the hallway is glaringly empty, “And two, I wasn’t the one who posted that video of us kissing, no matter how much you want to believe it.”

Till’s heart drops to his stomach. Ivan hums, jollier than ever.

“Unless that’s what you were hoping for?”

“No, asshole, just— find a way to delete the damn thing, okay?! I’m sorry.”

“Too late,” Ivan smiles gleefully, though to Till, it’s the delight of the devil. He leans down, his whisper conspiratory, “Don’t you know? People don’t have to accept apologies, even if they’re the sincerest in the world—”

“I’m– sorry. Ivan.” Till tries again, voice strained, and he can’t believe he’s doing this against his better judgment, “Please, just— try.”

“Nope,” Ivan sings. “Earn my forgiveness first, Till.”

It’s like the floor’s been pulled from under him, a sick joke everyone’s in on except him. And, literally, he’d take that over this kind of torment any day, this lame attempt at blackmail that Till’s unfortunately getting swept up in.

“Then,” his lip quivers with barely suppressed rage—fear? “How?”

“Since you wanna know so badly…” Ivan leans closer, and Till has to force down the rampant urge to bolt down the hallway when the guy ends with a downright evil, “Entertain me.”

—

He can’t believe that one single game of spin-the-bottle could herald his downfall in the span of two days. He just can’t believe that, out of all the people packed in a house party of hundreds, once it was finally his turn, it landed on Ivan.

Ivan, who’s begun to haunt his trips to the bathroom.

“Hey.” At the next urinal over, lo and behold, it’s Till’s daytime paralysis demon in the flesh. “Come sit with me at lunch today.”

“No.”

The sound of piss is deafening. Till could melt into the floor and die, and he’d be okay with it. Ivan, however— “Why not?”

“Don’t want to,” he replies, tucking himself away, and he catches Ivan staring right at it, his gaze darting up to meet Till’s, eyes wide.

Till has never zipped his pants up faster. “W- what?”

Ivan’s expression relaxes lazily. “Nothing.” He smiles, and it sends a wave of goosebumps all over Till’s body. “Why?”

“Nothing.”

The guy glances down at his own junk then, and looks back up to Till, who’s already out the door, wiping his wet hands frantically on his black jeans.

It leaves a stain, like he just wet himself, and honestly, he did.

-

Ivan, who’s begun to unabashedly stare at him in the locker room before PE.

“Till, you dropped this.”

“Thanks, Acorn.”

As he’s turning back around, he nearly jumps out of his skin. Ivan’s looking at him, hand on the locker door like he was in the middle of closing it, but somehow got sidetracked— and Till dreadfully remembers that he’s without a shirt.

He crosses his arms, suddenly self-conscious. “What?”

“You ask me that a lot these days,” Ivan replies, Till’s glare deflecting off of him like a rubber band. Ineffective. “Can’t I look at you?”

“It’s– weird.”

Ivan seems delighted, eyes cheery crescents, and to Till, that’s a bad sign. “It’s only weird if you make it weird, Till.”

“I’m not making anything weird, you’re just—” Acorn’s looking at them now, curious. Till lowers his voice to a hiss, “—strange.”

The jock leans against the locker, staring down at Till, and he feels more like some sort of interesting bug than a human underneath Ivan’s laser-sharp gaze. And now that it’s only the two of them here, Acorn having just left, it’s settled.

“Am I strange?” Ivan asks liltingly. “Or are you thinking things that you’re projecting onto me?”

Till’s lured in a beast with the scent of his blood; it’s going to take every last tether of his sanity to make it out in one piece.

So he makes the first move. Better to get a head start, he rationalizes.

He glowers at him. “What’re you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that it could all just be in your head.“

Till immediately regrets ever asking, because in no way is he prepared when Ivan reaches out and splays his fingertips over his chest, drags it agonizingly slow to the middle of his bare torso and pushes, causing Till to stumble back, shocked.

“Or maybe,” Ivan says, brushing past the other, still half-naked, “you’re onto something, Till.”

He’s leaving as Acorn pops his head back in. “Oi, Till! You’re gonna be late!”

“Coming!” Till calls back, hurriedly tugging on his shirt. Once he’s out the door, however, it’s hard to ignore that stare burning into the back of his head at all times, at every minute, every second, every slight movement, whether it be taking a gulp of water or wiping off sweat with the edge of his shirt.

He might just go insane.

—

Ivan should be studied, Till thinks, on the verge of passing out, forcibly squeezed between the jock and Mizi, his lovely angel. Despite being the freak he is, this guy is somehow best friends with the purest girl alive.

His head spins as it registers that Mizi’s talking to him. Willingly talking to Till, and he can’t get a single coherent word out to save his life.

“W- uh, I– um—”

“Till,” coos Ivan to his left, “she’s asking if you brought lunch, not for a fully formed thesis on the spot.”

Mizi giggles to his right, and oh dear, his soul could ascend from his body right now if it weren’t for the devil’s lackey clinging to him like dead weight and ruining his once-in-a-lifetime interaction with his crush since freshman year—

Till bangs a fist against the table. “I know that!” he yells at Ivan, and the room goes silent, but then he remembers that Mizi’s there and hangs his head in shame. “I- I forgot my lunch at home,” he mumbles quietly.

“Oh!” she exclaims. “Good thing I brought an extra sandwich.” Pulling it from her bag, she offers it to Till, who takes it with trembling hands. Ivan zeros in on the movement, mouth hidden behind a palm. “Don’t forget your food at home, okay Till? It’s hard to focus on an empty stomach, and it’s bad for you!”

“I–” Tears almost well up in Till’s eyes, so moved by her kindness. “I will. Thank you, Mizi.”

“You’re welcome, Till,” she says, smiling, and Ivan snickers against the back of his hand. Mizi stares at him puzzledly, and Till bites his tongue hard enough to draw blood.

Because unfortunately, Ivan decides that right now is a great time to squeeze Till’s thigh under the table. He does it again, the contact searing through his skinny jeans, burning and uncomfortable and worse of all, tingly.

Why it sends a thrill to his stomach, Till has no fucking idea. He’s not sure he wants to find out either.

But he’s stuck in place, not wanting to risk barrelling into Mizi and, God forbid, making her uncomfortable; and also not giving Ivan the satisfaction of caving in, because he won’t.

“You’d think it was his first time interacting with a human,” Ivan sighs deeply like it was a good laugh. Till really hopes it was, when he rams his elbow into the guy’s abdomen and he doubles over in pain, groaning into the table.

He hopes it was, now that he’s alone in the bathroom and realizes, in horror, that the sensation he felt didn’t just go to his stomach.

“Fuck,” is what he says, before he’s screaming his lungs out into his backpack.

—

There are whispers. About him and Ivan.

About them dating, and Ivan isn’t doing anything about it.

He confronts him in an empty stairwell, dragging him back before he can round the corner.

“Do you even know what they’re saying about us?”

Ivan’s smiling brightly in his obnoxiously red varsity jacket, splattered with faint traces of Till’s blood on the sleeves. It isn’t noticeable, but Till sees it clear as day.

Only they remember how it got there.

Ivan shrugs. “That I’m your boyfriend, yeah.” He says it like it’s no biggie, except for Till, it’s gradually edging him up a wall. “Really, you need to stop letting rumors get to you so easily. It isn’t—”

“—a big deal. For you it isn’t, but what about me, huh?”

Till isn’t popular. He isn’t as charismatic or funny or likeable as Ivan either, intimidating as he is in his emo getup. This bout of gossip is only setting him off, agitated to the point of scaring people in the hallways. Frankly, he’s had enough of it.

Ivan looks guilty now, lips pursed and eyebrows pulled together, and he ruffles his hair, sighing in defeat. “Fine. I’ll talk to them.”

He pushes off the wall, and Till backs off. “But I can’t make any promises,” he tells him before he goes, “‘cause—“

“Try your best,” Till cuts him off, turning on his heel to leave.

Ivan cares more about his self-image than Till, who he’s gotten off on the wrong foot with. There’s no room for him in the picture, and he’ll deal with it.

If people don’t like him, then so be it. For Ivan, though, it might just be the end of the world.

—

“How did you pull someone like Ivan, anyway?”

“I didn’t pull shit—“

“Well, you managed to grab his attention, so. How’d you do it?”

He knew Ivan wouldn’t try that hard to fix things. The guy probably threw it out there like a suggestion—afraid of being called sensitive or offending someone, like the people-pleasing coward he is—and nobody took it seriously since Till’s a joke, apparently. He knew, and yet he still hoped it’d get better over the next few days.

Now there’s a cheerleader trio holding him hostage behind the school.

“Those’re just rumors,” Till scoffs, and the girl tilts her head condescendingly. “We aren’t even friends.”

“Then what’s with the video?”

“It was a game.”

“Why do you sit with him at lunch everyday?”

“He made me.”

“Why does he follow you around everywhere?”

Till falls silent, then grits out, “To hell if I know.”

“Oh,” the girl’s eyes twinkle, smiling wickedly at him, “he’s obsessed.”

“Obsessed obsessed,” her friend pipes up. “I’m jealous.”

It’s like Till just confirmed their suspicions, whatever terrifying thoughts were brewing in their minds.

A third one chimes in. “The guy who uploaded the video is fuming right now, y’know.”

“Yeah,” the second girl turns her gaze sympathetically towards Till, “and Ivan can’t do anything about it since he knows the guy’s batshit crazy.”

“His plan backfired on him, by the way, and now the whole school thinks you two are dating,” says the first and glances at Till, who’s standing there, mouth gaping in shock.

“That guy— doesn’t like Ivan?” He doesn’t like him either, but that’s because he’s himself. Till didn’t realize others held the same niche opinion.

“Wants to ruin his reputation, bad.”

“And mine,” Till mutters dully.

“And yours,” she agrees, “but it wasn’t so great to begin with, huh?”

Till clenches his jaw. “Did he, like, want everyone to start calling Ivan slurs or something?”

She shrugs. “I guess, but Ivan’s so hot, anything’s excusable.”

“So no one cares that he’s gay?”

“He is?”

“Well, no—“ Ah, goddamn it, if only people knew what Till goes through, then they’d be thinking the same thing, “—but it seems that way to others now, doesn’t it?”

The three of them smirk, like they know something he doesn’t. “No one cares,” she says finally. “You’re not as special as you think you are.”

“Never said I was—“

“—oh, but if you really want the video taken down, I know the guy. He’s on the football team.”

Till’s about to fall onto his knees in gratitude when it all shatters with, “But you’ll have to do a little something for me first.”

She whispers in his ear, and Till turns pale.

—

As it turns out, dating athletes really does come in handy later on, because that girl has something Till needs.

“Thanks,” the cheerleader says sweetly, like she didn’t set Till out to do something wrong on so many levels. “Here you go.”

She hands him a small note with a six-digit code on it in exchange for a picture of Ivan topless, airdropped to her phone.

It doesn’t help that his uneasiness worsens as he sneaks his way into the boy’s locker room, tip-toeing over stray uniforms and empty water bottles. The football team has practice, so there’s no risk of getting caught.

For both his and Ivan’s sake, he’ll put an end to this. He keeps telling himself as much while opening every single locker—fortunately without locks, since it’s a hassle to keep turning the combination, he’d know—and tries to find a blue duffle bag, blue, blue, blue—

The lights flip on. Till’s heart sinks, and slowly turning his head, he’s met with Ivan, popping open his water bottle and taking a sip, clad in his football uniform.

It fits him well, his traitorous mind thinks, and he immediately wants to bash his head in. Snug, tight around the waist and thighs— oh, wait. Wait.

Focus, he needs to focus on the task at hand, but suddenly he can’t when Ivan approaches him steadily, pinning him in place with a pleasantly surprised gaze.

“Whatcha doing there, Till?”

Saving my ass. “None of your business.”

“I think I deserve to know, since that’s my locker you’re looking through.”

Of course it was. Somehow, it all loops back to Ivan.

“How was I supposed to know?!”

“That’s an invasion of privacy, Till.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Till shivers for the hundredth time at the growing smugness all over Ivan’s flushed face, sweaty from practice. “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you.”

There’s no other choice left, so reluctantly, Till grumbles out a name and Ivan nods attentively to his curt explanation. Wordlessly, he reaches behind Till, face gone white, and opens the locker by his head. He deflates, cursing his mind for coming up with the worst assumptions.

“You really wanna do this?” But Till’s already tapping furiously at the screen, and within seconds the video is gone, wiped from the recently deleted folder and any socials it was posted on.

He breathes a sigh of relief. He’s about to say something when Ivan pouts, sad-puppy-esque, and Till gawks. “Are you serious right now? Don’t you dare give me that look,” he shoves a finger into his face, “when you didn’t do shit to help me.”

“So taking a picture of me changing was a better idea?”

Heat rushes to Till’s face, ears steaming. Caught. “N- no. No. It wasn’t, but I needed to– f-for the password—”

“You could’ve just asked,” Ivan sighs, disappointed. “Honestly, Till, just own up to being my boyfriend and it’ll change your life forever.”

“You’re insane,” Till laughs in disbelief. “You could’ve told that guy off, and he would’ve listened to you. Don’t you get it, Ivan? People love you—”

“No, seriously, he hates my guts,” the jock mutters bitterly. “Don’t know what I did, but if I said something, he’d find a way to twist my words to make me look bad.”

Then, he frowns at Till. “You could’ve gotten dragged into my mess.”

Till doesn’t respond, so Ivan continues sheepishly, “I know how much you hated the video, but confronting the guy who took it would’ve been worse. He would’ve tried to dig up something from your past and make the entire school hate you to get back at me, and then I’d feel like shit—”

“Thanks… I guess.”

Ivan blinks dumbly. “Huh?”

“Thanks, I said,” Till grumbles, face hot. “Are you slow?”

“Oh…” Ivan’s red as he is now. “It was nothing, really.”

Till thought he was a pretentious ass, but maybe he isn’t. Crazy how opinions can change so quickly.

Crazy how, knowing that Ivan was actually looking out for him, Till feels all the blood rush to his face, dizzying.

It’s so stupid. He’s so desperately starved that he’ll take any drop of kindness he can get, and this knowledge was a bucketful.

Ivan’s starting to look a little cuter, too, and he hates how he doesn’t mind at all.

—

“Till!”

A huge puppy barrels into him, rubbing its face all over his cheek in greeting.

It’s Ivan, his b– bo— Ah, fuck. His boy—

“Good morning, my love,” says Ivan, so disgustingly sweet it makes Till choke on air, worsened by a peck on his cheek. Till fumes from his ears, pushing Ivan’s face away despite his whiny protests.

Ivan, his boyfriend.

“Mornin’,” Till replies stiffly, internally starting to panic at the feeling of jealous stares digging into his skin. “Didn’t I tell you, no PDA—”

“Aw, but I missed you soo much!”

Any retort shrivels up and dies on his tongue. He can’t yell at him when he's acting like this. So he puts up with the nuzzling, even if he wants to die a little bit, because his boyfriend loves him so much, and he—

“I love you,” Ivan sighs into Till’s shirt, and he might just explode.

“I... love you,” Till mumbles against Ivan’s ebony hair, so soft he wishes he could card his fingers through it, “too.”

“I wanna kiss you, Till.”

He winces at Ivan’s beaming face, so radiant he needs a shield. “L- Later.”

“You promise?”

“Uh-huh.”

He leans down close to Till’s lips and whispers, “Really?”

“Really!” Till squawks, and Ivan giggles into his neck, squeezing him tightly.

“You better keep your promise, Till,” and he does, until the moon rises, till the first break of dawn.