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It happened again in his dreams. Till relieves it every night, the last strains of CURE fading away the same way Ivan’s lifeblood ebbed out his wounds on that stage. He always wakes up with bloodshot eyes and trembling fingers that couldn’t begin to properly hold a guitar. His arms lock tight around the person next to him.
In the dark, he lets himself exhale. He tightens his hold around their body, pressing his face into their hair and breathing in–
Till stops breathing.
It takes him several moments, disoriented, to remember who he’s in bed with. He mentally puts together the pieces of fluffy curls, soft silk pajamas, cold, cold skin into a coherent whole. Luka. All of Till’s remaining self-control goes to resisting several contradictory impulses all at once.
Shove Luka out of bed. Pull him closer and cry into his neck. Slip out of bed without waking him up and find something new to drown his sorrows in.
Till does none of them and gingerly sits up in bed, contemplating Luka’s peaceful expression, defanged in sleep. He wasn’t the only one who had night terrors; seeing Luka freshly awoken from a nightmare was worse than any punishment the segyein could come up with because Till knew he could become like that too. Since being dropped into Heperu’s ""tender"" care, Till had shaken Luka awake more than once. He seemed to be the only one actually concerned by it, even if he’d rather be stuck with any human other than Luka.
Luka liked trying to start fights. He was good at finding your soft weak spots, at slipping under your skin and smiling about it all the while. No wonder he’d smiled like that when he’d got Mizi to lose control. Mizi…
Maybe a fight would have been cathartic for him, or a disaster for them both. It didn’t matter, because Till bluntly refused to engage. Even if he tried to pretend otherwise, Luka wasn’t a complicated person in his wants and desires – whatever was left of them after his owner had poked around his body and rearranged everything to his liking. But he knew Luka had them. As deformed as his free will was, there was still some part of him that could want. He was just as likely to sneer as he was to comfort.
If Till told him off, he laughed. If Till, in a rare moment of vulnerability, said he was hurting, he listened. He didn’t try to fill the silence with words, but he was there. And if Till showed even a flicker of anger, Luka grinned at the sign of life from him.
Something hot runs down Till’s cheek and falls on Luka's face.
The seconds in which he holds his breath spread out until they feel like an eternity, time crawling by as slowly as it did back in Anakt Garden. When Luka wakes, he’s always still. Probably from his godless, weirdo freak of an owner trying to make him look and act like a doll even more than he already does. His voice is soft, no doubt because he’s saving it for the final round. “Are you crying on me?”
Till backs away until he’s on the edge of the bed, rubbing his arm roughly across his eyes.
“Even for you, that’s a new low,” Luka tactlessly remarks.
An angry retort bubbles up on Till’s tongue. He doesn’t have the will to say anything at all, in the end.
With a long-suffering sigh that might have been halfway a wheeze, Luka loops one arm around Till’s shoulders to drag him back under the covers. No doubt missing his human heater; his entire body was constantly colder than ice. Colder than a corpse. He kisses Till’s wet eyelids, not seeming to realize how much effort it takes not to jerk away on instinct. “Mwah,” Luka murmurs. “Don’t cry now.”
With the moonlight from one of this planet’s many moons filtering in through the huge windows in Luka’s room, he looks almost ethereal. Almost, because without the stage makeup there’s nothing to hide how his cheeks are just a little too hollow or the bruise-like purple under his eyes. His scars are a lot more stark too against his papery skin without the smoothening that soft lighting lends them on Alien Stage.
“Till,” Luka whispers. Out of all the surgeries done on him, reconstructive or cosmetic or otherwise, none have touched his vocal cords. It’s a beautiful voice, one that makes Till want to compose. Even if he knows the notes won’t come to him.
Days, then a week passes in this manner, and Till gets no closer to making sense of what Luka is actually after. Because he must be after something – he wouldn’t be cozying up to him like this if he didn’t want something from Till. Trying to understand Luka just makes his head hurt, though, so he focuses on trying to compose. He’s been allowed access to a guitar again, the first time since round 2 when he’d killed the last one.
Whatever.
He’d take what he could get, as long as he was left alone for once. Luka might be used to getting cameras and mics shoved in his face, but that didn’t mean Till wanted to get used to media attention.
Luka himself is curled up next to Till like a parenthesis, recovering from his latest tummy tuck. Yesterday, he’d gotten the drainage tubes removed, but that just meant he could curl up next to Till again without the risk of ripping them out in his sleep. Scribbled notes and lyrics are scattered all over Till’s lap and the couch; Luka doesn’t attempt to peek. He probably knows better than to try deciphering his work when it’s still in progress, but he still presses himself against Till insistently.
Three weeks ago, Till wouldn’t have understood Luka’s touch the way he does now. It’s a weapon. Something designed to worm under the skin and unsettle, distract. But he doesn’t scare easily, he tells himself.
Distantly, Till feels Luka shifting against him, not minding as discarded papers flutter uselessly to the floor like torn-off feathers.
Trash. It’s trash.
It’s all of what remains of his soul, bare and vulnerable on paper. Most of them are blacked out by scribbles, his violence and rage and tears until he can cover up what he doesn’t want to remember.
(Ivan. Ivan’s eyes closing forever. The sound his body had made when it hit the ground.)
Except Luka has a page in his hand. And he’s picking up another. And it finally cuts through the endless static in his head that Luka is reading his work.
“Hey.”
He doesn’t seem to notice. Till reaches over to shake him a little. “Hey!”
“This isn’t the best you have to offer, is it?” Luka says silkily, letting the page slip out of his fingers like the trash it is. “You could at least try in the final round. So far, this season has been very boring for me.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you art takes time, you shitty king of the stage?” Till mutters. He turns his face away, not wanting Luka to see whatever expression his face is contorted into. The music won’t come to him, not like it used to. His mind is just unending static these days, the phantom pain of a limb long gone.
Luka laughs, then, a real laugh. It changes his face in a way his controlled, careful chuckles don’t. His eyes crinkle slightly, even sparkling a little, his mouth relaxing instead of tightening into a smirk. “I’m rethinking asking you to write our song for the final round.”
“That’s funny,” he says, the ink of the pen smudging on his fingers, “I thought you just said you wanted me to write our death song.”
“Was I unclear?” The bastard even tilts his head at Till, like he’s genuinely confused.
The discordant note staring back at Till from the page makes him rip it up into the tiniest pieces he can until it looks like snow falling into little piles around the pair. It’s worse than the static; he hadn’t thought that was possible. When he finally looks back at Luka, he’s still staring at him. Waiting for an answer. “...No.”
“Good. Write it.”
“No,” Till scowls.
“Why not? Well. Not any of this, obviously.” Luka says, casting his gaze across the sheaves of paper almost blanketing the room around them. “Or those. But I’d hate for these to be the last thing you write.”
“The last thing I write? You’re so fucking confident you’ll win. And I don’t write ballads.”
“I don’t only sing ballads,” he counters, even as he winces with the strain of bending down. With a flourish, Luka presents a blank piece of staff paper to Till from the floor. It’s a little rumpled, but it’s new. Clean.
Till gives him the stink-eye and doesn’t touch the paper. “What’s your angle?”
“I happen to like your music.” Luka smiles beatifically, as if he’s doing Till such a huge favor. “I want more of it. Preferably written for me.”
There’s nothing left in Till. The music had ebbed away the same way Ivan had bled out during Round 6. Static in his head, a pounding emptiness where there used to be music.
“Do you want me to beg? Wouldn’t that be nice, a king on his knees for you?” Luka’s touching him. Somehow, Till is still able to derive warmth from that corpse-like touch.
“Don’t,” he mutters. “I’m not sick like you and your masters are.” The static is no less loud in Till’s head, but as Luka presses the clean page into his hand, he can almost hear the notes of an opening refrain through it. “...Fine. You win.”