Chapter Text
The worst part about having to be pulled out of school over the bloody gunk Till had been coughing up was everyone knowing this was where he was heading weeks in advance. The only thing Till hated more than being told what he could and couldn’t do was other people being right about him. By far, though, the best part of this situation was that if he died, at least he wouldn’t have to die at home with his asshole stepdad, an awful prick ‘til the end.
“This program is very expensive. Get over it quickly,” he told Till while they waited for the intake nurse to come back in the room. “I wouldn’t bother with this if you didn’t have that talent of yours. Write something good while you’re wasting my money in here.”
Huffing a breath out his nose, Till bit his tongue. He’d planned on composing, but not for this shithead to shop around. He’d made enough money for the bastard growing up, writing jingles for local businesses. Now that he was getting older and his songwriting had grown more advanced, he had big plans no one knew about—plans that would change everything.
After being assured that Till would have the time and resources to write his music, the asshole left, and the admitting nurse fixed Till with such a look of pity that he felt the need to use his trump card.
“Can you show me my room already? I’m tired from dying of my deadly disease.”
“Of–of course,” she replied, getting to her feet with a pained smile. “You’ll have a roommate. I hope that’s okay with you.”
Till shrugged and followed her. It wasn’t like it would matter if it wasn’t. He watched her mousy brown ponytail bob against the back of her neck as she led him down the hall.
“You’re the last door on the right here,” she told him, gesturing to a maroon door at the end of the hall, “with another young man in the same predicament. You’ll attend group therapy and mealtimes together, but as I told your father—”
“Stepfather,” Till corrected.
She grimaced in apology. “Yes, your stepfather—You’ll have individual therapy and activity time, so he’s not the be-all end-all.”
A few doors from their destination, she stopped at a storage closet and began rummaging through the top shelf. Not the be-all end-all—what the hell was that supposed to mean?
Staring at the maroon door, Till fiddled with his hospital bracelet and the thin leather bracelets beneath it ‘til she thrust a stack of towels and a white hospital gown against his chest.
“So, um,” he blurted out quickly, before they reached the end of the hall, “this guy—is he a–a troublemaker or something?”
“Oh no, he’s quite polite. To the staff anyway. He has resisted our prior attempts to give him a roommate but the director was certain this would be an, um, enlightening pairing, at least.”
Huh? Till thought, but they were already at the door, so though his nerves were maximally frazzled, there wasn’t time to ask anything else with her pushing it open and leading him in.
He dropped his duffel bag and the towels on the unoccupied single bed before looking over at his roommate, reading on his back on the other. Even in a drab hospital gown and with his hair grown out, there was no mistaking him—his closest friend and the biggest pain in his ass, Ivan.
“Oh,” he said, putting down his book, nonchalant as fuck. “Hello, Till.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Till asked, dropping onto the bed and allowing the nurse to drape the gown over his long sleeved black shirt, tying it in the back. “Your folks said you were studying in the south of France.”
It would’ve been normal for those rich fucks to have no idea where their son was, but to lie?
At the question, Ivan only smiled mysteriously, asking, “Did they now?”
He looked thinner than usual and pale, and the hospital gown over his hoodie was certainly not his best look, but none of this hindered Ivan’s ability to be an enigmatic little shit.
“Oh, I see you two know each other already! Well, I’ll just let you get reacquainted then,” the traitorous nurse declared cheerfully before scurrying off.
“What the hell,” Till stressed. “So your parents lied to Mizi?”
Ivan fixed him with a patronizing look. “It’s not a crime to lie to Mizi, Till.”
“God, whatever.” The fucker was always teasing him about his crush, but it shouldn’t be funny to him with Till in here now. And he still hadn’t answered the question. “What’s wrong with you that you’re in here?”
“I’m on the same ward as you.”
“You—Seriously?” Till asked incredulously.
Ivan grinned, overly pleased with himself. “Is that really so hard to believe?”
“I don’t know, man! Like everyone’s had a crush on you. S'fucking annoying is what it is.”
At that, Ivan chuckled, leading Till to believe they had some sort of rapport and might continue to shoot the shit.
“You gonna tell me who it is?”
Promptly, Ivan’s smile dropped and Till could swear he saw his jaw tighten. He’d been mistaken, then.
“You don’t know the rules yet, do you?”
Just as quickly as it fell, Ivan was smiling again, fake and frosty this time. Even though Till had seen Ivan deploy that phony old thing a million times before, it always gave him the creeps.
“Alright, fuck you too,” he grumbled. “Don’t tell me. What do I care? I was just making conversation.”
Distantly, he wondered if it was Sua, the ice queen herself. Acorn died because she didn’t love him, which, fine, whatever. Till couldn’t have loved the guy either. But she’d refused to attend his funeral which finally earned her the reputation she deserved. If Ivan were to die because Sua didn’t love him back, Mizi would make her go to his funeral.
At that thought, there was a flutter in the back of his throat and he coughed, forcing it back down. He was used to that feeling by now, but it caught Ivan’s attention, making him sit up in bed.
“So you’ve really got it, then.”
“What, you think that rat bastard’s gonna pay to put me up here if they didn’t know for sure?”
“Hmm. I guess we’ll see,” replied Ivan, as if it was up for debate whether or not Till was actually sick.
After that bizarre exchange, Ivan got back to his book so Till opted to unpack his few belongings. Ivan always used to steal his shit, but even that fucker probably wouldn’t take Till’s stuff now while his life hung in the balance. He had to write something so good that Mizi would see once and for all that Till was the one for her.
As he was closing the desk drawer now full of his notebook, sketchbook, and pencils, a bell rang.
“Dinner,” Ivan informed him, smiling insincerely once more.
“Alright,” Till replied, smiling just as inauthentically in return. That turned Ivan’s into a real thing, toothy and gleeful. Weirdo.
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
With the taste of blood in his mouth near constant, Till hadn’t had any appetite in some time. The benzo the nurse gave him wasn’t helping him any on that front either, but he followed Ivan through the hallways, darting his eyes around to see who else was in here. There was nobody he recognized so far, at least.
Copying everything Ivan did, Till ended up with a plate of white mush seated at a table empty but for Ivan.
“Do you usually eat alone?” he asked.
Ivan just shrugged and began eating his mush. Despite his lack of hunger, Till tried to follow suit. He had questions but Ivan seemed intent on keeping his business hidden and Till wasn’t about to expose his underbelly for free in the hopes of coaxing it out of him.
“Why do they only give us this bland shit? Is it part of the protocol or something?”
“I don’t know,” Ivan replied, furrowing his brow. “I assumed they just didn’t want to spend money on us, since we’ll be dying soon anyway.”
With that optimistic pronouncement out of the way, Ivan resumed eating his mush.
Scoffing, Till pushed his tray away.
“Not me. I’m not dying just ‘cause I was too chickenshit to try. Maybe you’re fine with that, but I’m not.”
At that, Ivan sat up a little straighter. “You think it’s as simple as trying? What if she doesn’t like you back, Till?” He smiled tightly—phony, but in a different way from before.
“We won’t know ‘til I try.”
“If she says no, you could die on the spot. That would be it.”
“What, you know that for sure?”
“You could,” Ivan insisted. “It’s possible. Isn’t it better to just ride out the tide? Enjoy your gruel, catch up with old friends.”
So that was his advice. Unbelievable. Till shook his head and let out a breathless laugh.
“You really didn’t even try, did you?”
“If you know you aren’t loved in return, why would you kill yourself prematurely? That doesn’t make sense, Till.”
“There’s always a chance,” Till insisted, before pulling his tray close to him and forcing down more of the mush. He’d need his strength for writing.
Though he felt Ivan’s eyes on him as he ate, he couldn’t muster up the will to return his gaze. It filled him with—something to know Ivan had accepted his death sentence so readily. Seeing it laid out so straightforwardly like that, Till felt like a dumbass for thinking Ivan was too universally liked to end up in a place like this. His attitude alone made him a huge fucking loser, self-pity off the charts. Wasn’t he even at least going to say goodbye to any of them?
And where did he get off just giving up? Did he think he was too good to have to beg for scraps of love like the rest of them? It pissed Till off almost as much as the soft, tasteless food aggravating his sore, scraped-up throat. Maybe he was a bit hurt, too, because ever since they were kids, he and Ivan had been friends whether Till wanted to be or not.
What it was was bullshit. Ivan was too cowardly to even try. If Sua was the one he liked, Till could sort of understand that, but somehow he doubted it was. Ivan wouldn’t have been too afraid to approach her either.
He thought about them together then—Ivan and Sua. What it would be like if Ivan and Sua became a couple while he and Mizi remained on the sidelines, unmatched. Of course, Mizi could have whoever she wanted so it would just be Till on his own in the end, the spare that refused to be paired, an object of pity ‘til he faded from their view.
He got down his mouthful of mush just in time to hack up a clump of moss, little sprouts adorning it in a hideous imitation of actual flowering. So embarrassing to be dying over an ugly fungus while others hacked up flowers stunning enough to be a still life—even if the thorns on those light pink roses probably put Acorn in his early grave.
Till hunched his shoulders to block the view from any who might be peering over from a neighboring table.
“Huh,” Ivan noted, craning his neck to inspect the bloody moss in Till’s bowl of white paste. “They’re sure you have it?”
“Yeah, positive. The sprouts coming off it count, I guess. Shit’s not really supposed to grow in your…” Till trailed off, gaping at Ivan as he scooped up the wad of moss in his hand. “Dude, that’s got my blood all over—Oh my God!?”
Unfazed, Ivan had popped the moss into his mouth and was chewing, swishing it around in his mouth even like he needed to get a real taste for it.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” Till hissed, pulling his bowl closer to him like that could undo this calamity.
“It’s not poisonous.”
“Of course it’s not; it’s fucking moss! Why’d you eat it?”
To that, Ivan only shrugged and took a small sip of water.
“Mine is poisonous,” he told Till, who opted to wash down some of the blood in his mouth with water too. “Anemones.”
Gobsmacked, Till gawked at Ivan as he told Till about Aphrodite and Adonis, the Greek goddess of love and her mortal male lover. After he was gored by a boar, anemones first sprouted from the mix of her tears and his blood. Something about death and rebirth, tragedy and the arrival of spring.
“‘April showers bring May flowers’, huh? Well, isn’t that nice,” Till said, having had enough. “You don’t have a goddess girlfriend, though. So what are you dying for? Why wouldn’t you try confessing? I’m sure whoever it is would trip on their dick for the chance to be with you.”
Till was unable to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the thought. How melodramatic was Ivan that he let himself be carted off before even trying, especially with his totally undeserved luck with girls?
“Not everyone has a crush on me, Till. Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t be here if that were the case.”
“You probably just have to have someone suggest it to her,” Till insisted, “whoever the hell she is.”
There were no girls out of his league in their school, much as Till was loath to admit it. Some of the upperclassmen girls probably didn’t know who he was, but he was tall, rich, and polite to everyone but Till and Sua. Girls were always telling Till how hot Ivan was, begging for his number or for Till to pass on gifts. It pissed him off like nothing else.
“Marty’ll do it,” he suggested. Since Marty’s best friend was dead, he’d probably be free. “Not like he has anything better to do now.”
At that, Ivan’s lip curled. “My crush does not like me back, and that’s that.”
There was something cruel in his tone, but Till was surprised to find it didn’t bother him so much in here. Maybe it was because there was something equalizing about the knowledge that they were both unloved.
A large male nurse approached them as they picked at their food in awkward silence, or rather he approached Till. “Till, right? I’m Dewey. Supposed to bring you to the program director, then the shrink. She’s real nice. The, uh, director that is. The shrink’s…”
“He’s creepy,” Ivan stated flatly.
“He’s a little creepy, yeah,” Dewey said, scratching the back of his head. “But, hey, Hyuna’s great! So don’t worry.”
Desperately, Till looked to Ivan, hoping he might be able to make sense of that for him, but Ivan just gave an opaque smile and nod, and then Dewey was leading Till away.
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
After another long march down a white hallway, he found himself thrust into a small red chair before Hyuna, the director, Dewey promising, “Pick you up in a few, little dude.”
Though Till was hardwired to bristle at authority, Hyuna wasn’t like any authority figure he’d encountered before. She had a lollipop in her mouth and her feet up on the desk when he came in, and her first course of action was to yank open a desk drawer and ask Till’s favorite flavor, raising a thick brown eyebrow dramatically.
“Uh. I guess strawberry?”
“You got it, kid,” she said, shooting him finger guns before rifling around and tossing him a dum dum. “Well, you know why you’re here. Any questions for me?”
He unwrapped the lollipop and largely avoided her gaze as she leaned forward on her desk, chin in her hands. For her, he really only had the one question.
“Does everyone with this thing, uh. Die? Has anyone, you know… not died?”
“Look around, kiddo. Plenty of kids are still alive!”
“Yeah, but I mean—” She must have known what he was getting at. “Has anyone gotten over it?”
“Well…” She shifted her head side to side in her hands as if choosing her words very carefully. “We haven’t been up and running long enough for any solid stats. And any particulars—well, that’d be a HIPAA violation! I can’t share other patients’ information. That’s confidential.”
Till didn’t know what the hell that meant, but he knew Hyuna was dodging his questions on purpose. “What kind of, uh, treatments do you guys do in here?”
“Oh, you know!” she exclaimed, propping her feet up on the desk again and tilting her chair back. “Little bit of this, little bit of that…”
Till could feel a forehead vein twitch. “What does that mean?”
“It’s pretty much just experimental drugs and therapy, kid. That’s the best we’ve got for now. I’ll tell you this much: if that Acorn kid had checked in, we probably could’ve gotten him to hold out a few more weeks.”
“Look, I just—” Till huffed out a frustrated breath before getting a hold of himself. It would be very fucking stupid to snap at the program head on his first day and it wasn’t as if she was that bad. Just frustratingly cagey. She acted like a casual acquaintance, on the same level as Till, but that wasn’t necessarily what he wanted in a doctor. “I’m just wondering if anyone has left once they got here. Not in a body bag. Anyone at all.”
“Till, sweetie,” she said before sighing. “Why don’t we find out together?”
“Fine,” Till replied, folding his arms over his chest. He felt like a child pouting in the passenger’s seat of his mom’s car, though he hadn’t had the luxury in years. Something about Hyuna invoked memories of his mom. It was probably her upturned eyes and kind smile that made Till instinctively trust that she was looking out for his best interests, even if she had given him nothing today aside from the lollipop and empty assurances.
Though no more enlightened about his condition than when he came in, Till allowed himself to be led by Dewey to the next authority figure, the one Ivan and Dewey had both warned him was creepy. If Ivan was calling someone creepy, it had to be serious.
“I’ll be right outside,” Dewey told him in a low voice.
That this big excitable dog man should go quiet and solemn in the face of a tiny blond psychologist filled Till with a sense of foreboding.
Across the mahogany table with his dainty legs crossed in his chair, he didn’t look so scary flipping to a new page in his notepad. But when he flicked his sleepy golden eyes Till’s way, Till understood immediately what they meant.
“Till, is it?”
“Uh huh,” he replied reluctantly.
“I’m the head of counseling for the program. You may call me Luka.” He smiled then.
It wasn’t a nice smile, like the warm, friendly one Hyuna had given him to communicate, “Hey, kiddo, I’m on your team.” Luka was decidedly not on his team.
The longer he sat there under his judgmental gaze, the more Till felt like a quivering rodent that had caught the attention of a particularly hungry snake.
“Would you care to tell me why you think you’re here?” Luka asked, drawing perpendicular lines on his pad suddenly like he was making some kind of table.
“I don’t know. You tell me. Aren’t you in charge of this program?”
“Me? No,” Luka insisted, smiling all sleepy-eyed and predatory again as he looked Till up and down. “That would be the lovely Hyuna. What was your impression of her?”
“I don’t know,” Till answered, thrown by the question. “She’s nice?”
“Mm. Is that all?”
The guy was so creepy. Even though those two had told him outright earlier, they had not even touched the extent of it. It was like he could read Till’s mind and knew Hyuna had reminded of his mom.
“That’s all,” he said firmly, his voice quivering only the littlest bit.
“Ivan,” Luka began instead, as though trying a new tactic. “You know him from school?”
“Yeah, since we were kids.”
“What do you think of him being in here? Are you surprised his crush doesn’t like him back?”
“I don’t know,” Till replied, exasperated this time. “He won’t even tell me who it is ‘cause of your stupid rules.”
Swiftly, Luka perked up, furrowing his brow. “Which rules? We have no rules against discussing crushes.” It felt like the creep was putting on some kind of performance. Till made a mental note to run everything he said by Dewey to find out the actual rules.
“Ah, well, I suppose in group we do refrain from using specific names in the event of shared crushes,” Luka explained, “to prevent any needless interpersonal conflicts from arising. But there are no rules against sharing it in private, especially not with a trusted friend.” Till’s jaw clenched. Despite what some assholes thought, he wasn’t stupid; he knew Luka was trying to provoke him. But what if it was true? It was one thing for Ivan to hide the truth, but outright lying when Till would discover the deception near immediately? Ivan wasn’t usually so stupid. “I wonder why he didn’t trust you enough to tell you,” Luka added, a patronizingly fake-sad look on his face.
“Are we done?” Till squawked, the anger making his voice break.
“We’ve only just begun our session. I understand your mother died a few years ago. How have you and your stepfather been coping with the loss?”
Instinctively, Till let out a deep breath, and then another. Just as he was not going to yell at Hyuna, he was not going to beat this stupid bitch’s face in, but for very different reasons. He liked Hyuna already on some level. If Luka keeled over from a heart attack where he sat right now, Till would feel nothing but relief and maybe some childish sense of triumph. If he did it himself, though, he’d just end up choking to death on moss and blood in a prison cell instead.
Since he didn’t want that and Luka showed no signs of dropping fucking dead on his own, Till rose abruptly, strode over to the door, and barely even slammed the door on his way out.
“I want to go now,” he said and Dewey nodded.
“Yeah, c’mon, I’ll take you back. Saturdays, you guys have free time so you can just chill in your room. You and Ivan, uh—well, you’re friends, right?”
“I don’t know,” Till mumbled. He didn’t know if they were. What kind of friend would lie and hide as much as Ivan did? He still needed to confirm that it was a lie. “We are allowed to talk about our crushes, aren’t we?”
“Uh, yup,” Dewey replied. “If people wanna talk about who they’re into, that’s none of our business. Just had some bad incidents in the group seshes early on with people crushing on the same kid, you know?”
So Ivan had lied, not caring that Till would find out the truth quickly. He’d just calmed down from the asshole therapist’s jabs when his fury built right back up, this time at Ivan.
“Hey, you alright, kid?” Dewey asked tentatively, like he was scared Till was going to blow up at him. Dewey was the only person he hadn’t wanted to yell at today, but treating him like a poorly wired explosive might land him on Till’s shit list if he’s not careful.
“Yeah, just gotta talk to Ivan,” he grumbled.
Humming, Dewey led him into a familiar hallway with a maroon door at the end. “Go easy on him, huh? He’s sick just like you.”
With a couple of ginger pats on the back, he turned back around, leaving Till to confront his shitbag roommate and so-called friend. Sick just like you. No, Ivan was sick in a uniquely Ivan way. They could have the same exact condition, the same prognosis, the same odds at making it but Ivan was sick in the head in a way Till would never be—so self-defeating and yet still willing to take the time to fuck with Till by lying to him and eating the moss he hacked up.
When he opened the door, he found Ivan on his side facing the wall, looking rather pitiful, taking some of the wind out of Till’s sails.
“How was Luka?” he murmured.
Till closed the door and glanced at Ivan’s back, long and lanky in just his hoodie, before taking off his hospital gown too. “Creepy,” he replied.
“Told you.”
“Ha,” Till laughed flatly. “You know what else you told me was that you can’t say who you like.”
“Mmh.”
“Well, it turns out that’s bullshit,” he snarled, hoping to get some reaction out of Ivan.
But he only hummed again. “Mm.”
“Why would you lie about that?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t feel like telling you.”
“So just say that next time. Now that weirdo’s gonna mess with me for having no friends.”
Ivan hummed a third time and Till’s stomach did an uncomfortable flip. He was supposed to insist that they were friends, that he was just a weirdo who was embarrassed no one loved him. Till glared at his back, immediately softening when he saw Ivan had an arm wrapped around his own waist like he was hugging himself.
Dewey was right that they were in the same situation. Ivan’s solution of never even trying only grated because if Till was honest with himself, he had never really tried with Mizi either. But it wasn’t too late, for either of them. Maybe if he showed Ivan that it was possible to overcome it, he would try too.
Freshly determined, he opened his desk drawer and pulled out his notebook, then rifled around for a pencil. There had been so many—a dozen fresh No. 2s. Seeing none now, Till yanked the sketchbook out of the drawer too and threw it down onto the desk, hoping to find them all hiding underneath like cockroaches. But he had no such luck. They were all gone.
Even though it shouldn’t have surprised him—Ivan pulling his usual stunts—it did. Didn’t the heightened stakes, Till’s goddamn life in the balance, mean anything to him?
“You son of a bitch,” he hissed.
When he swung around, he found Ivan had turned onto his other side and was studying him already, his head in his hand with his elbow propped up on the bed.
Tilting his face down with a satisfied smile, he said, “I’m just looking out for you, Till.”
When Till lunged, it split into a deranged grin, and in the moments before he was upon him, it occurred to Till that he hadn’t seen Ivan look so happy in years.
