Work Text:
Ivan’s POV
"You should confess to him,"
Sua says, her voice cutting through the music like a blade. She stares straight into my eyes, unwavering.
"It’s been almost seven years you’ve been pining after that man. At this point, you might as well plaster your feelings on a giant billboard."
She exhales sharply and leans back on the sofa, arms crossed, frustration rolling off her in waves.
I stay silent, eyes fixed on a faint beer stain in the carpet.
The party swirls around us—laughter, clinking glasses, a song too loud for the size of the room.
But it all feels like a distant hum.
The moment Sua mentioned him, my brain latched on like it always does.
Till.
My heart clenches involuntarily at the thought of him.
He’s here.
I haven’t seen him yet, but I know it.
Of course he came—Mizi's the one who hosted this whole thing.
Sua nudges me with her elbow before standing.
“Well then, I’m off to find my girlfriend. Good luck, loser.”
I force a smile—tight and thin—as she disappears into the crowd.
Alone now, I let the smile slip.
I lean back, letting the room blur at the edges, the noise distorting like I’m underwater.
My thoughts begin to pull me under too.
*Flashback.*
Till was always... everything.
Loud, impulsive, unapologetically messy.
The kind of boy who’d climb a tree just to prove he could, or argue over the dumbest things just to win.
He was chaos, and I was always trailing a few steps behind—steady, quiet, hoping he’d never look back and realize how badly I was in love with him.
We fought a lot as kids.
He always threw the first punch—emotional or literal—but somehow, I came out with fewer bruises.
Maybe because I was used to pain.
Or maybe because I never hit back, not really.
I couldn’t.
His mom, Io, treated me like family.
No, better than family.
She’d see right through me—the fake smiles, the forced laughter—and just hand me a cookie, warm from the oven, without saying a word.
Her house was warm, and bright, and full of the kind of love I never had in mine.
It was the only place where I felt seen.
But things changed when Mizi came into the picture.
He started drawing with her after class, long afternoons in the art room filled with low music and soft conversation.
Then they started going to his place—just the two of them.
I’d show up sometimes, only to find the door locked and their voices behind it, light and happy.
So, I stopped showing up.
I told myself it was the mature thing to do.
That I needed space.
That I wasn’t angry—I was just tired.
But the truth?
I was jealous.
Jealous of the way she could sit close to him and call it normal.
Jealous of the way he looked at her like she’d painted stars across his sky.
Every time I saw them together, something sharp twisted in my chest.
I wanted to be happy for him.
I tried.
But every smile he gave her felt like another nail in the coffin of whatever we used to be.
And I never blamed Mizi. God, how could I?
She’s sunshine in human form.
She laughs with her whole soul and listens like your words matter.
She’s the kind of person anyone would fall for—and the kind of person I could never hate, even if I wanted to.
But I still wished it was me.
Just once.
I wished he'd look at me the way he looked at her.
Then, a week ago, everything changed.
There was a knock at my door, frantic and uneven.
I opened it to find him standing there—drenched from head to toe, hair matted to his forehead, eyes red-rimmed and swollen.
He looked broken.
Shattered in a way I’d never seen before.
He didn’t say a word.
Just stood there, breathing like he’d run all the way here.
So I stepped aside.
He didn’t just walk into my apartment that night—he walked back into my life, carrying every unsaid thing between us.
I gave him one of the old shirts he’d left years ago, still folded at the bottom of my drawer like I couldn’t bring myself to wash away the memory.
I brewed him his coffee—black, with just a hint of sweetness, the way he liked it.
We sat on the couch wrapped in silence, the television humming with his favorite show, What We Do in the Shadows.
He curled up next to me, legs pulled close, wrapped in the soft gray blanket I kept for cold nights and colder feelings.
And I held him—awkwardly at first, then instinctively—like cradling something sacred.
My arms knew how to hold him even if my heart still didn’t know what to do with the weight of him.
It was a fragile silence, the kind that teeters on the edge of something big.
"Ivan," he whispered, voice fraying at the edges.
I hummed softly, my hand drifting to his hair, still damp and curling from the rain.
"It didn’t work out," he said.
The words fell like broken glass—sharp and quiet.
He didn’t have to say her name.
I already knew.
"Sometimes things don’t work out because fate has other plans for us,"
I murmured, barely above a breath.
"Sometimes, what you need... is already right beside you."
I wanted to say more.
God, I wanted to scream it.
You.
I need you.
I have always needed you, Till.
I love you.
But the words stayed trapped behind my teeth, caged by fear and a thousand what-ifs.
"Thank you, Ivan," he whispered, his voice small.
"I missed this... us. Spending time together. Like when we were kids."
The silence that followed wasn’t the kind you escape from—it was the kind you live in.
It said everything we couldn’t.
I pulled him closer, listening to the soft rhythm of the rain and the flicker of the TV.
And for the first time in a long time, I let myself hope—just a little—that maybe, just maybe, we hadn’t missed our chance.
Wrapped in the warmth of that fragile moment, we fell asleep.
No dreams.
Just breath and heartbeat and the quiet possibility of something more.