Chapter Text
Tonight, Luka had intended to tell Ivan they should stop.
It’s what Hyuna says would be best and she’s usually right about these things. Despite being three years his junior, she has often been the one to lead him around, and this has been true since they were young.
She had explained her reasoning. Luka was getting weird again, weird in the bad way, where he’s fixating too much on a person—and this time it’s someone who came to him out of convenience, someone who doesn’t look at him the way he wants.
Like Hyuna when they were kids, but at least he could hold onto her as a friend. At least she could, over the passage of time, forgive him for when he did something that he hadn’t understood was wrong in the moment.
Ivan, she had reminded him, has known Till as long as Luka has known Hyuna and Hyun-woo, and only looks at him. At Till. He also, for some reason, thinks Luka is in love with Hyuna, and when he told Hyuna this she had looked nauseous.
So Luka meant to say they should stop. He’s meant to say as much the past three times, but today he had spent the day on set watching Ivan watch Till with dark, dark eyes. It was raining on set and Luka couldn’t even enjoy the sight of Ivan’s white suit clinging to his skin because he had to watch the wanting look on his face as he stared at Till, who was—and Luka can admit this, begrudgingly—quite handsome even with his dark clothes rumpled and soaked.
Worst of all, they had filmed the kissing scene today, so instead of telling Ivan he’s not interested in being his stress relief, Luka is letting himself be kissed into Ivan’s bed.
He’s in Ivan’s apartment, in Ivan’s bed; he’s the one who Ivan is kissing, the one whose shirt Ivan is slowly unbuttoning, but at least half of Luka is still on set watching Ivan kiss Till with a desperation that was not an act.
He’s also thinking about how good Ivan had looked as he ‘bled out’ on the floor of the set, fake blood pooling around his torso and staining his white suit and Till’s dress shoes, but that’s the sort of thought Hyuna says he shouldn’t tell other people because most of them will be uncomfortable.
A cool hand pats at his cheek twice. When Luka’s lashes flutter open, Ivan is staring down at him, left hand a soft cradle against his jaw, and he’s just close enough for Luka to be able to see him clearly. Luka wishes he would lean a bit further back, so that his face would be a pale blur and Luka wouldn’t have to see that his eyes aren’t nearly as wanting as they were on set.
“Distracted for once?” Ivan asks, his voice a teasing lilt, his right hand resting against Luka’s exposed stomach. “Even though you were looking at me all day.” His hair is still the faintest bit damp from their last take; the white suit is long gone in favor of darker pants and a dress shirt. Ivan the man, not Ivan the character. He kind of hates the writer-slash-director for giving the characters they portray so many pieces of who they are as people.
“You noticed?” Luka asks. That’s almost embarrassing. It should be; if he were someone else, he might feel it, but mostly he feels annoyed at himself.
“Not at first, but it was hard not to after a while,” Ivan admits. His fingers skim down Luka’s jaw, tucking some of his hair behind his ear. Luka wonders if he’s comparing the pale blonde to Till’s white-grey, dyed carefully for his role; he’s wondered since the first time Ivan kissed him if Luka’s sickness had been what made him a fitting substitute.
“It would have been harder not to watch,” Luka says, touching the hem of Ivan’s untucked shirt with his own left hand. The makeup has been rubbed away but Luka’s fingertips are still, as they almost always are, a faint blue; Ivan twitches above him, unable to hide the way he shivers at the chill of Luka’s touch as his palm rests against Ivan’s hip.
“The white suit,” Luka continues, his palm stroking up to Ivan’s ribs slowly. “The fake rain.”
He can feel gooseflesh rise on Ivan’s skin under his hand, just like he can see the way Ivan’s pupils dilate, so large that they nearly drown out the irises that are almost as dark in color.
Yes, Luka thinks with satisfaction. I’m touching you. Me. Luka.
Luka, not Till.
“Checking me out on set? How bold,” Ivan mutters. His ears are red. He speaks as if he hasn’t nearly gotten them caught several times because he couldn’t wait; during some of Till’s scenes with Mizi he had become so restless that afterward he’d pulled Luka into one of the bathrooms. Even three days ago he had pulled Luka into a changing room.
“As if you can talk. Nobody was paying attention to me, anyway.” Except perhaps Hyuna. Luka is fairly certain she had been giving him a look that could have been anything from pitying to judgemental.
Ivan grumbles. His head tips closer, closer, until he’s nosing into Luka’s hair and mouthing at his jaw. He’s sulking but Luka still feels the way the hand at his stomach shifts, fore and middle fingers dipping just past the boundary of the waistline of Luka’s jeans.
“Still,” he hears Ivan mumble against his skin. Luka’s hearing is better on his right side and Ivan tends to lean that way when they do this, so he wonders if the other had noticed.
“Still, what?” Luka grumbles right back as he squirms to lift his hips. Ivan had unzipped his jeans ten minutes ago; they finally get pulled down his thighs.
Ivan doesn’t answer. His mouth is wet against the junction of Luka’s shoulder and neck, his snaggletooth grazing the skin as he sucks. It’s a testament to the amount of times they’ve done this that he can focus on that and still pull Luka’s pants off in full; Luka kicks them away, his hand spasming into a tight grip on Ivan’s side as he moans.
Ivan usually doesn’t leave marks. Not on purpose. Luka is so pale that even the lightest of Ivan’s grips will leave faint bruises on his hips or thighs, but he usually avoids doing things like this.
It’s a shame. Luka always likes it. He pants, open mouthed, groping along Ivan’s back with his right hand, bunching the cotton of his shirt beneath his fingers as he grips. His hips jerk involuntarily at the sensation of fingers along his thigh, up and up until Ivan is palming at him through his underwear.
Luka all but ruts up against Ivan’s own thigh, groaning, and he can feel the man’s smug smile against the bruise he’d sucked into Luka’s skin. His makeup artist is going to be pissed. Luka doesn’t really care. He never has. His career is on a time limit as it is, one that he’s always been painfully aware of. Alien Stage will probably be his last production; the director is a friend of a friend of Hyuna’s who wanted a small cast, an intimate and almost indie production, and not everyone will be willing to accommodate his deteriorating vision the way they are.
Luka doesn’t want to think about that, so he doesn’t. He thinks about the way Ivan is kissing him again, his mouth warm, his tooth jutting into Luka’s upper lip. He doesn’t dislike it. Ivan pushes his own thigh up to apply more pressure to Luka’s groin and Luka, moaning into his mouth, bucks into the movement.
He forcefully unclenches his fingers from Ivan’s shirt to drag his hand down, pulling at the waist of his pants instead; it makes Ivan lean away and Luka catches himself before he whines or, worse, grabs him to pull him back in.
Luka lay there, chest heaving for air, lips cool with drying saliva, his hand unfortunately falling from Ivan’s ribs and onto his own thigh as Ivan shuffles out of his own pants. It’s necessary but annoying because it means his hands aren’t on Luka, where they should be.
Ivan pauses when he’s finished dropping his pants over the side of the bed, his hands hovering where they had gone to peel off his shirt. He squints at Luka.
“What’s the look for?”
Luka doesn’t know what kind of face he’s making. He never feels what he should when he should, and he never shows the right expression either, which is why he spent his entire adolescence mastering a permanent mask of polite interest.
“What look?” He asks. Ivan loosens enough of the buttons on his shirt to just pull it off, tousling his hair in the process.
“Needy,” Ivan answers. His tone is nonchalant. The last time anyone had called Luka needy, he’d been twelve, and it had been Hyun-woo teasing him for hating being in separate classes from him and Hyuna.
“I’m not needy,” Luka says. He’s probably lying. When he has something, he likes to keep it close and he hates when it strays from him. This includes people, which is why it’s impossible for him to have any meaningful relationships, according to Hyuna. Outside of her and Hyun-woo.
“Uh huh,” Ivan sounds like he doesn’t believe him. He’s smiling, or something like it; he doesn’t smile at Luka. Not usually. Luka’s lips curl downward in a pout against his will as Ivan pushes the cotton of his briefs down his own thighs and then Luka is too busy staring at the way Ivan’s aroused cock smears a wet trail on his inner thigh as he moves.
“And you say I’m needy?” Ivan clearly wants it almost as much.
The act. The gratification. Not Luka.
“Oh, shut up. I’ve been worked up all day.”
Right. Because of Till, wet from artificial rain; Till, whose hair Ivan’s fingers had tangled in, who Luka had needed to watch Ivan kiss several times because they kept reshooting.
“And I wasn’t? White suit, remember?” Luka’s voice pointedly doesn’t hitch as Ivan tugs off his boxers too, the hem catching on his aching dick as they’re pulled down.
“It’s different,” Ivan refutes, though he sounds distracted, staring at the way Luka’s thighs twitch under his hands as he rests them just below the yellow-edged bruises from last week. Ivan had gripped him just a bit harder than normal and Luka’s sallow skin had bloomed with it.
Luka forgot Ivan hadn’t seen. Three days ago the quickie they'd had in one of the changing rooms on set was all rushed and fumbling hands, with none of their clothes being removed. Luka has watched the color fade from a blue that was almost black to yellow-edged green, poking at them every morning and night and feeling the ache grow fainter and fainter.
Caught up in the way Ivan is staring at the shape of his own fingers, Luka forgets to reply, though he wouldn’t be able to offer a decent rebuttal without admitting something.
“You didn’t mention these,” Ivan says, his tone indecipherable. Luka takes a moment to answer, distracted as he tries to focus on what he thinks is the sound of Ivan’s breath quickening.
“Because they didn’t bother me,” Luka answers. This time there’s no hiding the hitch in his own voice as Ivan inches his palms upwards to overlap his hands where the shape of them lingers.
His cock twitches against his thigh. Ivan definitely sees it.
“You know,” Ivan says, voice somewhat distant as he shuffles upwards and pushes Luka’s thighs apart. Luka lets it, welcomes it. “The first time we did this, I thought you didn’t even like it.”
Luka doesn’t know where Ivan is going with this. They’ve been operating under the unspoken agreement of not talking about it for months now, since that first night. Luka remembers it well because he was perfectly sober. Ivan was halfway drunk; Luka’s not allowed alcohol. They had left the informal get together held at Hyuna’s home to celebrate finishing Round 3’s shooting, Hyuna’s friend Isaac driving them, and Luka had meant to leave Ivan at his door.
Then Ivan had kissed him. He’d been muttering the whole car ride about Till, about Mizi and Sua, about Till and Mizi.
Just once, Ivan had said against his mouth. Just this once, please. I need it.
So Luka had let him take what he needed. They hadn’t talked about it the next morning as Ivan drove them both first to Luka’s home, then to work, and Isaac had looked at Luka as judgingly as Hyuna did but had kept quiet.
Then it happened again a week later, except Ivan was as sober as Luka, and then again. And again.
“I wondered if you just weren’t into sex,” Ivan is saying. “Some people are like that. There’s a word, I think. You looked almost bored, but you liked it enough to get off, and you said I could keep going.”
Luka vaguely remembers Ivan asking something about him actually being okay with it, that night, but what he had replied with is a blur. He had been focused on trying not to lose his composure when Ivan had barely pushed his fingers into him, wet with lube from a bottle Luka had barely touched in the months he had it.
Now, Ivan swipes the fore and middle fingers of his right hand through the mess Luka has leaked onto his own leg. When he pushes those fingers in, they’ve done this often enough over the past several months that he’s loose enough to take it.
Ivan is watching his face and Luka wonders what he looks like to him as his spine goes taut and a wheezing gasp catches in his throat.
“But you do like it,” Ivan is whispering, quiet enough now that Luka can barely hear him over the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears and the whine he tries to swallow back as Ivan’s fingers press deeper. Ivan’s other hand spasms against his thigh, a grip that threatens to freshen the fading marks there.
“You really do like it. You want it. You thought about it all day, didn’t you? Is that how it always is when we’re at work, now?” Ivan sounds as breathless as Luka feels. They aren’t supposed to talk about this. Luka doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Can you hurry up,” Luka manages to say. The words taper off into an embarrassing warble as Ivan curls his fingers. His vision blurs.
“You love this.” Ivan’s voice is pitched oddly low and Luka is surely imagining the giddy undercurrent to it as he pulls his fingers out.
“Did you think I’d do this if I hated it?” Luka asks when he catches his breath. Through his blurred vision he knows Ivan is reaching for the actual lube.
“That’s not it.”
Then what is it, Luka wants to ask, but he also doesn’t. Whatever revelation Ivan is having, he doesn’t want to know.
He can both hear and feel the way Ivan shivers bodily above him, the faint wet sound of him slicking lube over his cock. Anticipation quickens his pulse as he feels Ivan’s fingers again, wetter than they had been before. They don’t press in for long; there’s no need, not after this long, and Ivan is as impatient as Luka has been pretending not to be.
Ivan takes his thighs in hand, pulling him closer, leaning over him. Luka keeps himself lax as he feels the broad head of Ivan’s cock breach him, a tender ache spreading through his legs and lower back as he’s stretched and filled.
In the privacy of Ivan’s apartment, there’s no condom. They stopped using them within the first month; Ivan sure as hell wasn’t sleeping around and Luka’s sexual experience was limited largely to himself, though he’s not sure Ivan knows that. He only knows that Luka is clean, so the only time he’s used a condom since is when he’s being risky at work.
Luka likes it. He likes it more than Ivan does, probably, because he isn’t what Ivan wants. One of Luka’s legs twitches a little as Ivan settles above him, as deep as he can be, his spine curving as he presses his mouth to the reddening bruise he’d sucked into Luka’s neck and shoulder.
He lavs over it with his tongue. By the morning it will be as dark as the petals of a morning glory and Luka will watch it wither and fade along with the new mottle of blooming bruises on his hips and thighs, just as he had the last ones.
Luka’s fingers, which have been twisting into Ivan’s dark sheets, lift. He fits his arms around Ivan’s shoulders, broader than his own, and a faint ringing joins the rush of blood in Luka’s left ear as Ivan moves.
Luckily for him, Ivan’s head is on his right side, so Luka hears every noise he makes clearly. He feels the way Ivan’s skin shivers, feels the thump of his heart under his palms, and he chokes on a startled laugh as the bedframe knocks into the wall as Ivan rocks in more harshly than the first time.
“So lucky this is a floor-through,” Ivan mumbles against his neck, shoulders shaking under Luka’s palms.
“That’s why we don’t do this at mine,” Luka barely manages to say. Then his own wheezing gasps drown out the occasional thud of the bedframe; he tries to tilt his head and bury the sound in Ivan’s pillows, but one of Ivan’s hands travels from his hip to his jaw, pushing his face away from the cotton.
“I want to hear you,” Ivan tells him and Luka’s dick, trapped between their bodies, aches and leaks against his abdomen. He can feel the wet trail of it as Ivan moves again and his cock is jostled between them.
Luka thinks he could come like this, his dick untouched, the way he hasn’t in a long time. Since the first time Ivan took him, probably, when he’d passed it off as being pent up. He thinks that was what he said. He can barely recall.
“Like that,” Ivan whispers, apropos nothing. Through vision further blurred by the wetness on his lashes, Luka watches the way Ivan is looking down at him, gaze flitting between his face and Luka’s cock.
“What?” Luka asks blearily, barely able to get the word out as Ivan rocks into him roughly.
“You’re enjoying this,” Ivan answers, that giddiness present in his breathless voice once more. Luka tenses slightly, making the next thrust almost painful. “More than you should, for someone just indulging his lovelorn junior in a distraction.”
How the hell can he talk so much, Luka wonders, accidentally sinking his nails into Ivan’s back with the force of his grip.
Ivan doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does he doesn’t care, too busy watching him with dark, dark eyes. Like a starless night sky. Like an abyss.
He’s looking at Luka. Talking to him, fucking him, looking at him; he’s pushing Luka’s sweat-dampened hair out of his face, and he’s holding Luka’s hips hard enough to bruise.
There’s no possible way for Ivan to be thinking about Till. Not when he’s looking Luka in the face, listening to the sounds of pleasure he pulls from Luka’s chest.
Right now, he’s looking at Luka in a way he never has before. Like he had looked at Till under the artificial rain, but now his face is flushed with arousal and his pupils are dilating with his want, and it’s because of Luka.
Luka tangles his fingers in Ivan’s hair so harshly it must hurt and kisses him, hard. He doesn’t think about how hours ago Ivan had done the same to Till, over and over, in front of the camera. Luka is the one drawing a moan from Ivan’s throat, swallowing the sound of it.
Luka is pretty sure Ivan fucks him harder than he has since the first time; he thinks Ivan had felt a bit guilty when he realized how easily Luka’s skin bruised, that his frailness on set was not wholly part of his character, and Luka revels in it.
Luka is right; his orgasm creeps up on him, between Ivan’s biting kisses and the trail of bruises he sucks down Luka’s jaw and neck, spilling a mess between them both. Ivan fucks him through it and keeps going, chasing his own pleasure.
Ivan usually pulls out before he can finish inside because of the mess. This time Luka hooks one sore leg over his waist.
“Inside,” he says when Ivan looks at him with wide, fathomless eyes, mouth wet and swollen. Luka tells himself it’s a demand and not a plea, and when Ivan does finish the name he groans out is Luka.
When Ivan finally pulls out of him, Luka is left with a pleasant soreness he knows will stay with him for days if not longer. Ivan gropes for something as Luka’s fingers slip from his hair; he curses under his breath, knocking something on the bedside table over, and Luka can’t hear what because it’s on his bad side.
Luka doesn’t realize his eyes have closed until he feels Ivan’s hands on his thighs again and he forces himself to open them.
Right. Tissue, he thinks, as Ivan wipes his inner thighs for him, a furrow to his brow as his tongue pokes between his lips.
“Thought you fell asleep for a sec,” Ivan says when he glances up and sees Luka watching. He says it slowly, like he’s holding back from saying something heavier.
“I think I did,” Luka mumbles, eyes slipping shut again. He always stays the night when they do this these days, so why pretend otherwise?
He dozes as Ivan wipes him clean of excess come and lube, stirring only when Ivan pulls him from the bed long enough to put on a pair of shorts, and he’s visibly tired enough that Ivan doesn’t make him wait while he changes the sheets; they climb in regardless of how damp they are.
Sorry, Hyuna, Luka thinks as he’s falling asleep, pressed comfortably between Ivan and his wall. Ivan’s arm is slung over his waist because the fact they always woke up tangled together is another thing that they gave up on pretending would not happen.
Hyuna was right, as she always is. When Luka had told her about the first time this happened she had said, with her usual frankness, that if he let it continue he would want more than Ivan would be willing to give. He’s always like that. Someone gives him an inch of themself and he wants to take a mile. It took a decade for him to learn how to have anything close to normal boundaries with Hyuna and Hyun-woo.
Ivan gave Luka an inch of himself. Luka wants the mile. He wants more than the mile. For a brief moment Ivan had looked at him with the same heavy, hungry want that he looks at Till with, and now that he knows how it feels Luka wants it again and again and again.
One of his last thoughts as sleep finally pulls him under is of that song he’d had to hear Till and Ivan sing. Ivan’s voice, the melancholy in it all too real, and the line in your gaze where I am seen…
Luka’s vision will only ever get worse. Soon the blindness will take him, and he’s decided he wants to take in as much of Ivan as he can before it goes.