Chapter Text
A lot of the old, abandoned picture books that Till had collected from the other children at Anakt Garden had included themes of love. It was a vague concept, but Till liked the idea of love a lot. Perhaps it was because in all those stories, the main character was always saved by their first kiss, often some kind of prince that falls in love at first sight and whisks the heroine away from her torrid life.
He liked the idea of someone taking him away to live in a big castle away from everyone, particularly away from the segyein. At the same time, he was a man therefore he should be the ‘prince’ from those stories and should be the one doing the whisking. If he was going to love someone, then it had to be Mizi. She was so kind, so gentle with Sua and even thoughtful of him, when it felt like no one else cared. The other pet-humans saw that he would act out against his guardian, and the consequences of doing so, and often stayed away from him as to avoid his influence. Not Mizi though, she didn’t mind.
It turned out Mizi did get whisked away in the end, but not by him, not by any ‘prince’. Love had nothing to do with it. He wished he had known right away what had happened to her, but the smokescreen had left him clueless, assuming, the same as everyone else, that she was probably dead. The thought of her no longer being in this universe crushed him, and any hopes he might have had of being her ‘prince’.
He hadn’t expected Ivan to kiss him, it was a surprise right up until the touch of their lips. Perhaps all that time, Ivan had been wanting to be his ‘prince’. Just like Till though, he had no carriage or means of ferrying them off this stage. Would that moment have been considered ‘true love’s kiss’? Till wished it had been his first, that would have made the moment far more poetic. Instead of being filled with those warm, fuzzy feelings he thought he was meant to feel, he’d been consumed by panic. He had every reason to be. Neither of them were singing, and their lives hung on them doing exactly that.
When Ivan’s hands wrapped around his throat, he saw the conviction in his eyes. Till accepted that Ivan was giving him an easy out. Someone else to blame for his end. Till didn’t know why though, Ivan had always been so obedient. He was bound to get in trouble for this. Till didn’t look at the scores. He didn’t need to know, because Ivan was going to kill him. His ‘prince’ was saving him in a way he hadn’t considered. But there was no salvation to be had.
He was numb to the rain, the thunder dull in his ears as he stared down at Ivan’s body. Blood pooled out, aided by the wash of the rain, coating the stage in his diluted life. His form still rose and fell with fading breaths. Ivan was dying, and he was only finding out now that Ivan had feelings like this? And he was just supposed to live on and keep singing? It wasn’t fair at all.
He didn’t notice the lights go out. He had been waiting for the staff to show up, for them to heave Ivan’s body off to wherever they go when they die, and for them to throw a collar on him and take him back to his guardian. It was only once they had been plunged into darkness and left alone for far too long, that he realised something was wrong. All the lights were off, including the emergency lighting. It was so dark he couldn’t even see the audience. It wasn’t just the lights; all the electrics had been shut down somehow. This was an opportunity. Ivan’s body was heavy, but fuelled by adrenaline and hope Till hoisted him up against his shoulder and dragged his feet. He didn’t know where he was going, but Ivan was coming too.
The sight of other humans was a blessing. The ensuing moments were a blur of unknown people, rushing around, deafening gunshots and Mizi. There was no time to be frozen by her visage until they were inside some kind of vehicle and some distance from the open-air dome they had been performing in. Once they were safe, he could acknowledge that she was real this time. Short haired and brimming with life and dreams and all the things Till couldn’t have given her.
Perhaps Hyuna had been her ‘prince’? Or maybe those stories were just all make believe. There were no ‘princes’ to come and save the day with the power of ‘true love’. In reality people had to fight to make what they wanted happen, and if they really loved someone, they would fight to make things better for them as well. There was no magic kiss that would change someone’s life, though he did suppose that while it was not due to the kiss, that things had certainly changed after it.
Their first port of call had been getting to the rebellion hospital, though the word ‘hospital’ was bit over the top for the small building it was. Still, they were able to treat Ivan and assured that he would recover. They were lucky that Ivan had been so close to Till when the scores finally settled, since it prevented the staff from getting a clean headshot from their positions. While Ivan’s head had certainly been within sight, they couldn’t have guaranteed that their aim wouldn’t stray given the adverse weather conditions. It had been a better call to fire at Ivan’s body, than risk a shot landing on the winner of the round.
Till was also checked over by the rebellion doctor, as all humans were when they entered. They had to be aware of any diseases, weaknesses or tracking chips that may have been present in each new human that joined their cause. Till’s results for just about everything had come back abnormal despite him being in good health, but it was explained off with an annoying comment.
“Oh, you’re the human editing company pet, aren’t you?”
He supposed that legally he was still Urak’s pet, but he didn’t feel like a pet anymore. Not with his neck bare. Yet, he still felt like many of the humans at the rebellion still saw him as one. He wasn’t sure if it was because he had won the round and so was technically still an Alien Stage competitor, or whether it was his connection to a large segyein company, but he didn’t appreciate it.
Their tune changed when he turned out to be useful, however.
Every human in the rebellion needed to help in some way. Construction, engineering, cooking, fighting, anything. Ivan found his place quickly with a vast knowledge of alien cultures and languages that he had picked up from books, and a shrewd business sense he had picked up from brief encounters with his owner. All of that coupled with his natural talent for appropriate expressions and tones, he became a useful negotiator and representative for the rebellion when it came to talks with sympathetic beings. He was even able to help write scripts and letters while he was recovering from his gunshot wounds in the hospital.
Till found it quite a bit more difficult to find a way to fit in. His skills were firmly tied into creativity, music and art being both his passions and only talents. Unfortunately, being able to sing a song or draw a picture were not the kind of work the rebellion was looking for. He helped out with odd jobs whenever he could, but the only useful thing about him was that he had an able body.
Once Ivan was out of the hospital, he also helped around the ‘school’ area often. This area was designated as the place for stray or rescued children to learn and play. Till hadn’t known that Ivan had a soft spot for children until he saw Ivan there. He’d felt guilty about not speaking with Ivan properly yet about what had happened on stage, neither of them knew how to approach it, so he made the effort to talk to Ivan while they were both in the school area.
“You’re here a lot, I guess you must know a lot of stuff you can teach them,” he wondered what it was that Ivan taught. Languages maybe? Till wasn’t sure how important it was to know segyein words, he vaguely knew a few that he’d heard Urak say, and he kind of had an idea what they meant, but Ivan could read entire books that weren’t written in the common tongue.
“I was a stray once too,” Ivan unexpectedly revealed something about himself that Till had never known. He’d opened up so easily, speaking so casually that Till had to take an additional moment to process the new information.
“Really? You were born outside of captivity?” It was difficult to imagine that someone with Ivan’s physical traits was not from a breeding facility. He looked pedigree.
“Mm-hm,” he’d hummed, watching the kids at play. “I got captured and sold of course,” he explained curtly, as he didn’t need to delve into the details of that. Till already knew what had happened next. “But if I hadn’t had been, maybe I could have found a place like this.”
Till wondered how long the rebellion had been around, and how many safe areas there were. He wondered if he and Ivan had escaped that night under the flaming meteor shower, what would the chances have been of them coming to a place like this? Not high, he would assume. In all likelihood they would have either been recaptured and returned, killed or found by someone that wanted far worse for them. That’s what he always told himself anyway. Even if they had gotten out, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Till found his role in the rebellion the day that he saw Ivan dash into the hospital with one of the children in his arms. Seeing Ivan in a frenzy like that got his blood pumping too and knowing that the doctor had recently left to run an errand, ran in to see what was wrong. He had never known Ivan to be so panicked that he couldn’t put his words together, but the lack of doctor combined with the fitting child he held was enough to do it.
With Ivan basically out of action, Till was the only other person that could do something. Attempting not to overthink the situation, he hastily opened the cupboards in the office searching for something to help. Quite quickly he found the word he was after, benzodiazepine. He grabbed the vial and located fresh syringes in a drawer, drew the liquid and administered the injection to the child before Ivan could question what he was doing. Not that Ivan would have stopped him. Something was better than nothing. The seizure soon ceased, the doctor flying in through the door urgently having been flagged down by a civilian that had witnessed Ivan’s journey from the school area.
“How did you know to give this?” the doctor questioned, twisting the empty vial between his fingers. It had been the correct call in this instance, but injecting drugs at random was a dangerous game.
“Doesn’t everyone know that it stops seizures?”
It turned out that the years of being subjected to various medical experimentations and augmentations had left Till remarkably knowledgeable in the field of human biology and pharmacology. He hadn’t known this himself, assuming that the understanding of their own workings was common knowledge.
He was brought in immediately to assist the understaffed hospital, though he had no interest in dealing with the sick directly. Instead, given his penchant for understanding medications and chemical interactions, they allowed him to spend most of his time in the backrooms of the hospital putting together drug treatments for patients that could not be simply treated. After he’d put together some chemical release stickers for the frontline fighters, stickers which enhanced coagulation for emergency wound healing, he was allowed to do pretty much as he pleased in the newly named ‘lab’.
Once they had both finally settled into their places within the rebellion, the pair could finally focus on themselves. Neither had spoken about what had happened during their round. By two months into their residency with the rebellion, it was becoming more awkward to think about. It was a night in which the dark skies opened and roared that encouraged Ivan to finally acknowledge it. It didn’t matter anymore how Till felt about his actions, he had to know what those feelings were. He had to end this tension between them.
When Till had answered the door with trembling hands and reddened eyes, Ivan had been worried. When he watched Till startle at the next crack of lightening, he understood. Ivan rushed forwards, wrapping Till up in his embrace, feeling as he tensed but held onto Ivan, refusing to let him leave. The weather had made Ivan solemn, but in an almost nostalgic way. It seemed Till associated very different feelings with the storm. The intensity of his reaction told Ivan all he needed to know. Till grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him down into a kiss confirmed it in a much more direct way.
“I was so scared,” Till’s voice was quiet, breaking with emotion, just like how his voice had sounded during their song. He’d been afraid of so many things when Ivan fell to the floor, and Till realised that he was not going to be killed by those hands around his throat. He had been scared to live, to keep competing, to keep existing under segyein ownership. Ivan’s death meant the continuation of everything that was awful, and in addition, the realisation that the dying man at his feet was the only person who had ever loved him.
“It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere now,” Ivan cooed, relishing every moment of peace with Till in his arms. For Ivan going onto that stage had been less frightening, and more nerve-wracking. When Till had stopped singing, he hadn’t hesitated to let his impulses lead him to do something he had wanted to do for years. He would die for it, but Till was a genius, he was always going to win.
They moved in together quickly after that, becoming an ‘item’ as they had heard it called, after that night. Opening up an additional living space was beneficial to the rebellion, and in truth although their relationship was newly evolved, they were more than comfortable enough to share a home after all their years together at Anakt.
Having a romantic relationship was new to them both, but that allowed them to learn together. It was nothing like the stories of impossible romances that Ivan had read, and nothing like the children’s story books that Till was accustomed to either. It was a domestic existence of casual touches and cuddling for the five hours Till would join Ivan in bed for. Both were kept busy throughout their days, Ivan sometimes travelling for his diplomatic duties with Hyuna while Till would hide out in the lab researching whenever he wasn’t filling out medication requests. The rebellion certainly kept them both busy.
“Look at this,” Ivan had earlier returned from visiting a nearby sympathiser of the cause with their leader. Till had made the effort to be home early, knowing roughly when Ivan was expected back, wanting to spend some time together.
He hated whenever Ivan had to go and meet with aliens. He understood it was his role, but he just couldn’t keep the thoughts from his head. All the terrible things that could happen. How much could Hyuna and a few foot troops do if a segyein felt insulted and struck out? It wouldn’t even get in trouble for killing a human, just ridding the universe of another pest.
“What is it?” Ivan was holding up a stick of some sort, maybe some kind of data storage device.
“The segyein today gave it to me as a gift, it’s a recording of our round together,” he explained, wiggling the stick for emphasis. Ivan could have taken the gift as an insult, but he understood from the way it was given that it was well-meant. A part of him wanted to watch it, but the rest of him was not ready to experience those moments again. From the look on Till’s face, he could assume that he was also not ready.
“Seriously? Why would they give that to you?” There was a good reason why Ivan made a good representative of the rebellion, and that was his cool headedness. While Till would immediately question and become upset by such an offering, Ivan could keep his calm and try to understand the situation. Cultures varied wildly between alien species; humans included. He found it fascinating and couldn’t grasp why others had no interest in the motivations of other species.
“It’s a kindness to have memories immortalised,” he spoke more to the gift than to Till, the words soft on his tongue to keep his boyfriend’s anger at bay. They would not watch this tonight, so Ivan got up to store it for safe keeping. Another time, when they both could bare to see it. “I think it’s charming to be able to watch the moment we both had our first kisses whenever we want.”
Oh. Was that why they felt so differently about this? Till’s skin itched. He wanted to say nothing, just nod along and move on. That was wrong though. They were boyfriends now, they were supposed to share their lives. If it was Ivan that had the past he did, Till would want to know.
“It wasn’t my first kiss,” he couldn’t look at Ivan, but he could practically hear the expression on his face change to something of surprise. Disgust.
“Really?” He wondered what Ivan was thinking, who he was blaming. “Did you kiss Mizi at some point?”
“No,” he answered instantly. It wasn’t Mizi. She would never have wanted to do that. He would never have been able to pluck up the courage. It was sensical that Mizi was the only person Ivan could have thought of though, because who else but her and Ivan did he ever hang around with? He chanced a glance up to see Ivan deep in thought. He didn’t look angry as Till feared he may have been.
“Hm, then who?” He gave up on his puzzling, coming up blank. There were no other humans that Till spent any considerable time with. Till squirmed, reluctant to speak on a topic that had never passed his lips.
“I don’t know exactly who,” it wasn’t like he was told their names whenever he was thrown in front of a group to entertain. Usually, they just wanted to hear him sing, other times they were more interested in Urak’s work. Sometimes, they just thought humans were fun things to play with. He hadn’t known what was going on when he’d been held in place, a mouth moving against his, but later he had been staring distractedly at the pictures in one of his story books and clicked that the action was that of a kiss. Certainly not one like in his stories though. “Just some segyein.”
He didn’t miss the miniscule way Ivan reacted, his eyes flickering wide for just a moment. That reaction was good. It reinforced Till’s confidence that Ivan had never been treated the way that he had. He would never be able to go out and peacefully speak with the segyein if he had been. Appreciating that this was a clearly difficult topic to talk about, Ivan brought Till’s body close to his, letting his warmth radiate through them both. Looking to bring the mood up, he took on a flirtatious lilt.
“At least we can still be each other’s first time in bed.”
His attempted sensual whisper was met with tears. Ivan had been ignorant. He didn’t know how much the segyein could take from them.