Chapter Text
Ivan watched Till from the doorway of the guest room as he unpacked his bag.
The room already looked homey.
A leather jacket hung over the back of the desk chair. Till's guitar case rested carefully beside the bed. The expensive guest room, usually untouched except for the occasional visit from housekeepers, no longer looked like an empty room.
Ivan still couldn't quite process it.
Till was here. Actually here.
After years of missed calls, delayed visits, and conversations squeezed between board meetings and concert schedules, it felt strange seeing him standing there, folding shirts into drawers.
“You just gonna stare at me all day?” Till asked, glancing over with an amused smile.
Ivan blinked, caught.
“I'm…still processing,” he admitted.
Till snorted.
“Well, process on the way to the restaurant. I'm starving.”
“We don't have to go out if you're too tired, I can call one of the housekeepers to cook.”
“Fuck that, I want to go out.”
He brushed past Ivan on his way out of the room, bumping his shoulder lightly against Ivan’s.
Ivan stood there for a second longer.
Down the hall, Till started humming to himself.
The house didn’t feel quite as quiet anymore.
Till's phone buzzed constantly on the drive to the restaurant. The screen lit up every few seconds before going dark again beneath his thumb.
Till ignored every call.
Finally, Ivan glanced away from the window he'd been staring out of.
“Should you get that?”
“No, it's just my manager,” Till said dismissively. “He's pissed I left last minute.”
The guilt hit Ivan immediately, heavy and familiar.
Till had cancelled half a tour for this. All the flights, schedules, and fans waiting to see him.
Ivan knew how seriously Till took all of it. He loved performing, loved the people who supported him. He’d never do anything to purposefully disappoint them.
Ivan looked down at his hands. “You shouldn't have dropped everything because of me.”
“Stop with the face,” Till said instantly. “It's fine. Half my job is music, the other half is creating a mess my overly paid manager has to clean up.”
Despite himself, Ivan huffed a quiet laugh.
Then, after a moment, he had to ask the question that had been bothering him.
“How did you even know things were bad?”
Till shot him a look like the answer was obvious.
“I have notifications set for your name, along with Anakt Inc.”
Ivan stared at him. “You do?”
Till frowned briefly. “Don't you have them for me?”
Well. Yes. Of course Ivan did.
Every article, interview, and trending clip. Sometimes he learned more about Till from headlines than actual conversations.
But somehow it had never occurred to him that Till might still be watching for him too.
The realization settled strangely warm beneath his ribs.
The restaurant was quiet enough that Till was able to take off his baseball hat and face mask with no fanfare beyond a few lingering glances. Ivan had chosen the place carefully, the private booths, low lighting, and prices were enough that people minded their own business.
Till immediately stole one of the fried appetizers off Ivan's plate before the server had even fully set it down.
“You have your own,” Ivan muttered with no real bite to his words.
“Yours looked better.”
“You haven't even tasted yours yet “
“Doesn't matter, I like yours.”
Ivan wasn't sure why Till's words were affecting so much this evening, his heart skipped a beat anytime Till said the most casual things.
Till, meanwhile, looked completely unbothered as he leaned back against the booth and finally silenced his phone after another round of buzzing.
Quiet fell across the table, Ivan wasn't sure what to say. Till had to have questions, but Ivan wasn't ready to answer them. He didn't want to talk about Gyeong or the interview, so he let the silence stretch.
Till stole another appetizer. Ivan huffed a laugh despite himself, the sound felt unfamiliar in his throat.
“You're lucky I'm incredibly generous,”
“I've been stealing your food since we were kids, you should be used to it by now.”
Till led the conversation after that, telling Ivan all about the highlights of his tour instead of the elephant in the room.
Ivan was grateful for the reprieve.
It almost felt normal.
Almost.
Till frowned as he looked down at Ivan's untouched chopsticks. He grabbed some of the appetizers off his own plate and replaced the ones he stole.
“Still having that issue with eating in front of other people?”
Ivan's grip tightened slightly around his chopsticks. He hadn't realized Till had ever noticed.
Till gestured vaguely toward him with his chopsticks. “I remember you constantly skipping lunch unless we were somewhere alone.” He paused, then bit his lip. “Sorry, I forgot, maybe we should have stayed at your place after all.”
Ivan didn't want to make Till feel guilty. He picked up his chopsticks and plucked an appetizer in his mouth.
The worst part was that Till didn't even sound judgemental. Ivan could handle being looked down upon, having someone worry was foreign to him.
“Apologies, I just didn't notice,”
“Ivan.”
Till's voice was so gentle, so unlike the fiery spitball Ivan remembered. Something about it made Ivan's chest ache unexpectedly.
Ivan braced himself for the line of questioning he's been dreading, popping another appetizer in his mouth to avoid answering for as long as possible.
Till studied him across the table, all traces of teasing gone now. “How bad was it before I got here?”
Well… Ivan hadn’t been expecting that question.
Not what happened. Or explain yourself. Or tell me everything.
Just… how bad?
Like Till already knew it had been terrible and the details of how he got here didn't matter.
Ivan looked away quickly.
He couldn't explain this. Couldn't begin to untangle weeks of humiliation and loneliness and quiet misery.
“...Bad.”
Silence settled between them. Ivan kept his gaze fixed stubbornly on the wall, shoulders tight beneath his coat. He couldn't bring himself to look at Till, he wouldn't be able to handle seeing the pity on his face.
But when Till finally spoke, his voice was matter-of-fact.
“It'll be okay.”
Ivan nearly laughed, the idea of being okay felt impossible at this point.
Till nudged his foot lightly against Ivan's beneath the table. Repeatedly, until Ivan finally looked at him.
“We'll figure it out,” he said softly. “You're not dealing with this alone anymore.”
Ivan wanted to believe him. Till made everything seem so easy.
And hell, maybe it was easy for him.
People loved Till effortlessly. Stadiums full of strangers screamed his name, fans hung onto every word he sang like it meant something sacred. Till walked into rooms and made people feel warm simply by existing in them.
Ivan, meanwhile, had inherited his position, his money, his name. Despite the polished image he spent years building, Ivan still managed to be hated by most people.
Still, when Till looked at him like that, so certain and stubbornly hopeful, Ivan found himself wanting to believe him.
“You always say things like you can bully the universe into cooperating.”
Till's smile was bright, relaxed.
“Well, it's worked for me so far.”
“We'll just have to see how it goes this time.”
It was late by the time they got home, Till looked exhausted after the long day of travel.
They said tired goodnights before parting ways at the top of the stairs.
Ivan lingered for a moment outside his bedroom door, listening to Till shuffle around the guest room down the hall
Then he stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
The cold came back instantly.
Not literally cold. The mansion was perfectly temperature controlled, just like everything in Ivan's life. But the silence in the room felt enormous.
Ivan switched on the lights. They illuminated the room in the same soft glow they always did at night.
Every object was exactly where it belonged.
Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
Ivan sat on the perfectly pristine bed.
Before Till arrived, this silence had become normal. Tolerable, even. He'd learned how to fill it with work calls, emails, television he never really watched, endless hours spent avoiding the empty spaces in his own head.
But now, after a single evening with Till's voice carrying through the halls and laughter interrupting the quiet, the room felt unbearable again.
Ivan reached for his phone purely to fill the silence and distract him from the cold.
He skimmed through the endless messages he'd gotten since the interview went live. Only when he landed on one, did he hesitate.
Gyeong.
He clicked her name immediately.
Gyeong: I want you to make time this week to see the children. I refuse to give you what you want and abandon them.
Ivan stared at the message for a long moment. A familiar heaviness settled low in his chest.
Gyeong had every right to hate him.
What hurt most was how easily the accusation fit.
Because that was what he was doing, wasn't it?
He thought back to all the missed dinners, the school events, parent teacher conferences. The nights he came home too exhausted to do more than stand quietly in the children’s doorways for five minutes before retreating back to his office.
He had told himself he was providing for them. Building a stable home full of everything they could possibly need. Not let them suffer the same way he had in the first years of his life before Unsha took him in.
But he miscalculated somewhere along the way, and now all he could do was repent.
Ivan: I'll take the day off on Saturday.
After sending the text, Ivan set his phone down and got ready for bed.
Sleep did not come easily.
It rarely did anymore.
He lay flat on his back beneath the heavy blankets, staring at the ceiling while the mansion settled around him.
Till was only a hallway away.
The thought settled warmly beneath Ivan's ribs.
Without meaning to, Ivan found himself thinking about summers spent stretched out beside Till in the grass under their tree. He thought back to one day in particular.
“Iiiiivan,” Till, ten years old, called.
“Tiiiiiillll,” Ivan called back.
“What are you doing on the ground?” Till asked, dropping onto his stomach beside him, chin propped in his hands.
Ivan pointed silently toward the centipede crawling through the grass. He'd been watching it for nearly twenty minutes now.
Till recoiled immediately. “Gross!”
“It’s not gross, just look at it go.”
“That is gross, Ivan! Is that thing poisonous?”
“The word you’re looking for is venomous.” Ivan corrected automatically. “And yes, but it can’t kill you unless you have an allergic reaction.”
Till stared at him in horror.
“Are you allergic to it?”
Ivan shrugged.
“You knew it was dangerous and still laid next to it?!”
Ivan blinked. “It's interesting.”
Till groaned and sat up, flopping on his butt and scooting away from the centipede. “One day you're gonna die because you think weird little murder bugs are ‘interesting’.”
“That's fine,”
“It's not!”
They sat together for some time, Ivan telling him facts about centipedes while Till pretended to be disgusted by the entire matter. It put Ivan's mind at ease having someone actually listen to the things he had to say.
“Its legs move in coordinated waves. That's why it looks like it's gliding.”
“Uh-huh,”
“And centipedes actually can't physically have a hundred legs despite the name-”
“Ivan,” Till interrupted, Ivan could see him fighting an amused smile. “I don't think I've seen you happier than when you're talking about these creepy things.”
Ivan blinked, caught off guard.
“That's not true.”
“It is,” Till insisted with a teasing tone, “you actually smile for one.”
Ivan frowned automatically, embarrassed now, but Till only laughed, poking him on the cheek.
“Don't be like that, it's adorable. I like this version of you better than the well-behaved kid you are around the adults.”
Against his will, a laugh slipped out of Ivan.
Till immediately seized on the victory, poking him again.
“See? There it is!”
“Stop.”
Till didn't stop.
By the time the pokes turned into tickles, Ivan was laughing outright. He wasn't about to let Till get away with it, though. He lunged forward and tickled him back.
Soon enough, the two boys were rolling down the hill. They landed side by side, laughing all the while.
The sun felt so warm, the wind gentle enough to keep them cool, the grass under them poked at their exposed skin.
Back then, Ivan had still known how to enjoy being alive.
The memory dissolved beneath the sound of his alarm. He must have fallen asleep at some point.
Ivan groaned and buried his face deeper into the pillows. As he did every morning, he ignored the noise in favor of staying beside Till a little longer.
That was, until he remembered he didn’t have to resort to dreams to see his best friend.
Sure enough, the moment he peeked into the guest room, there he was.
Half-buried beneath the blankets and duvet, face pressed crookedly into the pillow, one arm hanging uselessly off the side of the bed. His silver hair stuck out wildly in every direction, unlike the deliberately styled version of “messy” he presented onstage. This looked more like a bird's nest after a minor electrical fire.
Asleep. Comfortable. Real.
Something warm fluttered in Ivan’s chest at the sight of Till. Ivan really hadn’t hallucinated it.
Till was really there.
Ivan quietly closed the door before he woke him up. Now was not the time to get emotional. There was work to be done after all.
The next few days passed relatively uneventfully. People stared and whispered, yes, but nobody dared approach their vice president about the scandal.
The only one who likely would was Unsha, but Ivan tactfully avoided his father.
Instead, he focused on Saturday.
Gyeong would bring the children over in the morning. They would discuss things privately while the kids settled in. Ivan would apologize properly this time. He would explain that he understood where he went wrong and present actual changes.
He'd reduce his office hours, taking the majority of his work home with him so that his family had easy access to him.
He'd scheduled mandatory family time, reserving the hours of 6:00pm-8:00pm for dinner and helping get the children to bed. Sundays would be forever blocked off for whatever outings Yu-na and Tae wanted to do.
Fewer business trips. This one would be difficult considering Unsha demanded his presence at most public deals, but Ivan could send Marty in his place. He trusted his assistant enough to get the job done.
It would be manageable.
He and Gyeong had built a good life together once. There was no reason they couldn't repair it now that Ivan finally understood the problem and his faults.
They'd be a proper family once more. Stable. This scandal would be brushed under the rug as a simple little domestic dispute that accidentally became too public.
Yeah. Ivan could still fix this without having to tarnish Gyeong's reputation.
When Saturday finally arrived, Ivan ensured the mansion looked immaculate.
The housekeepers had been scheduled for overtime all week in preparation. Every surface gleamed, every decorative pillow sat perfectly centered, every trace of disorder erased before the children arrived.
Control the environment, control the outcome.
If things looked perfect enough, perhaps this visit itself would go perfectly too.
Till had spent most of the morning sprawled across the couch in the formal living room, guitar in hand. He casually provided the exhausted staff with their own private concert while Ivan meticulously directed preparations around him.
The contrast would have been embarrassing if Ivan had enough energy left to feel embarrassed.
Ivan adjusted the flowers in the foyer for the third time.
They had already been perfectly centered.
“You know the kids aren't gonna judge you because of poorly arranged hydrangeas.” Till called from his perch.
“They're perennials,” is all Ivan said, stepping back to inspect the arrangement anyway.
The kitchen staff had prepared Yu-na's favorite lunch and were currently working on the preparations for Tae's favorite supper. Both kids' preferred snacks had already been stocked in the media room upstairs. Ivan had even cleared his entire schedule for the weekend despite the increasingly irritated messages piling up from Unsha's secretary which he assigned Marty to handle.
He was prepared.
Or at least as prepared as someone could reasonably be for the possible collapse of their family.
A pair of hands clasping his shoulders from behind nearly caused Ivan to jump out of his skin. He hadn't even heard Till stand up.
“Relax already. You're gonna scare the kids.”
“I am relaxed.”
Ivan turned to be met with Till's unamused stare.
Ivan stepped forward again in order to straighten the flowers. Till's hands fell to his sides.
Silence settled over the foyer.
“Listen, Ivan-”
The doorbell rang.
The sound cut sharply through the mansion.
Ivan froze instantly.
The children had lived in this house their entire lives, yet somehow, they were standing outside ringing the doorbell like visitors.
The thought sat heavily in his chest, but Ivan forced himself forward.
Things would feel normal again soon.
He stepped towards the door and opened it without hesitation.
The moment the door opened, Ivan was met by his children exclaiming, “Uncle Till!”
They rushed past Ivan so quickly the cold autumn air swept in around him.
Till barely had time to brace himself before both kids knocked him backwards. He laughed loudly as he wrapped his arms around them both.
“Dang, look how tall both of you are now!”
“Yeah, if you came to visit us more often, you’d know!” Yu-na accused teasingly, poking sharply at his side until Till squirmed away with an offended noise.
“Hey, I’m a super awesome rockstar, I can’t just stay in one place forever,” Till defended dramatically. “Think of all the devastated fans.”
Ivan stood quietly beside the still-open door, hands stiff at his side.
It shouldn't have hurt.
The children had always adored Till.
Of course they did. Till was easy to love. He was warm and expressive and endlessly present whenever he was around.
Still, watching them run straight past Ivan with such easy excitement made something tight pull painfully in his chest.
Worse was the sudden realization that he had no idea what to do now that they were actually here.
He had prepared everything so meticulously, but standing in front of his children felt strangely similar to standing at a podium without a script.
Neither Yu-na or Tae had spared Ivan a glance. Despite all the promises Ivan had made to himself over the past week, fear crawled unpleasantly up the back of his throat anyways.
Till glanced toward him, catching Ivan's expression before it could settle into place. His smile softened immediately.
He ruffled both children's hair. “Alright, enough attacking me. Go say hi to your papa.”
Ivan reacted before either child could move.
“It's alright, I-”
His eyes caught on Gyeong standing beside the car outside.
“I should speak with your mother first.”
Without another word, Ivan closed the front door, leaving the children in the much preferred care of Till. He went over to Gyeong who had dug two backpacks out of the trunk and handed them to Ivan.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning for them.”
“So soon? I figured they could stay the whole weekend.”
“I don’t want to take up more of your time than necessary.”
Ouch.
“But I'm offering my time.”
“Uh-huh, says the man who walked out of the house without even giving his children a proper hello.”
Gyeong shut the trunk a bit harder than necessary, years of PR training were the only thing causing Ivan to not flinch.
“Gyeong, I wanted to talk to you,”
“Till’s here.” She said instead, as if Ivan hadn’t already known that. “Thought he was on tour.”
Ivan looked back to the house despite not being able to see said man.
“He came home for a while.”
Gyeong nodded. “Good. Glad to know you aren’t alone in that big house.”
Ivan paused.
Was that concern he heard?
Did a part of Gyeong actually still care about him?
It was just the opening he needed. If Gyeong still cared enough to worry about his wellbeing, then surely there was still time to remedy this situation.
“Gyeong, listen. I know what I said before, and I wanted to apologize to you. I was being stupid and talking in the heat of the moment. I don’t actually want a divorce.”
Gyeong stared at him.
For one terrible second, hope flitted across Ivan’s chest.
Then she laughed.
One short disbelieving laugh.
“You’re unbelievable, you know that, Ivan?”
“I’m serious,”
“Oh, I know you're serious, you’ve never made a joke in your entire life.”
“Gyeong, I can fix this.”
That only made her expression harden further.
“I’ll change.” Ivan continued quickly. “I’ll cut back on my schedule. I’ll be home more for you and the kids. We can work this out.”
“You think this is just about your calendar?”
Ivan opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
That was the problem, wasn’t it?
Clearly there was something Ivan wasn’t seeing, perhaps if he could get it out of her, he’d be able to come up with a countermeasure.
“Of course that’s not the only problem. Come inside and I’ll tell you all about the plan I hav-”
“Just stop Ivan. You’re being ridiculous.”
Ivan went to say something, but Gyeong interrupted him.
“I know you, Ivan, and I know what this is really about. You are just upset because I talked to that reporter, and now you aren’t liking the consequences of your own actions .”
Gyeong laughed again, sharper this time.
“Where was all this “I’ll change” bullshit when you were ignoring us?”
“That’s not fair,” Ivan said defensively.
“Fair?” Gyeong stared at him incredulously. “You want to talk about fair? How about having to explain to the kids why we are suddenly up and moving to grandma and grandpa’s one day?”
“I told you to stay and I’d leave.”
Gyeong stared at him for a second like she genuinely didn't know how to respond to that.
Then she let out a sound of pure frustration, dragging a hand over her face
“You’re still missing the point, Ivan.”
Ivan was losing her.
He wasn't sure when the conversation had slipped out of his control, only that every attempt to pull it back seemed to make things worse.
This was going badly.
Worse than badly.
And if he let her walk away now–
No.
He did not want to resort to Unsha's plan B.
“Gyeong-”
“Enough. Go inside. Spend some time with the kids. Actually pretend to enjoy it. And I'll be back in the morning to pick them up.”
Her tone was final, she was clearly done talking about this.
She turned from Ivan, getting in the car and driving off.
Ivan watched her drive off in stunned silence.
He failed.
Again.