Chapter Text
Till will never grow tired of how a violin looks in the early morning, pulled from its case in the middle of a practice room with the sun dutifully crawling across the sky. The city bustles outside. Sparrows unleash their anger to deaf clouds. He pushes aside velveteen covers, freeing dark wood so he can spend the next few hours mauling himself half to death upon guillotine strings.
But nothing in his life seems to run smoothly at the moment. The stars like to stick their noses into the corridors, rearrange their layout until a Ivan shaped blight is destined to come running back to stain his existence just when he thinks he’s managed to shake him.
Cautious knuckles tap against the door while Till’s got a shoulder rest clutched in his hand, delicate, measured, resounding with the shrill of silver against a champagne glass. Irritation sparks in the pit of his stomach. He has sh*t to do, pages upon pages of music scrolling along the insides of his goddamn mind because he’s burnt it into the lining of his neural passages with black ink and linear staves.
So instead of opening it, Till waits with an eyebrow co*cked. The tip of his bow makes lazy infinities in the air. It’s just so fun to watch unexpecting Juilliard students balk at the sight of him, hurry around as if he’ll step on them should they breathe too loudly. Knock them down a few pegs when they realize the scholarship kid is better than they’ll ever be, spins effortless beauty with his nothing-special background and his nothing-special violin, heaven born hands and hell born vision.
Okay. So maybe Till’s sort of a dickhe*d.
The door swings open. “...so sorry, I left- oh.” Ivan stills in the doorway, shoulders drawn into a tense curve. His tone drops its sweet edges, its candied peal and crystalline demerara. “Don’t you know how to answer?” he says, hardening around the edges.
“What did you leave?” Till asks instead, lips curling in a scowl. Ivan doesn’t seem like the kind of person who forgets his belongings, discards them in a darkened practice room and hurries around with his brain all scattered. Unless, of course, he’s had the soul f*cked out of him, coherency tipped down the drain in a torrent of bleach and aluminum. Perhaps that’d make him slip up, rush into the clutches of New York with his clothes all crumpled. Lips ruined, hair tugged to chaos.
Ivan lets himself into the room without so much as a second glance at Till, crossing over to where a folder of sheet music rests on the table. His hands curl around it with annoying delicateness. “This,” he says.
“You left your music.”
“Intelligent observation.”
A smile blooms deep inside of him, clawing its way up the soft lining of his throat until he’s exuding satisfaction, warm and sickly and addictive. It’s edged with a certain meanness, a dangerous blade in the form of revealed canines and wicked envy eyes. “Were your thoughts a little vacant last night, concertmaster? What did you do to yourself in here? I doubt it was a picture of purity.”
“I need to practice,” Ivan says simply.
“Wait.” His grip is hot around a narrow wrist when he stops Ivan from leaving, tugging him close before he has the opportunity to disappear into the intestinal mess of corridors. He releases when Ivan blinks down at him, empty empty empty.
“What do you want?”
“I was just about to play page 24, actually—you know, to warm up,” he says, fingers fluttering over the strings where he clutches at his violin with a lazy grip. Plucky notes spill from it, contained by the pads of his fingers. “You can listen, if you like. I’m sure it’ll impress you.”
He’s rewarded with a cold smile. “You’re no Heifetz.”
“I know. I’m better.”
“You’re better? Sounds like you’re overcompensating for something.”
Till shrugs before leaning up to press his lips closer, closer, closer. Until Ivan’s skin erupts with flesh freckles, betraying his sense of magnetization as Till blows words over his neck. “You’ve seen my co*ck. You’ve gagged on my co*ck, you’ve had it shoved in the back of your throat until you couldn’t f*cking breathe with those expensive lungs of yours. So tell me, concertmaster, do you think I’m overcompensating?”
Frost settles upon the ground between them, churning out of a sampo with all the vigor of a hunched witch pulling the millstones. And despite the biting cold, Till wishes he’d feel hot coals beneath his feet instead. Wishes Ivan would snap, would rise to the challenge so his face glows red. He could take him apart piece by piece regardless, smack a steady hand all over salt-toned skin for every perfect, uninteresting note Ivan has ever played in his life. Until he’s writhing, broken. Put back in his place to kneel at the feet of a sinner, feet which step upon headstones and dance between granite mausoleums.
“Just play the caprice,” Ivan sighs, pulling himself up onto the table next to Till’s abandoned violin case.
“Really?”
“I’m waiting.” He waves a hand, balancing his chin atop one of his knees.
Anticipation bubbles in Till’s stomach when he knocks the violin under his jaw, languid and lazy because even when he’s asleep, the gloomy stretch of the fingerboard haunts his every nightmare. Screaming daemons, dark specters with sound hole skulls. Figures with the flesh melted right off their bones, brandishing instruments blackened by ammonia as they drift through his dreams. Till never truly leaves his realm of guttural music, not even when night falls.
The bow rests over the strings, and it flickers like an oar through angry rivers.
Ebony eyes study his every movement, the arc of his fingers, the line of his wrist, the curve of his eyelashes as his lids fall shut. His feet as he steps into his rowboat, unmooring from the living world of upright steel, concrete jungle, pale pretty boys with crystal blocking their aortas.
Till breathes, and breathes, and allows the Cocytus to fill up his lungs with black water.
He doesn’t open his eyes until he’s done, and when he does, he wishes he hadn’t bothered.
Ivan picks at his nails, perfect crescents of peony blossoming from his fingers, petal lips downturned in disinterest. Nothing about his stature changes when the last note dissipates, destined to die a death of silence because Till is the only one who cares enough to listen to its descent. He tips his head to one side like every one of his expectations have been met, mapped out precisely by platinum adorned hands.
It’s not until he’s standing, pulling his violin case onto his back, that Till snaps.
“f*cking say something.”
“You want to know what I thought?” Ivan asks. His tone rings mocking around the edges, bottom lip pushing out like Till is a child to be scolded. Like he’s another student with dreams to break, desires to be dashed against the sidewalk without so much as a second thought.
“Yes.”
“I hated it.”
The door bangs shut behind Ivan’s broad form.
Till stands there in the middle of the room, violin tucked under his arm and hatred brewing in his stomach.
He wishes Ivan hated it enough to scream and kick at him, wishes he despised it enough to grab at Till and send wood splintering all over the floor. To snap his bow in half, to yank at the strings with perfect teeth until something gives. Chipped calcium falling from his lips, blood swirling over pink gums as he turns from the violin to Till. Hands tearing at his clothes, open palms falling across swathes of unmarked skin and teeth scraping along the length of his co*ck. Dark eyes rolling back as he thrusts harder, as he pounds into Ivan so violently he forgets how to f*cking walk.
Instead he’d been met with cold disinterest, sharp and blustery. Ivan’s features poised to perfection, flat lips and dark eyes full of void matter, brimming with nothing in particular even though Till had just poured his soul out. The sound of a door slamming in staccato finality.
I hated it.
Till wishes he’d really meant it.
Rehearsals flit by in a weary cadence, each one bleeding into the next. The orchestra shies away from him, he steps on the first violins, and the balance is never quite struck. He plays the concerto over and over, but it seizes around the edges, constrained by the up down up down of the baton, chained by rehearsal hall walls and Ivan’s annoying tendency to drag him out of hell. His back might as well have snowflakes permanently stuck to it at this point, the coldness of Ivan’s presence seeping into the ridges of his vertebrae every time he attends rehearsal.
Saturday morning falls. He’s exhausted, brain worn to a bloody pulp by Prokofiev.
Till is perfectly content with shuffling around his cramped studio, coffee in tow, but Ivan chooses this moment to shoot a text to his phone. They’d exchanged numbers once the maestro grew increasingly frustrated with their ability to coordinate, two sets of thumbs tapping away in opposite degrees of enthusiasm. Ivan thought it was hilarious, Till, not so much. The screen lights up, offensively clinical in the grey light of morning.
Give me your address. Need to practice concerto.
Till almost laughs at his f*cking phone. A part of him mourns the loss of his afternoon, cast out into the rain before it even began. He sets the cup down as he scrambles to type a response because Ivan is right, they really should be practicing the damn concerto.
wouldnt practice room b better?? soundproof :)
When Ivan doesn’t respond, Till sighs with exasperation and attaches his address to the message. Every day he thanks the heavens for giving him the most ridiculous scholarship to this stupid school, effectively ensuring he can just about struggle by with a sh*tty studio to himself. Uninterrupted.
here u go, for the ‘concerto’
He looks down at his attire, neckline stretched to reveal his collarbones and the decal flaking off in powdery snow bursts. Weariness crashes over him, a blizzard numbing his shoulders with waking aches and playing pains.
With his volitionally limited knowledge of Ivan, Till concludes he doesn’t have long before he appears on his doorstep, thrown up by the churning gut of New York with rain streaking over his expression and storm clouds crackling at his temples. His lips curling as he eyes Till, slumming around at eleven in the morning when he really should’ve been mauling his fingers to bloody pulps since daybreak. The ice of the image makes his arteries sing arctic song.
He should probably shower.
Till has to summon every last scrap of his willpower to get off his ass and buzz Ivan through the main doors when he shows up outside the building. His hair drips onto his shoulders, a problem he half-assedly solves by rubbing a towel over his scalp while he waits for Ivan to navigate the dinge of the stairwell.
Within five minutes, he’s standing just past the threshold of the studio, slender hands tucked deep into his pockets and a lemon slice sitting upon his tongue. He stares up at Till with unmasked distaste because he’s never been put in check, never been taught to treat anyone as an equal unless they wrestle the currents of the world with both hands and carry coffers full of gold. And because Till has roughly three dollars of discretionary income to his name, Ivan doesn’t make an effort to charm him with saccharine words and sly sweetness.
It’s sort of refreshing.
“Good morning,” he says, and it echoes as if off the walls of a rehearsal hall.
“Barely.” Ivan assesses the damp ends of his hair, the sleep clinging to his face and the weary set of his shoulders. “You haven’t played yet today, have you?”
“Nope.” He opens the door wider so Ivan can glide through the entrance, hands tugging the violin case off his back. Dark eyes flit around the room, noting the dirty laundry shoved into the corner, the cold mug of coffee set on the windowsill, the Soundgarden poster falling off the wall over his bed. Till hopes he’s regretting his decision to forgo the practice room.
The case is set against the wall. Ivan heaves an exhale, dredged up from the recesses of his soul and dripping with curdled exasperation. “It’s eleven, Till.”
“And? It’s Saturday, chill the f*ck out.”
“And we’re performing the concerto in two weeks.”
"I can already play it."
"Well, I wouldn't say that." Ivan is openly nosing around his room now, like he's an exhibition in the Guggenheim. His discarded shoes watch from the doorway as he trails ghost fingers over Till's desk, past the mess of manuscript and theory books, around the biro sitting in a pool of dried ink, across the stickered lid of his laptop. Till isn't sure whether he's impressed by Ivan's lack of shame or not. It's not until Ivan reaches for his shelf he decides to put an end to it.
"Are you gonna get your violin out or not?" He asks, an eyebrow tipped. "It sort of looks like you're wasting my Saturday."
"Your desk is a state," Ivan says as he shrugs his coat off. It's dappled with gentle drizzle, the sort of rain so intangible Till only knows it's there because he's unceremoniously given the damn thing by entitled hands. "Can you hang this?" Ivan gives a cold smile and holds out his coat.
Till is really quite tempted to throw it at the back of Ivan's head when he kneels to pop the latches on his violin case, tightening the bow in practiced motions and fitting the shoulder rest onto the back of the instrument. He sets it back in the case when he's done, straightening up with a stack of music clutched in his hands and a pencil between his teeth. His stupid, baroque fang pokes out at him. Before the urge to rearrange them swells with the intensity of an orchestra in the throes of crescendo, Till saunters across the room like he's waiting for the sun to expand and burn the earth to a crisp.
“Into the flood again,” he mumbles under his breath, slinging Ivan’s coat onto the skewed hook mounted on his door. It’s weighty in the way that polyester and acrylic isn’t, soft lining and gleaming metalware all stitched together by attentive hands. Next to his jean jacket and raincoat, it looks ridiculous.
“God, turn that off,” Ivan says, throwing a glance towards where Till’s phone sits. A speaker blinks at them from the other side of the room. “What are you even listening to?”
Till gapes at him, although he’s not sure why he’s surprised. “You don’t know Alice In Chains?”
“Not particularly.”
He thinks about grabbing Ivan’s shoulders, about shoving back him onto the floor so hard his knees bruise. About the way he’d gag around him. Eyes finally falling to rest so Till doesn’t have to spend his afternoon gazing into cold, uncaring irises. Tears running down his cheeks, imperfectly beautiful as Till closes off his airways until he’s scrabbling at his thighs, desperately attempting to draw air back into his lungs. The way he’d blossom pink. The way his lips would swell, glace cherry.
But they should probably work on the concerto.
“Alright, princess.” He disconnects from the speaker so they’re plunged back into the freezing Atlantic. "You can sit on the bed, or whatever." Something about the mental image of Ivan crossing his legs atop office-texture carpet is f*cking hilarious to Till, but he doesn’t think Ivan would want to sit his pretty ass on the floor for fear his pants would dirty.
"I would love to," Ivan says, dripping with the sort of poison which suggests he would very much not love to.
But he can't exactly complain, because he's the one who insisted upon making the journey here, upon shoving his porcelain nose into Till's life and rooting around with ivory tipped fingers. It's sort of pitiful. Ivan is so obviously unsettled by the memory of Till reducing him to nothing, of a steady palm crackling with bloodrush over the side of his face. This is his way to regain control. He clings to the hull of the ship with tremors in his hands, praying, praying, praying his desire for his virtuoso won't tip him right over the deck into the seas of Scandinavia.
So they sit across from each other, blaring sun and scalding bluster, spiced cinnamon wine decaying to acid while they negotiate which sections to hack over.
Ivan looks ridiculous kneeling on his bed, feet tucked beneath him in a manner that seems calculated, measured. He presses the eraser end of his pencil into his cheek as he skims over the sheet music, over all his grey markings and stark black notes, position shifts and fingerings and circled accents. It’s a map, music torn to pieces by a cartographer.
“The third movement is horrible,” he mutters, tapping the eraser against perfect teeth. “I don’t even know if it’s possible to make it sound good. You certainly can’t.”
“I like the third movement.”
“Of course you do.” Ivan rifles through the music, turning the pages gently as if they’re butterfly wings. “In that case, let’s start with...the andante assai.” The page falls open in finality.
Till looks at him long and hard. “You’re purposefully being a bitch at this point, you know?”
“What?" Ivan smirks, "It’s the best movement.”
“Sure. Whatever. I don’t care anymore, let’s just get this over with.”
They lean over their parts, violins resting upon open cases within easy reach should they need to play through a section.
Over the course of the morning, his urge to snap Ivan in half grows exponentially.
He insists upon discussing every phrase and dynamic change, penciling in notes for just about everything. Till isn’t sure how Ivan can read the music anymore, not when it’s covered by a grey haze of annotations and markings. The eraser taps against his teeth, erratic and jarring. Surely agonizing over each infinitesimal twist and turn of the concerto isn’t the way to achieve musical coherency, but Ivan is in his f*cking bedroom now and there’s not much he can do to make him shut the hell up. His back presses against the wall, slumped in disinterest as he lets Ivan talk at him.
By the time they get around to playing through a section together, Till thinks he might cry with relief regardless of how much he hates performing alongside Ivan’s ruled notes and rigid attitude. He springs out of his slouch, grabbing for his violin with eager hands.
Ivan follows with considerably less vigor.
“I’ll count in,” they chorus, posture mirroring each other’s with their violins resting at their shoulders.
“I’m the f*cking soloist, I’m counting,” Till says.
“You go too fast, it’s one oh eight.”
Before Ivan can do something stupid like pull a metronome out, Till rushes to deflect. “Again, I’m the soloist, if you don’t like it you should’ve tried harder at auditions. I’m leading.”
He inhales, lifting his bow in an exaggerated movement, and they launch headlong into the section.
Till can taste bile at the back of his throat by the time they finish the phrase, sickened by his melodies drowning in the greyness of the English channel. Shoved under water by demure hands, sent to seabed graves by pinpoint smiles pinned to a pretty face for the express purpose of getting his way. He doesn’t want to handle Ivan with velvet gloves and silk touches. He wants to tell him the truth, explain to him exactly why he can’t stand to play with him.
The violin rests under his arm, the last note still trembling in the air before him. “Put your f*cking soul into it, if you even have one. Let the music move you.”
“I do move,” Ivan says, setting his violin down in its case. He’s already reaching for the damned pencil, already stretching towards the abandoned manuscript.
“You move in all the ways the page tells you to, you play everything like you’ve rehearsed every breath of it. You move to guide your section, Ivan.”
“That’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Sure, it’s what you’re supposed to do, but it’s boring. Worry less about playing every note the best it can be, and be daring. That’s how you become better.”
“There is no space for error in the Carnegie, virtuoso.” Ivan narrows his eyes.
“Maybe not, but if I have the choice between perfection and risk, I choose risk.” A smile pulls over his face, snakelike, horned, devilish. He would rather f*ck up all his runs, snap his strings, miss his position shifts than play like Ivan, with each note measured to the nanosecond.
“You ruin the music,” Ivan says, autumn fire blazing up at him.
“I’ll ruin you next,” Till spits, and it sounds like a growled promise, sounds like a bow sliced across the bottom string until the bridge creaks under the force of it.
“We need to work on the third movement,” Ivan says. The tension diffuses, reducing back down to a simmer as they glare and glare at each other.
“f*cking finally.”
Till stretches out his legs when Ivan is tucking his violin back into the case, fingers loosening his bow to the point he can slide it into place. Silk covers the strad with floral whispers, delicate and expensive and sickly. Pollen clots in his throat, petals line his mouth with waxy pink.
“I don’t know anything about you, concertmaster,” he says thoughtfully, pushing a hand through his hair to shake some of the stiffness from his arms.
“What could you possibly want to know?”
Ivan slams the lid of his case and the latches flip into place. If they were operating under usual circ*mstances, this would be his cue to leave, to shoulder the case and disappear into the intestinal mess of grid streets and blocky skyscrapers, throw himself into the dreary drizzle that plagues the city these days. Winter hurries closer, condemning them to rain and ruin.
But there’s nothing usual or conventional about their predicament. Ivan sits on the bed once again, cupping the curve of his jaw in one open palm. His eyes glimmer with curiosity, urging Till forwards.
Till thinks very long and very hard about what he’s going to ask.
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Is this your attempt at an icebreaker? It’s not going to make me like you,” Ivan says. When Till waits with an eyebrow raised, his shoulders slump in defeat. Kneel for your virtuoso. “Teal.”
“Really? I thought it would be red.” Red is for blood boiling underneath paper skin, the color of Ivan's pupils, red is for the plush lining of a violin case, red is for hot anger and seas of plague. Red is dirty money, red is matured wine and red is the sharp skin of shining apples, waxy to the touch and ruined by straight teeth. The snap, crunch of a broken spine.
Ivan snorts. “You guessed wrong then.”
“You're right, grey fits you much better.” Till spits out.
“Grey would be my second favorite.”
“That figures.”
“What?”
“It’s the way you play. It’s muted, you know.” The inverse of synesthesia, notes falling in grey hailstones from gentle clouds, an expanse of colorless heaven producing diamonds instead of precipitation. And petrichor would be better than nothing, but Ivan hurries out of the storm to shelter his pretty head from its wrath. A sky of rayon, a canopy of safety blanket umbrella.
“I don’t need colors to play the notes right." Ivan glares, "Some of the ideas you come up with are idiotic.”
Till thinks about his world of decay and rot, his realm where plate tectonics crumble under his feet and his bow gleams scythe silver. The luthier boat he boards to get there, barely withstanding the threat of capsizing as the styx batters against its hull. Blood dripping from the clouds. Half masted flags tearing in the wind, poppies lining the riverbank as he descends and descends and descends. Perhaps colors are more important than Ivan thinks, because without seeing the world through crimson and scarlet vignette, Till isn’t sure he’d be able to pour as much raw horror into the music as he does.
“Is there anything else you wanted to know?”
Ivan tears him from his reverie, pale hands grasping his achilles tendon to set him down in a siberian plane. Iced pools, desolate ground, yellowing coniferous trees. He’s f*cking freezing.
He ponders to himself, searching searching searching for anything he could shine a light into. “Do you have any siblings?”
“Two. Both older.” Ivan looks away.
Till smiles slowly, carefully. Understanding bubbles in the pit of his stomach, malicious enough to turn his acid to chardonnay. Ivan has thrown him a lead, tossed him an axe with which to begin hacking away his layers, peeling back the illusion of allure and perfect posture. “That’s it, isn’t it? They’ll inherit daddy’s position on the board, won’t they? And Ivan is allowed to run off and become a violinist, run all the way across the Atlantic to New York so he doesn’t have to watch them making something of their lives.”
The room is deathly silent, the floor is lined with thistles. Itching sores work their way across Till’s calves when he looks at Ivan, lips pursed as he glares at the dirty laundry shoved into the corner. His hands lie across his lap, pretty like glimmering quartz. Till wants to push more, wants to push and push until Ivan turns ruby, teeth bared in pearly lines and dark citrine eyes blazing with amethyst.
“Ivan was always for show, wasn’t he? The third child, taken out of the box at dinner parties to impress CEOs and board members.” He leans forward so his lips brush over Ivan’s ear, cruel cruel cruel.
But Till’s always been an advocate for Lucifer.
“You’re just so pretty, Ivan. So boring, so plainly perfect it’s like you were made to be kept in a case. Paraded around every once in a while, put back in the cupboard when it’s over.”
Bloodless fists. “They played music too. It’s a privilege.”
“Ah, but they stopped, didn't they? They weren’t shipped off to Juilliard, out of sight, out of mind.” His hands slide over a narrow waist, light enough for Ivan to shiver. “And perhaps I’d understand, if only you could play the music with some semblance of artistry. But perhaps you’d be better off with your stock tickers and profit margins, because it’s far easier to get numbers right.”
“Go to hell,” Ivan says, frost lining every syllable.
His lips coast downwards, skimming along the cold skin of Ivan’s neck. “Gladly. They don’t call me a devil’s violinist for no reason. But I’ll bring you with me, concertmaster, just so I can watch your skin melt away under the fires of Tartarus.”
It’s frantic as they undress, violent limbs and stretched cotton. As if they’ve been balanced on a knife edge all day, waiting and waiting for the moment they’d tumble off the side of it, devolve into angry lust and hateful touches. And they both knew it all along, right from the moment Ivan insisted upon coming here instead of neutral territory. Till kicks his jeans off and discards them somewhere on the floor, uncaring of where they end up. He wants to ruin Ivan, make him see stars until he can’t remember how to play violin, until he can’t play another pinpoint note ever again.
Curiosity sparks when he catches sight of Ivan pulling his shirt off, revealing expanses of quartz and alabaster. But Till’s never liked the look of marble.
Instead, his eyes are drawn downwards, down over the small of Ivan’s back, over the jut of his hips. He reaches for him, reveling in the way Ivan shudders when his hands come into bruising contact with his waist. And he pushes Ivan forwards so his ass is bared to the afternoon air, so he can begin to piece together what he’s looking at, because the concertmaster of the Juilliard orchestra is in his bed and his ass is covered in angry impact marks.
Till thumbs over the skin where it flares a faded pink, where burst vessels mar expanses of perfect cream. “I knew you got off on this,” Till hums, breath blowing over cold skin just to watch the way it makes Ivan tense. He runs his fingers across red and rose, trailing pale stripes whenever he presses down. “Who put these here?”
He imagines Ivan under the palm of someone else and it makes his stomach curdle. He wants to be the one to ruin him, to burst vessels and slap so hard Ivan walks around covered in bruises. He wants to ruin Ivan like he ruins his music.
What’s it to you?” Ivan asks, but it comes out too clipped, too forced. A hasty construction of paper and mothcotton, tugged over the truth with nervous hands to conceal a thorny pit of shame.
Realization dawns with all the clarity of December daybreak. Delightful, delicious.
“Oh my god. You spank yourself, don’t you? Is it when you mess up? Do you get your ass out in the middle of the practice room and spank until you can play it right?”
The silence makes Till giddy, makes him feel as if he’s just been born from the stomach of hell and his flesh is still in the process of knitting itself together over his bones and marrow. “You do.”
Ivan's silence spoke volumes.
Till feeds off the confirmation, imagines Ivan fumbling over his perfect notes until he’s forced to bend over a table and smack, paint his skin pink until he daren’t blaspheme again. Eyes tearing with frustration because it’s difficult to get the angle right, difficult to hit as hard as he deserves for the way he’s butchered the music. Some twisted part of him hoping someone with bigger hands would walk in on him like this and spank with no abandon. The way he’d tremble as he reaches for his violin afterwards, back held straight and nervous because more mistakes would only result in further punishment. Soundproof walls keeping his dirty practice technique a secret.
Until now. Till knows what he does to himself now, knows how he pushes and pushes until the notes are neat and tidy.
“Don’t worry, concertmaster. I’ll hit harder than you ever could, I’ll slap so hard you leave here covered in goddamn bruises.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Ivan cuts. “I play perfectly.”
He leans forward until his lips are pressed directly over Ivan’s ear, whispered tones blowing straight over his skin so he’s rewarded with a trembling shudder. A dip in his composure, a fault for Till to stick his grapple hooks into and pull until Ivan breaks down the middle. “But that’s the thing—you don’t. You play what’s on the page, nothing more, nothing less. I want to break you, Ivan, I want to smack until you finally learn you need to put your goddamn soul into the notes for it to be worth anything.”
“What makes you think I value your opinion?”
Till smirks, reaches around Ivan to palm at his hardness. It makes his breath hitch even as he tries to contain himself, hips grinding forwards into a rough hand marred by playing calluses. “Guess I’ll just have to f*ck you until you understand.”
“You can try, virtuoso.”
His hand stills. Ivan whines under his breath, exhaling in gentle flutters against Till’s neck. Head tipped back against his shoulder, pale expanse of his stomach bared to the early afternoon light, chest cresting and cresting and cresting in desperate motions as he drags air into his lungs. The curve of his co*ck, angry red and seething pink.
“Concertmaster,” he says slowly, dangerously. His thumbs dip into soft skin, pressing above Ivan’s hip bones in a promise of dark purple, bursting bruises and autumn fruit. “I know you want me to f*ck you. I’m not going to do it unless you tell me to.”
He wants to hear Ivan say it, trip over the words as he begs the devil incarnate to drag him down to the pits of hell and work him open, spill into him so the inner workings of his soul are tainted white. Not in purity, not in agape, but in the forked tongues of albino snakes and the sweet flesh of apples. “Just,” Ivan gasps when Till’s hand slides back to press into the assortment of bruises and burst vessels, a thousand missed notes and incorrect bowings marked right onto his skin. “Just do it,” he finishes.
“Do what?”
“You know.”
So Ivan is determined to make this difficult for him. The clock ticks later and later into the afternoon, tugging Saturday with the force of the tide as Till’s weekend is lost to Prokofiev 2 and pretty boys who think they’re entitled to his co*ck. His hand drifts up to rest at Ivan’s neck, fingers reaching around his throat with just enough pressure for him to pulse with warmth. Ivan inhales anyway, attentive. Anticipating.
“You’re usually so full of pretentious words,” Till says, thumb pressing into the red mark stamped onto his neck by the body of his violin. “You’re usually running your mouth.”
Ivan's lips tilt up in an wobbly smirk, and it’s infuriating.
“I’m only asking for three of them, Ivan. f*ck me please, you can manage that, can’t you?”
For a few seconds, there's silence.
The porcelain cracks.
“f*ck me please,” he gasps, leaning back into Till even as they fill the room with cold spite, burning hatred.
Till smirks dangerously against the side of his head, satisfied. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
Whatever petty reply Ivan formulates is cut off as Till roughly pushes him down onto the bed, co*ck trapped between his stomach and crumpled sheets. His limbs are lax enough for Till to do whatever the f*ck he wants to him.
Ivan shudders when the bedside drawer rolls open, shudders more when he hears the telltale click of a bottle cap opening. He pushes his face into the fold of his arms as if it’ll erase what they’re doing, as if it’ll make his surroundings fall away into the void. And perhaps Till would take offence, but something about Ivan looking so embarrassed of himself for enjoying this makes his heart soar, makes every tainted part of him croon in cantabile.
When his fingers are slick with lube, Till pushes the pad of his index against Ivan’s rim, light enough it makes him arc backwards, muttered threats spilling from his lips as he commands Till with all the force of a dragonfly in the eye of a hurricane. It spoils the rush of heat, turns beach sunlight to the stifling authority of a desert.
“Patience,” Till manages to growl out. He doesn’t like brats, doesn’t like boys like Ivan who order him around as if they’re not in his f*cking bed.
When Ivan tries desperately to f*ck himself on Till’s fingers regardless, he pulls away to land a heavy slap on the delicate skin of his thighs. Another falls on the opposite side, so Ivan blooms with twin carnations, each swathe of him glistening wet with lube and red with pomegranate. He cries out with each hit, fisting at the sheets, and when his gaze falls upon Till, his chest heaves and heaves, his hips grind downwards as he searches for anything to relieve the tension. The temperature drops.
“What was that for?” Ivan asks dumbly, stars swimming across his irises.
“I said patience,” he mutters.
He preps Ivan slowly, slow enough his cheeks are wet with tears of desperation by the end of it. Till makes sure to avoid his prostate, twisting his fingers deeper and deeper but never nudging against where he needs it most. And every time Ivan curses at him, every time he protests or whines loud enough to rouse the heavens, he’s met with Till’s palms cracking over his ass, his thighs, the side of his face. Each one resounds like a broken note, a rest held for too long. An incorrect bowing, a tremolo too rigid or a col legno executed poorly.
He’s painfully hard by the end of it, straining against his stomach in shades of angry red. But it’s worth it to see the way Ivan writhes for him, to see his hole as it clenches and clenches around Till’s fingers, as his petal lips open to demand more. The expanses of his skin burn hot and irritated, marks left in the shape of hands far harsher than his own.
Till almost cracks when he lines himself up, almost thrusts in to the hilt because his mind has started to trip over itself in anticipation. Round and round in hazy circles, white painting over his vision.
Ice scorches his stomach, cold and unbearable.
It’s blistering when he pushes into Ivan, inch by excruciating inch because as much as he would love to break Ivan in half, shatter him like a glass figurine thrown against the wall, he suspects Ivan would love it too. Better to ease into hell with waves lapping against their hulls, better to hold back until Ivan has rivers overflowing across his cheeks and fingers clutching desperately at the sheets as he begs Till to go deeper, go quicker.
He knows he’s guessed correctly when Ivan whines, high and broken with only half of Till’s co*ck settled in him. “Hurry up,” he begs.
Till stills.
His hand ghosts over swells of red skin, barely there, featherlight. “Ivan. You know better than to tell me what to do,” he says. “Don’t you f*cking learn?”
And as the hit lands, as Ivan moans into the fold of his arms, Till supposes it’s a stupid question. Because Ivan relies on this to play violin, adds red bloodrush to himself every time he can’t recite the notes right. Even after he hits and hits and hits, the music still comes out emotionless. Unmoving. Apathetic. Till knows he can spank Ivan as much as he wants and it’ll make no difference, because Ivan is used to the entire world being handed to him upon a silver platter.
He f*cks into Ivan slowly, satisfaction brewing in his heart when Ivan chews at his bottom lip to stop himself from whining. More and more, until his hips are pushing against inflamed skin, until Ivan tightens around the entirety of him in relief.
“‘s big,” he admits, fists balling into tight carnations when Till thrusts, slow enough to make him desperate. Gossamer shines across his back, damp to the touch, stoned with tiny crystals.
“Really?" Till sneers, "I thought you said you’ve seen better.”
“I-” he breaks off as Till finally nudges up against where he needs it most, pushing and pushing until Ivan tenses, iron lining all his muscles. Then he withdraws, sliding out so Ivan is left to squeeze helplessly around his tip, pressing backwards like it’ll make him cave. “I have seen better. I can f*ck anyone I want, doesn’t matter how much they hate me,” he says, smug contentment radiating from his broad shoulders. As if Till’s fallen for something, as if he’s fallen for Ivan’s pretty smiles and porcelain neck like hundreds before him.
He pushes his fingers into Ivan’s hair and pulls hard.
“I suppose you want me to dote on you,” he mutters, even as Ivan protests the pressure against his scalp. He pulls a frigid back against his chest so he can skim his teeth across Ivan’s neck, sink gentle bites into alabaster skin. “You want me to tell you you’re pretty, you want me to tell you you’re beautiful, talented. You want me to snap my violin in half, give you everything you want.”
“I'm pretty,” Ivan says smugly.
His teeth sink deeper this time, promising purple and amethyst. “It’s not going to work, concertmaster. You’re here on my terms, and I’ll leave as soon as I’m tired of you.” A practice room door, slamming shut to contain starlight and moon pallor. “But I despise your playing, I despise you, and I know you despise me just as much. And that’s why I’m staying, because I’m prey to modernity, and I love to hate.”
“I hate you.”
“I know. And it’s the best thing you could possibly do for me.”
Because Ivan stands against the tide of praise, the current of fear and muted awe. He stands at eye level with Till, even though in reality the top of his head falls a few inches too short, always destined to be second best. His hands don’t tremble as he smashes display cases, as he hurls insults at god-given gifts and dashes dynasty vases against museum marble. Ivan isn’t his equal. But sometimes, Till wonders if by acting like it, he’s the only person in this entire wretched world who comes close.
Till sucks at his neck, teeth and tongue tightening around soft skin to maul it to incomprehension. Jaw floods his vision as Ivan’s head tips to the side, stretching his swan neck for more, more, more. How easy it would be to tear out his jugular like this, snake canines tearing into his throat as his arms wrap tighter and tighter around Ivan’s waist with every heartbeat. His co*ck pushed deep into him, throbbing with spiteful venom.
And when he’s had enough of Ivan’s breathy gasps, he shoves him forwards onto his hands and f*cks him as hard as he wants, relentless and beautiful.
He treats him like he treats music, perfect notes forged with the purpose of being broken, blue blood running hot against light skin and hotter through hate-filled hearts. Till takes Ivan apart, deconstructs him to a splintering mess. Strings wrap around his neck, and red lines blossom beneath each one. His cheek presses against the bed when his elbows tremble, unable to do much more than take and take and take whatever his virtuoso feels generous enough to give him. Greed emanates from his narrow frame, a wicked gluttony for more, a thirst to dance in the flames because he likes the way fire feels when it’s licking at his calves.
“I need to-” Ivan breaks off when Till thrusts deep, filling him to the brim with blasphemy. He moans—broken, lacking his usual berceuse lilt. It’s pathetic.
“You need to cum?”
A nod, tight and ashamed.
“I don’t know why you’re asking permission,” Till says, punctuated as he f*cks into Ivan harder. Breath hitching from exertion, hands grabbing at slim hips so hard he’s certain they’ll turn purple under his fingers. “You never listen to anything else I have to say.”
It’s all the affirmation Ivan needs to spill onto his stomach, contracting around Till with mind-numbing pressure as he c*ms hard. He trembles under the force of it. His lips fall open to cry out, the most entrancing music he’s ever produced flooding from his snake tongue as Till pushes him through it, desperate to hear how shattered Ivan sounds.
And he doesn’t stop.
Ivan twitches with every brutal thrust, cheeks wet with ocean brine. Overstimulation wracks through him, dredging up notes covered in silt, melodies ruined by serial accidentals and bridges giving way to pure force.
“Hurts, it hurts,” he babbles, so easily reduced to nothing as the flat of his stomach swells.
Ice covers his fingertips, a hand reaches up to cradle Ivan’s jaw. He slows, ceasing movement so he can appreciate the way Ivan trembles for him, painted in shades of pink and red, all his breath shuddering from slicked lips. “Do you want me to stop?” He asks.
Ivan falls silent for a moment before he’s shaking his head, bottom lip seized between his teeth.
“No,” he whispers, begging forgiveness. “Keep going.”
Till smiles because it’s exactly what he was expecting to hear.
“Okay.”
He f*cks into Ivan hard, thrusting deep enough he swears the sky flickers with red. Thunder rolls in the depths of his mind, a promise of shattered tectonics and bristling tidal waves, magma and molten rock pooling at his core as he chases release.
And Ivan takes it all, neck limp because he’s been reduced to nothing more than a f*cktoy, limp wristed and incoherent. He moans for Till, sobs out his name in a string of broken syllables. Till is sure lightning crackles in his stomach, singeing the soft lining of it to a charred crisp, but he’s so f*cking desperate to be full up of immorality that he allows Till to use him however he sees fit.
It’s dirty when he finishes, pulsing and pulsing with broken notes, a bow sawed across strings so hard they snap. And Ivan coaxes more, warm around Till even though the rest of him runs cold, even though frost bursts under his feet when he walks and arctic night adorns the jilted crown of his head. His eyes fall shut as Till spills into him. Sin, pulsing through every membrane of his being, angry red pulling his blood closer and closer to hedonistic purple.
Till pulls out and drinks up the way Ivan flinches at the loss, hips pushing back like he’ll die without Till leading him to hell, one hand gripping his wrist.
And just because he can’t help it, he allows his palm to crack over cold skin. Red blooms over crimson, more scarlet rushing to the surface as Ivan eases onto the bed, eyes flashing with deep thunder.
“Why did you do that?” he asks. His rage is concealed when he adopts a masquerade of sleep, fingers curled delicately against the sheets and cheek pushed into Till’s pillow. It’ll most likely stink of iris when he leaves, and the thought of it makes his stomach turn.
“Just felt like it.” Till shrugs, before remembering Ivan can’t see him.
It’s f*cking typical—Ivan can’t even spare Till his attention, instead electing to take up half his sheets with entitlement folded into his expression. As if he hasn’t just had the soul f*cked out of him, purity spilled into the drain along with all his agency. White decorates his skin, tracking dangerously close to linen. But Ivan doesn’t move to do anything about it, so Till supposes he has to sort it out himself.
He grabs Ivan’s shirt from the floor, balling it up in one hand so he can clean a pale stomach with Pima cotton just because Till likes to ruin expensive clothes, pretty faces, elegant music. And even though he’s staining the shirt with f*cking cum, Ivan’s eyes remain shut, chest rising and falling in rhythmic intervals as he expels air from gently parted lips. Till feels something needling at his chest. Disorientating and unfamiliar, a flock of angry magpies picking apart his organs.
The shirt is discarded on the floor again once Ivan is cleaned up. He looks so much worse without sinful white dripping from his navel, pale wrists set upon the sheets like daisies, hair dark enough to incite an eclipse in the middle of the damn afternoon.
Till lies next to him, stiffening at the feeling of ice skin pressing up against his side.
There isn’t a practice room door to disappear through this time.
Morbid fascination blooms in the core of his heart, unwelcome attentiveness to how Ivan looks when he’s weary, when he’s lying in the center of Till’s bed with his limbs stretched out as if he owns it. Till looks over the divots of his ribs, the tip of his nose, the red dusting across the tops of his cheekbones. Bruises punched across his thighs, his hips. Teeth marks set into his neck, red fading back to snow faster and faster as the blood withdraws from the surface.
“Do you think I’m pretty now?” Ivan is looking up at him, watching as he drinks in every diamond facet and stave line of his figure.
“Pretty detestable,” he says.
They lie for an indiscernible lapse. Till thinks the sun could very well burn up in the time they exist with an ocean seething between them, could toss out its last rays of light to the void and leave them with the tidal wave of roaring sound unheard due to the lack of atmosphere. There’s no baton here to mark out the seconds, no metronome ticking, no soles tapping against lacquered wood to tell one beat from the next. Ivan breathes with the force of moth wings against an exposed lightbulb. It’s too delicate, too soft, and Till would rather forget time exists altogether than use the rise and fall of his chest to measure it.
The silence grows tiresome, too much like a concert hall between movements. Till wants to hear him speak, wants to watch him struggle to string together words because he floats in an ocean of contentment, a pool of hate. "What's your favorite symphony?"
"Is this your icebreaker thing again?" Ivan asks in disbelief, exasperation flooding from the set of his shoulders.
"Come on, indulge me, concertmaster. You just had my co*ck in your f*cking stomach—don’t you think I deserve some kind of repayment?"
Ivan’s eyes slip shut for a moment, thighs pressing together like he’s remembering how deep Till had been inside him. Deep enough to bruise, to burn, to blossom with scalding carnation. “Beethoven 9.”
Till wants to fall asleep. “That figures. Boring choice for a boring person. Couldn’t you have picked something less f*cking typical?”
"I could’ve said anything and you wouldn’t want to hear it, virtuoso,” he says quietly. And it’s true, in fairness. They’re deaf to each other, only interested in biting, scratching, slapping, bruising until blue and red collide in deep purple. “What's yours?"
“I like Sibelius 2.”
“Really?”
He shrugs, poking at the gaps between Ivan’s ribs to watch the way it makes him flinch. “I performed it in highschool, sometime at the beginning of summer. I was concertmaster every single year, so I’m sure most of the section hated me,” he laughs, remembering the way the stars had been glimmering down at swamp water and humid asphalt by the time the performance was over. “I kinda felt like I understood the guy that night. So I guess I pick my favorites because of emotion, you know?”
He feels strangely vulnerable when he’s done, presenting his nothing-special life to Ivan for him to pick apart with a platinum scalpel. Till does everything with his heart, commands notes with a bloody pulse, hates with his entire soul and dances in the rain just to revel in the way it feels running over his cheeks. Orange bursts across his tongue, citrus and cypress compressing to murky brown.
“Touching,” Ivan deadpans.
“Oh come on. He called it a confession of the soul. Isn’t that what music’s supposed to be?”
“Nobody wants to see your soul.”
Till supposes that’s fair enough. His lips quirk upwards because Ivan has teeth, Ivan isn’t afraid to insult him to his face even if he still has Till’s cum dripping out of him in unholy desecration, dirty and raw and real. “I prefer concertos, anyway,” he says, running his fingers over sharp hip bones just to watch the way Ivan pretends it doesn’t make him shiver.
“You’re the most self-absorbed person I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing,” Ivan bites, and perhaps it would send snowflakes across the skin of anyone else, but they melt off Till as soon as they connect. He’s not scared of a little frost.
“I’ll perform Sibelius’ concerto for you, concertmaster. I’ll do it better than you’ve ever heard. Better than you could ever hope to play it. I’ll make you see.”
Ivan’s lips curl into a smile, revealing pointed fangs, poised and gleaming. Straight. Till wants to knock them out with iron knuckles. “I don’t need you blaspheming in front of me. You do it quite enough already.”
“Let me guess, you hate me? You wish I'd never set foot in the Carnegie again? Then why are you still in my f*cking bed?”
“Good question,” Ivan retorts.
Till is graced with the sight of marble planes as he sits up, manuscript skin flexing over every bump and divot of his stave-skeleton as he reaches weary fingers towards his discarded shirt. Delicate freckles bead across his back in rain movements, Autumn showers preserved there for a short eternity. He realizes his shirt is tainted with the remnants of their joint release, dried and sticking the folds together.
A sigh escapes him. “Give me one of your shirts.”
Till raises an eyebrow, throwing a hand through his hair when Ivan looks down at him. The shirt still cradled in pale hands gingerly, as if it’ll bite him. “You want to borrow one of my peasantry shirts.”
“There’s cum all over mine.”
He feels light headed with how absurd cum sounds when it’s spilling from Ivan’s eloquent lips, but he guesses it’s nothing compared to the way he’d f*cked his throat until he couldn’t breathe. He laughs anyway because the hilarity of their predicament is too much to handle, but is only rewarded by a knife glare. November cold.
“Sure, take your f*cking pick, princess. You know where the closet is.” Studios don’t leave much to the imagination.
After a moment of rifling his slender hands through Till’s clothes, Ivan pulls a black tee over his head, too short to conceal how mauled his thighs are, and tight enough to hide the marks stamped across his neck, his collarbones, the side of his throat. Till feels something inexplicable thump around like a bloody heart in the pits of his stomach because Ivan is wearing his f*cking Bleach shirt and his hair looks dumb and he’s not running his mouth for once. He thinks it might be hatred.
Till hates it, but guilt swirls between his bones, an unwelcome whirlpool fueled by bruised skin and spaced out eyes. The way Ivan is dressing himself, limbs held awkwardly because the early stages of deep rooted aching are wrapping thorned hands around his wrists.
“Are you like, okay getting back?”
Ivan glances over at him as if he’s just crawled out of the drain, robed in billowing steam. His fingers tap at his phone, heavy glass and dark backing all out of place in the gentle lines of his hands. Ivan smiles like Till made a particularly funny joke. “Drivers, Till,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
And the hatred is back, snapping the spine of guilt between strong jaws, the resounding crunch beautifully familiar in the seething expanse of Till’s mind. “Yeah. I f*cking hate you.” He allows his head to fall back until his hair tumbles over the sheets. Ivan will never have to touch the underbelly of anything, never have to step around puddles of dirt and descend beneath the concrete surface of the city. His fingers drip with cloudmatter, his feet are cushioned with cotton and linen.
“I’ll see you in rehearsal,” Ivan says, pulling his violin case onto his back. “Please make sure you can play it by then.”
“I can f*cking play it.”
His words are said to an empty room, because the latch clicks into place as Ivan vanishes to the stairwell, the last impression of him the back of his violin case swinging out of sight. Glossy enough to reflect its surroundings, to act as a mirror presenting Till’s face back to him with the same apathy as a news reader.
The hilarity of the situation dawns on Till for the hundredth time, and although he should probably pull his violin back out the case and whip the last movement into something presentable, he finds himself sitting up with the sheets pooling at his waist. A jab of his thumb spurs the speaker into motion, waves of mind numbing sound replacing bitter silence. His phone sits in his hand. He feels sort of stupid about it, scrolling through his contacts like he’s in middle school and needs to whisper about Ivan under an early morning sky full of regret.
He sighs and taps at Hyuna’s number, preparing himself for what might be the strangest f*cking conversation of his life.
