Chapter Text
"I love you guys, it was so fun!" Mizi giggles, and it's a beautiful sound, her laughter. Till can write a whole album dedicated to just that.
"It would be even more fun if someone didn’t try to fight a bartender," Sua replies, giving Till one hell of a dirty look.
"He refused to pour us more shots!"
"We were more than drunk already anyway," she throws back.
Till flushes. Sua herself looks completely sober, it is him and Mizi who can barely walk a straight line. Till isn't usually that into alcohol, but they were celebrating Mizi finally getting her own place and it was the first time she actually attempted to party in an "adult" fashion with drinks and all. He just wanted her to get all the fun she could. She deserved it. She deserves the world.
"We can move to somewhere else," Ivan offers, speaking up for the first time after they got kicked out.
He looks just as well put together as Sua does, but Till suspects it’s mostly a show. Unlike Sua, who barely sipped at her drinks, Ivan chugged as much alcohol tonight as Till did. Which means a lot.
"No," Sua snaps harshly. "I’m taking Mizi to her place, you two can do whatever though."
"Aw, so cruel," Ivan smirks.
Mizi, sweet sweet Mizi, however, takes his pretend hurt seriously.
"No-no-no, she is just being shy… And caring! And wonderful!" she breathes out and pats Ivan’s shoulder with one hand, while attempting to run fingers of the other through Sua’s hair.
It’s a testament to how much Sua loves her that she doesn’t flip out to a treatment this undignifief.
"Yeah yeah, she is wonderful and amazing," Till rolls his eyes. "I will walk you two home though, it’s quite late and while your place isn’t as much of shithole as ours, it’s still not the best place to walk around at night."
"Our place is perfectly nice!" Mizi pouts, and god, she is so adorable. Till has hard time suppressing an urge to cry. It might be all the drinks, but she looks so especially beautiful right now it's like she is glowing.
"We are perfectly fine on our own, you are very unnecessary," Sua snipes, irritation all over her normally mild beta-scent.
Till can’t help but reply with spiking up his own. He might not be the most popular alpha around but he still was one. It would be humiliating to lose the battle of pheromones to a female beta.
"Guys, stop it," Mizi whines and the tiniest note of genuine distress sneaking into her sweet scent is enough to calm them down instantly.
Till tightens control of his own, and takes a couple deep breaths to calm down. He wasn’t about to fist fight Mizi’s girlfriend. That would be horrible.
"I’m just trying to look out for you guys," he grumbles. "Weren’t there some assaults recently? I know you are capable, but you are drunk and omega-beta couple of girls."
"Why don’t you walk home your boyfriend instead," Sua hisses, but he can see that she is starting to reconsider his offer. While Till is sure Sua would gladly gouge anyone’s eyes out if they proved to be danger to Mizi, she is also not stupid. Standing at barely 5 feet tall and 110 pounds soaking wet, she already has to put considerable effort into half carrying Mizi. Having another pair of hands would obviously be for the best.
"Ivan is not my boyfriend," Till snorts dismissively, glad to see a look in Sua’s eyes, indicating that she really was about to cave in and let him help escort Mizi to her place safely. "Besides, the guy is huge and can throw one hell of a punch, no one would try anything anyway."
He glances briefly at Ivan, to check whether the asshole is about to make any snide remarks just to spite him or something like that, but startles slightly at the way how closed off his face is. In the years since they have known each other Till had come to learn that this face is his default expression whenever he feels annoyed or genuinely hurt.
But there was no reason for him to feel hurt, was there? Ivan and Till are not dating. They are roommates, yeah, but it’s solely for convenience of pooling rent money. And yeah, Ivan helped Till out couple of times during Till’s rut, but that was just another thing they did out of convenience. Because Till was too into Mizi to search for casual sex on the side and Ivan was too much of a prude to tolerate a sex-crazed alpha stinking his living space. It still didn't mean anything. They were friends first and friends with benefits second. Just because Ivan sucked Till off a couple times and let him scent himself, he didn’t suddenly became Till’s boyfriend. For fucks sake, Till isn’t even sure if Ivan is interested in having any relationship at all. He might be an omega, but everything about him is so detached from this gender that sometimes he feels more beta than Sua ever did. Not to mention that neither his height, nor his attitude matched the sweet, gentle tempers that omegas are supposed to have. He is a weird brat with a mean streak mile wide. There is no way a guy like Ivan would get upset at Till refusing to call him his boyfriend.
He probably just got annoyed at being called huge. Models are supposed to be touchy about that, aren’t they?
Sua stares down both Till and Ivan with that heavy gaze of hers, but sighs in defeat when Mizi gives her another rather sloppy kiss on the cheek and drapes herself over the beta’s narrow back.
"Fine, but you will only walk us to the door. I’m not letting your ass in," she grumbles, but Till doesn’t really care about her threats, because Mizi smiles and whoops at the chance to show her place off to Till so soon.
"Well, lets get going," Till grins and gives Ivan a wave before leaving. "Ah, don’t forget we are out of eggs."
Ivan doesn’t reply, just nods. Under the dim lights of the street lamps, his face looks even paler than it usually is. There is something vaguely sad about him being left behind like that, but it’s not like he couldn’t join them and force Sua to tolerate his company just like Till did, right?
*****
Till wakes up to the sounds of retching. For a couple of seconds, he is too disoriented to remember where and who he is. The fact that his head is throbbing with pain doesn’t help either. He groans miserably, scrubbing at his face. How much did he even drink to feel this shitty?
Retching again.
Till blinks, realising that the sound wasn’t dreamed up by him. Unless Ivan brought someone home with him (very unlikely), the puking person would be Ivan himself. Which is weird. Ivan is good at masking his inebriated state, but Till also knew him well enough to know that although Ivan was, in fact, drunk, he wasn’t drunk enough to be spitting his guts out right now.
He could have drunk more though. Oddly enough, Ivan wasn't home yet when Till returned, even though it would make him far less time to make it home than it took for Till. But it wasn't like him either. Ivan wasn't one to get hammered even in company, and there is no way he would be drinking alone after all his friends retired for the night.
Fighting nausea and sharp pain in his temples, Till quickly makes his way in their cramped bathroom. Predictably enough, he finds Ivan hunched over the toilet, hacking and gagging miserably. Still confused, Till steps closer and gets hit by the heavy stench of vomit, distress, something heady and musky and… is that blood?! - emanating from the omega.
"Hey, are you alright?" he demands, genuinely concerned.
But Ivan just gags again. And again. Starting to feel freaked out, Till does the first thing that comes to his mind, and reaches out for Ivan to at least hold his hair or some shit. But Ivan bolts at that. He flinches away from Till so hard he falls over, landing harshly on his ass and elbows. Till rushes to him, close to actual panic now, and…
And Ivan… Ivan looks like a complete mess.
His pretty lips are bruised and bloody, he looks like someone straight up punched him in the mouth. His face is ghostly pale, skin almost grey under the harsh bathroom lights. His hair might as well double as a bird's nest, usually smooth silky hair are disheveled and has oddly sticking up locks all over the place. There is also something weird that clings to them, but Till can’t even begin to wonder what the hell is this stuff, he is too worried about Ivan's immediate wellbeing.
"What the hell happened to you?" He chokes out, cold horror creeping up his spine. "Did someone rob you?"
Ivan doesn’t answer. For what feels like a full minute, he just sits on the floor, completely still and staring at Till with eyes full of crazed desperation. Till can’t for the life of him tell what he is thinking about. On the other hand, his scent is an ugly, frightened thing erratically swinging between hysterical fear and loud hurt. There is nothing of his usual image left. He is neither posh, perfect little prince nor is he an annoying, but weirdly endearing brat. Ivan looks small in a way Till never had seen him to be, not even when they were little children and he was a whole half a head shorter than Till.
"Ivan…" Till starts again, trying to keep his voice calm and encouraging, even though everything inside of him shrieks in panic. "What happened?"
A hurricane of emotion passes through Ivan’s starkly white face, as if whatever memories he is running through somehow manages to rob him of the last dredges of color. He bites his lip, his little snaggletooth worrying still bleeding injury here. More blood trickles down his chin, and as if on a reflex, he licks it. Something snaps in Ivan's eyes.
"Go away, please," he mutters and his voice is wrecked.
It’s quiet, cracked and hoarse, like he screamed himself raw and could barely talk now. He probably did, Till realises, and his stomach twists with another wave of terror.
"I can’t just leave you like that, you can’t even stand. Tell me what happened? Should I call cops?" questions spill from his mouth without him even thinking about it. He only knows that he has to help Ivan. He has to do something, anything.
"No!" Ivan flinches again, and the motion must have disturbed some of his injuries, because he nearly bends in half and honest to god squeals. It’s high pitched and piercingly loud despite how hoarse Ivan’s voice was just a second before. It’s a sound only utterly distressed omegas and unpresented pups are capable of making. Till’s heart is about to jump out of his throat, alpha instincts demanding for him to reach out and sooth omega's pain away, to protect him. But it mixes up extremely poorly with utter absurdity of this whole situation and Ivan's behavior.
It’s the scent of even more fresh blood that takes him back to reality. Not touching Ivan, but hovering as closely as possible, he checks on him, only to see no other injuries besides his mouth, and some really ugly bruises on his wrists and neck that couldn't be hidden by clothes. But where is the blood coming from, then? Is it under Ivan’s shirt and that’s why he is curling into himself so tightly right now? Did someone stab him? Holy shit, to hell with Ivan’s protests, if he actually got stabbed Till is definitely calling police.
He is about to check again, before the horrible, horrible thought hits him. He crouches low, and instead of focusing on Ivan’s upper body, peeks at his legs. There, not instantly noticeable on the dark fabric of his black jeans, is blood. Till can see smears of it all the way down to Ivan’s ankles, but the biggest spots are…
Till almost retches too.
The biggest spots would be between Ivan’s thighs.
And with that comes the last realisation of this night. The one that was hovering right on the edges of Till’s mind for the whole time since he woke up. That nasty, musky smell half covered by the stench of Ivan's vomit and blood. It was the scent of sex.
"Don’t look," Ivan murmurs and finally starts crying.