The last thing Ivo’s aunt ever told him was that he was to blame for his father’s death. He never believed this. His father’s decisions were his own, and Ivo was a child: but Anika used to say he drove his father to madness, and Ivo used to say her husband married her out of pity. People grow up, and memories are unreliable. During his time on the streets, Ivo became very good at looking out for himself, and it wasn’t as if anyone else would have done it anyway. There’s no one to trust - except yourself. It was probably for the best, though it hadn’t seemed this way at the time. Ivo was always Anika’s biggest regret. Everyone knows this, even if no one ever says it.
In his left hand, Ivo carries an iced coffee. In the pocket of his jeans, he stashes a pile of bills. Theft is easy to get away with, if you know where to go. As a homeless teenager, theft had been the only way to survive. As a working man, it’s just a thrill. Living isn’t cheap. Nobody asked to do it, anyway. There’s something about living near the ocean. Juno sits on the floor, watching the oven, almost finished the cake she’s baking. At random moments, Juno becomes nauseous and locks herself inside the bathroom. She never speaks of it.
Ivo never pays rent on time, if he pays it at all. He never asked his cousins to give him a place to live, and really couldn’t care less about their financial burdens. He hadn’t minded being homeless; it saved money, and let him be nomadic. When Juno moved out of her parents’ home, she insisted Ivo move in with her. If it weren’t for her homemade meals and willingness to drive him around, he’d leave everything behind again. Grabbing the rent money Juno placed on the table, Ivo wipes his tinted glasses on his sleeve. He has tunnel vision. With glasses, he sees nothing but very blurry outlines, shadows, and dull color. His glasses make him look like a bug, which people aren’t shy about pointing out. Even with his glasses, he sometimes needs a cane. Ivo hates this. He’s only eighteen, but walking with a cane makes him feel like an old man.
Juno stands. She looks nothing like the rest of her family, and even less like Ivo. As a boy with no siblings, Ivo hadn’t had the faintest knowledge of any family outside of his father. “Give it back.”
She’s bald, and very thin, according to Ciel. Right in front of his face, everything looks like a blur. Ivo distinguishes people by their voices and footsteps, and this is what he’s always done. It’s only a matter of time before Juno dies. She speaks about the inevitable with tact and care, as if it hurts Ivo’s feelings to hear about it. The kitchen smells like smoke. Juno’s burned the cake, again. “What are you talking about?”
Ivo’s cousin used to say he wished he looked like Ivo. This was a stupid thing to wish for.
Juno is eighteen years old. She’s the middle child, which nobody ever cared about until she got sick. When she’s frustrated, she speaks in Dutch. Ivo is Dutch too, and he shows off sometimes. When he lived with his aunt and uncle, they insisted the language never be spoken in their home. Despite this, Juno insisted on learning. “I put my money on the table, and now it’s gone! I know you took it, just like you take everything that doesn’t belong to you. Give it back!” Juno’s such a stickler. She doesn’t stand for long periods of time, saying she becomes tired too easily. When he’s not in school, Ivo works in a warehouse, possessing enough light perception in his left eye to stock shelves and run conveyor belts. He doesn’t speak to other employees. Big corporations are corrupt, and don’t work for their money. Instead, they force underclass citizens to work themselves to the bone, and then steal from them. There’s nothing immoral about crime. There’s no such thing as moral truth. People label crime based on what the government says, and never use their own brains. Nobody sees it this way.
Ivo shrugs, fingering the bank notes in his pocket. “Juno, I’m blind. I can’t even see what’s on the table. You must have put it down somewhere and forgotten.” She does this a lot. Ever since her diagnosis, her memory isn’t what it used to be. He’s a selfish and uncaring boy, as he’s been told many times. There’s no point in being nice to others if nothing comes of it. Ivo’s lived a life of self-sufficiency and secrets, and he’s not about to change this anytime soon.
Juno’s frowning. You can tell a lot by the tone of a person’s voice. “Ivo, I’m dying. Can’t you be nice to me for one day?”
It’s snowing. It’s September in Alaska. He scoffs at Juno: a girl who believes herself to be a martyr because of the hand she was dealt. “Everybody dies. You’re not special.” Juno scurries to the bathroom, likely to be sick again, and Ivo shouts through the door. “Your cake is burning, by the way!”
Ivo likes outdoor activities. During the summer, he often scuba dives or snorkels in the ocean, among the fish and plants. In the winter, he used to enjoy skiing, snowboarding, and snowmachining. In recent years, his vision has gotten too poor to continue. Ivo’s father was a neglectful and absent man, who left him alone as a child for long periods of time. By five years old, he’d swim in the ocean by himself. By eight, he cooked most of his own meals, and transported himself around Europe alone by bus. When his father died, he was twelve years old. It’s hard to forget things like the sight of your parent killing themselves in front of you. As a teenager, Ivo might have believed his death was accidental. These days, he had reason to believe it wasn’t.
In Ivo’s bedroom, there are very few belongings. There’s a bed, a small chair, a side table, a record player, and not much else. The walls are plain and unpainted, and the carpet is always vacuumed. He moves around a lot, and prefers it this way. He was born in Arnhem, Netherlands, to a man who loved drugs more than he loved his family, and who died in front of him. He never knew his mother. She remains nameless, never spoken of. Relationships don’t matter. In the end, everyone leaves, and everyone dies. After the death of his father, he traveled to Alaska: a sixteen hour flight, to live with some family he’d never met before. Ivo hated them. Living with another person is exhausting and unfulfilling. Perhaps, living in general is this way. As a child, Ivo believed he had a purpose, that he meant something, in the grand scheme of things. He was born alone, and he’ll die the same way.
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Until his preteen years, Ivo was oblivious to the existence of any family outside of his grandfather, Sander, and his supposed father, Pim. According to Juno, her mother has two siblings: Pim and Verena. In the three years he lived with his aunt and uncle, Ivo had no interest in meeting extended family. When Ivo and Juno met, they were twelve years old. After Pim’s death, he kept to himself for several days, going on with life as usual until a police officer showed up at his home. He hadn’t needed this, and probably would have survived perfectly fine on his own from that point on. “You’re an old soul, aren’t you?” the officer had said, chuckling under his breath. Ivo didn’t trust him. He trusts nobody, least of all authority figures. Anika became his legal guardian thanks to a written document Pim had filled out before his death. Anika’s a dumb cunt who raises shit kids - everyone knows this about her. Ivo’s not shy about telling people how he feels about them, but people are easily offended, and can’t take criticism. It’s said you’re supposed to love and respect your family, and for what? Just because they’re family. Ivo’s young, but he knows that’s not how the world works.
I took you in after your father died! Anika used to say, as though this made her a superhero. I gave you someplace to live so you wouldn’t end up in foster care. But Ivo never asked her to do this: and so, it never really worked when she tried to guilt him into behaving. Ivo is not a boy who can be made to feel bad. He doesn’t show emotions the way most everyone else does. Some people would say he doesn’t show emotions at all. Adults seem to think they deserve the world for doing the bare minimum: clothing their children, feeding their families, being a parent. Ivo learned from a very young age that the ones we love always betray us. He never plans on having kids. There’s no good reason to do so, and anyway, children are noisy and stupid. Most adults are stupid, too.
Nighttime brings a sort of comfort. It’s quiet, peaceful, and much easier to go unnoticed. As a teenager with bright white hair and skin, Ivo gets looks everywhere he goes. Pim was the same way. People stare at things that are different. As a teenager who dresses in almost exclusively suspenders and sweater vests, he gets made fun of a lot. It’s dark when Ivo arrives at work. He’s quite fond of winter, and loves the cold. When the sun disappears, he doesn’t have to put as much effort into covering his skin. Most of the time, all a stranger can see of Ivo is his eyes. They’re very pale blue: pink speckled sclerae, often looking crossed even underneath large lenses. Before Juno fell ill, she drove him to work. Most days, he can walk there in twenty minutes.
Outside the warehouse, Ivo lights a cigarette. He gets many nasty comments, and presumably looks, from strangers, and always returns them. He tasted his first cigarette two years ago, when Ciel left a carton on the kitchen counter. He’s not old enough to buy cigarettes - not legally, anyway. If you know how to work other people, you can get just about anything from them. Ivo is short and slim, a twink in all senses of the word. After work, it’s not uncommon for him to meet up with a much older man in a hotel room or a vehicle. When he was fifteen, he was involved with a man twice his age, who taught Ivo many of the things he knows now about life and love. It’s exciting to be taken advantage of by older men: to be mistreated and used, and abandoned with bruises and marks. This sounds appealing to almost no one. Ivo isn’t quite sure what a functional relationship looks like.
He doesn’t own a cell phone. Juno and Ciel loathe this, as people do when they can’t think for themselves. It’s a wonder how some people get along in the world. You’re such an old man, Juno likes to say, which might not actually be too far-fetched. Technology can’t be trusted, and neither can the government. Ivo values his privacy and anonymity, and refuses to be tracked. He makes all his plans by word of mouth. He makes hardly any plans at all. When he was homeless, he let many other men use him as a sex slave in exchange for money and shelter. At sixteen, this needed to be done especially discreetly. Ivo has broken the laws in many different ways. It’s only ever illegal if you get caught.
Sex has nothing to do with love. Ivo isn’t really even sure if love exists - he’s never been loved in his life, and certainly doesn’t deserve to be. He meets a man called James behind the supermarket after work, when the sun is just beginning to come up. He’s a well-established man, who probably should be reprimanded for his actions, but Ivo never cared about morality. They don’t speak much; Ivo isn’t here to make conversation. He never keeps a job long. He’s said to be disrespectful and unruly towards customers and coworkers alike, but companies like employees who are good at being slaves, and Ivo does what he likes.
“Why are you so rude?” he’s been asked thousands of times. “You never smile, you act as if nobody else’s feelings matter, and you insult everyone who tries to be nice to you.” Nothing is as simple as it seems. Others think they know you after one brief interaction, assuming everything you do has to pass their own approval. Ivo doesn’t speak about his past. He’s been labeled many things: problem child, loner, sociopath, unlovable. The truth is that Ivo’s had behavioral issues since childhood, and nobody ever cares until it personally affects them.
He’s good at giving head. Inside James’ car, which is always tidy, he takes the man’s cock down his throat over and over. They always come back for more, even if they know they shouldn’t. James is married with children. His wife doesn’t know what he does on his days off. Ivo has no gag reflex. He supposes this is what happens when you suck off enough men. They never say goodbye afterwards. When Ivo wipes his face, James pulls up his pants. After this, Ivo gets out of the car and walks off without saying a word.