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Lovro never thought he’d be here.
Last month he’d been living at home, sticking his throat down Ema’s throat to keep up appearances, telling himself that it wasn’t to keep up appearances and almost believing it. That he really could like her. That he was just too stoned to find those feelings. That too much was going on for him to be able to form a connection, to feel something that meant anything. To feel anything.
And then—
Well, then Ivan, he supposes.
Hadn’t he been the one to completely reroot every sure thing Lovro had ever known? Hadn’t he rendered them all false?
Ivan and his fucking scooter, the thrum of an engine that the rhythm of Lovro’s heart had synced to without so much as permission. Ivan who was everywhere and nowhere all at once, around every corner when Lovro tried his hardest to forget about him and nowhere to be found when Lovro searched for him in every room, every hallway, every pocket of space he entered.
Ivan who had kissed him when Lovro had cursed his own stupid, delusional, degenerate self for wanting that same thing, and who hadn’t wanted to stop since. And for the first time probably ever, Lovro hadn’t wanted to either.
If only his boys could see him now, not the fuckboy they pegged him for but someone with the capacity to fall in a way he never thought possible. Lovro being down bad like this? Never in a million fucking years, dude.
Just wait until they find out that the person he’s down bad for is a dude.
The guilt is easier to push past than he would’ve imagined — here at least, tangled in the safety of Ivan’s arms — but he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t still clouding the edges of every moment. Receding, maybe. But still there.
Ivan’s lips peck at his nose, pulling him back to reality. “Stop thinking so loud.”
“Even if I'm thinking about you?”
The truth is, it’s hard to pinpoint a time in the day where he isn’t. God, even his dreams are full of Ivan, Ivan, Ivan. Just completely fucked all around.
A smirk spreads over Ivan’s face, lines bunching at his cheeks as those attentive eyes of his meet Lovro’s. “Depends on how impure the thoughts are.”
“Hm,” Lovro scoffs back. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
He digs his fingers into the base of Ivan’s hips, pulling him closer on the bed. He’s higher than Lovro is, his torso peeking out of the sheets, and Lovro has to stretch his neck up to reach his lips. They’re warm, steady, void of that lingering acrid tang of makeup he hadn’t ever gotten used to while kissing girls.
No flavoured lip balm could ever outdo the taste of Ivan on his mouth. God, Lovro, way to make things gross.
Ivan nips at his bottom lip, surprisingly bold in a way Lovro hadn’t taken him for in their first meeting, dragging it out with his teeth ever so slightly. Lovro follows him up, a mishmash of lips and tongue tangling together as he ascends. Ivan’s hand caressing his jaw, Lovro’s own still perched on his waist.
Everything happens fast after that.
If hadn’t been so caught up in the moment, maybe he would’ve heard the screech of the door handle in time.
“Lovrooo, I have a biology—“ a voice sounds from the doorway, and Lovro, heart pounding and shooting away from Ivan like he’s radioactive, whips his head around to see Eva standing there. Her eyes are wide, indecipherable apart from the overwhelming wash of shock set over her features. Her hands fly to her mouth, fingers criss-crossing over themselves. “Ah! Shit, sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!”
Then she’s backing away, uttering a few more overcompensating sorrys as she swings the door over. Lovro can’t help but chase after her, not bothering to take a single glance in Ivan’s direction before doing so.
“Lovro—“ he tries, but Lovro doesn’t hear him.
“Eva, wait!” he calls instead, trying to catch the door before it swings closed. “Eva! Would you just wait a minute?”
She’d seen.
Holy shit, she’d seen. This isn’t how Lovro wanted this to happen.
He wanted to work through this alone, wanted to figure out how to navigate this giant fucking spanner in the works of his life, and now she’s just—
He should’ve considered this, should’ve stopped to think for two fucking seconds about how his room is pretty much Eva’s too. About how Eva doesn’t knock. About how Eva has never had to knock because Lovro hadn’t hidden something of this calibre from her before.
From her. From everyone else of meaning in his life. From Jakov.
Oh, shit, what if she tells Jakov?
Fuck his life!
“I wanted to study!” she defends when he reaches her, desperate in her attempts to explain herself even though she really hadn’t done anything wrong. Had Lovro? He feels like he has. “If I knew you had someone over, I wouldn’t have—“
Someone.
Like it’s nothing. It doesn’t feel like nothing to him. Not at all.
“I’ll give you a heads up next time,” she adds when he doesn’t say a word, static buzzing in his ears. She studies him for a second, his expression concerningly blank. “Are you okay? Lovro, say something.”
What is there to say right now? Where does he even start? There’s too many thoughts in his head now, swirling around, pressing against every recess of his brain.
His feet start to move before he knows they’re doing it, padding over to the couch and perching himself on the edge of it, back hunched and hands cupped in front of him.
“You can’t tell Jakov,” is what comes out once he's back on solid ground, staring down at the floorboards and refusing to meet her gaze. “H-He doesn’t know. I haven’t—“
He can’t lose his best friend. Other people, whatever, he’d already halfway accepted that much, but not Jakov. Never Jakov.
And if Eva told him before Lovro found the right words to do it himself—
Eva bends down on her knees in front of him, forcing herself into his line of sight and taking his hands in hers. “Hey, I won’t tell anyone. Promise. But I think you should ask yourself if he’s ever let you down before. Because he hasn’t, has he? He’s always had your back.”
And damn it, Eva can be a lot more wise than people give her credit for. Lovro included. Something ugly twists in his chest, knowing her words are true — Jakov had always been in his corner no matter what — but fearing that this whole development could be the one exception to that certainty.
Lovro hadn’t been a very good friend to him these past few weeks, so why expect Jakov to be the bigger man now?
“It’s different,” Lovro splutters out, because it is. It is. And try as he might, Jakov will never understand what it’s like to be here, to be Lovro in this moment. “I don’t want him to think… I don’t even know what. I’ve lied to him for so long — to myself, to Ema, to you.”
It’s harder now, now that he knows why he betrayed Eva the way he did. Now that he has a name for that ugly gnawing feeling in his gut that only seemed to flare up only when Jakov held her a bit too tight, kissed her a bit too long, talked about her a little too much.
It wasn’t the same, not like it is with Ivan, but had some subconscious part of Lovro wanted it to be back then? Well, yeah, that’s kind of hard to dispute at this point. If Lovro is gay now, he would’ve been gay then. And while those feelings had been impossible to ignore with Ivan, they’d been easy enough for him to excuse away with Jakov.
That’s the difference here, right? It would’ve never come to this with Jakov, no matter how much the Lovro of last year held onto those lingering hopes that it would. None of it was ever real.
But with Ivan—
Maybe it could be. Is he getting ahead of himself here to think that much?
“I knew it wasn’t about me,” Eva’s voice returns as steady as her hands on his, small and deliberate. “What you said at the Christmas party, I knew it didn’t add up. You and me.”
Had he really been that transparent? If he had been that obvious to Eva, then who else saw it? He decides that he’d rather not know the answer to that one.
Lovro squirms in his seat. “Yeah, that was dumb. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“You think?”
But she’s smiling, wiggling a brow at him. Laughing it off like she does with everything these days. But that doesn’t undo how he had taken her down to her lowest.
He swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry about that, for the record. All of it.”
“I’m not,” Eva shrugs, hindsight looking good on her. “I don’t think I would have faced a lot of stuff I needed to face without it. Even though it was a total snake move.”
She jabs him in the ribs, making him crack a smile — something that seemed virtually impossible two minutes ago. That’s just Eva’s effect on people, really. Lovro hopes she never reverts back to that other version of herself, so much more carefree than she was then. He wants that for himself, maybe, someday.
“I know,” he breathes out with the hint of a laugh. “I’m the worst, we know this.”
Eva jerks her head back towards the bedroom, sarcasm lacing her every word. “Who’s going to break that news to him?”
“Sure he’ll figure it out eventually.”
“So, is he, like, your boyfriend or?” she asks then, seizing her opportunity.
“I don’t know.” Heat fills Lovro’s cheeks, his voice growing stilted as he shrugs. “Maybe something like that.”
It’s not like they’ve had a conversation about it or anything, but if Ivan asked him, he knows he’d fold in a heartbeat. Lovro never thought he’d allow himself to have anything close to a boyfriend, now here he is dancing around the possibility, wanting nothing more.
“And he has a name?” Eva presses with a grin set on her face, sick of his aloofness already.
“Yes, Eva, he has a name,” he groans back, sensing a tidal wave of questions coming his way. She widens her eyes expectantly, silently begging for more details. “Ivan.”
Something pinches at his cheek and it takes him a moment to process that it’s Eva, dragging out her syllables — and his skin — in a half singsong, half squeal. “Lovro and Ivannn!”
“Shhh!” he hushes her, not wanting Ivan to hear. Can’t exactly have an air of mystery around him when she’s acting like this, can he? “Okay, enough. Seriously.”
“Look, he’s blushing!” she piles on, just as giddy — and just as loud — as before, still squashing his cheeks with both hands. “Look at those pink cheeks! Lovro’s blushing because of his man! Because of Ivan!”
“Eva!”
He pretty much tackles her, the two of them collapsing onto the ground in a huddle of chuckles and tangled limbs. It shuts her up, anyway. Lovro just hopes he won’t have to explain the thud to Ivan later.
Or, well, anything that had come out of her mouth in the last few moments. Got to keep playing it cool, right?
Eva hiccups as she picks herself up, sitting there cross-legged next to him, bumping her shoulder against his.
“Speak to Jakov,” she tells him, squeezing his arm before she gets to her feet. “He’s worried about you.”
It is a bit overdue, isn’t it?
Lovro sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. “Okay, mama.”
“I’m gonna see if Maša will let me study in her room,” she tells him, grabbing her backpack from next to the front door. “Go get him, Romeo. Love you.”
“Enough to knock next time?” he tests.
“We’ll see,” she calls back, disappearing into the depths of the flat.
“Good enough,” he replies. “Love you too.”
It takes Lovro a minute or so to pick himself up after that, unsure if the legs he’d relied on for so long still have the capacity to keep him upright. Nothing had changed, as it turns out, putting one foot in front of the other serving him as well as it always had.
At the very least, his body still works the same as it once did.
Eva knew he was gay, knew how completely smitten he was with Ivan, and it hadn’t completely rewritten the mechanics of who he was.
Ivan who is still curled up on the bed when he creeps back into the room, knees pulled into his chest and the slightest tinge of concern painting his soft features.
Lovro pulls his lips into a tight line at the sight of him, a kneejerk reaction accompanied by the warmth in his chest that hadn’t left since that first time he’d seen him on the balcony.
“I didn’t know if I should leave,” Ivan says, a little insecurely, and then to break the tension. “So that’s Eva, huh? Way to make an impression.”
“It’s what she does best.”
Lovro slides himself into the sheets, back turned to Ivan so that he can press it against his chest. Ivan turns onto his side, letting him do exactly that, arms wrapped around Lovro’s waist.
“Is everything okay between you and her?” Ivan mumbles into his ear, pressing his mouth against his neck. “She didn’t—“
“Nah, she’s cool,” he breathes back, an odd sort of melancholy overtaking him. It’s not that he isn’t appreciative of her support, it’s just a lot. All of this is a lot to process at once. “Maybe a bit too enthusiastic, but I can live with that.”
Ivan chuckles ever so slightly, breath hot on his neck. “How about you introduce us sometime?”
Warmth floods through Lovro’s veins again. “Yeah, we can do that. Sleep first, though.”
God, he’s exhausted. Maybe more than he even realises. Ivan pulls him in tighter, draping his leg over Lovro’s body like a weighted blanket.
“Deal.”