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Vuk didn't even have time to think about the implication of Dražen laying among his sheets – nor did he property take in account the faint pink hue dusted upon his cheeks by the ethanol streaming throughout his system. The Serb had simply reached out towards the other man currently residing in his bed, yet he was met with a sudden, unexpected resistance.
It startled his equally drunken self, causing him to flinch back on instinct as Dražen's hands loosened their grip on his wrists, instead springing up to his own shirt. The white button up he wore was hastily undid by Vuk a moment prior, yet the fabric was stretched across his chest by the palm of his hand, shielding himself.
Dražen bore a horrified look on his face, as if he had suddenly woken up from a trance and found himself in bed with Vuk, bearing no prior knowledge of anything happening up to this point.
Vuk simply stared back at him, mouth dry. Just a few moments ago, the two were nose to nose, smirking and giggling to each other as they kissed – Vuk's hands openly admiring the curve of the Croat’s hips without any problem. Dražen stumbled along with him, away from the living room and onto the bed, without showing any signs of discomfort.
Now, he seemed rigid.
– “What's up with you?” – Vuk had asked, not bothering with anything but his native language as his tongue slurred behind his teeth. It was hard to focus, he needed water.
– “This – “ Dražen states, almost completely sobered up seemingly by the way his voice was drained of all playfulness. – "This is a bad idea. I have to go.” The smaller man attempted to roll away from Vuk onto his side, wishing to ease off the mattress. It didn't work properly as he was met with more sheets and a spinning world, then Vuk's fingers wrapping around his arm before he could push everything in his way aside.
– “Let go– “ Dražen gasped, head snapping back towards the Serb as his free hand pressed the white fabric of his shirt to his chest.
– “Wait, wait, what are you doing?” Vuk blinked, attempting to get a hold of both wrists now as Dražen struggled. – “We just almost… I don't understand?”
– “It's not important!” Dražen, ever the defensive type, snapped back without gracing the other with any type of clearance or explanation. In moments like these, short words that revealed nothing of himself were best. – “I'm stupid, I just realized. I shouldn't have laid down with you.”
– “Man,” Vuk hissed, now wondering if this was part of some stupid prank played on him. He was starting to get annoyed. – “We made out for half an hour. You're only now realizing you're stupid?”
– “Let me go,” the smaller male repeats, a cold sweat breaking out on his back upon seeing Vuk's resistance to his wishes. His long hair was in disarray, light brown strands falling across his eyes, painfully aware of its length. He cursed himself over and over for letting his desires get in the way of his boundaries, for overstepping mental borders previously established by himself, nonetheless.
This was dangerous, Vuk was drunk, stronger than him physically.
His secret was going to get exposed by nothing other than his stupid, impulsive actions.
Vuk seemed to calm down upon sensing Dražen's very serious distress. He wasn't a monster, after all – despite what Dražen may claim or think. Vuk loosened his grip slightly, sitting up together with the Croat. Shirtless like this, Vuk felt unusually vulnerable as well. – “Man, wait a minute, bre. Talk to me, did I do something?”
– “No,” Dražen replied before he could think about anything other than his shirt still being open, only held together by his own grip. – “Nothing, forget about it! I just simply changed my mind. I don't want this anymore, let go of me – I won't repeat myself!”
– “Ama, Dražene,” Vuk spoke his name with confusion, his head clearing as the seconds passed painfully slowly. – “So, you came over to my flat after the meeting, you sat with me till – oh, how late is it again? Two, three in the morning – You climbed in my lap, laughed with me, drank and you had no problem with making out with me!”
– “This is something completely different!”
– “You idiot, you dragged me to the bed –”
– “That's not important!”
– “Oh, it is!”
Dražen's patience was starting to run thin, he needed to leave, needed to escape this place and never return in a million years. He recalls the many times he had threatened Janez, told him that if he were to spill his secret to his enemy he would make him relearn the true meaning of suffering – how serious he had been, how many times he had reminded him. If he were to tell the Slovene that his own stupidity and lust had caused him to spill the beans himself, well, he wouldn't hear the end of it. It was fair, considering that grudges Janez held easily, no matter who.
It wasn't unusual for Dražen to find himself locking lips and arms with Vuk once they've both gotten intoxicated. It was exciting for both of them, if truth be told. This dance of theirs – hate, arguments, opposing opinions – cast aside for a moment of indulgence once they're alone. It was easy to be excused from a party under the premise of ‘talking things out between them’ – well, yeah, Dražen's lips would move then but not for words – so that no one would really catch on with what they'd be doing in the dark.
Janez wasn't stupid as the rest of them, so he knew and reminded Dražen each time of his stupidity to engage with Vuk in such a way as if they were two young teens hiding from their parents. The Croat was sure that Šćepan must be aware as well, considering how close he is to the Serb – yet the dark haired man never really said anything to indicate that he's in the loop. Maybe he simply didn't care, after all.
But well, that is also where it usually ended.
They'd kiss, grope at each other a bit and then they'd spend the rest of the night engaging in conversations, finally absent from their usual fighting. Dražen found Vuk surprisingly good company once they've drunk a fair amount; suddenly, his stupid jokes and the horrendous slang he used seemed amusing enough to tear laughs and giggles from the Croat, letting loose.
If they went out as a group, the six of them, it could happen that Vuk and Dražen disappeared sometime after midnight and that the last trace of their wellbeing would be a picture snapped to Šćepan of them getting something to eat from a bakery in a completely different city at unheard hours of the night.
Dražen remembers that time the two of them had left a gathering, only half sober, heading towards a small playground a couple of minutes away from the location. Sitting on the swingset, next to each other, Dražen swayed just barely while the old metal construction groaned above them from their combined weight. Vuk sat still, the darkness only lit up by a streetlight nearby and the moon. The air was warm, it was July if Dražen remembers correctly, and the crickets were annoyingly loud and his arms kept itching from mosquito bites.
The Croat remembers sharing such intimate moments with no one else in his life. He wasn't the lovely-dovely type, never a romantic. He liked playing his guitar at the beach, he liked flowers and going to Christmas markets – but he found those activities by himself just fine as well. Dražen never really considered people datable, always finding flaw after flaw until everyone seemed not good enough for him. He couldn't imagine himself interested in someone for a long time, not even Vuk, he concluded.
Women never really interested him either, and the Croat knew that such was a similar case for Vuk as well, even if the other denied it and flirted with trashy girls at clubs. He was lying to himself, quite obviously, and Dražen was never truly determined enough to make him realize that his horrible taste in women was a mask rather than actual attraction.
Dražen thinks of those moments, and stares at Vuk’s unyielding face – lowers the hand which the Serb still held onto, and pondered if telling him about a different kind of secret would be as bad as he assumed. Now with his knuckles against the mattress and Vuk's fingers sliding from his wrist to his palm, it was almost like they were locking hands under the warm yellow light of the bedside lamp.
Suddenly, his brain conjures up the many instances in which Vuk would tug at his hair, snicker something about girls – ah, Dražen, you look like a girl – ah, you sissy – ah, you're so thin, you look like a woman, are you really even a man? The Croat shivers, pulling his shirt tighter around himself, feeling unsure and conflicted.
He retracts his hand from Vuk's hold, the other lets him.
– “Listen…” Dražen begins with a breath, trailing off his sentence as he wasn't sure how to even explain it to Vuk. Would he understand? He was still very old-schooled in some areas, especially considering his sexuality, so it was safe to assume he wouldn't know the details of being transgender. No, Dražen couldn't tell him. – “I don't want to argue. Every time the two of us meet, it ends the same way. You're angry, I am too.”
– “Yes, I am mad,” Vuk confirms, eyes flicking down to Dražen's chest, making him tense. – “I'm mad because I can tell you're hiding something from me. If you made such a huge deal out of this because… I don't know – you have a big ugly bruise on your chest and – oh, by God you cannot let me see it, joj, – I'll kill you!”
Vuk vaguely gestures at Dražen's form and the Croat feels sick upon realizing that his enemy was closer to the truth than thought. He didn't figure it out, Vuk simply meant that Dražen was being a snobby bitch by faltering at the thought of bruised skin, claiming it to be ugly – and yes, that scar was ugly, Dražen wished he didn't bare it – but it wasn't the wound itself that disgusted him.
Dražen lowered his gaze, exhaustion exchanging places with intoxication as it settled in his bones.
Vuk took it as a sign that he was right.
– "Look,” the Serb said after a moment of silence, moving closer to the Croat by scooting a bit towards him on the mattress. His voice was unusually soft, perhaps he was growing tired as well. – "See? Horrible, really. Here and there, and here too. It's no wonder, you know?”
The taller man pointed towards his upper arms and chest with a finger, making Dražen's cheeks heat up slightly and his eyes trail from scar to bruise, between body hair, muscle, moles and fat. – "We're countries, me n’ you. We lived long lives, memories stay on our skin, yeah?”
Dražen gulped, nodding. He couldn’t meet the Serb's eyes. He felt a hand on the small of his back before the Croat was pulled towards his enemy without much resistance. Their knees touched, and Dražen didn’t allow anything else as Vuk tested the waters, unsure if his movements were accepted. The front of the Croat’s white button up is stained by the sweat of his palm, rumpling the fabric as his hand shook. Dražen's green eyes finally lifted, meeting the brown pair right away.
– “Why are you so nice to me?”
– “Hah, shut up. Don't ask. Tomorrow it won't be important.”
– “Not important?” Dražen repeats, watching Vuk lean down towards him, their faces getting closer together. The Croat didn't move back.
– “Everything will be just as usual, tomorrow. Like always.”
– “... This time it won't.”
Vuk stops, having honestly not expected Dražen's defiance as he assumed the two of them would be on the same page. They have been, for decades, yet something seemed to have changed tonight and Vuk wasn't sure what it was, just that it was intimate. He stopped just short of touching noses with Dražen again.
– “Why?”
– “...You won't understand.”
Ugh, he was already telling too much. Dražen was drunk, still probably, so it was no wonder his sense of judgment was a mess. But being with Vuk like this felt safe, somehow, even if the only rational part of him recognized that his sense of security had to be false.
Dražen would rather lay down with Vuk in his bed, lean himself on the Serb's chest and hide his own scars that way. It wasn't like the two had never cuddled each other before, especially in bed. Vuk always ran so warm when they were embraced that Dražen was forced to roll away from him in the middle of the night because of how much he was sweating – only to wake up with Vuk glued to his back in the morning.
Vuk wouldn’t look at him the same afterwards, it would never be how it was before. Yet, a weird part in him told him to be brave and to just get it over with. Dražen knew he was stalling – and he was getting annoyed with himself as well.
So, without any words, his pupils fell downwards to Vuk’s hand, still on the mattress. He reached out with uncertain fingers, and found himself annoyed as he noticed that they trembled in the other’s palm lightly. Dražen brings the limb to himself slowly, the tension painstakingly thick in the air as his pupils meet brown ones, holding each other's gaze.
The moment seems eternal and Dražen can feel how he holds Vuk’s attention without fail. The Serb leans closer, causing the other to receive some of the warmth radiating off him unintentionally. The Croat swallows a bile down his throat, feeling sweat poke at his back, spreading out the palm he currently held onto – releasing the white shirt he hastily kept together with his other reluctantly.
Before Vuk could properly peek behind the fabric, his palm was placed right over the other’s sternum – where his chest met collarbone and the skin prickled with heat. Dražen’s face was red, an unusually vulnerable look present – be it the remains of alcohol or something Vuk couldn't explain. He was shaking like a leaf, yet the Serb knew that if he mentioned such a fact, Dražen would deny it to hell and back.
Yet, Vuk couldn’t think about any of that properly with his hand on such an intimate area. Dražen moves his palm, since the Serb is too afraid to do so himself, and once he does Vuk could catch a glimpse of what had started this whole fiasco to begin with. Right under the slight swell of his chest were two red lines located, spreading out towards his sides and disappearing under his armpits.
It wasn’t the grandiose reveal of a battle scar turned faded nor of an ugly, purple and yellow bruise – it was rather something Vuk himself only would’ve caught if he were to properly search for it. For a moment, the Serb felt confusion flood his senses, unsure of where Dražen’s embarrassment of the scar could originate from. The scars on Vuk’s chest were far uglier… Dražens ones were neat, surgical even.
All Vuk was certain of is that his bewildered expression and his silence annoyed Dražen.
– “I… I don't get it,” Vuk said, slowly, as if approaching a hungry lion, ready to be pounced at as each second passed.
– “You don't?” Dražen repeated, his tone dangerously flat. His eyebrow twitched, then his eyelid – and Vuk immediately caught on the signs that the Croat was about to flip. –”Majmune, glupane, idiote -” A string of insults left his lips, all shyness and hesitancy gone as he seemed more exasperated by Vuk’s confusion, his voice raising.
But before Vuk could say anything back, or attempt to calm the other sitting opposite of him; Dražen raised himself slightly to his knees, grabbed a vice hold onto the Serb’s hand (his fingers dug so intensely into his flesh that Vuk noted that it became painful), removed it from his chest where the other rested his palm at unmovingly, and tugged it down between his legs.
Blame his temper, the alcohol, the rage steaming through his blood – whatever, just not Dražen himself.
Even through the fabric of Dražen’s pants, Vuk could clearly feel that his fingers were met with something plush, warm and soft – clearly there was no bump present, just a mount – and it caused him to tear his hand away out of reflex, leaning back from Dražen with wide eyes, the Croat doing the same, almost if he caught onto what he had just done.
For a few moments, they held each other’s gazes – Dražen was breathing heavily.
– “I… didn't know…” Vuk breaks the silence, slowly, carefully.
In that moment he remembers Besa, and concludes that Dražen must be like her, it made the most sense to him. She used to tie her chest to make it appear flat, yet Dražen had seemingly taken another step further. She also had stopped doing it in more modern times, yet the Croat persisted; he must be more determined, Vuk concluded as his entire world was turned upside down for a moment. – "I didnt know you were a girl...”
– “Mrš!” Dražen barked at him, furious seemingly as the swear fell from his lips without thinking. His hand twitched upwards, and he struck Vuk across the face fast enough for the Serb to be unable to block the attack. Vuk’s head fell to his side, eyes wide in shock as the Croat’s hands shook with rage. – “I knew it! I knew it, knew it! Why did I even think I could tell you?!”
– "Stop! Wait! Dražen!" Vuk yelled back at him in return as he was met with more blows; but now he had luckily prepared himself to block the attack. His hands wrapped around the Croat's wrists in order to stop him, causing Dražen to attempt at squirming out of his grasp.
– “Wait, wait,” Vuk breathed, trying to stop the other from flailing and wiggling like a trapped animal. – “You're not a girl, I get it. Don't worry.”
Dražen stared holes into his soul.
– “No, you know… Besa, she also –”
– “She's not like me.”
– ”I understand that now.”
Then there was silence.
Dražen felt awfully vulnerable under Vuk's gaze, under his own shirt hanging open and under the fingertips pressed into the pulse of the veins in his wrists. He cursed the Serb over and over for his stupidity to misunderstand something like this; yet he couldn’t lie and admit that the conclusion Vuk drew wasn't far-fetched.
Something in his stomach became lighter at the fact that his enemy had never been able to tell. Aside from some crude comments about his femininity, the Serb had no idea.
The short feeling of euphoria passed just as quickly as it had come once Dražen noticed how Vuk's own gaze hardened with something akin to anger.
The Croat readies himself for an explosion of disgust, rejection and fury. He braces himself for traditional words lacking understanding, for facts far from the truth and for the disappointment sure to come upon realizing that his rival wasn't what he pretended to be.
– “...And you didn't tell me?!” Vuk shouts, more furious than he has been in a long time.
This was not the question he had expected. Dražen was suspecting that he'd be told to scram, to get out of the apartment no matter how dark nor cold it was outside, he didn't… expect to be met with jealousy? Or at least he recognized the look in the other's eyes to be something akin to envy.
– “...Excuse me?” Dražen speaks slowly, the Serb's face closer to his own.
– “Who else knows?” Vuk growls out, and the Croat's brain fills with even more confusion.
– “Janez, Roderich and Elizaveta.”
– “Janez knows, and I don't?!”
– "What's wrong with you?!” Now it was Dražen's turn to yell, anger returning to his mind naturally. If there's one thing the Croat excelled at, it was grating his nerves into dust no matter the situation. Vuk's behavior made no sense and Dražen was starting to feel clammy while being stuck in his grasp – the Serb was so warm, always running too hot that Dražen felt cramped and suffocated around him.
– “Why did you never tell me?”
– “Why would I tell you?!” Dražen shouts, suddenly snapping his wrists out of Vuk's grasp with a violent twitch of his arms. As he breaks free, for a moment he could see how the Serb’s eyelids scrunched together as they usually do once he feels hurt by something. Dražen chooses not to dwell on it. – “We hate each other, always have! Now, after I told you, you'll use it against me!”
Vuk opens his mouth to speak, yet Dražen continues.
– “I know you well. You'll tell the others, or you'll threaten me with telling them. Every time you need something, we'll come back to this topic.” The anger drains from his voice, and Dražen goes to wrap the loose shirt tight around his chest with his arms, shielding himself, embracing himself. – “I'm a complete idiot, you never should've found out.”
– “Dražen –” Vuk reaches out for him slowly as he would towards a wounded animal, yet the Croat jerks away, sliding off the bed.
– “No. I'm leaving,” the shorter male breathes, putting the buttons back into place hastily. – “And you? Tell everyone, go ahead. Let everyone else look at me differently, let them talk about me; somehow I don't even care anymore!”
A lie, partly – formed out of the desire to shield himself and to bring up stone walls high enough to rival those in Dubrovnik. If he let Vuk think that he couldn't touch him, then the Serb might lose interest in exposing him. Just the thought alone, of Enis, Šćepan, Idriza finding out makes his stomach churn with nausea – centuries of a strictly kept secret unraveling due to a drunken night.
Janez would be furious, Roderich would pity him in his unkind and pretentious way, Elizavetta would tell him that she had warned him and Ludwig would change the way he would look at him. If Vuk wasn't in the same room as him still Dražen would wipe away tears of frustration he was currently keeping at bay.
– “Dražen,” Vuk breathes, and said man jumps slightly as he feels a sturdy chest press against his back. When had the Serb even moved from his spot? Dražen was so lost in his internal battle that he hadn't heard him. – “No one will know. I'm not that much of a cretin, I hope.”
– “Why –”
– “Lay down, take your shirt off,” Vuk breathes beside his ear, and Dražen can't deny the goosebumps that form onto his skin as the other's hands work to open the shirt he previously buttoned. – “Just like that. When was the last time you were topless?”
– “Well….” Dražen lets out a breath, unsure.
– “Well?” Vuk echoes, eyebrows lifting as he guides the white fabric from Dražen's shoulders and onto the floor. It lands almost silently, but to the Croat’s ears it sounds like a gunshot. – “With Janez?”
– “No… Not like that. He only sees my bare chest when we go on vacation together, when we swim alone,” Dražen breathes, suddenly feeling nervous without a top. – “And it's not like I strip in front of Roderich and his wife.” He said with a slight smile, feeling Vuk's chest vibrate with soft laughter behind him. Humor was the only way to calm his heart, which was currently attempting to beat out of his own chest.
Warmth, warmth, how could Vuk be so warm?
Dražen didn't even think about the fact that he was guided back to the sheets, nor did his mind protest as he fell onto the mattress beside Vuk. A hand comes to his chest, and Dražen has half the mind to swat it away, but he forces himself to relax.
With his nose burying itself into the Serb’s neck, he can sense his natural smell and the neverending warmth coming off him. They're chest to chest, Vuk's bicep under his head while his own arms loosely wrap around the other's waist, his nails scratching slow lines into his skin, something he knew Vuk loved.
No more words were needed to be exchanged between them from this point on, except for the small satisfied hums of Vuk as his back was getting scratched slowly. The Serb's thumb lazily strokes Dražen's sternum, where his hand lay, and he hoped that the smaller male would not notice how it faintly shook, nor how sweat gathered between their skins.
Luckily for him, the Croat seems to calm as his breathing evened out gradually. Vuk could not recall the last time he had fallen asleep after the Croat, for the Serb found no issue in closing his eyes and immediately drifting off (... curse his relations to the Montenegrin) – it was always Dražen who wiggled, turned and in the end escaped his grasp to dream.
Tonight, after everything, the Croat seemed exhausted enough to remain where he laid – until his always-tense muscles gave in to the alluring comfort of sleep.
Once Dražen's breathing evened out, Vuk's picked up.
Oh God.
He hasn't properly thought about anything, not while he comforted the other as best as he could, not while he guided him back to the bed – and especially not now as they laid practically embraced after who-knows how long. The alcohol has worn off completely, or at least Vuk assumes so, even though a part of him wishes he could blame the ethanol for the deep, heavy feeling in his gut.
Now that he was practically alone with his own mind, Vuk wanted to rip his hair out.
Dražen never wanted to tell him! There was a part, a very intimate and deep part of the Croat, Vuk naturally would've never been aware of. There was something the Serb didn't know, wasn't supposed to for that matter, while Janez trotted around unwilling to spill a single word of this secret. Vuk looks back on many drunken nights spent with the Slovene, of many bottles knocked over and laughter shared– truly, he and Janez were not on bad terms so to say, in fact they could get along just fine usually! Yet, yet – Even while fully intoxicated, the blond would not utter a word to him?!
With which torture techniques did Dražen threaten him with?!
Vuk feels sick to his stomach, he thinks he might vomit for a moment. He closes his eyes, which bore holes into the closet right across from where he was laying, and attempts to breathe deeply.
So many centuries, so many years spent battling Dražen, rather literally or figuratively, and… He was going against someone he didn't fully know. He wondered why his hair was long then, why he dressed the way he did – if he really was what he claimed to be. No, Vuk had felt it when Dražen took his hand into his – the Croat was impulsive, he always did things and later pulled his own teeth out over them.
Vuk wasn't knowledgeable on the subject of transition, but he wondered how he had never noticed. Years, decades, centuries of poking fun at him; insulting his form, his lack of muscle, the fact Dražen was half a head shorter than him – now he wondered, how had he never noticed?...
Then again, he thought Besa was a man for an embarrassing amount of time…
And Dražen still dared to wear that stupid cross around his neck? Vuk still wore his, because he knew that whatever he felt whilst gazing at the Croat was nothing more than appreciation. Sure, he appreciated having something pretty to look at – it was simply that! There was nothing more to it, never was. He never gazed at him while stuck at Roderich's place shortly all that time ago, nor did he scoff at how easily the Croat could play the piano so elegantly, nor did –
God, he might actually vomit.
Despite his better judgment and an indescribable desire to be close to Dražen, the Serb gently unhooks his arm from the other's torso, successfully without waking him. Then, he slowly turns to rest on his back. The Croat moves a bit, and Vuk bites his lip in hope that he settles again; and after a moment which feels eternal, he does, resting his nose against the Serb's upper arm.
Vuk exhales, eyes fixated on the ceiling now, feeling exhausted.
He lets the silence settle, takes in the sound of random cars honking outside, of engines passing with blasting music, of his city right beyond the thin glass of his windows, right beyond the soft breathing of the man next to him. Vuk thinks of ash and blood and a mark right on the underside of his jaw, of a knife pointed at him quite often enough to feel familiar, of green eyes always so guarded and then of the deep sadness that guts him once he realizes that things weren't as they seemed and that nothing quite made sense.
– “Maybe I really do like men, afterall…,” Vuk whispers to the dark, his eyes unyielding in their gaze at the ceiling and sky beyond. He wonders if Dražen heard him, then realized it truthfully did not matter even if he had. It's not like the Croat would say anything negative, not after what Vuk found out tonight that others knew for centuries.
Ugh.
He turns his head and sees that the shorter man hasn't moved, yet that the hairband that held together the chestnut strands of his came loose – tired of tonight's commotion, feeling useless as most of his hair laid untamed anyhow. Vuk moves, gently treats his fingers through it, and slides off the black rubber, letting it spill over his arm, feeling the tips of his hair tickle his bicep. Vuk brushes a few off his forehead, and notes how his eyebrows twitched closer together for a moment.
He thinks of placing a kiss to his cheek, something he has never done before, yet decides against it in some cowardly fear of Dražen pulling away.
The Serb truthfully just wanted him close at this moment, and any opportunity for him to roll away needed to be avoided at all costs. Vuk moves again – God, were there ants under his skin? – and slides his arm over the Croat's waist, pulling him flush to his own form.
Dražen doesn't stir, yet Vuk knows that once he wakes in the morning; Dražen would be on the other side of the bed with the blanket pushed far away from him. And maybe that would be just okay too. Maybe they'd actually talk for once instead of screaming at each other, or maybe things will just go back to how they always were.
Now, none of it mattered. Now, Vuk could only bask in the feeling of not being alone, of having someone at his side, especially because that person was Dražen, his precious, gorgeous gem.
He wasn't going to let him go like that, not at all.