Chapter Text
LOVRO
It all started six months ago. Or maybe not exactly that. But when Lovro later thought about his relationship with Ivan, that moment kept coming back to him as a kind of turning point.
Lovro was twenty-one and had no direction, none that he could name. He hadn’t chosen his studies properly, or maybe he had, back in high school, when he ended up on a biology track. Or more honestly, Jakov had chosen it first, for himself, and Lovro had simply followed, like a figure drifting through darkness, drawn by the smallest shift of light.
But then their paths separated, because Jakov started studying philosophy, and although for a moment Lovro considered going after him again, he eventually chose something else. Leaving him behind wasn’t easy, but it felt weirdly necessary.
Landscape architecture.
At first it was a pretty random decision, made at the last minute, just picking any course so he wouldn’t lose the alimony from his father. Lovro told himself that since he had already gone through biology, through ecology classes, he might as well stick with it. And he liked taking photos. Even though he drew badly. Always had. And he was thankful for technology, and all the programs that made his lack of drawing skills less of a problem.
Sometimes he wanted to drop it completely. Sometimes he actually liked it, and it made more sense than not. His student life didn’t really go beyond the university. He talked to a few people, but he already had his friends, the ones he’d known for years, and he mostly stayed with them when it came to anything close. His love life? Yeah. A joke. It barely existed.
Never for long. Never seriously.
He had an app. He went on a few dates after he stopped running away from the fact that he was gay, after he stopped being afraid of the word itself. When he became friends with Vito and moved in with him, Vito, who, by the way, he had met in a gay bar, when he was hollowed out and completely lost.
Vito was a good friend. He had already walked further down a road Lovro was only starting to step onto, slowly, carefully, in small movements that still felt uncertain. So it was nice to have someone like that around. His friends accepted him. Except for one, which Lovro no longer thought about. His mother accepted him. His father didn’t know. Lovro lived inside that arrangement.
Still, he was mostly on his own, mostly stuck in fantasies, even if there had been a few kisses. And one very awkward situation involving a hand.
Everything got a bit more complicated when Vito’s cousin came back to Croatia. Nora was nice, genuinely kind, but there was a problem. Not with her, but with the room Lovro was using, which had actually been hers. Nobody was kicking him out. He didn’t even feel like anyone was quietly pushing him out of the apartment. It was just that they didn’t fit anymore.
And sleeping on the couch in the living room, with people constantly moving around, morning, afternoon, night, wasn’t exactly comfortable, to put it mildly.
So when Lovro met Vanessa six months ago, he started complaining a bit. A lot, actually.
„I guess I’ll have to go back to my mom,” he groaned, taking a random photo to check the camera settings. He played a bit with the focus, squinting in concentration. „Because my dad’s not really an option.”
„You still don’t talk?”
„Sometimes,” Lovro shrugged, glancing at her, but she was doing something on her phone. „Barely. He sends me money.”
Vanessa hummed in response, clearly knowing she didn’t need to dig deeper, that Lovro wouldn’t want her to, and the conversation faded out.
It was mid-October. The sun was setting earlier every day, and Lovro was starting to notice a growing obsession with time passing. He took a few photos that might be useful later for a project, warm light breaking through the tree canopy. He stood up and took a few shots of an empty path, until he finally focused on Vanessa’s profile leaning against a tree trunk. Her hair trembled slightly in the wind, her cheek lit with warm orange light. He took a photo of her too.
„You know what, at the end of the month a girl is moving out from our place,” she said suddenly, looking at him when the series of quick clicks stopped. „I can ask Ivan if he wouldn’t rent you the room. Maybe he hasn’t found anyone yet.”
Lovro sat down next to her, pretending to look through something on his camera. But he wasn’t really seeing any image on the screen, only Ivan in his head.
Lovro knew him. Or, well, that was too much to say. He recognized him. Knew of him. Sometimes they ended up in the same space, the same group of people, close enough to exist in the same frame without ever really meeting.
Ivan had transferred to their high school in the middle of the final year, and that alone was unusual, but Lovro never found out the reason. He never asked anyone either.
He noticed one thing right away. That Ivan was attractive to him. That Lovro sometimes looked for him in the courtyard or in the hallway. The he liked the sound of his voice, low in a way that sent a strange current down his spine, like his words were reaching somewhere deeper than they should. That in P.E. he sometimes paid more attention to Ivan than to the actual exercise. That he even started going more often, just to be near him, to brush against him, or let their fingers touch when they struggled over a ball.
But they were never friends. Ivan stayed just a stupid crush, like Jakov once had been, a rather shameful memory. Lovro had broken up his relationship with his childhood friend. Falling for another straight guy with a girlfriend again, that felt like too much, even for his experience.
They sometimes saw each other at parties and talked a bit, mostly about trivial, superficial things. Once Ivan gave him a ride home on his Tomos, which later suddenly disappeared, when Lovro got too high and the police showed up at the apartment. Lovro had probably never been so turned on in his life as then.
He even followed him on Instagram, a big step in the modern world, and Ivan followed him back, but unfortunately he didn’t reach out. Lovro’s courage ended at the follow. And dropping likes on his posts every now and then, like a quiet reminder that he was still there.
Sometimes Lovro didn’t know what to think about Ivan when he separated him from the handsome face and the nicely shaped body, the big biceps Lovro thought about too much and too often went, for a specific purpose, to look at them in the photos.
He wouldn’t say Ivan was unfriendly or that he felt he was prejudiced against him, although Lovro didn’t really go around telling people about that part of himself either. Ivan was rather naturally distant, even when he talked a lot, even when he was close. As if he stayed within his own frame and didn’t even stick his nose beyond it, even a very attractive nose, actually. About that too Lovro sometimes thought too much.
The only thing that stung Lovro was the feeling that Ivan kept him at arm’s length, that he liked talking to girls more than to him, especially Vanessa, but who didn’t like Vanessa. Tina had pulled Ivan into their group after meeting him while showing him around the school, and then clumsily tried to flirt with him. At the next party she invited him to, Ivan showed up with a girlfriend, and that was the end of it.
That was also when Lovro got hit with a bucket of cold water, seeing them together, Sonja standing in front of him, so pretty and smiling, with her hand extended to greet him. And Ivan was standing beside her, bored, not even looking at Lovro. It settled inside him all wrong.
But somehow Lovro got over it. He talked about him with Vito a few times, okay, maybe more than a few, more like a dozen or even dozens, sighed over his photos, although it would calm down sometimes, especially after school ended and Lovro pretty much stopped talking to him, aside from running into him at parties every few months. At those parties he didn’t avoid Ivan, but he also didn’t know how to be around him without adding too much meaning to everything.
And then Ivan would smile at him a little wider than usual, or sit down next to him, sometimes a bit too close, until Lovro couldn’t think about anything expect his warmth and the smell of him.
A few times Lovro made small gestures, rather subtle, like spreading his legs a bit wider so their knees touched, or placing his hand on the couch in a way that sometimes made their fingers brush. And every time Ivan didn’t move away, probably not even thinking about it, the corner of Lovro’s mouth would go up and refuse to fall back down.
And now he could live with him. Just like that.
„Oh, really?” Lovro said, and through his head ran a few no, no, no, this is a bad idea, before control was taken over by Ivan, Ivan, Ivan, so he added, „That would be great. Thanks.”
„No problem.” Vanessa said with a smile before going back to rummaging in her bag. Lovro watched her for a moment, thinking it was the perfect chance to ask about him.
„But isn’t he, you know,” he started, keeping his hands busy securing the camera before putting it into his backpack. „I don’t know… kind of uptight? He looks like he is.”
„What?” Vanessa laughed, furrowing her brows. She pulled a pink stripped makeup bag out of her purse and started digging through it. „Lovro, you know Ivan. You like Ivan.” she stressed the word, glancing at him, brief, casual, and Lovro never told her that he liked Ivan, although he felt she probably knew. Vanessa always seemed to know everything.
He got a little tense, but tried to keep his composure.
„Yeah, but,” he shrugged, letting his eyes drift to a couple walking their dog along a nearby path. „I just get the feeling he’s kind of, you know, a snob.”
He looked away when they shared a kiss, nothing explicit, nothing that should have bothered him. He probably just felt a bit lonely. Nothing serious. Nothing new.
„No, he’s fine,” Vanessa waved it off, pulling a mirror out of her makeup bag. „He just didn’t get along with Ema, but…”
„Ema? Which Ema?”
Vanessa squinted, lifting her eyes to look at him.
„My roommate, Ema," she said, scanning his face briefly before going back to her lipstick. „Sonja’s friend. She lived with us for a while, but, well.” she shrugged.
Ema. She had flashed past his awareness a few times in the apartment when he visited Vanessa, maybe even showed up at a party once or twice.
And that was actually interesting. Lovro thought for a moment, twisting his mouth into a funny expression. Should he ask more about Ema? Or change the subject to Sonja? But he could also check if they were still together on Instagram. Although Ivan never posted anything with her. But she did.
Okay, enough.
Lovro shook his head, deciding that if he kept acting this strange, Vanessa would drop the idea to save what was left of his dignity. And his heart. His fragile, easily falling heart.
Besides, he told himself he didn’t feel anything anymore, that he had never really felt anything at all. He didn’t even know Ivan. Not well enough for it to be anything more than that.
But one thing Lovro told himself, another he actually thought, and a third he did. So he asked anyway.
„Does Sonja live with you too?”
„No,” there was a moment of hesitation, and Lovro watched Vanessa a little more carefully.
„I think they, you know…” another hesitation, and Lovro’s heart both stopped and sped up at the same time.
„I don’t know, I think they don’t really get along. It’s not my business.”
She ended it there, as always reasonable and grounded, and Lovro nodded, changing the subject to something completely different. He knew how to play it, or at least liked to think he did. Though now he was even more certain he’d later do his little Instagram check.
And he did. But there wasn’t really anything there he was looking for. For a moment he let himself hope, because of the last photo on Sonja’s profile, a picture with Ivan, where she was leaning on his shoulder and he was making a funny face at the camera, a photo that, like a true masochist, Lovro had been looking at almost every day for no clear reason since she posted it. Even though Lovro told himself it was just to remember, for refreshing his mind. It probably didn’t work.
That photo was gone, but she was probably just cleaning up her feed, because everything else was still there, apart from a few selfies she apparently didn’t like. Lovro didn’t understand what Sonja could dislike about herself. Maybe there was some kind of rivalry, well, only in his head, but he couldn’t downplay her. She was beautiful. Very. And she fit Ivan so well they looked like they had been made for each other.
It was a slightly heavy thought, and it ended his scrolling for the night.
As for the apartment, Lovro didn’t pressure Vanessa, even though he kept thinking about it all the time, especially when Vito was cooking in the kitchen at 1 a.m., or when Nora was arguing on the phone until 3 a.m., pacing back and forth to the bathroom every few minutes. Or when they got up earlier than him, and, even if they tried to be quiet, it just didn’t really seem to be in their nature.
He couldn’t have been more relieved than when Vanessa, exactly two days later, told him she had talked to Ivan. And that Ivan had agreed.
„Your snob said you should text him,” she added, gathering her things from the wide vanity in the studio into a makeup case. Vanessa had dragged him into helping with a photoshoot today and even though photographing people wasn’t really his thing, he never turned down a few extra euros. „Relax. He’s actually nice. And he’s not going to wake you up for yoga at six in the morning.”
Yeah. Vito’s latest obsession, which he was trying to force on everyone around him. Lovro wasn’t really into physical activity. Not that kind, anyway. Joke. He had no experience with the other kind either.
„My snob, what are you even talking about,” he snorted, rolling his eyes while zipping up the backpack with his camera inside. Still, it made him feel stupidly good, even if she was teasing him. Yours. Yeah. That sounded nice. „I don’t think I even have his number.” he added, even though he could just message him on Instagram. But it was still one more thing connecting him to Ivan.
„I’ll send it to you later,” Vanessa said, glancing back at him over her shoulder. She didn’t seem suspicious. „Just text him. Don’t freak out.”
„Okay, don’t,” he smacked her lightly on the arm when she patted him with that teasing smile. „It’s not like I’m scared of him. I just don’t know if we’d get along.”
Lovro said it partly to deflect, but after thinking about it for a second, it was actually true. They’d had two years to become closer and somehow never did, even though Ivan seemed to get along with everyone. He even sometimes sent funny, well, at least according to them, videos to Jakov, or went with Mario to the gym or to play basketball a few times. Lovro wasn’t jealous. He just ended up venting to Jakov a couple of times.
But now he was the one unpacking the last box of his things in Ivan’s apartment, or really, his aunt's apartment, the one who had moved abroad and let him stay there in exchange for taking care of the place and tenants. She must've been loaded, judging by the three-bedroom place with a huge kitchen and living room in the center of Zagreb.
And when Lovro added the silver Rolex glinting on Ivan's wrist and that old-school, slightly pretentious aesthetic, it all came together into one clear picture. Yeah, definitely a wealthy family.
But Ivan turned out to be a good roommate. Even when things were quiet between them sometimes, especially at the start. Sometimes Lovro felt frustrated by how hard he was trying to say, hey, I’m here, maybe we could talk about something other than the weather, or maybe sit on the couch and watch a movie in silence so our shoulders touch at least a little, so I can feel that you’re a real person and not just a ghost haunting my thoughts and playing tricks in front of my eyes.
But then Ivan would look at him, and in those eyes Lovro saw, hey, I know you’re here, but leave me alone.
So he left him alone and didn’t push, taking only what Ivan was willing to give him.
And Lovro swore he had fantasized about it, thought about it a sick number of times, but he still never expected what Ivan would offer him not long after that.