Work Text:
Petak, 14:47.
There was one specific spot on Lovro’s back that felt warmer than the rest.
It didn’t make sense. Not really. If the sun had been out in full force, if the pavement were radiating heat, if he weren’t standing in the middle of Zagreb on a day that felt actively hostile to human joints, then sure. One foot rested lazily on his skateboard, the other planted on the concrete, his weight settled in that familiar, practiced way. Under different circumstances, warmth would have been logical.
But this was Zagreb, and days like this exposed the lie of numbers. Seven degrees Celsius sounded tolerable on paper. His joints, however, disagreed. A dull ache spread through his knuckles, and even the light pressure required to grip the Styrofoam cup drew a quiet, stubborn resistance from his fingers.
Ah. Right.
The slushy.
The blue slushy. Blueberry, allegedly. Or something adjacent to blueberry, diluted enough to be more color than flavor. The icy sweetness numbed his tongue every time he took a sip, the cold seeping into his palm. The shade of blue was faintly reminiscent of the buzzcut he’d had once, a version of himself he’d abandoned for reasons that made sense only in the privacy of his own head.
Still, the warmth lingered. Right there.
Lovro shifted his shoulders, uncomfortable with the sensation he swore he could feel spreading beneath his jacket, like someone had aimed a heat lamp directly at his spine. Annoyed enough to do something about it, he pivoted, nearly completing a full turn, wheels of the skateboard scraping softly as his foot adjusted.
And then he saw him.
Ivan.
Of course.
It was strange, honestly, how often Lovro had been seeing the new student lately. Too often to feel coincidental, not often enough to feel intentional. Stranger still was the treachery of it all, the small, involuntary twist in his stomach when Ivan met his eyes. The look was sharp, surgical, held a second too long to be accidental. A glare, maybe.
Lovro hated that part. The way his body reacted before his brain could intervene.
He couldn’t lie, not even to himself. His ego was still tender from the day before, bruised in that dull, lingering way. The failed almost-skating-date with Ema. If it even deserved that name. Just thinking about it made his stomach churn again, a separate but familiar discomfort.
Because that was the worst part, wasn’t it? The part he couldn’t explain without sounding ungrateful or broken. He’d somehow managed to bag a girl like her. Beautiful, funny, smart in a way that made conversations easy instead of intimidating. And still, there’d been nothing. No spark. No pull. Just a hollow politeness, at best, where something else should’ve been.
Lying to her felt wrong.
Lying to himself felt worse, somehow.
Lovro shook his head, a sharp, almost irritated movement, as if he could physically dislodge the thought. Thinking about it drained what little good mood he had left, like cold water seeping into his shoes.
And then there was Ivan.
Standing there, existing, radiating heat in a city that had no business feeling warm.
Lovro exhaled slowly, fingers tightening around the cup, the ice clinking faintly. He told himself, firmly, that this meant nothing. Nothing at all. That the warmth was imaginary. That the way his attention kept snapping back to Ivan was just curiosity, or coincidence, or some leftover restlessness he hadn’t worked out of his system yet.
Still, his foot stayed on the skateboard.
Still, he didn’t look away, this time.
It might have been frustration left over from the embarrassing interaction from the day before. Or maybe it was a sudden, reckless flare of courage. Either way, Lovro found himself dragging his skateboard toward where Ivan was busy with his red scooter, the wheels scraping loudly against the pavement. A few of the stickers he’d slapped onto the board at some point in his life peeled and frayed at the edges.
He barely noticed.
Maybe this was just him trying to prove something to himself. That, for fuck’s sake, he could absolutely interact normally with another guy. That this was, in fact, how he made friends. Casually. Easily. Without his brain turning into static or mush.
Lovro opened his mouth to say something, anything.
Ivan beat him to it.
“Cool skateboard.”
He nodded as he said it, chin tipping toward the board, which now rested against the outside of Lovro’s calf since he’d stopped moving.
Lovro tried to read Ivan’s face and failed completely.
Ivan was, well, looking at him. Not glancing, not flicking his eyes away out of politeness. Looking. Long enough that it felt intentional. That alone suggested he wanted to talk, right? That this was an opening?
Except his expression itself was unreadable. Serious. Flat. Almost too neutral.
Was that sarcasm?
Was Ivan messing with him?
Lovro dropped his gaze, suddenly very interested in his skateboard. In the handful of anime stickers clinging stubbornly to the rough, scuffed surface. Stickers he’d chosen carefully at the time.
Did they make him look too stupid?
The realization hit him half a second too late. He’d thought too long. He hadn’t answered.
Ivan lifted both eyebrows at once, a quick, subtle motion. Expectant. Patient. Waiting.
Shit.
Lovro wondered when his social competence had slipped out of reach, and why its absence now registered as such a sharp, undeniable awkwardness.
“Uh,” he started, sloshing the half-melted shaved ice around in the Styrofoam cup. The motion was unnecessary, purely out of nervousness. A laugh slipped out between his teeth before he could stop it, thin and betraying. “Yeah. I skate.”
Wow. Astounding conversationalist. Ten out of ten.
It wasn’t as if Ivan couldn’t see the skateboard. Or the way Lovro’s foot rested against it.
Not even the cold was enough to stop his face from warming up.
Lovro could feel it happening, heat creeping upward despite the sharp air, and he prayed, he actually prayed that the embarrassment wouldn’t bloom visibly across his cheeks. And if it did, if the color betrayed him anyway, he could always blame the weather. The cold. The way tiny blood vessels expanded and contracted under the skin. The two soft pads of flesh people call cheeks. Biology was a perfectly reasonable excuse. Science was on his side.
“I used to skate,” Ivan said casually.
He straightened his spine as he spoke, posture snapping into place, and wow.
Up close, Ivan was tall. Really tall. Lovro was tall too, had always been, tall enough that people commented on it, tall enough that mirrors had taught him to expect a certain scale. But Ivan still had at least a full handspan on him, which was… rare. Slightly disorienting. Lovro’s eyes had to travel upward more than expected, and the realization landed with a quiet thud somewhere in his chest.
“Before I had an accident that made me lose one of my arms,” Ivan added, completely deadpan.
Too deadpan. Almost aggressively serious.
…Huh?
Lovro’s eyebrows knitted together instinctively, the space between them tightening as confusion rippled across his face. He opened his mouth, ready to respond, but nothing came out. His brain stalled, buffering like a bad internet connection.
He was pretty sure — no, he was certain — he’d seen both of Ivan’s arms yesterday. On Instagram. On that stupid, cursed photo he absolutely did not want to think about. Or remember the embarrassment that followed. Or the way his stomach had flipped when he saw it. Or the fact that he’d stared for way too long.
Had prosthetics really gotten that good? That realistic? Which arm was it supposed to be? And, wait, why would losing an arm automatically mean he couldn’t skate anymore? Plenty of people skated with one arm. People did way crazier things with way fewer limbs.
None of it was adding up.
Lovro was still standing there, mouth slightly open, thoughts tripping over each other, when it hit him.
The smile.
Slow, unhurried, spreading across Ivan’s face.
Oh.
A joke.
It dawned on Lovro a second too late, the realization clicking into place with a soft internal oh, for fuck’s sake. That was Ivan’s humor, apparently. Dry. Straight-faced. Delivered like a fact, left to rot until someone caught up.
And Lovro did, eventually.
“What the hell,” he laughed, the sound bursting out of him in a single breath. His hand flew to his chest on instinct, palm pressing lightly over his sternum as his heart kicked up speed, reacting not just to the joke, but to the smile that had caused it. It was bigger than before.
His laughter wasn’t cool or controlled. It escaped him fully formed, honest, unguarded. And he was suddenly very aware of how good it felt to laugh like that. How loose it made him feel. How it softened the tightness he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying all day.
He inhaled, shaking his head slightly, still smiling.
God. He really had believed him for a second.
And maybe that was the scariest part.
“You had me in the first half, not gonna lie,” Lovro said, the sentence slipping out automatically, a clear nod to that meme. Yes, that one.
It occurred to him a beat too late that Ivan might not get the reference at all, and that switching languages mid-conversation could very well come off as strange. Or too try-hard. Or chronically online. But Lovro decided, right then, that he was done dissecting every single thing he said. If he kept doing that, his head would actually split open one day, right down the middle.
Ivan didn’t look like he understood.
He also didn’t look like he cared that he didn’t understand.
And, somehow, that really helped.
Lovro drew in a slow breath through his nose, shoulders easing as something inside him finally unclenched. He felt calmer. Grounded. Almost light. It was… nice. Very nice to feel this way.
“Can I try?” Ivan asked, nodding his chin again, clearly indicating the skateboard.
God. Why was he always so vague?
Lovro took another sip of the slushy, the watered-down sweetness coating his tongue, icy enough to make his teeth ache. He swallowed and nodded.
“What, to skate?” he asked, needing the confirmation out loud.
In his head, he was being effortless. Casual. Cool about it. Somewhere else in his brain, a quieter but more insistent voice whispered that he might just be being dense, because obviously that was what Ivan meant, dumbass. Still, Lovro had promised himself he would stop spiraling like this. Stop second-guessing every word, every glance, every pause.
Ema had told him the exact same thing, just the day before, over text. Don’t overthink.
“Yes. That,” Ivan said, stepping closer. Close enough to take the skateboard from where it rested diagonally against Lovro’s leg.
And, of course, Lovro let him.
He barely registered the movement of the board leaving his side, because his attention snagged on something else entirely. That scent again. Subtle, but there. Warm fabric, clean skin, something faintly earthy clinging to Ivan’s clothes. Up close, Ivan was definitely taller. Not in an abstract, distant way, but in a way that shifted Lovro’s sense of space, made him tilt his head just a fraction more than usual. He told himself that this meant nothing.
He was fine.
Just making a new friend. Right?
“Do you know how to?” Lovro asked, mostly out of obligation, because by then Ivan had already placed one foot on the skateboard.
The answer arrived immediately, and violently.
Ivan wobbled. Not a graceful wobble. Not a tentative, maybe-I’ve-still-got-this wobble. No. It was bad. Clumsy. The kind of wobble that starts in the ankles and spreads upward. The weight shifted wrong, pressing down on the lower third of the board, which shot forward like it had just been waiting for the opportunity to do so.
Ivan lurched, and instinct took over. He threw his hand out and caught himself against the graffiti-covered wall bordering the street, sneakers scraping against the pavement as he scrambled to regain his balance.
“Shit, man,” Ivan said, laughing.
Laughing.
It was the first time Lovro had seen him do that.
Lovro had just slipped the straw back into his mouth out of pure habit, something to anchor himself with, but it popped free the second his own laugh burst out to meet Ivan’s. The sound surprised him. It wasn’t restrained or careful. It spilled out of him, loose and bright and completely unfiltered.
God. He sounded, and felt, like a teenage girl.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like that. Really laughed. The kind that shakes your chest and makes your face feel warm afterward, like you’ve momentarily forgotten how to hold yourself together.
“Are you okay?” Lovro asked, mostly to keep the conversation going.
He already knew the answer. Ivan was laughing, openly and without restraint, shoulders shaking, breath uneven in that careless way people laugh when nothing in the world feels particularly dangerous. Still, when Ivan finally pulled his hand away from the wall, Lovro noticed it.
Blood.
Not a lot. Just enough to matter. A scrape across the lower part of his palm, skin raw where it had dragged against the concrete. One thin drop slid lazily toward his wrist, catching the light before falling away. Damn, he must have scraped himself pretty badly on the wall.
Nothing serious, though. Nothing that alarming.
And yet Lovro’s eyes widened before he could stop them, his stomach tightening with a reflexive, almost stupid concern. His own palm tingled in sympathy.
Ivan didn’t answer him. Not with words, at least. Still laughing, he wiped the blood against his jeans like it was nothing more than dirt. As if his skin wasn’t even really his.
“Maybe I should stick to my scooter,” Ivan said, grin stretching wider, wider, wider. “Before the prophecy about me losing an arm actually comes true.”
He smiled like the sky when it decides to be kind. Unapologetically open. Bright, so bright, in a way that felt almost illegal for a gray afternoon.
Lovro felt so fucking light. Ridiculously so. Like gravity had given up on him. Like he was stepping on clouds and half-expecting to fall through them at any second.
When Ivan dropped down onto the curb, settling there, Lovro took the movement as permission and sat beside him. Close. Close enough that the outer sides of their thighs brushed.
The contact burned.
Not painfully. Just very, very vividly. Almost like someone had pressed a warm coin against his skin and left it there.
God. Maybe he really was touch-starved.
It felt good like this. Natural. Comfortable. Their shoulders angled slightly toward each other, knees bent, bodies unconsciously mirroring. Lovro could feel the faint vibration of Ivan’s laughter lingering beside him, like static still clinging to the air.
He tried not to think too much about how aware he suddenly was of his own body. Of where his hands were resting. Of how easily he could move them.
Or how he didn’t want to.
He swallowed, the motion a little dry, and forced himself to breathe normally. He told himself it was nothing.
“Maybe,” Lovro agreed, mostly because agreeing bought him time. Time to think of what to say next, even though the silence between them wasn’t sharp or awkward the way silence usually was. It was… soft, in a way. Like a held breath that didn’t yet need releasing.
“Are you going to Tina’s karaoke party later tonight?” he asked, finally. “I mean, I heard she invited basically everyone… and then some.”
Nice save, Lovro. Really. Because if you hadn’t pivoted right there, Ivan might’ve noticed that suspicious little detail. That you’d remembered the exact topic they’d been talking about the first time your eyes had—
“I’m going for the drinks,” Ivan said, honest to a fault. That was definitely his thing. “And to see how long I can last before I feel the overwhelming urge to manually remove my eardrums.”
Lovro huffed out a quiet laugh before he could stop himself.
Ivan shifted slightly, palms turning upward as they came to rest on his bent knees. His fingers cracked absentmindedly, one by one, like he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. The scrape on his hand was still there. A little darker now, blood drying along the edge of broken skin.
“You’re still bleeding,” Lovro pointed out again, because apparently stating the obvious was his brand today. At least it proved he had two functioning eyes. Very reassuring.
“Mhm,” Ivan hummed, still unconcerned.
He lifted his palm again, unhurried, and his tongue dragged over the abrasion, slow enough that Lovro could see the exact moment the red bloomed brighter, could see the faint shine of saliva catch the light. The sound was barely there, soft and wet, but Lovro’s brain, of course, amplified it obscenely.
His body reacted before he could stop it. Holy shit.
Heat flared under his skin, sharp and immediate, like someone had struck a match inside his chest. A shock raced up his spine, electric, settling uncomfortably low in his stomach. His shoulders tensed, breath stuttering, fingers curling reflexively around the flimsy cup still in his hand. The drink inside sloshed, grounding him and not grounding him at all.
What the fuck.
He swallowed, his throat suddenly too tight, too dry. This made no sense. It was blood. It was a scrape. It should’ve been gross, or neutral at best. And yet—
And yet.
He was painfully aware of his own tongue, still stained blue, chemical and childish, the artificial sweetness lingering stubbornly no matter how many times he swallowed. And the contrast hit him hard. The red on Ivan’s tongue wasn’t fake. It wasn’t artificially flavored. It was warm and real and human.
Red and blue.
So, purple.
The thought arrived fully formed, vivid, unwanted.
And then his brain betrayed him completely.
He imagined their tongues brushing, teasing, tracing each other, wet and messy. The faint metallic taste of blood bleeding into sugar and dye, iron cutting through sweetness. He imagined the texture, the warmth, the way Ivan’s hand would probably come up to cup his cheek, thumb pressing under his jaw to keep him there, where he wanted.
Jesus Christ.
Lovro’s breath went shallow. He blinked hard, jaw tightening, like he could physically shake the image loose. His heart was pounding too fast, too loud, each beat echoing in his ears. He felt sixteen again. No, fourteen. Like his body had skipped ahead without him, reacting to something his brain wasn’t ready to name yet.
“Man,” he said, forcing out a laugh that didn’t quite land, “I don’t think you should do that.”
He heard it immediately. The way his voice cracked, just slightly, like a fault line showing itself. The laugh came a second too late, too thin to cover it.
Nervous. Confused. Very much intrigued.
Ivan really was something else.
“It’s my blood,” Ivan said easily, amused, like the idea of danger, itself, was a joke to him. “I’ll be fine.”
Then he looked at Lovro.
Not a glance. Not a passing acknowledgment. A look.
Lovro felt it like pressure. Like being pinned in place. His lungs stalled halfway through an inhale, breath caught awkwardly in his chest. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing visibly, and licked his lips again, a nervous habit he couldn’t suppress.
The air between them felt charged. Thick. Shared.
Ivan was close enough that Lovro could feel the faint heat radiating off him, could catch that clean, warm scent again, something that clung to fabric and skin. Soap, maybe. Something herbal underneath, too. Something Ivan.
Holding eye contact like that felt dangerous. Not threatening. Just… very revealing. Like Ivan could see the mess of thoughts tripping over each other inside Lovro’s head. Like if he kept looking, Ivan might notice the way his pupils had blown wide, or the way his shoulders were tense, or the way his fingers had gone faintly numb.
So Lovro broke it.
His gaze darted away, landing on the sling bag strapped across Ivan’s chest. Always there.
Something safe to focus on.
“Uh—” Lovro gestured vaguely with his thumb, grateful for the excuse to move. “You don’t have, like… a band-aid in there or something?”
He already knew the answer. I mean, for all he knew, he could have had a band-aid in there, but it wasn’t likely. Man, he just needed to breathe again, okay? He needed something mundane to grab onto.
“Here? No,” Ivan said.
And then that big, almost absurdly big hand moved toward the sling bag. Lovro watched it without meaning to. Long fingers catching the zipper and pulling it open in one smooth motion.
Good. He took the bait.
For a brief, anticlimactic second, the bag looked empty. Dark fabric and shadows. Lovro felt his face arrange itself into a quiet, involuntary question mark, eyebrows pulling together before he could stop them.
And then—
A fucking spliff appeared between those same fingers.
Ah. Of course.
He’s a stoner too.
That made sense. Somehow, it fit. Too well, actually.
Lovro felt something inside him perk up, a small, stupid spark of excitement. His brain immediately supplied an image he hadn’t asked for: the two of them sitting somewhere less public, shoulders brushing, sharing smoke. Passing it back and forth. Fingers touching accidentally. Or not accidentally at all.
Where the hell were all these gay thoughts coming from?
“You’re only carrying weed in your chest bag?” Lovro asked, evidently amused.
His voice came out softer than he intended. There was a shy smile permanently lodged at the corner of his mouth now. It had decided to live there, apparently. He drew his knees up, resting his forearms across them, his posture folding inward in a way that felt instinctive rather than defensive. His head tilted slightly forward as he looked at Ivan from the side.
Comfortable.
Natural.
Like this was how he was supposed to be sitting.
“Well, not anymore, no,” Ivan replied, just as amused.
He tucked the spliff behind his ear with casual, downright annoying, confidence.
If it had been anyone else, Lovro would’ve thought it was painfully cringey. Try-hard. That whole wannabe James Dean thing people did when they wanted to look cooler than they actually were.
But this was Ivan.
And, somehow, everything Ivan did just… worked.
Even when he was doing too much, it didn’t feel like too much. It felt effortless. Like he wasn’t trying at all, like the world just met him halfway. Always.
Lovro hated how fucking attractive he found that.
“So,” Ivan continued, glancing back at the bag before looking at Lovro again, eyebrows lifting just a fraction, subtle but intentional. “You wanna give me something to fill the space?”
Lovro blinked.
For a second, his mind stalled completely.
Because the honest answer was no. He didn’t have anything. Nothing cool, nothing useful, nothing that felt worthy of being carried around by Ivan, tucked into that always-on-him bag.
Heat crept up his cheeks for the hundredth time.
Jesus. Why did being around this dude make him feel like this? Like he was constantly a half-second behind his own body?
Not thinking very clearly anymore, Lovro reached down and plucked one of the dandelions pushing stubbornly through the cracks in the pavement.
It surprised him every time he noticed them. How something so soft and alive could exist there, wedged between slabs of concrete, surviving on whatever scraps of soil had been left behind. Wild. Bright against the gray. He rolled the thin stem between his fingers for a second, feeling its slight resistance, the faint grit clinging to it.
“This?” he offered, holding it out to Ivan. “How about this?”
There was a restrained laugh in his voice. Small, but very real.
It probably looked silly. He was aware of that. Handing someone a flower. Even if it was just a dandelion, even if it meant nothing. It was impulsive, unfiltered. But it wasn’t meant to be anything more than that. Just a stupid, spontaneous gesture. Ivan had asked for something to carry with him. Anything would do. Right?
“And they say romance is dead,” Ivan replied, accepting it with an easy grin.
He was clearly joking.
And still, Lovro’s heart kicked hard in his chest, suddenly galloping, forcing blood up into his face so fast he was sure it had to be visible. His ears felt warm. His cheeks too. He stayed quiet, watching, entirely too aware of his own pulse.
He watched Ivan tuck the dandelion into his sling bag with so much care. Watched him adjust it so the stem wouldn’t bend, so the flower wouldn’t be crushed by whatever else he was planning to put inside. It was such a small thing. Such an unnecessary consideration.
Something inside Lovro shifted.
“Well,” Ivan said eventually, straightening up. “I should go.”
The words landed heavier than they had any right to, because Lovro hadn’t realized just how much he’d been enjoying himself. Not that he didn’t enjoy being around Jakov, or Filip, or Mario, or Eva, or even Ema. He did. He really did. But, with Ivan, it felt different. Looser. Like he didn’t have to measure himself so carefully.
With Ivan, he felt like he could just… exist. As himself.
Before, Lovro had envied the freedom Ivan seemed to carry so effortlessly. The way he moved, spoke, took up space. Now, sitting there, he realized something a little unsettling and exhilarating at once. Maybe it wasn’t something to envy. Maybe it was something he could grow into.
“I’ll see you later, yeah?” Ivan added.
Lovro nodded, his smile small, contained, but genuine nonetheless.
“Yeah,” he said. “See you later.”
As Ivan walked away, Lovro stayed still for a moment longer, the words echoing softly in his head.
See you later.
Some quiet part of him hoped they would always say goodbye like that.