Work Text:
Matej is out late.
To be fair, it’s not the most late he’s been out this week, however it is definitely pushing it on the line where his parents might be concerned, but who cares? He’s seventeen and about to sneak into his girlfriend’s place, where there weren’t any adults cause the rest of her family is out enjoying their lives in Spain. He nearly tripped himself out of the back door for this.
“Anything for love,” Matej said fondly over facetime ten minutes ago. Now he’s starting to reconsider it in this fucking negative degree weather with only baggy jeans and two layers on, counting the jacket he blindly caught from the hanging rack.
To make matters worse, he accidentally got off the wrong stop, leading to his current predicament of walking around at midnight trying to dodge suspicious drunks and the occasional temptation of buying late-night food when he’s five euros away from begging on the streets with cardboard.
He needs to sit down, Christ. Matej looks over to his far distance to see dozens of benches aligned together. He’s about to go in and take a quick break, when he notices two people in the middle of it all cleaning… a table with a tree? There’s a crowd nearby, which Matej guesses must be their crew.
One of the guys, who looks familiar yet Matej can’t exactly pinpoint where, starts picking up trash to throw it around the tree like it’s a Christmas decoration and not some litter a few people were too lazy to pick up after.
By this point, Matej has stopped in his tracks to squint aggressively, trying to will his brain into why that hair and figure seems to be stored somewhere in his memory. He’d go in but he really doesn’t have time nor the energy to deal with a bunch of potential drunkards.
It’s only when the guy stands back briefly to look up at the tree, saying something to his friend, when it clicks for Matej.
Ivan Kovačić. Right there in the damn flesh.
Matej begins to gawk.
He doesn’t live under a rock. Even if he did, he wouldn’t ever miss him, not when he was the eye of a storm everyone talked about a while ago.
The details are fuzzy, and by the end of the winter term it was a messy game of incoherent telephone, but what Matej got was this: Ivan tried kissing some dude, freaked the fuck out, then purposely broke his knee at some basketball game after spamming Bible verses and shit about repentance in the school’s confession wall.
The most extreme versions say he tried doing worse to himself afterwards, but Matej has only heard the stories through the grapevine, never in person, so he’d rather not jump the gun that far. Again, the specifics are all wishy-washy.
At least chatter’s significantly died down now that Ivan’s transferred, but Matej can still feel the slight tension within some classmates knowing that they liked having a guy like that around. Matej, for what it’s worth, mostly feels bad for him, but the kissing another guy thing is funny. Generational crash out for sure.
It didn’t bother him as much. Ivan’s a year above him, and Matej had some other shit to sort out in his life, mostly keeping in touch for the sake of Juraj, who seemed glad to finally find an excuse of the grudge he’s held ever since Ivan took his spot in the roster for a huge local tournament. He never once sought out the drama himself, yet some of it did make it to his timeline, to his mild annoyance.
Anyway, this is the part where he should’ve continued walking to his girlfriend’s apartment, getting back home with a funny anecdote on a former schoolmate whose reputation precedes him.
But then.
The taller one wraps his arms around the other guy’s shoulder, reaching the tip of his toes to dunk that plastic cup on top of the garbage-lavished fir tree. That’s not the strangest thing, though. Matej watches as Ivan says something to the guy, both looking up at the tree then at each other. Ivan leans in, and —
Matej immediately turns around in the other direction and brisks up his pace, just in time to hear an indistinct ‘what’re you guys doing?’ from the far opposite side. He doesn’t dare take a look, no matter how much he’s burning with curiosity.
It’s only when he reaches a lone bench in the sidewalk that he realizes, what the fuck? Were they gay, or something? Like, for real gay? Cause he can’t lie, that looked pretty romantic as shit if someone were to ask him, even though it was literally a public place. He doesn’t think the average affectionate guy would pull that with their own friend, coming from his own experience. No, they were gonna kiss. But they got caught though, didn’t they? Or they pulled away in time?
He doesn’t know why he’s a bit shaken up by this, despite the fact he virtually knows nothing about those strangers. Kind of, cause he’s seen Ivan Kovačić around campus last year, before the dude tweaked out and was pretty well-liked, but that’s basically it.
It’s still weird as hell, Matej thought the gay thing was from his… breakdown. His sister, Milica, would probably be on his case if he told her this, even though it is totally valid on his part cause no one’s seen Ivan act like that towards guys before. The fact that he was naturally touchy does not count, everyone knew that was his personality.
He grew up around Milica going on and on about progressiveness. Matej only humors her if not to placate her, but he doesn’t care for that stuff for the most part. Nothing against them, he just didn’t think he’d ever be in the same room as a gay person, which is pretty fucking dumb now that he gives more than five seconds to think about it. Statistically, that’s gotta be impossible. He’s read stuff about how people pass by at least five secret murderers in their lifetime, and Juraj said that number’s gotta be fake, it has to be more than ten and Matej only shrugged. How many people does he know are secretly gay?
Matej’s mind travels to Ivan Kovačić. How he’s seen the social media shitstorm that happened, and all the comments and laughed slurs and would you have fucked the entire team? jibed at and how that guy had to transfer mid school year, and Matej feels sharply, uncomfortably aware of the extent of how much that guy endured.
Most of the comments and posts have been deleted now. Doesn’t mean it’s completely scrubbed off the internet.
He was a good player, but I guess now we know why he’s good with balls in the first place, Juraj said. He has a girlfriend, though. This is just an episode. Matej reasoned while recovering from howling with laughter. You think he’d be freaky like that? His girl’s a real looker, maybe she should be with me instead. I’d be scared and tired all the time if I dated someone like him.
In hindsight, the guy didn’t deserve any of it; the busted knee is enough proof of the shame Ivan’s gonna bear for the foreseeable future.
Milica had been pissed at her own friends over this whole thing — talking about it — and Matej called her soft. He still thinks she was, but she probably had a point about it being all super fucked up. It was simply hot gossip to Matej, so distanced from that reality, especially since he’s never crossed direct paths with Ivan. Maybe the fact that it boiled down into ‘school drama’ in his head is part of why it’s fucked up in the first place.
In an odd way, he feels guilty. Partly for seeing a private moment, mostly for how it all went down back then.
He exhales, hands resting against his jeans while sitting up. Matej feels the outline of his phone inside the pockets, and he immediately fishes it out with cold hands, habitually opening his messages to go to his girlfriend’s message thread. He pauses when he has finished typing u won’t believe, the cursor blinking up at him as if it was waiting for him to finish.
Matej brings up one of his knuckles to his lips, a cue he gets into when he’s deliberating something. He deletes the entire message, instead sending a quick one about how he’ll be there soon.
Katya replies with a heart when Matej’s already brought up Ivan’s Instagram profile, and Katya gets a call from Matej after Ivan has received an innocuous notification from a new follower who’s down to play ball with him sometime.
Months later, while Matej is aimlessly scrolling in his bed, he comes across a new post on his feed from ivan_kovacic01.
The caption reads ‘joyride’, alongside a tag in the form of user lovro360_. The picture itself has Ivan and someone else on a sky background, hairs slightly mussed, with both beaming at the elevated front camera, revealing a familiar red Tomos at the very bottom.
Ivan’s smiling holding the camera, dimples on his upper cheek put on full display and his other arm on the handle bar. Unknown, all bright blue eyes with a button nose and moles, is grinning behind him, chin just above Ivan’s shoulder and his hands innocently resting on Ivan’s sides.
Unknown is wearing a black jacket with swirling, almost flower-like patterns, same as that night Matej stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have.
He presses the like button without thinking it and scrolls right past. Good for him.