Chapter Text
Ivan was never a fan of foreign cities, but he realized that didn't matter as long as he had Lovro by his side. If Lovro were to hold his hand and lead him into the scorching depths of hell, he wouldn't have minded, not as long as he could reunite with the cold that was found in Lovro’s blue eyes.
Just knowing they could be together, eyes meeting eyes, skin meeting skin, made the rest of the world fade away. In Ivan's mind, he wasn't living in just any world. He was living in Lovro's, and he couldn't have been happier.
Everything around them seemed to slow as they walked hand in hand, Ivan stealing glances at the beautiful boy beside him. His beautiful boy. And until this moment, he couldn’t believe that that boy was his lover.
Lovro turned, catching Ivan's stare, and shoved a hand playfully against his face. "Stop looking at me."
Ivan chuckled. "I can't help it."
And he meant it. If he could, he would sacrifice anything just to keep looking at Lovro's face. Especially at those devastatingly blue eyes… Oh, Ivan was a weak, weak man for them. A heresy of blue, so profound it felt like staring into a piece of the sky's own vault. Yet at the core, if you looked too closely, you'd catch a sunburst of ochre, a glimpse of a molten fleck of yellow topaz that burned with all the warmth the azure denied.
Looking into Lovro's eyes, Ivan felt like he was drowning in an impossible winter with the memory of summer forever flickering at its heart.
"People are going to notice," Lovro nudged him.
Ivan wanted to shrug, but instead, he voiced it: "So?"
If he could, he would declare his love for Lovro to the whole world. But that wasn't something Lovro was ready for. However, once Lovro would give him the green light, Ivan wouldn’t hesitate to do so in an instant.
Lovro noticed Ivan edging closer with every step, so he moved a few paces ahead to keep some distance between them. "Just don't make it too obvious."
Ivan slipped his hands into his pockets and smiled. "Make what obvious? That I'm in love with you?"
His grin widened when he caught the pink tint spreading across Lovro's cheeks. God, how was it possible that Lovro grew prettier with each passing second? It fascinated Ivan how many colors seemed to radiate from him as if Lovro were the one distributing color to a black-and-white world, introducing it to something far from real.
"You can't just say that," Lovro murmured.
Ivan jogged to catch up and fell back into step beside him. "We're in Japan, baby. I highly doubt anyone's going to understand Croatian."
But Ivan knew what Lovro was really saying. It was sufficient enough for people to judge by the language of their eyes that they were madly in love with each other, especially with the way Ivan looked at Lovro. Well, Lovro shying away from his eyes wasn’t exactly subtle, either. And they both knew it.
“Have you looked up anywhere you want to go?" Ivan asked.
Lovro nodded enthusiastically, then immediately shook his head. "I mean, yeah, but also... it's Japan. I kind of want to visit every corner, honestly."
Ivan chuckled. "Well, we have infinite time. Where do you want to start?"
Lovro pulled out his phone and shoved the screen in front of Ivan's face, making his boyfriend blink in surprise.
"Babe, I can't read Japanese," Ivan said.
Lovro rolled his eyes. "You don't have to understand Japanese to know what this is! Have you never heard of Akihabara?"
Ivan raised an eyebrow. "Aki-what?"
Lovro wagged a finger at him. "You can't date an anime freak like me and not know about this place. I'm going to educate you until you get bored of me."
Ivan gently took Lovro's phone and slipped it back into his boyfriend's jacket pocket, never breaking eye contact.
"I'll never get bored of you."
Lovro's cheeks flushed that perfect pink again. "You're so embarrassing."
Ivan smiled. "I know."
Then they continued walking. The Tokyo street was exactly just how Ivan imagined, judging by what Lovro had described to him. Distant chatter, the hiss of a train somewhere underground, a vending machine beeping. Ivan felt Lovro's pinky brush against his, then hook around it. Small. Private. And absolutely perfect.
But something was settling over Ivan. Slowly. Like fog rolling in before you notice the temperature dropped.
He blinked.
The street hadn't changed. Lovro was still beside him. But the sounds felt... muffled. Like hearing everything through water. Ivan wanted to say something, but his mouth suddenly felt heavy. The words were there: I love you, maybe, or this is nice. But they sat at the bottom of his throat and never made it out.
Lovro glanced at him and smiled. He even said something, but Ivan didn't catch it. He couldn’t catch it.
When did the sky get so gray?
Ivan looked up. The light hadn't changed. It was the same afternoon sun, the same soft blue. But it felt gray. Felt dim. Felt like the world had turned down its brightness without warning him first.
"Hey." Lovro's voice came from somewhere. Closer now and terrifyingly concerned. "You okay?"
Ivan wanted to nod. Wanted to say yes, of course, I'm with you. But the nod, when it came, was delayed. Clunky. Like piloting a body that didn't quite belong to him.
For some reason, Lovro found the courage to hold his hand fully now. He felt Lovro squeeze it, but at the same time, he didn’t.
But Ivan held on tight. It felt like he was holding tight on nothing but thin air, and even that, he didn’t seem to feel.
They kept walking. Or maybe they'd stopped? Ivan wasn't so sure anymore.
The street was the same. The crowd moved around them like water around stones. But Lovro… Lovro was different. Not different wrong, just different. His smile seemed smaller. Further away. Like he was standing at the end of a very long hallway instead of right beside Ivan.
Am I losing him?
No. No, that was stupid. Lovro was right there. He could literally see him right there.
But when Ivan looked at their joined hands, he confirmed his fear: he was indeed not feeling Lovro’s touch, even when he could see it. And when he looked at Lovro's face again, he saw him beginning to fade.
"Lovro." His own voice startled him. It was too loud. Too rough. Now, people were definitely going to notice, whether they’d understand them or not.
Lovro turned. "Yeah?"
Ivan opened his mouth. Closed it. The words were there. He was screaming them in his head, in fact: I feel strange, I feel wrong, I feel like I'm losing you even though you're right here—but they just wouldn't arrange themselves into sense.
"Never mind."
Lovro's brow furrowed. That beautiful concerned crease between his eyes. He squeezed Ivan's hand again, but Ivan felt nothing, still. "I'm right here, you know."
Are you?
Ivan wasn’t sure how long they'd been walking, but the sky kept getting darker and darker. They passed a window, a shop selling electronics, bright lights, rows of screens, and in the reflection, Ivan saw Lovro.
But Lovro wasn't standing where he was standing.
The reflection showed Lovro on the opposite side of the street. Arms crossed. Watching them walk by. His face, Ivan couldn’t read.
Ivan turned his head sharply. Lovro was beside him. Still there. Still walking with him.
He looked back at the window.
Empty now. Just his own reflection staring back, pale and wrong.
I imagined it. Just tired. Just—
"Look, that cat is so fat."
Lovro's voice pulled him back. He was pointing at a plump calico sprawled on a doorstep, and Ivan tried to focus on it, tried to laugh, tried to be present.
But when he glanced at Lovro's profile, he noticed something.
Lovro wasn't looking at the cat.
He was looking at Ivan. But not with Ivan. It was the same way you'd watch a stranger on the subway. Curious. Detached. Like Ivan was something to observe, not someone to hold.
Then Lovro blinked, and the look was gone, replaced by warmth.
"Shopping district is this way, slowpoke." He tugged Ivan forward.
Ivan followed. But something cold had settled in his chest.
By the time they reached the crowded intersection, there were two of them.
Ivan noticed it gradually the way you notice a single gray hair, then suddenly realize there are dozens.
A flash of Lovro's jacket disappearing into a side street. But Lovro was right here, asking if Ivan wanted crepes.
A glimpse of Lovro's laugh from a second-story window. But Lovro was right here, pulling out his phone to show Ivan something funny.
Ivan stopped walking.
The crowd flowed around him unstoppably. Lovro stopped too, three steps ahead, turning back with that beautiful confused expression.
"What's wrong?"
Ivan couldn't answer. He was too busy counting.
There. By the vending machine. Lovro, leaning against it, arms crossed, watching.
There. Inside the electronics shop. Lovro, browsing, glancing up, meeting Ivan's eyes through the glass.
There. Across the street. Lovro, sitting on a bench, head tilted, waiting.
"Hey." His Lovro, the one holding his hand, the one with pink cheeks and warm eyes, stepped closer. "You're really pale. Do you need to sit down?"
Ivan looked at him. Then at the Lovro by the vending machine. Then at the Lovro in the shop. Then at the Lovro on the bench.
They were all looking at him now.
And their expressions were beginning to change.
The first one to speak was the Lovro by the vending machine.
"When were you planning to tell me?"
Ivan flinched. The voice was unmistakably Lovro's, but it was wrong. Thin. Trembling.
His Lovro, the one holding his hand, kept on frowning. "I didn't say anything. Ivan, who are you looking at?"
Ivan couldn't answer. Because now the Lovro in the shop was speaking too.
"I don't know how to help you."
The Lovro on the bench. "I never know which version of you I'm going to wake up to."
His Lovro was gripping both his hands now, but Ivan couldn't feel his touch at all. He couldn’t hear him over the others.
More of them now. Emerging from the crowd. From doorways. From behind passing strangers. Lovro after Lovro after Lovro, surrounding him, their voices layering, overlapping, and building.
"I'm exhausted, Ivan."
"Don’t hurt me.”
"One day you're there and the next you're not."
"You scare me."
"I don't recognize you."
"I don't recognize you."
"I don't recognize you."
The voices crescendoed, a choir of Lovros, all saying the same thing, all looking at him with eyes that had once held summer and now held only fear and exhaustion and something worse—
Pity.
Ivan spun, searching for his Lovro. The one who held his hand. The one who blushed when Ivan said I love you. The one whose eyes held that golden fleck of warmth.
He found him.
Still there. Still holding on. Still real.
But his eyes… those devastatingly blue eyes, they were wet. Tears tracking silently down cheeks that had lost their pink. And suddenly, Lovro had lost all of his colors.
And when he opened his mouth, his voice was the quietest of all.
And the most devastating.
"I don't know if I can do this forever, Ivan. "
The words hit like a blade.
And all the other Lovros, dozens of them, hundreds, filling the street, filling the world, spoke at once, their voices merging into a single unbearable truth:
"I don't know if I can do this forever."
Ivan tried to reach for any version of Lovro, hoping that at least one would hold onto their forever. But all of them were turning away—No, they were all running away from him. Scared. Terrified. Horrified.
Then they never locked eyes with Ivan ever again. They just kept saying it, even as they faded, even as the world dissolved around them:
"I don't know if I can do this forever."
"I don't know if I can do this forever."
"I don't know if I can—"
Ivan fell to his knees, clutching his hair so hard his scalp burned, Lovro's words still carving through his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to shut off his brain, but the voices only grew louder, the world shrinking smaller and smaller until the darkness swallowed him whole.
He screamed. And screamed.
Then his eyes snapped open.
Sonja loomed over him, wide-eyed, her hands hovering near his shoulders like she was afraid to touch him. "Ivan! Ivan, you're okay. It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare."
Ivan gasped for air, chest heaving, sweat soaking through his clothes. His heart pounded so violently he could feel it in his throat, his temples, and right behind his eyes. He stared at Sonja, trying to piece together where he was, who she was, and why the world felt wrong.
Okay, he was in his attic. His bed. Morning light through the window.
A nightmare?
"Ivan..." Sonja's voice was tentative. She wanted to reach for him, he could tell, but his body wouldn't stop shaking, and that scared her. He could see it in the way she pulled her hand back. "Are you okay?"
Ivan's mouth opened. Nothing came out at first. Then, barely a whisper: "Lovro."
Sonja's expression flickered.
"Where is Lovro?" Louder now. Demanding. But when she didn't answer fast enough, Ivan was already moving, already lunging out of bed, stumbling across the attic, throwing open the bathroom door, the closet, and calling out like Lovro might be hiding in the corners.
"Lovro!"
Nothing.
"Lovro!" His voice cracked desperately. He didn't know how many times he screamed it. Didn't care if he woke the neighbors, the street, or the whole goddamn city.
"Ivan!" Sonja caught up to him, grabbed his arms, and with all her strength wrenched him around to face her. "Ivan, look at me!"
He looked. But his eyes were wild, searching past her, through her.
"I need to see Lovro. Is he here? Is he—"
"He's not here!" The words tore out of her, sharp with pain, and it stopped him cold.
They stared at each other in the silence that followed. Sonja's breathing was unsteady. She swallowed, forced herself softer: "He's not here. He was here a few days ago, but he left."
Ivan went still. "Left?"
She nodded, rubbing her own arm like she could smooth away the tension radiating off both of them.
"Why?"
The word came out splintered. A child's question. The kind that doesn't expect an answer because it already knows it won't like one.
Sonja didn't have one to give, though, which made things even harder for Ivan to understand whether she knew the answer or she was genuinely just as lost as he was.
Then Ivan remembered. That sentence. The one all those Lovros had said in unison, their voices layering into something unbearable:
I don't know if I can do this forever.
Was that why? Had his dream been a warning? Had Lovro actually left him for good after what had happened because of him?
Sonja sighed. "Come on. Let's get you back to bed."
She guided him gently, and Ivan let her. His legs moved because she moved him. His body sat because she placed him there. He was a puppet, and the strings had gone slack.
He stared at the floor for a long moment. Then, quietly, he asked: "What time is it?"
Sonja studied him. "Does it matter?"
He didn't have an answer. He was doing it again. He was pretending this was normal. Pretending the sleepless nights were normal, the nightmares when he finally crashed were normal. All perfectly normal. All perfectly fucking mental.
Sonja held out a glass of water.
Ivan glanced at it. Then at her.
She shook her head quickly. "I'm not giving you your medication, if that's what you thought."
Ivan looked away. Didn't take the glass.
“How… How many nights have I slept?”
Sonja gulped. “You slept for three days.”
Three days? How?
Ivan turned from her, curling into himself with his face buried against his knees. "You can leave."
Sonja let out a bitter chuckle. "Yeah, right. I'm doing anything but that."
Ivan sighed. "Sonja, please. Just leave. I want to be alone right now."
She blinked at him, something fragile passing behind her eyes. "Look, Ivan. I know I can't understand what you're going through. But you look terrible, you just woke up from a nightmare, and I can't—"
"Can't what?" Ivan's voice sliced through hers, sharp but mostly brittle. He didn't lift his head from his knees. "Can't leave me alone because you realize how pathetic I look? Can't stop pretending this is something you can fix by just being here?"
Sonja flinched. "That's not what I—"
"I slept for three days." His laugh was hollow and ugly. "Three days, Sonja. Do you know what that means? That means I was gone for three days. That means my brain decided to check out without telling me. That means I'm—" His voice caught, strangling on the word.
He finally looked up, and Sonja took a half-step back.
His eyes were red-rimmed, wild, but worse than that: they were wet.
"I'm broken, Sonja." The word came out mangled, like it hurt to say. "I'm fucking broken. And you're sitting here with your water and your gentle voice and your 'I can't understand what you're going through' like that's supposed to make me forget that I’m—" He grabbed fistfuls of his own hair, tugging. "I’m sick in the head."
Sonja's mouth opened, then it closed. Then, it opened again. But she had no idea what to say anymore.
Ivan kept going, the words spilling out now like poison he couldn't stop. "You know what I saw? In that nightmare? Lovro. Lots of him. Everywhere. And every single one of them looked at me like—" He choked. Swallowed. Then, he forced it out. "Like they were tired. Like I was tired. Like loving me was just... exhausting. And the worst part?" His voice dropped to something barely there. "The worst part is I don't even blame him, especially after knowing about everything that I put him through."
He released his hair and let his hands fall limp at his sides.
"Because look at me. Look at what I am. I don't sleep for weeks, and then I sleep for three days straight. I'm either nothing or I'm too much. I'm either dead inside or I'm behaving like a fucking maniac. And Lovro—" His breath hitched on the name. "Lovro just has to... watch. Watch me fall apart. Watch me disappear. Watch me become someone he doesn't recognize."
His eyes dropped to the floor.
"I don't know if I can do this forever, either."
The words which were Lovro's words were now his. Or maybe they had been his all along, and he just seemed to realize that by saying it out loud, himself.
Sonja stood frozen, the glass still in her hand, her knuckles white.
“So, leave. Please. Just leave me alone.”
The words landed like stones. One after another.
Sonja didn't move at first. Ivan could feel her staring at him, and it was that look she got when she was trying to figure out if someone meant what they said or if they were just saying it because they were hurting. He knew that look. He'd seen it a thousand times. From her. From Lovro. From himself in the mirror.
But he couldn't look up. Couldn't meet her eyes. Couldn't risk seeing whatever was in them and having it crack him open further.
Seconds passed. Maybe minutes.
Then, softly, the glass appeared at his bedside. She set it down without a word. The quiet clink against wood was somehow louder than anything she could have said.
Ivan heard her shift. He heard her breathe in, like she was about to speak. But thankfully, it didn't come.
Instead, he heard her footsteps. Slow at first. Then faster. The creak of the attic stairs. The door opening. The door closing.
And then nothing.
Ivan sat there, curled into himself, listening to the silence she left behind. It was what he asked for. It was what he wanted.
So why did it feel like she'd taken all the air with her?
Minutes bled into each other. The light through the window shifted was paler now, or maybe that was just him. His eyes stayed on the floor, on the glass of water she'd left behind, on the dust motes drifting through the room like they had somewhere better to be.
Alone.
He'd wanted alone.
He was alone.
And the voice in his head, the one that sounded like Lovro, like all the Lovros, whispered again:
I don't know if I can do this forever.
And Ivan had no idea if a ‘forever’ with him would ever be possible.
Ivan pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw colors bursting behind his lids. It was better than seeing nothing at all.