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The party is good. When you walk in the music is pumping, the drink is flowing, and the atmosphere is high from a mix of both. Jakov is, beyond doubt, proud about this one. He mingles with the crowd, every face one degree of separation from him by maximum. People throw him “hi”s and “good party”s in the beginning, but slowly everyone makes their way down the slippery slope of drink after drink after drink, and pretty soon everything’s nothing but a vibe. It’s great. It’s so Eva’s scene. He only wishes she were here.
Lovro is, though, of course, and by extension so is Ivan. Whenever they can get away with it, one is always attached at the hip to the other. Jakov wants this to be fun for them, too, and he’ll never admit to double-checking the guests, but any effort is worth it for them, even if it means people will have to walk in on them making out on the sofa, or something. Jakov’s sort of curious what that would look like. Because isn’t that, like, par for the course for any good party? If you haven’t got a couple or two teetering too close to needing a room by the end of the night, you’re doing something wrong.
His tolerance is pretty high, though after getting too enthusiastic in a round of some convoluted drinking game with girl-Nix and Vanessa, he’s pretty pushing the threshold. So he isn’t tottering into the kitchen, but he sure does feel like it. It’s secluded, the music muffled by the walls, and inside, the only people are Lovro, leaning against the counter, and Ivan, leaning against Lovro. The height difference makes it a bit funny to watch.
“Hey, bros,” Jakov exclaims, words slurring into each other, and he makes to dap Lovro up. He shakes his head, lifting the two cups in his hands. Jakov nods in understanding. “How’s the party?”
Lovro smiles. “Really good. Though Ivan’s had a bit too much to drink.”
“So have you.” Ivan’s voice is deep but surprisingly composed for someone who’s supposedly drunk. “I just like doing this for no reason.”
“Looks painful, though,” Jakov quips, settling on the island across them with a fresh can of beer in his hand, “like, you two look, like, this.” He bends himself dramatically sideways. Lovro grins at the gesture, and pride washes over Jakov.
“It’s not that bad,” Ivan hums. He leans his weight even further onto Lovro and makes him stumble sideways, just that little bit.
“What an asshole,” Lovro remarks, setting down one of his cups and using his free hand to stroke Ivan’s cheek. Jakov laughs. Notices the hand on Lovro’s waist. Feels the laugh thin out. Seeing all this affection feels a bit wrong, like he’s just intruded on something private.
Or maybe he’s just not used to seeing Lovro date. Aside from that unfortunate spiel with Ema— they all knew how that had gone— Lovro and PDA weren’t really two words that came together in his head. Even with Ivan, they’d always been pretty good at never letting the facade slip.
Lovro takes a generous gulp from the other cup in his hands. If anything, he actually seems even tipsier than Ivan, who frowns. “You sure I haven’t drunk from that cup already?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Lovro shrugs, and downs the rest of it in one go. Jakov’s attention catches on his Adam’s apple bobbing in the light.
Ivan does, too. His eyes jump immediately to Jakov, then, not accusing, more so like interest. A bolt of awful, terrible uh-ohs shoots through Jakov. He feels fourteen again, listening to his mum yell at him for sneaking out to a party: first regret, then hitting himself for getting caught.
“So how are things with Eva?” Ivan asks suddenly.
Jakov shifts on his feet, alcohol-addled neurons striving to make up an answer. How did Lovro get over how unnerving this guy is?
Ivan’s grip on Lovro is tight. “We’re fine. On good terms. Pretty much the same, nothing’s changed.”
“Aha. But not made the jump yet, huh?”
Lovro jabs an elbow into Ivan’s side, face suddenly much redder than before. Ivan looks at him as if to say, what?
“No,” Jakov admits, hand twitching around his can, still untouched. “I think we want to give it a bit more time. She’s finding herself, I’m finding myself. It’ll be better for us both in the long term.”
“Mm.” Ivan nods, forcing silence between them by dropping the thread of the conversation. Jakov hasn’t felt this unnerved in a while.
That last drink is really starting to catch up to Lovro. Jakov tries his hardest to ignore how Lovro’s leaning even more of his weight on Ivan than vice versa now, his eyes going lidded, a hand sneaking around Ivan’s waist like he’s trying to hide it. Badly. Ivan doesn’t do anything except adjust his centre of gravity and hold Jakov’s gaze.
“Uh,” Jakov averts his eyes from Lovro’s face tilting up en route to probably, maybe, kiss Ivan’s neck. He can feel a flush coming on from his neck up. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
“Mhm,” Ivan agrees, a tone of taunting to his voice that Jakov is not at all a fan of. Jakov pushes himself off the counter, can in hand, and speed-walks out of that place. It doesn’t stop him from catching a wet smack of lips on skin, though, and he leaves with the hypothetical, disruptive image of his best friend pressing himself against someone else, maybe with hands roaming, mouth pressing kisses on anywhere it can find.
Fucking hell, he needs another drink.
—
Patience is nowhere near Lovro’s greatest virtue. As soon as Jakov’s gone, Ivan gladly dips his head to meet Lovro’s invitation. His hand slips onto Lovro’s nape, as it always does; he says it gives him leverage over how hard the kiss goes. Tonight is not the night for restraint, though, Lovro thinks through a brain that’s really feeling that beer and that vodka, and he just about shoves himself onto Ivan even more. Their teeth clack together, but not painfully enough for Lovro to stop.
Ivan does, though, detail-oriented as he is. His eyes are filled with mirth, his pupils dilated from the dark and maybe something else, so certainly it’s not because he doesn’t like it. “Jesus Christ, baby,” he breathes, smiling, “what’s gotten into you?”
“Jakov was looking at you weird.” Lovro’s filter is turned down low enough not to sugarcoat it.
“Weird,” Ivan repeats. Lovro’s not sure whether that’s an agreement or a reiteration. “How weird?"
Irritation rises in Lovro. He digs his fingers into Ivan’s shoulder blades. The hands on his waist tighten in turn, a playful reprisal. “Can we just keep kissing?”
“Yes.” The word is a balm. Lovro gets on his tiptoes, that’s how serious this is. Ivan’s hand drifts up to cup his cheek. Closing the distance between their lips is all Lovro’s really sure of and yet Ivan pushes him back, as if to pace him, ration out the contact like he thinks he owns it all.
"Did you like him staring?”
Lovro’s stomach does a quick, nauseous swoop, then a triple axel, and a backflip. What kind of question is that? “Dunno,” he stutters, remembering the heat of jealousy coiling in his belly. It hadn’t been unpleasant. “Like, he was just looking at you.”
“Oh, no, darling, he was looking at you like he could eat you up alive,” Ivan assures, his blitheness the kind that veils worse intent. “Thoughts?”
Lovro’s mind is racing. His reasoning defaults to the standard fallback of what do I want? He swallows. “I guess.”
“You liked it?”
“Maybe. Oh, my God, Ivan, just—” Lovro leans in. Ivan meets it this time, smiling into the kiss. Lovro slips his tongue in between Ivan’s lips at the first chance he gets, and the kiss gets exponentially messier, just the way he wants it. He suckles on Ivan’s tongue, drawing a groan out of him. He feels hands on his hips. Good.
“Baby,” Ivan interjects once Lovro actually allows him to break for air, “baby. We can’t do this here.”
“Why not?” He looks up, genuinely confusedly at Ivan. “It’s only friends around.”
Ivan looks fond. Also turned on. Lovro feels like punching the air. “Yes, but I mean, let’s do this in the bathroom. Somewhere not the kitchen. I feel watched.”
Okay, sensible. Lovro wipes Ivan’s saliva from his mouth with his arm. “You know where it is?”
“Yeah, Jakov showed me.” The mention of his name recalls Ivan’s earlier inquiry. Lovro wonders, not for the first time, what’s going on in that mind of his. Ivan taps his shoulder. “Come on.”
Everyone else is outside playing some drinking game. Lovro couldn’t care less, only that it allows them to slip into the side corridor unnoticed until the bathroom door falls shut behind them. Ivan has the prudence to turn the lock before Lovro shoves him back against the door and kisses the breath out of him. Ivan groans back, low and desperate, and tugs Lovro closer, chasing the second-hand acrid tang of alcohol. Ivan’s hand threads through his hair, the other curls around his waist, just as he knows Lovro likes it. That way, when Lovro’s knees eventually buckle under the onslaught, Ivan will be there to catch him.
Lovro nips at Ivan’s bottom lip with renewed impertinence. Ivan’s mouth falls open from the surprise, but quickly, Lovro feels teeth tugging lightly back on his own mouth, and Ivan’s hand searching beneath his shirt from his waist up to his chest, the touch rough and scalding. Lovro whimpers softly when a gently calloused hand brushes over his nipple—
Knock knock. The sound rings out like a gunshot. Lovro just about jumps out of his skin, he’s so surprised. Ivan just looks vaguely amused.
“Who’s in there? I gotta wash my face, Mario spilt beer on me!”
Lovro knows that voice. It’s the same one who spoke to them in the kitchen, who apparently looked at them both with strange, ulterior motives. “Fuck,” he whispers in slight panic, pulling away and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, “what do we–?”
Ivan shrugs and steps away from the door. He points to the lock, mimes turning it.
“No!” Lovro hush-yells. He catches himself in the mirror. He looks like the textbook definition of someone who got caught kissing and wants to hide it. He tries to run a hand through his hair like it might help. Obviously, it does not. He wants to wash his face.
“Hello?” the voice shouts again, a new agitation in it. “Can I come in?”
Ivan cocks an eyebrow, mouths he won’t care.
Is that all there is to it? But Jakov is standing out there with beer dripping from his hair onto the floor, and it’s a pitiful image. He won’t care, Lovro repeats to himself. It’ll be too fast for any questions. He nods at Ivan weakly.
Ivan turns the lock and Jakov bursts in with a groan. “Thank fuck!” He storms to the sink, not even looking around him, and starts splashing copious amounts of water onto his face. A lot of it gets on the mirror.
Ivan closes the door quietly. “You wanna take off your jacket?”
“Nah,” Jakov grumbles, squeezing the water out of his bangs. “Mario and his obsession with Tina, man! I’m happy to be the wingman, but seriously! It gets to a point!”
Lovro’s commiseration barely covers his impatience. His lips feel sore, a pleasurable reminder of what they’d gotten up to, what they could be doing now. His eyes move to Ivan. What the hell do we do?
Lovro’s thoughts are still a half a minute behind his motor abilities when Ivan strides up to him with a wicked glint in his eye. The hints start falling into place. Ivan pulls him into a kiss, Jakov still behind them, and every nerve ending in his body fires back up again with a vengeance.
So we’re playing this game. He settles surprisingly quickly into that reality. If anything, he just feels a bit shown off like this. Ivan is taking his sweet time, sucking gently on his lip, then his tongue. Wet smacks echo through the bathroom. They sound insanely loud to Lovro. Only then does he register that the tap's stopped running; he dares himself to look up to the sink, and is rewarded by the sight of Jakov blinking right back at him.
His eyes shift from shock to mortification, to something more curious, more probing. Holding his gaze fires a shock of electricity through Lovro that settles, tingling, in the peripherals of his body.
Ivan starts kissing down his jaw. There’s a trail of wetness curling down his neck. Lovro tilts it to give Ivan more access and lets out a cruel, little sigh. Jakov has never stopped looking.
This is such a horrible idea he can’t even put it into words. Part of Lovro’s brain is working overtime to scream out warning signals about how bad the fallout could be when everyone is sober again. The other part of him, the part that’s overcome by a heady mix of alcohol and lust, thinks this could be fun. The way Jakov is looking at him is so intense, so distracting, that other, more disruptive thoughts simply shut themselves down.
I’ll humour you two, he thinks, somewhere along the line, having decided that this was a group ploy, and runs his hand up into Ivan’s hair, all the while staring dead-on into Jakov. Ivan nips his neck playfully in approval.
Jakov’s voice cuts through the room. “Yo.”
Ivan’s mouth stops moving against Lovro’s skin. He watches Ivan turn around and look at Jakov. He doesn’t even try to act like his surprise is real. “Go on.”
Jakov has the face of someone forced into a particularly gnarly interrogation. Then, “What’s it like?”
Ivan right now reminds Lovro of a hunter watching its prey near a set trap. “What’s what like?”
“You know.” He’s flushed, from drink and whatever this is. “Kissing a guy.”
Lovro’s brain grinds to a halt. His thoughts are running, running, running overtime. He’s still got the guts to be that direct? What the hell.
Ivan cocks an eyebrow. He looks remarkably calm. “You’re interested?”
“Maybe.” Jakov’s face is carefully blank.
Ivan glances at Lovro, a silent ask for permission. But what permission? What on earth is he even consenting to at this point?
“You know,” Ivan continues, eyes still on Lovro, “the best way to test that out is by experiencing it.”
Experiencing. Kissing? Is his— oh, God, he can’t even compose that thought without dying a little inside— is his boyfriend offering to kiss his best friend? Who he knows Lovro had a big fat crush on? What on Earth is going on? Like, is Jakov gay now? Or– what do they call it? Curious? He clings to the buoy of that thought. Well. Wouldn’t that have been useful to know a year ago?
At least Jakov looks just as surprised by the audacity of Ivan’s offer. “Seriously?”
Ivan shrugs. “What do you think, Lovro?”
Even the notion seems ridiculous, realistically nothing but a delusion he’d think up in some hot, guilty daydream. And yet here they are, handing it to him on a silver platter.
“I— uh.” His hands clench around the toilet seat. “I mean.”
“We can drop this like nothing ever happened if you want,” Ivan adds. Jakov startles himself awake and nods rapidly.
“No,” Lovro hears himself saying, voice disconnected from the rest of his body. Here we go. “It’s okay. I can watch.”
Jakov looks doubly stunned. “For real?"
Ivan hums, slowly approaching Jakov until they’re close enough to do it. “You heard him.”
A beat. "Okay.”
Well, fuck. Lovro’s never heard Jakov sound like that before. He folds his legs up to his chest on the toilet seat and hugs himself, trying to burn the scene into his memory. Ivan’s hand reaches out to lock the door again.
“Here we go,” Ivan says. He tilts his head in and presses a kiss to Jakov’s mouth. When Ivan receives no objection, he does it again. Then again. Jakov doesn’t move anything but his lips. Lovro watches on, transfixed, butterflies in his stomach, listening to the sounds. It hasn’t quite sunk in what’s going on yet. He wonders if this technically counts as cheating.
Jakov’s hand flies up into Ivan’s short hair, tugging forcefully, a little impatiently, and Ivan deepens the kiss even further. He grabs Jakov’s shoulders, and the mutual push pulls them off the wall and into the centre of the bathroom. Lovro’s eyes are glued to where their mouths are meeting. This isn’t usually the angle he takes of Ivan kissing, or at least that hasn’t been the case for a good while. Does he look like that when he’s kissing Lovro? Their bodies are pressed up against each other’s, hair in each other’s hands, pushing and pulling. Ivan looks very pleased when Jakov pushes back against a particularly hard nip on the lip. He wears it well.
Lovro adjusts his legs to sit normally, unable to look away. All the blood in his system is draining out of his head and into more superficial places. Jakov isn’t looking at anything at all.
Lovro wonders if he looks this lost when he kisses Eva.
Ivan parts their kiss after what seems like an eternity. Jakov looks dazed, like he just had some eureka moment. Lovro feels wound up and too warm. Ivan catches Lovro’s eyes and grins a little apologetically, mostly smugly. He looks insanely pleased with himself. Again, Lovro tells himself, he should not look this good after de facto cheating.
He doesn’t even realise he’s frowning until Ivan comes up to him and settles between his legs. He has to bend down a ludicrous amount to kiss Lovro. His lips are warm and suspiciously wet, but Lovro melts into the kiss nonetheless, and he pulls Ivan down, deepening it to the best of his ability. He doesn’t even realise how hard he’s moving until fingers move to tilt his chin further up, almost as if to reassure. He lets his eyes flutter shut. He can feel Jakov looking. The stare burns.
They kiss for long enough. He feels a mess; he probably looks like one. Ivan’s pupils are dilated from the dark and everything else. He strokes Lovro’s cheek, soft and reverent.
“Bitter about missing out?”
“No?” Lovro says, immediately on the defensive.
“Mm. How does Jakov taste?”
Jakov stiffens in his periphery. Blood rushes to his face. What kind of fucking question is that? “Uhm.”
Ivan tosses his head in Jakov’s rough direction. “You could try it firsthand. If you wanted.”
Jakov just looks taken aback. He doesn’t look like he doesn’t want to, at least. The way his eyes drop to Lovro’s mouth for a split second says it all. Lovro’s crotch feels too warm; that is probably why the idea sounds as appealing as it does. “Why not,” Lovro says, too high on the notion of Jakov finding him hot, wanting to kiss him, to think better about it.
Ivan steps away and gestures to Jakov to give him the go-ahead. The room is stifling and full of that tension that comes with the execution of an objectively bad idea. Lovro pushes himself up from the toilet seat anyway, fiddling with the edge of his sweatshirt with his hand.
Jakov walks closer, his hand copying Ivan and tilting Lovro’s chin up a little. Their eyes meet. Of course, Jakov looks illegally hot from here. Lovro’s head is spinning. He wonders what will change between them when they come to their senses.
But, again, the way Jakov is looking at him is fundamentally admiration. It’s just an extension of affection that was always there. He licks his lips. Lovro itches to bring up the crush situation, but he has this feeling that Jakov’s already thinking about it.
“Lucky Ivan,” Jakov quips, boyishly, before coming in for the kill.
Jakov kisses like he could channel his affection in all its sincerity through his mouth, though the shared wetness between them is a useless reminder of what exactly the context of this kiss is. It makes something tight and fiery in Lovro rear its head. He wraps his arms around Jakov like a child staking an arbitrary claim over his favourite toy.
Jakov curls his hand into the short strands at the base of Lovro’s neck, tentative at first, but quickly encouraged by the sigh of delight Lovro emits at the action. Honestly, he’s pretty close to a perfect kisser. Lucky Eva.
Lovro feels something on him. Of course, it’s Ivan, the voyeur that he is. That delicious heat he hasn’t felt since that one Friday party wakes itself up. It’s the power of holding your cigarette to someone else’s skin and them doing the same to you, and daring each other to flinch away first. How he’d secretly missed feeling on top of the world. He could do anything. He arches his neck, does his best hitched-breath moan into the air, eyes never leaving Ivan. He nudges Jakov down his jaw. Any good performer knows how to play with their audience.
Ivan looks like he just spiritually sucked on a lemon. It feels even better when Ivan pulls them apart. Lovro feels like he just won a race. Anyway, he’s panting like he is. His vision is going a bit spotty.
“He looks good like that, doesn’t he?” Ivan’s voice sails over his head.
“Damn.” That’s Jakov. “I mean, I get it.”
“Ngh,” Lovro mumbles, affronted, as if to say, I’m literally right here. I’m going to faint against the bathroom wall. Someone help me.
“Sorry, beautiful.” Strong arms prop him up and set him back down on a sturdy thigh. Ivan’s body heat is seeping through the cotton of his T-shirt. Lovro’s head lolls back. God, even that feels too thick right now.
“You’re missing out.” Ivan, again.
Lovro has to look up at that. He wrinkles his nose. “Uh, hello?”
Jakov snorts out a breathy laugh, runs a hand through his hair, making it even more dishevelled than it already is. “Guess so.”
Surprise after surprise tonight. Lovro looks at Ivan. Ivan looks at him. They shake their mental hands and Ivan looks at Jakov. He says, “Want to, like, extend that trial period?”
Lovro groans. “Awful metaphor, holy fuck, Ivan."
Ivan nips him behind the ear, just where he knows to do it. His hands are large and warm around his waist, and mentally, Lovro is ice cream on a summer day going all soupy from the heat of a palm. “Sorry. Point is, Jakov—”
“Yes,” Jakov interrupts him, straight and sure and impatient. “Why the hell not. If Lovro wants to.”
Lovro cannot think. He beckons Jakov in the only way he can remember how. His impulses aren’t one-hundred per cent making their way to his brain. Is he beckoning? No matter, Jakov is kissing him anyway and he genuinely, no-joke, starts moaning into it. This situation is so fucking cheesy. God, it’s so hot. Jakov smushes their lips together with that passion only a desperately horny teenager can muster and Lovro likes it, he likes it so much, he clings around Jakov’s neck like he’s his sole lifeline, and Ivan is pulling him back down so Lovro feels like he’s being pulled at two poles. He might be grinding on Ivan’s lap but God, he can't care, what with the way Jakov is making out with him and Ivan’s kissing down his neck and moving his hands down his waist. His willpower is nothing in the face of unrivalled attention. Maybe this was what Ivan meant when he called him spoiled.
Lovro is a ticking time bomb and it takes everything in him to push Jakov and Ivan away from him. The world feels like it's losing balance, a spinning top running out of control into the eventual halt. “Just,” he gasps, “not here.”
“Guest bedroom,” Jakov answers instantly. They don’t even say anything in response, just scramble to their feet and Jakov exits before they do, the best attempt they can make at preemptive damage control. Lovro takes the time to splash some water on his face. The cold sobers part of him up.
“You okay with this?” Ivan asks softly, behind him.
Lovro rolls his eyes not unaffectionately. Always making him say the quiet part out loud. “Is that even a question?”
“Well,” he sounds somewhat uneasy, “he was your gay awakening.”
Therein lies the problem, then. “And who am I dating now?” Lovro stares into Ivan’s reflection. “It’s only for the night. And I wouldn’t date him in a million years.”
“You think he wouldn’t date you?” Ivan sounds oddly displeased. Arms wrap over his shoulders.
Lovro straightens up and leans into Ivan. “I wouldn’t let him, anyway,” he breathes, eyes closing.
Jakov sticks his head into the bathroom then. “All good?”
Ivan nods. Lovro nods. Jakov points them down the neon-lit corridor– everyone’s drunk out of their minds, hide round the corner and go up the stairs– and Ivan leads Lovro along, out of the dim light of the bathroom, into the dark. Jakov closes the door for them, alcohol and adrenaline pounding through his system, shoots a text to Mario– don’t wait for me— hurries after.