Work Text:
Kris meets Jure at a party.
The first thing the skinny, happy-go-lucky blonde asks him is if Kris has ever considered modeling as a side gig.
Kris blushes and replies that he hasn’t, because he already interns part-time at a publishing agency and he still lives with his parents, so he doesn’t need much more to pay for his studies. He is a chemical engineering first year student, while apparently Jure is senior year at the film academy.
They hit it off quite easily at that party: they talk and joke and at the end of the evening they’ve exchanged numbers and promised each other to get a coffee on campus, sometimes. Maybe invite each other to other parties in the near future.
Kris kind of wishes, while getting home, that he’d felt the Pull towards Jure, at least for a moment.
Jure goes out with Mark.
He says it’s nothing serious, that the Pull isn’t there yet, but Kris can see how the two look at each other, how they sit as close as possible opposite him at the cafè’s table they are occupying during one of Kris and Jure’s coffee dates (that Mark didn’t really want to crash, but Jure insisted he’d come, since he wanted him and Kris to meet).
Mark is far more laid-back than Jure, always wearing a baseball hat and smiling patiently at Jure’s enthusiastic rambling, but he shares the blonde’s sense of humor and passion for movies and video making, so Kris can’t help but think they are actually a very cute couple.
The Pull will come with time, there’s no rush. It happens, sometimes.
Mark shares Jure’s opinions about Kris being fit for the modeling career: he tells him that if he’s curious, he can introduce him to a friend of his, a photographer who he works with sometimes.
Kris shrugs and agrees: maybe just to meet new people, to feel less lonely.
Mark sometimes works with Vita.
She’s a very talented photographer. Kris can see it, in the beautiful pictures exhibited at the art department’s show that Mark and Jure took him to.
He meets her and she politely invites him over at the studio she rents sometimes, offers to help him out with creating a photobook to really give a shot at his modeling career.
Kris is still indecisive on that, but he’d love to learn more about Vita’s work, so he agrees to meet her there.
She is beautiful in her petite form and bright blue eyes under a thick fringe of messy, dark hair. Kris, once again, wishes for a little while she was The One.
But time passes, he poses for her a few times, gets his modeling book, some of his portraits end up on the art department’s walls at the next exhibition and Kris still waits futilely for the Pull.
Vita used to be Jan’s roommate.
But their living situation changed a bit last year, when Jan met someone and immediately felt the Pull. He didn’t think it would be possible to fall in love so fast, so irrevocably.
Jan talks of everything he loves with calmness in his deep voice, but with a special glint in his obsidian, expressive eyes: math, basketball, his cat Igor, his partner.
Kris has just met Jan, but he already admires the older boy like he doesn’t think he has admired someone else other than his parents, in his 22 years of life.
He and Jan become fast friends: he goes with Vita to Jan’s basket games, with him and Jure and Mark to the movies, to concerts with the whole group of new friends.
There’s a different type of Pull, maybe, one not many people talk about: it’s the one he feels when he’s with Jan and Jure, with the people that make him smile the most, relax the most, feel like everything is going to be okay just because they are in his life now, and they are here to stay.
Jan has just moved in with his partner Nace.
And Nace is another piece of the puzzle, another person Kris feels instantly right with.
The veterinarian is Jan’s soulmate and a perfect addition to the group’s dynamic.
Their coffee dates become a four person affair, they plan long vacations together and Kris crashes at Jan and Nace’s place more times than he can count after long studying sessions or after parties, or after game nights.
Nace is older than Jan and Kris so he becomes the person Kris goes to when he needs advice or someone to listen when he wants to express his doubts and fears about his still nameless and faceless soulmate.
He tells Kris everything he knows about the Pull and never makes Kris feel bad about believing so much, maybe too much, that there is someone out there just for him.
Nace used to play the bass and he taught Martin how to play.
And after being his private teacher for a few years, they remained good friends.
Martin only comes back to Ljubljana from time to time, during the holidays mostly, because he lives abroad with his girlfriend, studying for a master program in the UK.
He is soft spoken and kind, but he can also be witty and cunning, extremely intelligent and smart and Kris likes him a lot and wishes they all could see more of the guy.
They organize a party on the last day of Martin’s latest stay in Slovenia and invite all of their friends to it.
Martin’s best friend is Bojan.
Kris sees him, actually notices him for the first time that night, amongst the crowd of people, the extended group of Martin’s friends.
Bojan catches Kris’s curious gaze from across the room and slightly recoils, looking taken aback for a moment before a charming, sunny smile breaks on his face, pulling his mouth in dimples, crinkling his warm brown eyes.
Kris’s breath catches at the sight and he can’t help but subtly smile back, invite the boy over to his side, and start a conversation with him.
The Pull is there, unmistakeable.
Bojan kisses Kris at that party.
(later, Bojan tells Kris how much he’s heard about him from Martin and Nace, how they almost met at one of Jure’s parties or at one of Jan’s games, how he sometimes saw him on campus, across a corridor or on the other side of a room, how he begged Vita for the name of her most handsome model and Mark for a chance, an excuse to finally meet him.
Because the Pull was there already, through pictures and fleeting glances.
Has always been there.)