This turned out more introspective than I'd expected, but what's Bojere without at least a tiny bit of angst, right? 👀
I hope you like it and thanks for the request! ❤️
By the time Jere makes it to the green room, Bojan is already doing the rounds with his bandmates and the crew, laughing and joking and chattering away so fast that it’s a wonder he doesn’t trip over his own words. He means to sneak up on him, surprise him, but it seems that Bojan has other plans because he spots him the moment that he makes it through the door.
“Jere!”
He hadn’t known anyone could light up even more than Bojan already had.
This isn’t the Bojan he sees through the Instagram clips and the perfume adverts that his bandmates slip him over WhatsApp for a laugh. This is the Bojan he brings to family dinner to charm his grandma, the Bojan he belts out cheesy karaoke with, the Bojan he wakes up next to on far fewer mornings than he’d like to. He’s sweaty and bursting with elation as he heads straight for him, suddenly up close enough that Jere can see every mark and laughter line that the camera refuses to acknowledge.
His hair is an absolute mess, falling into his big brown eyes in the same way it does in the mornings. It’s muscle memory by now to reach out and brush it aside, to try to put it behind his ear even though he knows it will slip forward again almost as soon as he’s moved his hand.
He can’t remember whether they’ve ever had any kind of sense of personal space. He suspects they haven’t, actually, as he remembers a shoulder nudge from the stranger next to him at a lunch table in Madrid as if to launch a call of don’t worry, you’re not alone clear over the language barrier. He just knows that Bojan won’t mind because he’s never minded, because whenever they’re together it’s just been so easy to forget where one of them ends and the other begins.
For the first time in ages, there’s that hopefulness about him that Jere loves to see, as though every last problem in the world has no chance of reaching him right now. Fame hasn’t always been the kindest to Bojan, despite all the determination he powers himself with. He hasn’t seen him like this since Thailand, halfway round the world from real life and finally getting a chance to just exist away from demands and deadlines and people watching just a little too closely for the slightest stumble.
It’s how he should always be, Jere thinks. At his happiest and most beautiful. Invincible to anything life can throw at him.
Of course, from there, it’s not like he’ll be able to concentrate long enough on doing or saying anything before he kisses him, so that’s exactly what he leans in to do. It’s little more than a quick press of warm lips, as short as all their time together seems to be with a plane ever present on the horizon, but it’s no less familiar for it. Weeks and months can and do pass between them being in the same country let alone the same room, and yet kissing Bojan feels like home each and every time in the same way his arms feel when they’re wrapped around him or his smile looks whenever he turns to Jere. It wrenches his heart every time he thinks of it, almost enough to cry.
He catches himself just as Bojan pulls back, still buzzing with excitement, full of questions about what Jere had thought of the set and what he’d liked best, as though he could wrangle all of his thoughts into words as immediately as that. There’ll be time enough for tears tomorrow after he leaves Bojan at the airport, even if it’s just a snatched few minutes before he has to carry on with his own day.
So he leans in instead for another kiss and prays it’ll last a bit longer: the way Bojan is glowing with joy, their kiss, their time together, all of it.
