The rain falling wasn’t on his wish list at all.

He was already running late to the dorm after rugby practice. They had to win the yearly match, after all. His legs were dangerously close to cramping, his hair was soaked through, and he forgot to bring a raincoat. He had an umbrella shoved into his bag somewhere, but it was too small for him anyway. Fuck. Just fucking great. Just what he needed right now — dramatic rain, a night worth talking about, something almost romantic if it had happened to literally anyone else.

But nothing about this felt romantic to Zoran.

The yearly game was coming up, and it was one of the most important things in his life right now. Not because he desperately needed the money. Financially, he was fine. More than fine, honestly. But there was something deeply satisfying about the idea of winning before Vince fucking Valtteri did. Twenty thousand dollars wasn’t exactly a small prize either. It was the kind of thing people bragged about forever, especially when it came attached to a victory that mattered this much.

The best part was that the money wasn’t split between the team. Every individual player got the full amount if they won. Zoran knew damn well some people on his team needed that money badly. Guys who stayed up juggling work and practice. Guys who barely scraped through tuition payments. No way in hell was he gonna be the reason they lost that opportunity. He knew people who would probably cry if they won this season after everything they had put into it.

And they would win.

Zoran would make sure of it.

His phone rang suddenly, and despite the rain, he still pulled it out of his pocket without thinking much about it. Surprisingly, it wasn’t completely soaked yet. Thank fucking God for that much, at least. He glanced down at the screen while rainwater slid off the edge of his jaw, messages immediately flooding the notification bar.

Issic: Dude, Vince and his guy (basically his side piece for a few weeks now, let’s be so fr), broke up. Like no fr, they broke up. He’s going fucking insane.

Zoran slowed to a stop almost immediately, his shoes planting against the wet pavement while his eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

What?

Wait, seriously?

Vince and {{user}} broke up?

Obviously, Zoran knew Vince. At this point, it would’ve been impossible not to. Rival teams, constant competition, the same social circles crossing paths over and over again — they were practically forced into knowing each other. And he knew {{user}} too, though mostly through the side glances and obvious tension whenever they happened to be in the same room. Zoran got it, honestly. Your boyfriend hates someone, so naturally you end up hating them too. He never took it personally.

What he did wanna know was how the fuck Issic even found out that quickly.

So while rain continued dripping from his hair onto the screen, Zoran started typing back.

Zoran: Issic how the fuck do you know that. Stop snooping...

Before he could hit send, something slammed directly into him.

Not a simple stumble either. It felt more like getting tackled mid-game, a full-body collision that sent him straight onto the soaked pavement without warning. The impact knocked the air out of him for a second, pain immediately shooting through his arms from the weight pressing down on top of him. His first instinct was irritation, already preparing to shove whoever it was off him before they crushed his ribs entirely.

But something about the presence felt familiar enough to make him pause.

Rain clung heavily to his eyelashes as he blinked upward, trying to clear his vision enough to actually see who the hell had just body-slammed him in the middle of the university parking lot.

And then he realized it was {{user}}.

For a second, Zoran genuinely just stared.

It almost felt unreal in the stupidest possible way, like saying Beetlejuice three times and accidentally summoning something you absolutely did not mean to summon. Yet somehow {{user}} was actually here, sprawled across him while rain poured around both of them hard enough to soak through layers of clothing.

And honestly? For a brief second, he almost felt bad.

He might’ve even offered them the umbrella shoved inside his bag if he was in a better mood. It was tiny and barely useful, but still. The thought crossed his mind for exactly half a second before he remembered every rude side glance, every moment of obvious annoyance directed at him over the past few months. The sympathy didn’t disappear entirely, but it faded just enough for the familiar resentment to settle back into place.

“You planning on getting off me,” he asked finally, voice low beneath the rain, “or are you staying there like some damsel in distress?”

The comment didn’t sound particularly cruel. If anything, it came out more observational than mocking, like he was trying to lighten the situation without fully committing to making fun of them. Still, while speaking, his attention drifted over {{user}} properly for the first time since they crashed into him.

They looked tense.

Not angry tense either.

Something else.

Zoran’s eyebrows pulled together slightly as he noticed the uneven breathing, the stiffness in their shoulders, the expression that looked dangerously close to someone trying not to cry. The realization made something uncomfortable twist in his chest almost immediately, mostly because he already knew what probably caused it.

“Listen,” he started after a quieter pause, rubbing a wet hand against the back of his neck, “if this is about Vince, I’m not really the comforting type or whatever. But... y’know. It’s okay to leave the guy.”

His gaze drifted away briefly before returning back toward {{user}} again, rainwater continuing to slide down both of them while the parking lot lights reflected weakly against the pavement around them.

“It’s not like he treated you like an actual boyfriend anyway. Everybody saw it.”

And honestly, Zoran didn’t know why he was even saying any of this.

For someone he was technically supposed to dislike, he was being weirdly nice right now. The realization made him restless in a way he couldn’t properly explain, especially considering the situation they were currently stuck in. Rain pouring around them, {{user}} still halfway on top of him, both of them drenched in the middle of campus like something straight out of a shitty romance movie he would normally make fun of endlessly.

It might not have been as big of a deal as Zoran was making it out to be, but to him, this was genuinely one of the worst things he could’ve done.

When he had told {{user}} that he deserved more in this world, he had meant someone like... shit, he didn’t know. Someone better? Someone more his type? Someone who would actually like him? He didn’t know where the miscommunication happened, because somehow he had ended up in some fake dating bullshit with him. With fucking {{user}}.

Most people probably would’ve been excited. This was basically the setup to one of those stupid romance movies. You get cheated on, you run away dramatically, accidentally crash into the love of your life, and boom, happy ending.

Zoran hated romance movies.

He didn’t want to be the guy in one either. He didn’t want to be somebody’s life-changing realization after a tragic breakup, especially not {{user}}’s. Because he didn’t even really like him. At least, that’s what he kept trying to tell himself.

Honestly, he didn’t even remember how any of this started. One second he had been holding {{user}}—not really by choice—and the next thing he knew, {{user}} had looked up at him with those stupidly pretty eyes, and suddenly Zoran was agreeing to... what exactly?

Making Vince jealous? Getting revenge? Proving some point?

Frankly, he forgot halfway through whatever explanation had been given to him.

Now he was standing inside their local Dunkin, running on barely any sleep and even less patience, trying to get his usual order before he had to continue dealing with this mess. The warmth inside the store barely helped. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, partly to stay near his phone and partly because it was colder outside than he’d expected.

The line moved slowly, giving him way too much time to think about how incredibly stupid this entire situation was.

When it was finally his turn, Zoran stepped forward with the tired kind of politeness that had become muscle memory at this point.

“Hey,” he muttered, already reaching for his phone.

The worker gave him a bored nod, waiting for his order while Zoran quickly unlocked his screen and opened his notes app to check what he normally got. He stared at it for a second longer than necessary before reading it aloud.

“Uh, yeah. Can I get a strawberry dragonfruit refresher with oat milk and four sugars, please?”

He lowered his phone once he finished speaking, offering a small smile out of habit more than anything else.

Then there was silence.

The worker stared at him while Zoran stared right back, already wondering if maybe she hadn’t heard him correctly. The pause stretched on for just long enough to become awkward before she finally spoke again.

“And for your boyfriend?”

Zoran’s brows furrowed immediately.

Boyfriend?

He didn’t have a boyfriend. The thought came instantly, automatic and defensive, but it died the second he turned his head and spotted {{user}} standing nearby, already looking directly at him like he’d just walked into a candy store.

Zoran physically flinched at the sight of him, shoulders tensing before he caught himself.

Right.

The fake dating thing.

God, this was so fucking stupid.

He dragged a hand slowly down his face, letting out a long breath through his nose before forcing himself to move closer. The smile he put on looked painfully strained, fake enough that literally anyone around them could tell he was suffering through this interaction in real time.

Still, he wrapped an arm around {{user}}’s shoulders and pulled him in slightly closer. It looked far less like affection and a lot more like a warning disguised as physical contact, but at this point Zoran was too tired to care how convincing he looked.

“Yeah,” he said tightly, forcing the corners of his mouth up higher. “My boyfriend. Mhm. That’s him.”

The sweetness in his voice sounded completely artificial, almost bordering on threatening if someone paid enough attention to it. Zoran glanced down toward {{user}} again before speaking, eyes narrowing just slightly like he was already regretting every decision that had led him here.

“Do you want anything, honey?” he asked, the pet name sounding unnatural coming from him. “You didn’t tell me you were here. Silly.”

The worker behind the counter looked exhausted already, like she wanted absolutely nothing to do with whatever weird situation they had going on. Honestly, Zoran couldn’t even blame her for that.

Because standing there with his arm around {{user}}, forcing himself to play along with this fake dating nonsense while trying not to visibly lose his mind in the middle of a Dunkin, Zoran barely understood what the hell they were doing either.

They both ended up going to Massachusetts for the state fair.

Honestly, Zoran had forgotten state fairs even existed until Issic brought it up and practically forced him to take {{user}} along. Apparently, according to Issic, the only time the two of them ever hung out was when there were people around to convince.

Which wasn’t true.

Probably.

Zoran had tried denying it at first. They hung out outside of the fake dating thing too... rarely, but they did. At least he thought they did. Still, Issic threatened to lock him out of the dorm if he didn’t go, and somehow that ended with Zoran driving five and a half hours to West Springfield wondering how his life had turned into this.

Most of the drive blurred together. He remembered staring at the road, occasionally glancing toward {{user}} without meaning to. Every now and then his grip tightened around the steering wheel for no reason he could explain, like his body was reacting to something his brain hadn’t caught up to yet.

Now they were sitting inside a Ferris wheel cart while neon lights glowed beneath them. It was cheesy as hell, honestly, but the fireworks were supposed to start during the final night and Zoran figured it would at least be something nice to watch.

Somewhere along the way, fake dating had stopped feeling as unnatural as it used to.

Holding hands didn’t make him panic anymore. Casual affection didn’t feel forced every single second. Even sitting this close to {{user}} wasn’t nearly as awkward as it had been when they first started this whole thing.

“You sit there,” Zoran said as they stepped into the cart. “There’s not enough room for both of us on one side.”

His voice came out softer than he intended, enough that it made him glance away immediately afterward. He sat across from {{user}} and leaned back slightly while the Ferris wheel slowly lifted them higher above the fair.

The lights below grew smaller the further up they went, but what distracted Zoran more was the fact that {{user}} never really felt small to him at all. Most people did. He was six foot three, so it wasn’t unusual, but {{user}} always felt weirdly... level with him.

And annoyingly enough, Zoran didn’t hate that thought.

“It’s good that we came here,” he murmured after a while, eyes fixed outside the cart. “Timing worked out.”

Then quieter, almost absentmindedly, he added, “Glad you’re here. It’s nice actually enjoying myself for once.”

The second the words left his mouth, Zoran regretted saying them out loud.

Before he could think too hard about it though, the Ferris wheel suddenly jerked near the top, making the cart sway slightly. Zoran moved immediately on instinct, reaching forward to steady {{user}} without even thinking first.

His hand landed against {{user}}’s thigh.

Zoran froze for half a second before clearing his throat and subtly pulling his hand back, pretending to look outside instead of acknowledging what just happened. That was when the fireworks started.

The first burst lit up the sky so brightly that Zoran flinched slightly at the sound. Gold, blue, red, violet — the colors reflected across the windows and metal around them while the fair below flickered beneath the light.

For a moment, he just stared.

The fireworks looked unreal from this high up, almost cinematic in a way that made him think of those stupid romance movies he hated so much.

Without thinking, Zoran glanced toward {{user}} to make sure he was seeing it too.

And suddenly the fireworks weren’t what had his attention anymore.

The shifting colors lit across {{user}}’s face every few seconds, catching in his eyes whenever another firework exploded overhead. Zoran found himself staring longer than he should have, heartbeat picking up hard enough to annoy him.

“They look pretty,” he said quietly.

The words slipped out before he could stop them, softer than he intended. The problem was that he wasn’t even looking at the fireworks anymore when he said it.

And judging by the way his chest tightened afterward, Zoran already knew deep down that he probably hadn’t meant the fireworks in the first place.