Chapter Text
Through the tears, Bojan felt his face flush with anger. This was happening more and more often. Jere knew how to push his buttons. Of course, the Finn never wanted to intentionally hurt him. They never wanted to intentionally cause pain to the other, they just got tangled with whatever hurt the most. Sometimes booze was involved, but often it was just two sensitive individuals laying themselves bare in front of each other.
Bojan needed something. A drink, a cigarette, a hug, his fist punching a hole in the wall, someone else’s fist punching a hole in his face. He knew he was being melodramatic, but his whole body was shaking and his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest.
Bojan hadn’t noticed that his sister had entered the room. She pressed a handkerchief into his hand. Not a paper tissue, but one of those fabric ones that made even crying seem like a refined, artisanal experience. It was too flowery, too timid, but he took it.
“It’s Jere again”, Tijana said. It wasn’t a question, which made him feel ashamed about how obvious it all was.
“When you look like that, it’s always Jere.”
“Please don’t give me a lecture”, Bojan said. “He’s a good person and he so good to me and it’s not his fault I’m like this.”
Though he wasn’t fully sure of it right now, but when he wasn’t upset he knew it was true.
“You are both good people and that’s why I feel like finally saying this out loud”, Tijana said.
Bojan waited. Tijana had seemed fond of Jere when they met in Liverpool. Of course she did, everyone liked Jere, but perhaps her patience was growing thin.
“I know this might sound wack, but have you heard of twin flames?” she asked.
“That’s like a hippie New Age word for soulmates, right?”
“Yes and no. It’s based on the idea that someone is kind of the other half of your soul. But when many people think of soulmates, they assume that being with this person comes easily and naturally, while the concept of twin flames is completely different. It claims that you will be drawn to each other, but the interactions between the two of you will be turbulent and wrenching.”
Tijana seemed to speak nonchalantly so she wouldn’t give the impression she was pushing this idea on Bojan or that she was even sold on it herself.
“Supposedly they are like mirrors for each other’s trauma and wounds and have a lot of learning and growing to do together. But it’s important, meaningful learning.”
Important and meaningful learning certainly resonated.
“And you believe me and Jere are…?” Bojan asked.
“I’m saying that this is a concept many people believe in. I’m not sure what to think about it myself. I think it can also be used in damaging ways, like people are actually in harmful relationships, but tell themselves it’s supposed to be difficult. If two people are in constant turmoil, is anything good coming out of it or is it just hurting them? At least from my perspective, the answer is clear. Jere makes you question yourself in a good way and get your shit together. You nourish each other. And now I’m going to nourish us by making some tea .”
Tijana wanted to give Bojan a little pause to digest this, and he tried. The subject itself felt overwhelming, so he focused on how glad he was that he could talk about this with his sister. He had never explicitly told her about his feelings, but she had picked up on them almost immediately when she arrived in Liverpool, probably even before that. And now it was out there for them to discuss. Huh.
A few minutes later she returned with two steaming mugs. Early August in Slovenia was a bit too warm for hot drinks and it brought a sweat on Bojan’s skin, though that felt pleasantly grounding.
The tea was red and still slightly tart underneath the honey that she added. Fruit tea. Like Bojan: sweet, hot and fruity. He could have made that joke, they would have both laughed, but he didn’t.
“Who knows about this New Age crap”, Tijana continued. “I want you to be happy and people can make each other happy even if they sometimes also make each other sad or furious or whatever. And you did know immediately, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. When I saw Jere for the first time, it wasn’t like love at first sight or I want to marry this guy or I want to f– sleep with this guy, it was more like ‘yes’. Or ‘of course’.”
There was a huge mess of thoughts and emotions ever since Bojan saw the music video for Cha Cha Cha. What he felt immediately was tinged with attraction, but he hadn’t felt like that before when looking at an attractive man.
That something was difficult to put into words, but when Jere won UMK, the main thing was gratitude. Käärijä winning meant that Bojan was going to meet him. In the interviews he watched, Jere was so sweet. Definitely hot and fruity too, but very importantly, he came off as a lovely person.
From back in January, Bojan was excited to meet Jere, and then from the time their eyes first locked, everything made perfect sense. He felt almost triumphant. He knew.
And then he actually got to know Jere, who had such a magnetic personality regardless of whether he was playing the role of Käärijä or being fully himself. Surprisingly quickly, the Finn decided to reveal his real self to Bojan. It’s like he also knew. That was what they were supposed to do. That’s what made sense.
Recounting that now felt slightly odd. How everything had been scary and sparkly and intense, but also soft and tender and self-evident. Like oh. That wasn’t how human relationships typically operated.
Bojan’s phone buzzed. He already knew who it was. Not exactly rocket science in the situation, but it could have been someone else.
“I’m sorry I hurt you. Love you.”
It made him Bojan feel all warm, though he hadn’t for a moment doubted that the message was coming. He showed the text to Tijana, who smiled fondly.
“This is how you communicate? ‘I love you’?”
“I have five other men in my life who tell me they love me all the time”, Bojan said.
He knew he was damn lucky for that. Having six good friends with whom he was close and affectionate was a big deal. Though even with their many hiccups, conflicts and issues, all of the other friendships were so much easier.
“Do they mean the same when they tell you that as Jere does?” Tijana asked.
“Probably? I can’t read people’s thoughts.”
“People tend to channel their thoughts and feelings into their behavior. You’re not the only one who wears their heart on their sleeve.”
Bojan sent Jere a string of heart and hug emojis. The Finn would know he meant them.
He missed Jere so fucking much.
***
Not surprisingly, Bojan dreamed about Jere again. The Finn appeared in his dreams almost every night, yet frustratingly, Bojan almost never remembered their contents. He did know it wasn’t the same dream, but a different one every time. At least the majority of them weren’t sex dreams or necessarily even romantic. Just Jere living in his head rent-free.
“Do you remember the fortune-teller where grandma took us? The one with jet black hair even though she was very old.”
“It was dyed, Bojan”, Tijana said.
Oh. That hadn’t really occurred to Bojan. Somehow he had assumed that the lady was so witchy or otherworldly that she didn’t go gray. He had been so naïve back then. Maybe he was being even more naïve now, taking interest in divination at all.
Her house had smelled strange. It wasn’t the smell of food or the scent of a perfume or incense, nor patchouli which more Western hippie types tended to douse themselves in. Whatever that smell was, it blended with tobacco, as she was constantly holding a cigarette with those wrinkled fingers.
Bojan wasn’t sure what she used to make her divinations. Was it coffee grounds? Tarot? At least it wasn’t a crystal orb. She said Bojan would go on to have a great career, but it was going to pose a lot of difficulties. Many people would look at him in admiration, which seemed less like a divination and more like an educated guess based on his appearance. That he should eat more leafy greens or was it root vegetables, Bojan wasn’t sure anymore. More yoghurt or kefir.
The wise woman got angry and refused to answer when grandma had tried to inquire about Bojan’s future wife and kids. Grandma had interpreted that in an ominous way that didn’t make much sense to Bojan, like maybe his future wife was going to die young before they were able to have kids. She had been distressed.
It seemed pretty reckless to take someone to a diviner, because either it was made-up shit, or if it was actually real, there could be some highly disturbing information in there. Though surely those who made up things would tell people exactly what they wanted to hear?
“Do you think it’s possible the lady didn’t tell me about my future partner because she knew I wasn’t going to marry a woman, and she was homophobic so it upset her?”
“Oh, for sure. If this fortune telling business is in any way valid, she probably saw just that and it pissed her off. Or maybe she was just imagining an ugly, nasty girl. Who even knows.”
Had she actually seen Jere? Bojan was amused by the idea that maybe she had got a vision of Jere in his stage outfit, so the problem wasn’t even that he was a man, but that he was a very slutty-looking dude.
It was probably ridiculous to even entertain these ideas. Even if the lady was legit, that didn’t mean she saw Jere. Just because Bojan was head over heels for him and just because they really clicked didn’t mean that was how it was going to go. And while certainly “fruity”, he still hadn’t conclusively gathered whether Jere liked men.
When Bojan next called his grandma, he asked if they could go to the fortune teller lady again.
“She passed away last year”, grandma told him. “Lung cancer.”
For a moment the pack of cigarettes in Bojan’s own pocket felt like it was burning.
“Did she know in advance that she was going to die?” he asked.
“Of course she knew, she was on oxygen for the last year or so.”
She couldn’t have been all that good at divination if she couldn’t foresee the cigs were going be her demise, no?
“I can take you to someone else?” grandma suggested.
Bojan figured the demographic of old Balkan wise women probably wasn’t going include many LGBT allies. He wanted to see this particular lady, but alas, it was not an option anymore. He wondered if there were more inclusive diviners around. Probably anything could be found online. Maybe he should take a look.
***
With his bandmates looking at him like that, Bojan knew he had missed what one of them had said, a common occurrence nowadays. It was just hard to focus. The fan was whirring on the table and Bojan was waiting for it to rotate to cool down his burning face for a second.
“Bojan?” Jan asked.
“Yes”, he said, and the look on everyone’s face said it all.
“Did you not sleep well?”
He did, but that’s not what Jan was really asking. He wanted to know if Bojan was okay. Yes, he was, merely distracted. Thoughts were swirling around his head and some of those thoughts were actually melodies, but it wasn’t music that belonged in this moment.
They had Bojan perform the latest unfinished song and then there was another set of complicated expressions on his bandmates’ faces.
“I’m not sure if we need Padam #2”, Kris said.
“It’s not Padam #2”, Bojan protested. He could see the point, but Padam was about hopelessness and despair. This song was pretty glum, yet there was a glimmer of hope, it was forward-looking. So if anything, it was more like Novi val #2.
Perhaps they didn’t need #2 of any of their songs, but that was the problem. Creativity was bubbling inside Bojan, yet what came out sounded derivative and often miserable, too. Even when he found find joyful or at least hopeful things to sing about, the minor key and melancholic Slavic chord progressions were beckoning to him.
It wasn’t that Bojan was mopey all the time. A happy person by nature, most of the time he was in a good mood. Being with his friends made him even more joyous and talking with Jere provided a near-miraculous boost. Most of the time. There were some exceptions, like when they fought or when Bojan just missed him too much.
But joy was a tricky emotion to portray. It was cheesy and cloying and bland and corny. That’s why Bojan had penned most of his past lyrics about imaginary heartbreaks. How a broken heart looked like in movies, in 2D. That’s surely what most artists did. Some of Bojan’s colleagues had been married for a decade yet kept cranking up wistful breakup tunes.
Padam was their only song that was really about Bojan’s own heart aching. There were times when he just couldn’t sing it. Would it be so bad to fully open yourself up twice?
The others could tell when the lyrics were about Jere, no matter how veiled poetic metaphors he was trying to hide behind. Supposedly, their listeners would also know, because they had turned Bojan and Jere into a thing, which Bojan wasn’t really opposed to, it just made some parts of the ordeal more complicated.
But what would Bojan even sing about, when every subject seemed to be a no-no? He even tried penning something about the fortune teller had died of cancer without being able to foresee it, but that wasn’t Padam #2 anymore, that was straight-up Gloomy Sunday #2 and no one needed that.
Bojan tried an angry rant set to music after one of their fights, one that would have earned the “Parental advisory: explicit content” label much more earnestly than that paltry “jebe” in Ona. But when he attempted performing it, he was no longer angry and it came off as cartoonish.
There was so much music that wanted to exist, but it didn’t really belong anywhere, and was Bojan supposed to just murder it? Probably.
Always murder your darlings, that’s what they said.
So then Bojan concocted a song that was happy-go-lucky and a bit corny, the language straightforward and the allusions naïve. It wasn’t obviously about Jere, even though of course it was about Jere. It was not a masterpiece, but it was fine, it would do, especially after they slapped on some brass instruments.
It would tide them over until Bojan could write moderately sad cinematic songs again.
***
It was 2 AM, which meant it was an hour later still in Vantaa. By now Bojan was running two internal clocks, one for Slovenia and the other one for Finnish time. Normal people would be fast asleep by then, but Jere was not a normal person.
Jere stayed awake until ungodly hours and barely slept at all, anyway. Usually it had Bojan frustrated and worried, but at times he was grateful for the chance that the Finn was available.
He needed Jere. No one else would do now.
“Bojan?” the Finn finally answered.
“I’m not okay”, Bojan managed to get out. Speaking was a massive effort. His hands holding the phone felt numb and almost like they weren’t even his.
“You have panic attack?”
“I think so. It feels like the world is suffocating me.”
On top of everything else, there were the floods. The world was suffocating Bojan, but his own country was drowning. There would be charity concerts soon. Joker Out would play there, they always played to help people in need, because that generated money and money was what helped people, but there would be no songs about Slovenia being submerged in water.
“How I can help?” Jere asked incredibly sincerely.
“I don’t know. I just want you to hold me.”
Was he being too much? Bojan could ask Kris for something like this, so hopefully not.
“If you are here, I hug you and hold you tight so you feel very safe. I touch your hair and stroke your back and tell you it’s okay.”
Jere knew exactly how to help. His soothing voice went on detailing how he would hold and caress Bojan, allowing the Slovene’s imagination to fly. He pictured Jere saying all kinds of things, not sexual ones, but about tender, affectionate, loving touches. How Jere would hold Bojan’s hands and gently stroke them.
Bojan’s heartrate and breathing were slowly returning to normal. Jere had such a soothing presence even through the phone. Such soft hands. His touch was perfect. He would kiss Bojan’s hair and forehead and the tip of his nose. And then his lips.
That’s where the fantasy began to shatter, because of course Jere wouldn’t kiss his lips. Even if Kris and Jan and others had, but Jere could not go there.
“I touch your shoulders and your neck and maybe I put little kiss there too.”
Jere was blushing, Bojan could tell from the voice. This line he didn’t imagine, Jere really said that. And he had kissed Bojan’s neck in real life, live on TV in Liverpool, yet this imaginary kiss felt more intimate. It was kind of like phone sex, but without the sex. Just verbal depictions of love and care.
What if they really were two halves of the same soul?
“You are still there?” Jere asked.
“Yeah.”
Depending on the meaning of “there”. Bojan was floating, drowning, suffocating, but right now he was grounded by Jere’s imaginary hands, because that’s how pathetic he was.
“Just a bit distracted.”
“It helps what I tell you?” Jere asked.
“A lot.”
Bojan heard him smile in the static of the line, Jere’s breath was full of smile. Bojan hoped he could convey to Jere how incredibly helpful his words were.
“Can you turn the camera on?” he asked.
Jere did and he had tears in his eyes, too. He had managed to cry without Bojan noticing, but his smiles were always audible, even in the silence. Now he was smiling again.
“I’m so lucky to have a friend like you”, Bojan said.
“No. I am lucky.”
Jere put his hand on his heart. Again Bojan could tell even if the picture was cropped to only show his face. The Slovene was intimately familiar with Jere’s invisible and imaginary hands. Of course they had known each other in a past life or on some other plane of existence, why else would Bojan know him like that?
It was very late. They should go to sleep, they both had places to be the next day. Earlier in the summer when they dialed each other in ungodly hours, Jere’s apartment was still light because Finland was weird like that.
Bojan had been there, in the eerie and exhilarating sunlit nights, but it felt so far away. Now the sun set much earlier. It got darker by the day, soon it would be autumn and then winter. Though not without one thing happening first.
“Bojan”, Jere said. “We meet again next month.”
“Yeah”, he breathed back. Next month and next lifetime and every lifetime, but why couldn’t it be every day in this one?
Even next month seemed impossibly far. Next month, technically, but still many weeks away. Bojan knew it would go relatively fast, with the whirlwind of concerts and studio time, though it would pass much faster for Jere, who was at least twice as busy.
“Will you hold me then for real? I mean, even if I’m not having a panic attack.”
Now, that was where Bojan unequivocally stepped over the line, but Jere just assured him:
“Of course.”
“We should go to bed. I’m sorry for keeping you up”, Bojan said.
“My own stuff keeps me up, not you. And you are in bed already.”
Perhaps it was obvious, but Bojan wanted to imagine that even without the camera, Jere could also see.
“Can you stay on the call until we fall asleep? Or at least I do. Please.”
“Sure. Hyvää yötä, Bojan.”
It felt like a fractal: a couple of words yet so many more hidden in their nooks and corners.
“Good night.”
Bojan knew Jere would be the last one of them awake. Jere was watching him sleep. Jere was watching over him.
“Of course.” Sometimes things seemed impossible but at other times, they just flowed with such ease, Jere’s breath in his ear where it belonged.