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Ivan startles awake from the sharp pain shooting from his knee up to his throat and struggles to get a full breath in before he can concentrate enough on the pain to try and make it stop feeling so encompassing, eventually managing to convince his brain his leg is the only thing up in flames after what feels like an eternity.
He does all this while keeping himself as still as possible, not that much because of the knee itself but because Lovro is currently sleeping glued to his side –head on his shoulder and arm across his chest– and he looked more tired when they went to bed than he has in weeks, so Ivan would rather allow him to get his fair amount of rest.
Ivan takes another deep breath and tries to roll his ankle and crack it to see if that will restart his body’s self-awareness on his whole leg.
He knows the only thing that hurts is his knee. His body and his mind should know as well.
It works for a second, but another jolt of pain makes his leg spasm from his knee to his hip and then the flashes of pain just keep radiating out of his knee in random intervals after that. He has to bite down on his bottom lip to not make a sound and he tries to breathe himself through it but the world narrows down on the pain to such an extent that he can barely feel or think about anything beyond it. His mind going fully blank for one scarily long second.
Ivan squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth, enjoying the momentary relief that the pressure on his jaw brings. He feels the cold tears roll down his temples and cheeks towards the pillow beneath him but he is too outside his own mind to care by then.
He doesn’t notice when Lovro’s weight lifts off him, nor does he notice the shift of weight on the mattress. The next time he is aware of Lovro being in the same room as him at all is when something cold plops down on his knee and snaps him out of his own mind.
When he opens his eyes in shock the first thing he sees is Lovro’s blue eyes wide open in worry right above him. Ivan tries to smile reassuringly up at him but judging by the twitch of his cheek and by Lovro’s concerned frown, he doesn’t think he manages it all too well.
Ivan drops the expression and closes his eyes again, taking another deep breath and enjoying how the cold has already started to work on taking the swelling down.
After a blink, Ivan turns his head slightly and looks at Lovro currently kneeling on top of the bed right next to his hip, still firmly pressing one of the cold pads Ivan keeps on his freezer onto his knee.
He should be asleep right now. Ivan feels himself start to get frustrated and shallows it back.
“Hey.” Ivan tries to say softly, his voice cracks. He scrunches his nose up and clears his throat.
“Hi.” Lovro answers while giving him a small smile that makes him look even more concerned.
Ivan wants to tell him to go back to sleep. He wants to put his arm around him and pull him back down onto his shoulder so he can get the rest he needs instead of having to baby him because his fucking body forgets how to act at random times now.
Lovro grabs his hand and puts it on his lap, interlocking their fingers and squeezing until Ivan's looping thoughts recede and he is looking at him again.
“Hey.” Lovro repeats softly, a gentle tilt to the corners of his mouth.
“Hi.” Ivan replies after a beat, his voice rough but steady this time.
Lovro's close mouthed smile gets slightly bigger and the corners of his eyes crinkle for a second. This is Ivan's favourite Lovro-Smile. All of them are his favorite, but this one is so plainly honest that it might win out if you press him for a top 1.
Lovro squeezes his hand again and then releases him, letting go on the cold pad shortly after too so that he can lean sideways and away from him. Ivan cranes his neck to follow the movement and watches him as he grabs a couple of pills and a glass of water from the side table that weren't there when they went to sleep.
Ivan blinks and puts his hand on Lovro’s hip to stabilize him as he wobbly pulls himself back, pill and glass in hand.
“I couldn’t find a tiny water bottle, so this will have to do.” Lovro whispers in his Ivan-voice as he presents both things to Ivan like an offering.
Ivan's heart squeezes and somersaults inside his chest at the same time and he swears nothing hurts for a moment. He feels his face go soft and finally manages a real smile, and then he very slowly tries to semi incorporate himself using his other arm as a crutch while he takes first the pills and then the water, and chugs it all down in a blink. Lovro takes the glass from him and puts it back down on the table, and Ivan’s hand automatically moves back to his hip to help in the only way he can right now, completely unnecessarily.
Lovro comes back and raises one eyebrow at him.
“You are not fooling anyone.” Lovro half-chides softly.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Ivan says blankly, but he still hasn’t moved back to rest on the pillows again.
Lovro rolls his eyes at him when Ivan squeezes his hip once, but he gives in quickly enough and just leans down so he can give him a feather-light peck on the lips –it's a blink and it's gone kind of kiss, but Ivan feels it like a shock of electricity. When he pulls back he doesn’t go very far, face close enough that the only thing Ivan can fully focus on is how impossibly blue his eyes are.
Ivan moves his hand up to cup Lovro’s cheek and pushes his face down slightly so that he can kiss the tip of his nose before he pulls him close and kisses him on the lips again in thanks.
He pulls back a little bit exactly as his leg decides to spasms again -the pain traveling up and down his body like a hot flash this time- and he has to press his eyes closed as he lets out a hiss, dropping his hand away from Lovro’s face so he can grab at his upper arm and squeeze to try and ride the pain out. Lovro’s hand automatically coming up to grab onto his wrist in silent support.
After the worst passes, Ivan lets him go and defeatedly plops back down onto his pillow with an annoyed huff that is only half performance, but that he hopes looks entertaining anyways.
Lovro gives him a little snort and a fond smile in reaction, so he counts it as a win and allows himself to shoot him a tired little smirk.
“I’m going to put a pillow under your ankle and then we can put that compression thing on and go back to sleep, yeah?” Lovro informs him as he moves himself off the bed slowly enough to not jostle his knee, taking the cold pad with him.
Ivan's heart squeezes again and he lets his head loll so that he can follow Lovro’s movements around his room. He asks himself how the hell he has gotten this lucky and his chest swells with affection as Lovro putters around and finds the things he needs, a bit hesitantly still but laser focused.
“You know where everything is, huh?” Ivan voices almost accidentally, either the pills or the sleepiness starting to make his mind feel a bit cottony. He hears the love in his own voice and doesn’t regret it even a little bit.
Lovro looks back at him over his shoulder, his eyes scrunched up in amusement.
“I’m going to rob you blind when you least expect it.” He says from across the room, and Ivan can’t do anything but let out a surprised cackle.
Lovro makes his way back to the bed much more confidently, a smirk of his own firmly in place. The worry still in his eyes almost an afterthought now that Ivan is feeling more like himself again.
Ivan makes himself useful and helps him by raising his leg so he can place the pillow but when it's time for the compression sleeve to go on, then the only thing left for him to do is to look up at the ceiling and grit his teeth as Lovro puts it on past where Ivan can’t reach right now. He does it as gently as he can, but there is simply no way to do it that doesn’t involve moving his whole leg in excruciatingly painful ways.
When the full compression sleeve is past his ankle, Ivan looks at Lovro's panicked face and struggles to incorporate himself and bend forwards so he can take over, putting his hands gently over Lovro’s -which had frozen in place the second they had made eye contact.
Ivan knows they both hate this part, and Lovro knows as well, but it’s one of those things one only feels brave enough to say under the cover of darkness that only the early hours of the morning and an extra blanket covering your head can provide -a sort of unwarranted confessional- so neither of them dare to voice it now.
“I can-” Lovro stammers.
“I know.” Ivan reassures gently. “It’s going to hurt regardless of who does it.”
“I-” Lovro tries, but he can’t quite add anything else. His eyes swift quickly between their overlapping hands, his knee, and Ivan’s face.
“We do it together, yeah?” Ivan suggests in a low voice, with as much of a reassuring smile as he can muster right now.
“Are you–” Lovro stops himself.
“Yeah.” Ivan nods in understanding.
“Okay.”
Ivan moves to grab onto the upper edge of the sleeve with one hand at each side of his leg and Lovro follows to grab onto the lower part, pulling slightly so that it doesn’t press onto his leg as they move it slowly upwards. Ivan usually does this in one smooth jank that makes him feel like he just pulled his skin off and never remembered to put it back on. With this technique the feeling is much less visceral.
Once it's mostly in place Ivan lets go with a big relieved breath and collapses back down onto the bed, his eyelids impossibly heavy all of the sudden. When he doesn’t feel Lovro follow him, he fights himself to open his eyes and looks down to see him still nervously frowning down at his knee.
“Sleep.” Ivan slurs, more a question than a word.
Lovro glances up at him and goes to say something before closing his mouth with an audible click.
“Hm?” Ivan asks eloquently.
“It’s not-” Lovro starts and stops again.
Ivan guesses ‘mostly in place’ is not up to standard for Lovro.
“Just move it” Ivan mumbles tiredly, but it comes out more as –jus’ mov’it– with all the worlds slurring together.
Lovro seemingly understands him anyways.
“You sure?”
Ivan hums and closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and holding it inside of his lungs to brace for the jostling.
Lovro places his hands near the top of the sleeve so Ivan knows where to expect the pain from, and then he feels him move away and grab onto the top edges a second before he twists the entire thing slightly to the left as painlessly as possible.
It’s still a lot.
“Ouch.” Ivan says blankly after he gets his breath back. His mouth feels like cotton too now.
“Sorry.” Lovro whispers from much closer than Ivan expected.
Ivan opens his eyes as he moves his head in the direction of his voice and finds Lovro lying on his side next to him already. The blanket is back over both of them.
“You teleported.” Ivan says loopy.
Lovro smiles at him and fireworks go off inside Ivan’s brain.
“I’m a magician.” Lovro answers in English.
God Ivan loves him.
“A magician.” Ivan repeats back dumbly, also in English.
“Yup.” Lovro confirms with a nod before moving his hand to cup Ivan’s cheek and softly rubs under his eye with his thumb. “Time to sleep.”
Ivan closes his eyes the moment Lovro puts his hand on his face, and then he feels his lips press down on his forehead, then the apples of his cheeks and finally his nose before he pulls away and Ivan feels the weight of his head down on his shoulder again, his arm crossing over his chest.
“I love you.” Ivan says for the nth time, words all jumbled together and barely intelligible.
Lovro kisses his neck in answer and Ivan feels the smile he presses against his skin before the pain and the pills finally catch up to him and he falls asleep again.