Jannik stares at the photo. Blurry, grainy, from a distance. He’s familiar with it, has watched himself from similar angles, private moments frozen in place from cameras he wasn’t aware of. Violated, maybe, but not in any new or surprising way. Shrugging over them with his girlfriend after, “It happens, no?”.
It’s not even anything bad. Jannik has been caught groping and touching and kissing. Instead, Carlos is smiling and leaning inwards, it’s intimate, the way you carve out a private space with someone you care about. There are other photos, photos of them jumping into the sea, pool noodles underarm.
But it’s the photo of a delicate hand on Carlos’ cheek that gives him pause. A squeeze. A smile. It makes his chest constrict. It unlocks a memory, so small in comparison to everything else that follows them. Something he almost forgot. Carlos stuffing risotto into his mouth, leaning in close to Jannik. Alicante sun streaming through a window. He was achy from a long practise and Carlos was seemingly ravenous. A stray piece of rice on the side of Carlos’ mouth as he finished his plate.
“You’ve got-“ Jannik started, then stopped as Carlos looked at him with wide eyes. He reached up to brush it away with his thumb. A moment of stillness suddenly charged. Inappropriate for sitting at the kitchen table. He moved his hand upwards and squeezed Carlos’ cheek. “You’re cute,” he said. He laughed. Carlos laughed too, some of the tension broken.
“I like you Janni,” Carlos said, spooning more of his mother’s risotto onto his plate. “I like you a lot.” He began to eat again, the tension was broken, but the hunger, the hunger was still there.
They were teenagers then. Half nothing. A romance stretching out in the early years on tour. Kissing and fumbling and god, how many of these tiny stray moments did Jannik have buried in his brain. How many times was his heart going to flip out of his chest.
He closes his phone. Opens it again. Closes it. Considers texting Carlos. Something like “heard your back for cincinnati?” something like “heard you have a new girl👀” something like “do you still find it hard sometimes?” something like “did you know how special it was, when we had it? i think im still learning.”
In the end he tosses his phone, makes his way to the kitchen. he is, after all, hungry
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