The Shape of Silence

The café’s stillness echoed with the tapping of rain against glass. In the background, a saxophone whined softly. Daniel’s thumb traced the rim of his cup, the ceramic warm against his fingertip. Across from him, Theo sat fiddling with a sugar packet, nails bitten down to nothing.

"It’s been a while.” Theo’s voice was light, almost airy, but there was something involuntary in the press of his finger into the swell of paper in his hand.

Daniel nodded. "Two years."

An exhale. "That long?"

Neither of them mentioned the in-between. The ignored calls. The messages half-written, half-honest.

Theo glanced up, then away. He cleared his throat. "I saw your name in a byline the other day. Almost messaged you."

"You should have."

A smile flashed in the corner of Theo’s mouth, brief but insistent. Daniel’s gaze lingered.

"Would you have answered?" Theo rasped.

Daniel’s hand slid down his cup, now cool. His gaze wandered out the window, where rain blurred headlights into streaks of gold and blood.

A long silence followed, drawing out the wail of the saxophone. Theo sighed into it, remembering how their bodies once spoke in the quiet—when their cheeks were still plump and every movement a lamentation of teenage lust.

"You always wanted everything said out loud. But I—" He hesitated. "I’ve never been good at that."

Daniel studied him. The familiar creases around his eyes, the way his hands curved around the muscle of his thighs, like he was bracing for something that wasn’t Daniel’s weight.

"You didn’t have to say it," he murmured.

Dark eyes dropped to the swell of Daniel's lips, bitten and raw. Then, carefully, he reached across the table, fingertips skimming the damp sugar packet lying forgotten between them.

He focused on the burn of Theo’s gaze along his cheek as his thumb traced the familiar imprint of a cooling touch. As the saxophone’s moan sank into stillness, Daniel caught the sigh of his name, drawn low and wanting.