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“Hey, sunshine.”
Rafa looks up, and there he is. He leans against the wall as he unlaces his boots, trying to balance on one leg instead of sitting down to take his shoes off like Rafa always insists he should. His woolly hat is pulled down over his head and his scarf is up to his chin. He looks like he’s cold, but he’s radiating warmth. The room is already that bit brighter, that bit more homely, just for Roger’s presence.
“Hi,” Rafa says, breathless, like he’s seeing Roger for the first time. He always feels that way around the man, like he’s falling in love with him all over again; like he’s a teenager once more, watching Federer play, hoping that they might one day be able to talk. Rafa thinks about it often, what it would be like to be able to tell past him that someday soon, Roger will be more than a colleague, more than a friend. Roger will someday be his morning, noon and night; his reason to wake up and his reason to fall asleep, the reason his heart beats and the birds chirp and the reason the world keeps on turning.
Someday, Rafa wishes he could tell his younger self, with his eager eyes and calf-length shorts, he will call you sunshine.
Roger comes over to where Rafa is sitting on the sofa and presses a kiss to his forehead before making his way into the kitchen. He does it in the gentle way he always does: two fingers to tilt Rafa’s chin before he brushes back his hair, lips lingering against Rafa’s forehead for just a moment longer than necessary, as if he is savouring it. Rafa savours it too; he closes his eyes and for a second, merely exists.
“Did you get everything you need?” He calls out to Roger as the sound of opening and closing cupboards and the clinking of tins and jars rings through the kitchen and into the living room.
“Just about,” Roger calls back, “They didn’t have the tinned tomatoes you like, so I’ll have to make the pasta sauce slightly differently. Is that okay?”
He asks Rafa this like he’s genuinely concerned; like he wouldn’t hesitate to get back into the car and drive about for hours looking for the best tinned tomatoes if Rafa had an issue with a slightly different pasta sauce. The thing is, Rafa is sure Roger would do exactly that. He is certain that Roger would be content to scour every supermarket, every greengrocer’s, if meant securing those Sardinian tomatoes that Rafa likes the best.
Rafa thinks about how love is stored in the kitchen, and he knows it to be true. Every meal that Roger makes tastes like love, if love could have a flavour, and he hopes that every meal he cooks for Roger tastes just the same.
He gets up from the sofa and walks into the kitchen, taking hold of the hand that Roger extends to him and lets the older man reel him into an embrace. He presses a kiss to Roger’s mouth and murmurs against his lips, “Of course.”
The pasta sauce for dinner that night is slightly thinner than usual and not quite as rich, a brighter red than typical - more scarlet than cardinal - but it tastes, predictably, just like love.
And love pairs wonderfully with a bottle of Malbec.