counterpoint

on display

He doesn't know they take pictures of them together until Nathaniel leaves his phone unlocked on the kitchen counter, gallery set to recent, and he sees.

It's not out of the ordinary, really, not when they take up modeling on a semi-regular basis, but — well. There's something about them, these snatches of moments they shared, that feels different. Intimate. Wholly damning.

He wonders what Nathaniel sees when he looks at them. Wonders what had possessed him to take his phone out, snap an image then like he just had to pin it down.

(Really, even he can't pin it down himself, whatever it is he feels when he looks at — yeah.)

He's not man enough to ask Nathaniel outright for the pictures, and so he sneaks them onto his phone, shot by precious shot, as if they haven't already been singed to the back of his eyelids. Days pass, but the thought never leaves him. Tantalizes him, leaves him teetering on a knife's edge. Does anyone else have pictures of them as well?

He doesn't quite ask around, but it's a near thing: friends are met with, their galleries quietly consulted, the pictures granted.

Brick by painstaking brick, he builds an exhibit of memories, of actions unknowingly taken and distances unwittingly crossed. They stand all-too-close together; their shoulders brush more often than not. Their gazes follow an ebb and flow, caught in a volley of back-and-forth.

They look at each other like — like there's no one else they'd rather see.

Shit, he thinks in a distant, disbelieving sort of way, we've been unbearably fucking rude, haven't we? No wonder everyone's been taking pictures of them behind their backs; he can't blame them, really.

(Being the last ones to figure it all out — god, no one will ever let them live this down.)

He looks at his phone, at the evidence laid out over months of candid shots, at the truth they now tell, and decides that, well, that's enough granting photoshoots without pay, thank you very much.

(If they've been unbearably rude to their friends then, they'll be sickeningly insufferable now.)