Once the preparation and service were done, all the staff abandoned the stoves, griddles, and kettles to march in unison towards the cafeteria.

I spotted Gioele along the way, and hurried to join him. I imitated him by taking off my hat.

Gio followed my every move as I freed myself from the cap. For a moment, I deluded myself into thinking he was admiring my hair, or something like that, but no. He was just fixated on my ears.

"I set aside some dishes for you." I explained. "I thought you might like them."

Gioele shifted his focus to my face. He seemed confused.

"What's wrong?"

"Did you prepare something specifically for me?" I would have expected him to be embarrassed, or flattered... Instead, he seemed scared.

"No, no, of course not!" I slightly panicked. I mentally slapped myself for adding that of course not. As if it were logical that I would never do something for him.

But Gioele let out a sigh of relief.

How was I supposed to interpret that reaction? My first thought was the usual. He knew. He had always known. He hadn't said anything because he was polite, but he knew I was gay, and now he was afraid I had a crush on him.

I walked down the road to the cafeteria clenching my fists and feeling the need to shout at someone. Specifically at Gioele, to give me some non-conflicting signals, for once.

We each grabbed a tray and got in line. Bianca had left the plates for Gio at the last table, with the "gluten free" sign in front. In the days prior, I had never seen that label, I was pretty no one in the staff was allergic to gluten, but nobody blinked in front of that reserved section. With so many interns coming and going, special diets had to be a common appearance.

"Forget these." I stopped Gioele as he scanned the trays with a distressed look. "Yours are down there. I just plated them before adding too many ingredients. I didn't do extra work. If anything, I did less for you." I couldn't hide a note of annoyance. I had busted my butt to finish the preparation an hour early to be assigned to meals, and he...

"Ah! Great!" Gioele replied all happy.

He bypassed the line and reached the last table. He gave a dirty look at the "gluten free" sign, and immediately made sure to inform me that he wasn't allergic to gluten.

"I know, I know. It's just... a mistake. Don't worry."

I was starting to regret doing all that work. It was probably presumptuous of me to imagine he would be happy about it. I wasn't saying that he had to be grateful...

Okay, yes. I wanted him to be grateful. To say thank you. To compliment my efforts and my cooking.

Instead, he did none of that. He placed the tray on the table, turned each plate a full 360 degrees, examining it from every angle. Then he began loading the tray: the bland salad without beans, the rice with blended onion and mushrooms cut into uniform pieces, the grilled mackerel with nothing but a drizzle of oil and salt. His portion of gnocchi without gooey mozzarella was critically observed for a good two minutes, and in the end, Gio pushed it away.

"No gnocchi?"

"There are tomato peels."

"No, I strained them."

"They're there, I'm telling you."

"They're not, I'm telling you." There it was. How long had I managed to hold back from being an annoying pain in the ass with my roommate? Three days? A new record.

Gioele looked at the plate again. He turned it slowly, staring at it without blinking. "There." He said, pointing to a small piece of peel.

It was the size of half my pinky nail. My expression must have reflected that thought, because Gio's head retreated into his shoulders as if trying to escape.

"I can still eat it." He placed the plate on the tray and lifted everything to move to the table.

"No, wait..." I ran after him. There, now I felt like crap. "You don't have to eat everything. It's too much for one person."

Gioele slammed the tray on the table and sat down, the chair squeaking. He stared at the center of the table as if he wanted to set it on fire.

"Gio..."

"You prepare this specifically for me, didn't you? You lied before." For the first time since I'd known him, he looked at me, really looked, straight in the eyes. And he was pissed. "I don't like it when people lie."

And for a moment, I felt guilty. Guilty for what? Busting my ass?

"Okay, yes. I did it specifically for you. I just wanted you to have a decent meal. But you don't have to get any weird ideas. I would have done it for anyone. I don't like seeing someone go hungry while everyone else eats."

I gripped the back of the chair without daring to pull it out.

He stared at the center of the table again. In a low voice and clenched teeth, he spat out, "Thanks." He picked up the fork, holding it suspended over the plate of gnocchi. "I didn't ask you to do it, okay?! Now I'm forced to eat it because you did it for me."

"But it's not true! If you don't like it, you don't have to force yourself."

"Yeah, people always say stuff like that, but they never mean it. You're telling me that after you went out of your way for me, you wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't eat anything?"

Yes, I would be disappointed. I preferred the version where he gulped everything down and told me my cooking was exceptional.

Gioele laid down the fork, took a breath that trembled as it passed through his lips. Even though his eyes were still downcast, I could see they were quickly filling with tears.

Oh, no.

He curled up on himself to hide the contorted lips in a sad grimace.

"I don't want to be so difficult," he said weakly, "thank you... for cooking for me."

And when he got up from the chair to flee the cafeteria, I stood there dumbfounded, crushed by something I couldn't even understand. What the hell had just happened?

It took me a while to snap out of it and follow him out. There weren't many places he could have gone. The kitchen or the bathroom, and I was pretty sure he didn't want to go back to the kitchen.

"Gio?" I asked softly, opening the bathroom door. He had his back to me, leaning against the last stall. He was rubbing his face with his hands.

"Sorry," he whimpered.

I wanted to go back in time and chew myself out before I had the stupid idea of ​​cooking for him.

But I swear I just wanted to do something nice. I didn't understand why he took it so badly.

I had the impulse to tell him he could throw everything in the trash, in fact, I would take care of it.

But that would have definitely made him feel even worse.

And so, just to prevent silence from swallowing us, I said the stupidest thing I could say: "I don't know what to do."

Gioele cocked his neck to see me, there behind him. The tears had dried up but his face was a mess. His eyes were red and his face was crumpled like a piece of paper.

"I can repay you in some other way."

My mind went to the wrong place possible. "W-what? In what sense? You don't have to repay me. It was a gift."

Gioele furrowed his eyebrows, extremely opposed to that idea. "Gifts don't exist. There's always something to give back, even if it's just making a surprised face and saying wow, that's nice. Nico, I hate lying. I hate saying something is nice if it sucks. And I hate having to eat something that makes me want to puke just because someone offered it to me."

Ah, I was beginning to understand.

"So, you see it as an exchange? And you got mad because I forced you into a disadvantageous deal. I like cooking, it's not fair for you to repay me by doing something you hate, like eating something you don't like. So, let's say you do something for me that you like, and we're even. If by any chance you also want to eat what I cooked, it's a bonus."

Gioele let his shoulder graze against the stall until he leaned back against it completely. He nodded slowly. "To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. It's the principle of equivalent exchange."

"Ah, yes, exactly."

Gioele stared at me, tilting his head to one side. "You don't know Fullmetal Alchemist, do you?"

"I don't know what it is, no."

That made him smile. Thank you Fullmetal Alchemist, whatever you are.

"Repaying you with something I like... Mh. I could watch that movie. The one with Charlie Chaplin. I don't know if I like it, but even if it's boring, I have no problem spending two hours staring at a screen."

Seriously? He'd rather watch a boring two-hour movie than pretend tomato peels don't bother him?

"Deal?"

I was still tempted to reiterate that he absolutely didn't have to repay me in any way, but I felt like I wouldn't get the desired effect.

"Deal."

Gioele straightened up and threw himself at me. His habit of hugging me without warning would send me to the ER.

"Thank you." And I had no idea if he was thanking me for lunch or for renegotiating terms of a contract that existed solely in his head.

When he let go of me, he immediately started on the way back to the abandoned tray. It took me a while to order my legs to move, but eventually I regained the motor and mental functions to follow Gio into the cafeteria.

To not put any more pressure on him, I went to get my portions before sitting down at the table, taking my sweet time.

When I took my seat, I found Gioele picking at his mackerel. He was touching a piece of fish he had torn off with his fingertips.

There were no bones, I was sure of it, but I didn't think telling him would cut short that inspection.

At the end of the meal, Gioele had categorically rejected the gnocchi, finished the fish, eaten a few forkfuls of rice, and only eaten the cherry tomatoes from the salad.

It was still more than he had eaten in the days before, so I considered it a win.

...

We returned to our room and took turns showering. I used the bathroom last and returned to our room with still-damp hair.

Gioele was in shorts and shirtless on his bed. He was staring at his laptop screen while petting his stuffed animal.

"Do you think Charlie Chaplin would be pleased to see The Great Dictator?"

His thin legs were covered in dark hair, and his chest was long and narrow, like a doll's trunk. Okay, now I was sure: he didn't know I was gay.

"Are you talking about the octopus or the actor?"

"The octopus," he replied, showing me the jar, as if it were absolutely obvious.

The poor jarred creature floated in a solution of water and vinegar, losing bits of skin every time Gioele shook it.

"I think it's a bit too much of a corpse to care."

"Don't be heartless. Charlie can do anything he wants if he really tries." And to prove that, Gioele placed the jar on the laptop keyboard and rotated it so that what had been the creature's eyes were facing the screen.

"Okay, I'm starting to think that thing is creepy."

Gio gave me a toothy grin, as if that was exactly what he had hoped for. Then he moved over a bit, taking with him the plush, computer, and octopus. "Come?" He patted his tiny bed.

Sure, we'd spend two hours stuck in the same bed, while he had practically nothing on. Definitely.

"Ah, there's already a crowd down there. I'll watch from here." I propped my pillow against the wall and slumped against my bed.

Gio didn't think anything of my counteroffer. He turned the screen towards me and started streaming.

I couldn't focus on a single frame. Gioele wasn't gay. And he didn't know I was. He was just a cuddly person, touching others without even realizing it. He wasn't making advances.

He didn't even imagine that I couldn't cling to him for the whole movie without being constantly and inevitably distracted.

Suddenly, I felt like crying. I had been afraid that Gio had tagged along on my internship just to end up in a room with the only notoriously gay guy in school.

It wasn't like that.

And, fuck... how much I wished it was.

Gioele laughed, throwing his head back on the pillow. He had a beautiful way of laughing, his eyes lifting, his cheeks puffing up. He always showed his teeth. I don't think he was capable of doing anything in a subdued manner.

"It's funny," he exclaimed surprised. Had he really thought it was going to be two boring hours of a serious movie?

I nodded without speaking, because I still felt that urge to cry in the back of my throat.

Gio didn't notice, he continued to watch the screen, dispensing cuddles between his plush and his octopus.