The way Tino danced could only ever be described as an unstoppable force. If Berwald watched him long enough, he would swear everything stopped just so he could fly if even for just a moment. The world moved around Tino, he was sure of it.
Gravity catered to Tino's whim, and when said dance, it danced with him. The air moved around him, the light bent around him, and the world stopped turning just to watch him. The sun dimmed itself so as not to distract from Tino's light as he took the stage. His dancing was powerful, and soft, and it commanded the world to wait.
And no amount of scraps of paper thrown beside him and no amount of half scribbled out stories about him could ever describe the weight in his chest when Tino leaped, or the look on his face when he feet refused to return the floor, always dancing just above. Half finished work was undeserving of Tino, he deserved a novel and a show, a spectacular event just to describe the near violet shade of his eyes. His nonsense metaphors drifted around the edges of what Tino was, never fully describing him, and never truly saying the things they were meant to.
Sometimes he swore he was a bird, and he spent days writing about the silhouette of wings that reached behind him as he spun, daring to lift him from his stage altogether. He wrote endless poems around the way he stretched, feathers spreading in anticipation of flight. But calling him a bird could never describe the way he looked as he sunk down to the floor, curling in on himself away from the light. He looked trapped and frightened and the opposite of everything Berwald believed him to be. He was never a bird when he hid, he was a cat. Leaping around the stage and lunging for prey he could never quite catch. Sinking down as if hit when he failed, hiding from the world and from himself, as if shame resting on his shoulders was too much to bear.
Every metaphor he started could never describe all that was Tino. No one thing could cover the countless layers he danced across. Because he was never just black or white he was shades in between and none of them all at once, and never dared stay in one place too long. Berwald had yet to discover if it was because he was afraid of what comes from staying still, or if he had forgotten how to stop running away.
He was the sunlight on Sunday mornings shyly drifting in through the cracks in the curtains, barely daring to lay itself across the shadowed life that lie inside. But sunlight didn't fly the way Tino did and it could never fill his chest with as much light as Tino did and sunlight could never being the describe the light that was inside him.
Tino was the light that woke Berwald each morning, warming him from head to toe, the feeling of him echoing through his veins. He was everything sunlight was, but like a secret made just for Berwald. He was his personal sunlight, casting warmth across the shadow of his own life, from where he watched his dancer.
But sunlight did not pull Berwald the same way as Tino did.
Tino grabbed him and pulled him along swiftly and his hands were soft and his steps were light and his laugh was intoxicating. The way he smiled tugged his heart towards him so strongly it ached, and Berwald felt like he might crumble under his weight. But at the same time, he forced him to fly with him. He pulled him like the Earth did the Moon.
And maybe if he looked at it like a gravitational pull the papers and the poems would make some sense once and for all. He had to approach it like a scientist and like a scholar. If Tino was a beautiful dancer who flew with each step, and Berwald was a writer with just half written thoughts tumbling out of him like broken parts, how long before they collide?
The formula for gravitational force is but Berwald wasn't a mathematician or a scientist he was a writer he was a poet and Tino was the love of his life.
And maybe that should be all he needs to know but he wants more. He always wanted some reason as to why Tino tugged so hard. And all the metaphors in the world could never tell him that.