Sometimes Andy can’t bear looking at Novak. He is a physical manifestation of everything Andy has ever wanted, since he was a dumb kid, and wanting something besides winning was still allowed. Years have gone by, everyone around them has changed in so many ways, everyone but Novak. He looks exactly the same, making Andy endlessly wonder about things he is no longer allowed to.
Sometimes Andy thinks about how incomparable they are; he has changed his hair, smile, his eyes. Some of his body changed too, involuntarily, injuries, scars, betrayals that he had no control over, and even metal inside of him. Sometimes Andy wonders how much of the person Novak first met is still in him. But when he looks at Novak, it feels like everything is in exact same place it was a day before, a year, and a decade back. Dreams he had dreamt of still clinging to the visual of the spiky hair just as they did when he was fifteen.
But with time, besides the pure and comforting feelings that the dreams and the presence once brought there has been so much more that accumulated, bitterness, jealousy, and something resembling hate, even if Andy always knew that it couldn’t be, not really.
Why would Novak not change? Why every other obstacle that should have deformed him, makes him bend somehow, just gets overthrown by the sheer power of his will.
What did Novak have that let him stay still while Andy couldn’t stop changing?
But now the bitterness is long gone and maybe for the first time, Andy can actually notice that the changes are there but you need to be close to see. He notices them in little wrinkles around Novak’s eyes when he smiles at him after a particularly good training session or feels the scars under his own fingers when they lay together.
Maybe him staying still was just a way to let Andy catch up.