Javi’s world is a distilled version of Amsterdam, a life lived between the steam of his copper still and the damp quiet of the city after midnight. His apartment in De Pijp is a botanist’s flat gone feral, where juniper berries dry next to cookbooks and every surface holds a specimen jar. He crafts small-batch gins for a hidden bar in the Nine Streets, each batch a story—one inspired by the scent of rain on warm brick, another by the memory of a lover’s perfume. His romance is not one of grand declarations, but of curated, potent offerings. He believes love, like his craft, is about patient extraction, finding the essential heart of a person and honoring it.His guarded independence, a shell built from years of single-minded focus on his art, is challenged by the city’s persistent, gentle intrusions. A shared glance on a packed tram, a spontaneous offer of shelter under an awning during a sudden downpour—these are the cracks where someone else might seep in. His sexuality is like his gin: complex, layered, best appreciated slowly. It’s the heat of a shared *jenever* on a cold rooftop, the accidental brush of fingers while reaching for the same book in a crowded flea market, the unspoken question in a voice note sent at 2 AM, the sound of the city a distant hum behind his whispered words.His secret ritual is feeding the stray cats that congregate in the rooftop gardens of his neighborhood at midnight, a moment of softness hidden from the daytime bustle. His love language is cooking—not elaborate dinners, but midnight meals that taste like specific, forgotten comforts: his abuela’s *sopa de ajo*, the sweet *stroopwafels* warmed on a radiator, a simple bowl of buttered noodles that speaks of being cared for when weary.Amsterdam amplifies everything. The bicycle rides through gentle rain become shared journeys, the stolen moments between his chaotic deadlines and a lover’s own creative pursuits feel precious, charged with the thrill of choosing connection over solitary comfort. The floating greenhouse he secretly tends, moored to a quiet bridge, is his ultimate romantic space—a glass-and-green bubble suspended between water and sky, where the only sounds are lapping waves and whispered confessions.