good fences

Chapter 1

Kaelix’s knuckles whiten around the box’s base as the musty elevator he’s in lurches upward.

It’s about ten floors higher than his parents’ sprawling two-story where the nearest neighbor was a ten-minute bike ride away. He’d spent twenty-five years watching the sunset fall over mostly green, listening to his four younger siblings bicker over bathroom time, where the frogs croak through muggy summer evenings, and he had to be driven forty minutes to get to the nearest decent coffee shop. Now most of his siblings were scattered across campus housing and starter apartments in this same concrete maze, while he had finally followed after working up the courage to go solo much later than them, and all because his friends had finally worn him down about “wasting that voice in cow country.”

Still, months of planning hadn’t prepared him for how fragile he suddenly feels navigating the final three meters from elevator to apartment unit, and he wonders briefly if it’s possible that having a minor panic attack over basic adult responsibilities might be some sort of sleeper gene in the family.

The elevator doors shudder and wheeze apart with a noise that can only be described as reminiscent of a B-grade horror movie. Kaelix’s hands are full of a truly unreasonable cardboard box, but he’s managed to wedge his phone between his shoulder and his chin, half-listening to a voice memo from Elira.

She’s, as usual, punctuating her advice with a bark of laughter and the occasional reminder about how the baby of the Wilsoneer Club has finally grown up.

“Okay, but seriously—” she says (and she sounds like she’s been chewing around something soft, like a doughnut), “it’s time to put that developing frontal lobe to good use!”

The memo cuts off with a tone that, if he’s honest, sounds like she’s either being murdered or doing a flawless dolphin impression just as the sounds of her roommate (this is a generous approximation, by the way, because neither have confirmed nor denied anything yet), Finana, filter in to shriek about something that Kaelix doesn’t quite catch before the line gets cut.

He thumbs the phone to silent before Finana might let her go so she can deliver her next burst of wisdom to him. He sticks it in his pocket, and nearly drops the box as he re-angles it to keep the sharp corner from digging into his rib.

The elevator hums with what feels like how existential dread might sound, and for a second, Kaelix regrets not paying the movers extra to haul all of this up to the unit.

That’s the problem with growing up self-reliant and the eldest: you assume you can carry what most of the world has to throw at you, only to discover that, at twenty-five, the world is primarily made of books you’ll never re-read and an inexplicable number of ceramic mugs. He doesn’t know yet if the monkey plushies he’d left back home were a regret or clearly a better choice.

Kaelix steps out into the hallway, vision momentarily occluded by the box’s tower of half-taped flaps, and forgets—immediately—Elira’s other, earlier advice to “just… you gotta live in the moment!!” after he’d expressed the mounting fears he’d had of finally living alone. The only moment he’s currently living in is the one where the hallway smells a bit like microwave popcorn and floor cleaner, and where his biceps are beginning to tremble in a way that might come back to haunt him tomorrow.

The box is heavy enough to justify the grunt he lets out when he wrangles it through the elevator gap.

There’s a text notification that vibrates in his pocket once he alights, and he briefly manages to slip the phone out to peek (in case it’s important!), only to see that it’s from Elira still.

Kaelix manages an eye roll, which is, for the most part, invisible to the universe, much less to the person it’s directed to, and lets his tongue rest against his molars in concentration as he lets the phone slide back into his pocket.

The odds of meeting someone cute seem infinitely less important than the fact that his arms are burning and apartment 303 still looms about four doors away from where he is. Each step is a full-body negotiation and he’s hoping this isn’t the instruments, or anything breakable because he remembers banging it against the stairwell wall during his brief, ill-advised attempt to avoid the elevator because he’d managed to develop a more than mild distrust for it during the first few trips up.

Kaelix makes it ten paces before the universe decides to remind him that new beginnings rarely arrive without complications.

He does not see the person stepping out of a nearby apartment until it’s too late. In his defense, the box is in the way, and the other person is approximately two shades paler than the walls, which is a feat, considering the building’s color palette runs from somewhere between ‘ghost of eggshell’ to ‘trauma-ward beige.’ They collide with the distinct thud of two people who absolutely were not expecting human contact today.

The box wobbles dangerously in his arms. Kaelix stumbles forward, then backward, then manages to catch himself, miraculously still holding the box.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” he blurts, instinctively setting it down, intending to help the stranger.

He half-expects him to be a grumpy pensioner, or worse, a building manager in a very, very bad mood.

What he finds instead is a guy maybe about his age (to Kaelix, he does not seem discernibly younger or older at this stage), maybe shorter; he takes in the shape of his eyes, the color of the molten sky, gentled by the softness of the rest of his features, like the shape of his cheeks, or how his hair, a shade of turquoise he can’t yet place, that swoops to one side of his head, and at the back, is longer than you’d expect and also just this side of messy. There’s a dark lacquered hair stick in on the floor, next to the guy’s open palm that mostly caught his fall. His phone sits face down on his stomach like it knew better than to skid away and shatter on impact.

The stranger is on the ground, sitting on his ass, wincing with a kind of grim resignation that suggests this might not be the worst thing that’s happened to him today.

Which, god, Kaelix thinks, he sincerely hopes not.

“Ow—” The soft rasp of the stranger’s voice catches him off guard. It’s definitely one that, for some reason, feels like it can only belong to him. He moves slowly, lifting himself up more.

Kaelix freezes. His brain, trying to fire up a normal opener or move—anything, really, but instead he’s thinking: okay, but like... seriously? Is this what city people are supposed to look like? Is this standard here? Is there a screening process to be this hot while also being nearly, possibly concussed?

The guy looks over himself with one hand before shaking his head, trying to right himself further, and more of his hair falls over his shoulders.

Kaelix snaps out of it a full beat longer than what could be considered socially acceptable and finally moves to properly offer his hand.

“Here—sorry, seriously, I wasn’t looking,” he says, slipping an arm under the guy’s to help lift him gently up from the floor. He feels heat rise up his neck realizing how easy it is for him to do that, pull him up without much effort. “I just moved in today. I...okay, I’m not sure about how good my spatial awareness actually is, but it’s not usually this bad.”

The guy doesn’t seem angry, just slightly winded.

At full height, he’s still shorter than Kaelix. Which, granted, tends to be true for most.

Kaelix darts to the side, retrieving the lacquered hair stick from where it came to rest by the baseboard. He wipes it lightly against his shirt before holding it out, which feels a little performative but it’s also too late to take it back.

“Er, here you go,” Kaelix says.

“Thanks,” the guy murmurs in response, taking it from him and then shoving it in the tote instead of fixing his hair back up again.

He can see now that the stranger is in mostly black, in loose pants and boots, a white shirt under a deep gray sweater that stops just below his wrists.

“I really should’ve been looking,” Kaelix starts to say, already kicking himself mentally because he’s starting to get distracted by how slender his fingers look dusting invisible lint off his pants as he continues his self-assessment. “Sorry, really. I think my arms forgot how to function halfway down the hall.”

The guy sighs.

“You’re lucky it was me,” he says, not unkindly, adjusting the hem of his sweater one final time. “There’s a few older people in the building. Some of your new neighbors wouldn’t survive a full-body check like that.”

Kaelix’s eyes widen in genuine concern, and he hopes at least the guy can see that if he had dog ears, they’d be folded down right about now. He really does feel bad.

“Seriously, are you sure you’re alright?” he asks, scanning the stranger’s face for any sign of pain. His hand hovers uncertainly in the space between them, not quite reaching out but clearly wanting to help. “I really didn’t mean to. But you are so right, and I should’ve been watching where I was going.”

The stranger tilts his head, like he’s considering that seriously.

“Well, unless you cracked my ribs, I think I’ll survive.” He shrugs lightly. “But if you’re looking to kill someone, there are easier ways. I believe poisoned banana bread was the good old traditional in this building for a time.”

Kaelix is caught between a laugh and a groan.

“You joke, but my grandma actually tried that once. On my uncle.” He’s not sure why he says this. It’s as if this stranger has just opened a portal to the part of his brain that stores nothing but random trivia and family secrets. “Turned out fine for the most part—although that’s how we learned a banana allergy might be something in the family.”

He gives Kaelix a long, unreadable look for a moment before the side of his mouth twitches up, just barely, “I see. Well you’ll want to be wary of baked welcome presents then.”

A beat of silence passes, and Kaelix decides to fill it again with an apology. He really does feel bad, knocking him over like that. What if he was having a bad day already and Kaelix only just made it worse?

“I’m really, really sorry again,” he starts to say, and then adds, “but for the record, I promise I usually look both ways when I exit buildings and cross the street.”

“You may have forgotten to add hallways to your repertoire.”

Kaelix fails to keep from laughing too loud at that.

“But duly noted,” the stranger adds, perhaps feeling generous. The ice in his tone has thawed slightly, though his arms remain crossed over his chest like a shield against whatever chaos Kaelix may yet unleash upon them both next. And that’s, well… that’s fair.

Kaelix considers keeping the conversation going, something more about neighbors, but the stranger beats him to it.

“Right, well, speaking of exiting buildings…” he says, the need to pull back from this conversation clear in his voice, “my turn, I guess. I’ll let you get back to unpacking.”

“It was good to meet you—uhm—” Kaelix blurts out just as the guy starts turning away from him.

“Freodore,” the guy supplies.

“Kaelix,” he responds, “Kaelix Debonair—” and because his brain is going 120 miles per hour with no signs of stopping, he adds, “you get a free ‘shove Kaelix down for whatever reason’ pass for what just happened, by the way. I’m really sorry about that again, Freo!”

They both pause.

Kaelix, because he is quietly having the generational crash out of his life in his mind right now, grabbing a version of himself by the neck and shaking him, because what the hell is he saying? And Freodore, because he had been in the middle of checking the time on his phone and slipping it into his tote bag when Kaelix had said it.

Thankfully, Freodore just tilts his head slightly, a little bemused, hair falling over one shoulder in a way that makes Kaelix’s stomach twist because the early afternoon light hits it just right from this angle.

“I’ll think about a good time to take you up on that,” Freodore says, laughing a little under his breath before waving and heading straight for the stairs.

Kaelix watches him go, because honestly, why wouldn’t he?

The first thing Freodore notices in the main alcove is the distinct smell of cardboard, cheap tape, and whatever chemical lives inside the building’s new “eco-friendly” floor cleaner that is not interacting well with lemon-scented room spray in here. The second is that his package has arrived—too big for where his actual mail is supposed to go.

The box is large and enough to comfortably fit a small family of hamsters, which is ridiculous considering what was supposed to be in here. He scoops it up anyway, flipping it in his hands to check the label, and, yep, it’s his, and not a single word of the shipping manifest matches what the outside suggests (or what it contains inside for that matter).

Freodore tucks it under his arm and navigates back to the short flight of stairs from the mail room to the ground floor landing, intent on making a quick escape before anyone sees the garish hot pink and purple decorative stickers on it (which the sender, for some sadistic reason, plastered all across it) and maybe stare long enough to put two and two together.

No such luck.

At the base of the stairs, someone is blocking the exit with what looks like a small mountain of boxes. The guy’s white hair is, if possible, even more noticeable under the bleak fluorescent, and he’s wearing nothing but a plain shirt despite the dipping chill of the outside world and the on again off again heaters in this building’s common spaces—definitely not property management staff, and definitely not from any of the apartments Freodore immediately recognizes.

He hesitates, evaluating whether to backtrack and wait or brave the gauntlet.

The guy looks up, meeting Freodore’s eyes with a startled, guilty expression, and immediately attempts to shift two of the boxes at once. The top box wobbles dangerously, and before either of them can react, it starts to tip.

Freodore is quicker. He wedges his own package against the stair’s railing and reaches out to steady the falling box, managing to catch it at the expense of ramming his shoulder directly into the guy’s chest. They both grunt (one from surprise, one from blunt force trauma) and the moment hangs there, suspended in awkward and slightly ridiculous, until Kaelix recovers enough to reach over and re-stack the load.

“Oh god, I am so sorry! I can’t keep doing this,” the white-haired guy says. He ducks his head, then peers at Freo from under his fringe. “You’d think I’d learn after last Monday.”

Freodore snorts. He reclaims his box from the rail, spins it so the worst of the colorful decorative stickers face away, and slides sideways to let the guy through.

“I’m not here to break any more bones, promise,” Kaelix smiles, all apology and earnestness.

“Yet,” Freodore says, as they walk up together. “Long staircase.”

That gets a laugh. It’s a bit too loud for the space, but it’s genuine all the same, and for a second Freodore finds himself smiling, just a little.

They walk in tandem, the air too quiet in that weird echoe-y way this building always gets when no one else is around on weekday afternoons. Kaelix adjusts one of the boxes in his arms, making a ridiculous face at the effort, and Freodore manages to keep his own box angled just right so the bright “THANK YOU FOR YOUR ORDER 💞😋” sticker doesn’t scream of its existence at the hallway like it wants to.

Freodore slows as they approach the third floor. He’s halfway to pulling out his set of keys when he realizes that Kaelix hasn’t stopped.

He glances over, startled, only to see the other man still walking. Past apartment 309. Past 307. Past 305. Past—wait.

Freodore stops at his door at the far end of the hall, his, at 301. The numbering is weird here in that only the odd ones are on the left, and the even ones on the right. He’d felt a little bad about missing out on a nice even numbered unit or a round number when he first moved in years ago, but the corner unit for how much he was paying wasn’t so bad.

He watches Kaelix stop right next to it, at Unit 303, setting the stacked boxes down in the narrow strip of wall space between their doors.

Kaelix fishes in his pocket for a set of keys, then glances over with a sheepish grin, tilting his head in consideration of this development. “Huh.”

Freodore raises a brow.

Kaelix gestures to the proximity of their doors. “Guess we’re neighbors-neighbors, then?”

“I guess so…” Freodore trails, key in hand, still not moving.

It’s not really a predicament. Not exactly. Earlier that week’s accidental collision and at the stairwell today, at least to him, didn’t really quite qualify as an incident, and Kaelix hasn’t been anything but mostly pleasant. To speak with.

...Maybe even to look at.

And, it could be worse, Freodore tells himself. Could be the sweet old man who used to badger him into playing checkers every time he’d see him come up from a grocery run until he finally moved back in with family. Or worse…er, the three vicious sausage dogs from across the hall. Those tiny, furious things that once launched themselves at his ankles and nearly breached his apartment, intent on mauling his cat.

Kaelix, by comparison, is just lightly chaotic, overeager in the way large puppies are when they don’t understand their size relative to how long they’ve been in this world.

So, yes. It could definitely be worse.

“Let me guess,” Kaelix says, watching him, “you’re the neighbor with the mysterious cat I keep hearing through the wall at two in the morning? I think the other unit next to mine’s still empty.”

Freodore frowns a little, feeling a bit bad. “She has opinions,” and then, “sorry about that.”

Kaelix’s grin widens. “Hey, no. All good, really. I respect that. She has a cute meow.”

Freodore unlocks his door, but doesn’t go in yet. Kaelix’s key turns with a clack. There’s a beat of silence between them, one of those strange moments where it feels like something might be said, but neither are quite sure of what to occupy the space with or how to ease out of the silence.

Then Kaelix lifts one of the boxes with a slightly dramatic grunt. “Alright, neighbor. Catch you around.”

Freodore steps inside with a faint, involuntary smile. “Maybe not when you’re overestimating how many boxes you can carry up a flight of stairs.”

“No promises!” Kaelix calls back cheerfully. He shuts the door behind him with his foot, Freodore’s following not long after.

There’s a time, usually between half past three and five o’clock, when the building’s hallway on their floor catches direct sunlight through the high window next to Freodore’s unit at the far end making the world look like it might be dusted in gold leaf. Freodore never plans his errands around it, but he’s come to expect the sharp sting in his eyes whenever he rounds the landing on his way back from the mailbox if he happens to go out for it in the late afternoon. He squints, head down, clutching a lumpy envelope in one hand, and only notices the other presence in the stairwell when he nearly runs into a broad, glistening wall that he hadn’t noticed on his way up.

Kaelix is a few steps above, heading to their floor too, tank top plastered to his chest, hair pushed off his brow and shining wetly at the tips. He looks like the mascot for some morally questionable sports drink, that might deliver more than just electrolytes. There’s sweat beading across his collarbone, and his skin is flushed in a way that makes Freodore’s brain misfire for a moment before it rights itself.

He locks eyes with Freodore and gives a little wave, open and guileless as usual.

“Hey!” Kaelix says, barely breathless. “You headed out?”

Freodore forces his voice to work. “In. Just got my mail.”

“Ah, wait, sorry, not my brightest moment. I just realized we’re walking in the same direction,” Kaelix flushes.

“Haha, yeah,” Freodore nods. He doesn’t move. The air in the stairwell is several degrees warmer now, and it’s not just because the heating is, by some miracle, on today.

He tips his head to the general direction of up and Kaelix just beams at him, before waiting to start up the stairs again, this time with Freodore in step. For the briefest moment during their short trek back up, Freodore catches the clean scent of whatever soap Kaelix uses, mostly underscored by the musky salt of sweat, a little bit of sun, maybe from the walk back from the gym a few blocks down the street. It’s dizzying.

Freodore mentally slaps himself on the wrist to remind himself that he absolutely has no business staring at the flex of Kaelix’s arms, nor at the way that tank top clings to his body to tease the outline of a decently defined pec. It’s nothing jarring or insanely chiseled, but like… it’s solid. Like you can tell that even if he can’t bench 90, he might be your guy for opening jars on the first try.

Freodore swallows, trailing along quietly behind him down the hall. He is not staring at all. He is simply... cataloging what is right in front of him. And that is his neighbor fresh from the gym on a weekday afternoon.

Kaelix pauses at his door instead of immediately opening it. He glances back, as if checking to make sure Freodore hasn’t disappeared, another amicable smile plastered on his face.

“You okay?” he asks, genuine concern laced around his voice.

Freodore pulls himself together, nodding briskly as he walks past him to his own door. “Fine. Just—sun in my eyes.”

Kaelix grins, and it’s clear he doesn’t really buy it, but also that he doesn’t mind.

He finally turns his key and moves to let himself into his own place. “See you around, Freo.”

“Mm, see you,” he murmurs, holding his mail in his hand, trying not to let his thoughts wander off too far.

Half of him wants to entertain one he hasn’t had in a very, very long while; the other half wants to barricade himself inside his apartment for the next week or maybe consider calculating how many days he can reasonably avoid the stairwell at this hour.

The hallway suddenly feels too exposed, like a stage where he’s forgotten all his lines, and he fumbles with his own keys, nearly dropping them once before managing to escape into the safety of 301.

Freodore is one of the rare few people on earth that, if you had to ask him for his favorite grocery store, he’d be ready with an answer. It’s the one that is six blocks from the building, because the nearer ones have proven to be places where he just wouldn’t be able to avoid being jostled or being forced to make polite small talk with anyone else who has clocked he lives in the same apartment. As a bonus, the self-checkout here never breaks down too.

He rarely needs more than a few things at a time which is why he doesn’t mind the slightly longer walk, but today he’s over-committed, and both paper bags are filled to near-bursting: canned cat food for Gatita, full stock of detergent for the month, a few bottles of electrolytes, and a six-pack of toilet paper that, to his annoyance, won’t fit in either bag and so it dangles awkwardly from his pinky finger.

He’s nearly at the main entrance when he hears the sound of someone running full-tilt, shoes slapping against the sidewalk. Kaelix appears out of nowhere, white hair wild, cheeks flushed with the telltale glow of someone three drinks into a good night. Under his jacket, his button-down is half-untucked, top buttons undone, and there’s a faint smudge of what might be someone else’s lipstick on his collar. He stops next to Freodore, grinning like he’s won something just by catching up.

“Hey, neighbor!” Kaelix’s voice, louder than necessary at this hour, bounces off the tile and glass of the vestibule, but somehow it doesn’t bother Freodore as much as it should. “Wow, that’s a lot of groceries.”

Freodore tightens his grip on the bags. “They restocked the cat food brand she likes and I don’t think I want a repeat of the three weeks I had to replace it because of a supply chain problem.”

Kaelix laughs, looks at the bags in his arms, and, without asking, reaches for them. “Here, let me—”

Freodore tries to sidestep, but Kaelix’s reach is unfair. The bags are gone from his grip before he can protest, and Kaelix hoists them easily, the muscles in his forearm tensing just enough to make Freodore’s thoughts skid dangerously off track.

“You’ll break your wrists,” Kaelix says, as if this is just a known fact about groceries and physics and apparently, Freodore’s complex joints. “The paper always tears before you reach the top of the stairs.”

Freodore offers a grudging, “thanks,” as he pushes the door for them both, and hopes it doesn’t sound too much like surrender.

As luck would have it, the elevator is out of order today, and so they make it up the first flight in, mostly, a companionable silence.

Kaelix shakes his head in wonder as they round the second floor, probably thinking he should fill their quiet with something.

“Where I’m from, if you ran out milk, it’d be a twenty-minute drive out just to get it. Here, I could throw a rock and hit three different places selling organic oat alternatives.”

“That’s how you know you’re in the right part of the city,” Freodore replies. “If you can’t get toothpaste in the middle of the night, move.”

Kaelix barks a laugh, and this time, Freodore catches the barest glance of blue-green eyes shifting to something softer, warmer even under the harsh lighting of the stairwell steps.

“I don’t know how you do it. All the noise—car alarms in the distance. The people. I mean, most have been pretty nice and I have friends here—”

Clearly. Freodore’s mind supplies, betraying more than his facial expression will allow as his eyes track the stain on Kaelix’s shirt collar. He doesn’t say anything at first, letting him finish.

“—but I don’t know. It’s just so different.”

Freodore shifts his weight, adjusting the hold he has on the pack of toilet paper’s flimsy plastic handle. “I… was like that at first too, sort of. You kind of take for granted when ambient noise was mostly your family in close proximity.” He pauses, eyes tracing the outline of a water stain crawling up the stairwell wall, unsure why he’s even bothering to say all this to someone who’s still mostly a stranger to him.

“Unfortunately, it’s just something you either get used to or you go back. No shame in either.”

Kaelix looks at him, and for once, the smile on his face is softer, a little more thoughtful as he considers his words.

“I figured,” he says eventually. “But it’s nice, you know, to have someone nearby to talk to. Even if it’s just about, like, groceries and uh, mail, I guess.”

Freodore is not built for this level of sincerity in public and from someone he can still count on one hand how many weeks they’ve known each other. He fumbles for the right response and comes up empty, so he just shrugs.

The climb is faster with Kaelix carrying most of the load. At the third floor and closer to their units, Kaelix stops and waits for Freodore to open his door.

Freodore fumbles for his keys, mind racing through a mental inventory: there’s only one dirty cup in the sink from coffee that afternoon, Gatita might be trawling the place or asleep in his bedroom, and—oh god—the new lubricant samples are still scattered across his coffee table in the living room. He pushes the door open just enough to slide through, sets his bag down in the narrow entryway, then he turns and takes the second bag from Kaelix with a quick “thanksforthehelp” before practically slamming the door in his face.

Through the wood, he hears Kaelix’s unbothered laughter as he says, “good night to you too, neighbor.” He can practically see that smile. He pretends it doesn’t do whatever it does to the pit of his stomach.

Freodore leans against the door, exhaling slowly, then pushes off to gather the damning evidence from his coffee table and put his groceries away.

One other reason Freodore’s been reluctant to get to know his neighbor better, aside from the general threat of quite possibly too-charming men who live too close and smile too easily, is the soundproofing. Despite investing in the acoustic panels for his bedroom he was once confident could muffle a small concert, he’s suddenly hyper-aware that Kaelix occupies unit 303.

Having a corner apartment means he only shares one wall with anyone, and of course, it had to be with the man whose laugh had made his stomach flip the third time he heard it. His own joke wasn’t even that funny.

It’s also the same wall behind which Freodore occasionally livestreams, shoving things up himself wearing questionably tailored lingerie (not mutually exclusive, by the way) that arrive in discreet packaging, earning tips that mean Gatita’s premium salmon pâté never runs low and his own kitchen always smells of those small-batch coffee beans that cost more per ounce than what most people would prefer to spend on full meals.

He thinks about it while clipping his mic into place, double-checking the gain on the receiver. It’s part of his evening routine, though only a couple nights a week, and never on Sundays. Freodore’s not particularly religious but, back home, when he’d busy himself working on less questionable stuff on the day, he would hear his mother’s voice in the usual “ay, Freodore, really? On the Lord’s day?” and it’s stuck with him ever since.

It’s Wednesday, which is close enough to the weekend that the site’s traffic peaks around nine at night. He sets up the camera at an angle that catches just the right part of his body, checks the lighting, and then spends a full three minutes adjusting his mask to make sure it covers the line of his jaw.

Tonight, he’s in a pair of black lace panties that feel like almost nothing. It might be because it just frames him and there’s no actual coverage to be had here, which is, of course, the point.

He’s been live for awhile now.

Freodore isn’t much of a talker on stream. He rarely speaks unless he’s reviewing something, and even then, it often starts out mostly clinical—so, for everyone involved, it’s kind of a process. The draw has always been the restraint. The control. The softness of it when he can finally let go or can’t help it anymore.

He leans back a little more over his pillows. It’s part of the quiet appeal his viewers know by now. His soft noises, the little gasps, the moans that slip through half-muted—those are the point.

Tonight is a “just me” night. So no toys, no PR or review product. He lets the show run at its own pace, moaning when he feels like it, which, granted, isn’t all that often.

Freodore’s fingers dip lower, lightly skimming the line of his cock, biting down on his lip under the mask before he starts the tentative and somewhat personally excruciating hurdle of beginning to pleasure himself.

The first steps are always the most difficult, usually. Today though, he isn’t really thinking about whether his audience might finally be able to pick out how easing himself into this has always been a bit of its own ordeal or took a small toll on his mental load. Today, when he touches himself, he’s already leaking a little at the tip. And he’s this way because his mind is quick to supply himself with hypotheticals. How the pad of someone else’s fingers might feel against him, what the heat of someone else’s hand sliding along him would feel like, a thumb flicking gently over the head, how those long fingers might smear the pre-cum beading from him, how a wider palm might be able to envelope him easily and work him over to coax more out.

He pants, feeling the friction start to connect with the rest of his senses. He slides his free hand over his chest, thumbing gently at a nipple, his knees digging into his mattress as he tries to brace himself better in the angle he’s chosen for his audience today. He feels the lace of the panties scratch the base of his cock and how the slick of the lube and himself smears across his fingers as he strokes upward, slow at first, then firmer. He tightens every so often, breath stuttering at the sensation with more pressure, his knees nearly giving way.

A chime dings quietly in the background, and then in come several tips and a slew of praises and thank you’s.

He has a couple of rules for chat despite the website being a (generally) no holds barred sort of place. He goes at his own pace, he gets to do whatever he wants, and no, he will not call you Daddy no matter the price tag.

He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing slow but heavy behind the soft pull of his mask, letting the stimulation spread and parting his thighs a little more for his audience.

The mic picks up every wet slide, every hitch in his breath, broadcasting his arousal. He’s usually so much better at maintaining more restraint and keeping his sounds to a minimum, but tonight, small gasps and sounds low in his throat start to spill from the mask he’s wearing.

Freodore tries his best to focus on the task at hand and make himself think that’s all it really is—a task. He thinks of being methodical about the slippery glide of his fingers around his cock and training his senses to the way his body responds to his own touch.

His hips start to rock subtly into his hand, seeking more of the pleasure he’s getting, of what builds with each pull of his hand around his cock. He tries to narrow his focus and stay in the moment. Just the one, but it’s when he tightens his hold a little more that it goes right to a bright, easy laugh, and the flex of arms over boxes, under his own helping him up.

Fuck. Freodore curses without the sound, beneath the mask. He doesn’t even really know him. And sure, they’ve traded a handful of sentences here and there. But the thought of him keeps knocking inside his skull, persistent, like light seeping through a closed curtain.

Freodore exhales. This is ridiculous. He does not want to be thinking about his neighbor right now, of all times.

He takes a shuddering breath and forces himself back into the sensation, chasing the rush. He can feel the cool air from the room kissing his heated flesh, making goosebumps prickle his skin. His breathing grows heavier, little gasps and whimpers escaping him as he loses himself in sensation.

He chances a glance at the live count to ease his mind into literally all else. It’s sitting at about two thousand now, give or take. He’s flushed, hair sticking to his forehead, breathing heavier behind the mask, and he knows this is the moment his regulars are waiting for. His movements grow urgent, grip tightening as he picks up the pace. His body knows what it’s doing. How to follow that small, slow build of heat but even then, his mind keeps drifting, unhelpfully, elsewhere.

He lets his eyes drift shut, hoping he comes off less exasperated with himself and more like he’s just gotten really into this. He can feel much more now, how his nipples are pebbled and tingle under his touch, and he lets out a sharp, involuntary little gasp that sounds different in his own ears. Like it’s higher, and he hates to admit it, even in the privacy of his own mind—needy.

He knows exactly why, because maybe he is.

Even though it’s just for show, and even though he’s never once broadcast any sort of fantasy he’d dreamed up himself in front of these strangers, tonight his brain won’t stop serving up the memory of Kaelix’s biceps flexing under the grocery bag, or the shimmer of sweat on his throat jogging the short way back from the gym, or the easy cadence of his name from Kaelix’s mouth.

Freodore tells himself this is just a side effect of too much proximity, too much attention—that he’s only like this because this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to him in this place. But the thought does little to help him out. The image is vivid and persistent, and soon the ache from the hot, wet slide of his own hand on his cock is less about the camera and more about the possibility of something he’s not supposed to want.

That thought alone is enough to bring a fresh flush to his cheeks, and he can’t bring himself to stop.

He readjusts his grip, fingers sliding freely now with lube and leaking cum, and the sound echoes into the mic.

The ache builds fast. His legs tremble slightly, and he knows he’s not performing now. His hips rock urgently into his touch, chasing the fast-building pleasure and desperately trying to push Kaelix out of his head.

But it’s not working. Freodore’s body is betraying his mind’s intentions, reacting with a fervor that has nothing to do with a camera trained on him or an audience in the thousands watching his every move. The wet, obscene sounds of his fingers echo through the room and into the live mic, louder than his strained composure can suppress. His pulse races, skin flushed and hot to the touch.

Freodore can see a different pair of hands on his body, a different voice urging him on, his mind substituting the wrong fantasy for the one it knows he should be focused on. Kaelix’s face, his hands, his voice, all swim before his eyes in the darkness behind his lids.

A choked moan slips free, and Freodore claps a hand over his mouth over the mask, hoping it’ll muffle the sound further. He’s so close, teetering on the edge of something he’s never allowed himself to experience before, and he knows it’s going to happen. He just doesn’t know how to stop it, or stop himself for that matter.

“Nghh—ah!” Freodore’s body seizes up, every muscle pulling taut, back bowed this time as he squeezes more firmly, dragging upwards to tease the head. He can’t even bring himself to think about whether the camera’s catching a proper angle of him. A thin cry escapes his throat, pleasure ripping through every nerve ending white-hot as he tugs hard and fast. His release surges through him, spilling all over his fingers, down his thighs, eyes widening over the shock of pleasure that’s tearing through his body.

For a single, stunning moment, Freodore sees stars. He pants, trying to come back to himself. He pulls his hand away, swallowing a lump in his throat as his breathing slows.

In the aftermath, Freodore is still, chest heaving and skin glazed with sweat. He’s never come so hard on his own in his entire life, and he knows that he’s only done so today because of the phantom of Kaelix haunting his every move. The realization leaves him mortified.

He shifts to sit down, angling the camera to face more of his upper body as he speaks to his audience even though his mind is elsewhere, though not very far. His legs still tremble faintly, and the sweat at his temples cools in the air. He tries not to think about much else as he thanks people for swinging by, talks about his plans for the rest of the week.

He’s been told by chat regulars that his moans are a little bit distinctive, and sometimes, when he’s edging himself and needs the climax to be a little more explosive, he thinks about that. About how he could, in theory, be recognized from the sound alone. It doesn’t make him nervous so much as it makes him careful.

“Thank you again for stopping by today,” he says, still a little out of breath. He lets a few good nights and rest wells (in between all the ohmygod that was so hot and variations thereof) scroll past before he ends the stream, his body moving with great effort to shut everything off.

Once it’s all out, he peels off his mask, throwing it down beside him, scrubbing his mostly clean hand over his face as he groans into his palm.

“I am never going outside ever again,” he declares, mostly to himself.

With a final sigh, he drags himself off the bed, resisting the urge to just collapse into it further and start hiding in there forever now. He’s half-convinced that the universe is going to punish him immediately by making Kaelix show up in the hallway the next time he checks the mail.

Kaelix hangs from the pull-up bar and wonders, for the twelfth time in as many minutes, if his neighbor is ignoring him on purpose or if that’s just a city thing. The answer is most likely both, but he refuses to let it sour his mood.

He can admit, to himself and to no one else, that he thinks about Freodore more than he should, maybe even more than he thinks about how much cheese is too much cheese at the grocery store or whether he remembered to pay the Wi-Fi bill last month. This is not a competition, but if it were, Freodore could well be winning.

He shakes out his shoulders, letting the familiar ache settle in, and then grips the bar tight, knuckles whitening. He inhales slowly and then pulls up. His body answers immediately, the motion ingrained in muscle and memory: shoulders draw down and back, core tightening, biceps contracting. He exhales on the up, air forced through his teeth. Sweat beads along his hairline, threatening to drip into his eyes, but he ignores it. At the peak of the motion, he holds, chin hovering above cold steel, and thinks about the last time he saw Freodore. It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?

He drops back down, arms extended, and hangs there for a moment, letting gravity stretch him out. A line of sweat trails down his spine, a cold tickle. He pulls again. And again. By the fifth rep, his arms burn, and not feeling like pushing too hard he drops not long after, landing on the worn patch of mat on the ground.

He’s been coming here almost every morning since moving in, a ritual that started as “a great way to get used to the city” and quickly became “a great way to avoid spending time with myself inside my own head.”

The gym is almost empty at this hour, just one guy in the corner getting acquainted with the rowing machine, and maybe three others milling about and mostly minding their own business. The air hums with the metallic click of weights and the low, persistent bass from the sound system—a playlist of early 90s hits and a few modern pop songs that make Kaelix feel a little bit more at home.

It’s been over a week since he and Freodore had what could generously be called a “moment.”

Which is to say: he got exactly one sentence of small talk in before the man did an incredible speedrun of setting down his bags, saying “thanks,” and closing the door with such finality that Kaelix could only stand there, bewildered mostly and unsure what to do about thinking how cute he looked even as he was scuttling away and likely, in no words, trying to tell him: “I am at maximum capacity for social energy right now, thank you. Please try again later. Or don’t.”

Elira says city people are just like that, and maybe she’s right, but he can’t shake the feeling that it’s something else. That maybe he is, in fact, doing too much. Maybe city people have a sixth sense for that country bumpkin flavor of desperation and are hard-wired to avoid it at all costs.

Or maybe—he lifts the towel to his brow, then drags it along his neck, attempting to wipe away the thought with the sweat—maybe he just wishes Freodore would give him a shot.

At getting to know him and being friends, of course.

He finishes up with a half-hearted set of tricep dips, then sits on the bench, elbows on knees. His chest rises and falls, slow and even, but his mind is a mess. He cycles through the upcoming week: shifts at a part-time job doing some light temp work, the tutoring gig he randomly took up on a whim, show schedules, the new song he’d planned to finish writing by Sunday, and underneath it all, the persistent, somewhat idiotic hope that maybe, just maybe, the next time he runs into Freodore it won’t be so stilted and so awkward. Or if it is, it’ll be the kind of awkward that leads to an actual conversation.

He wonders if it would be weird to invite Freodore to see him perform. Probably. If it were anyone else, he’d just ask and let the universe handle the rest, but this feels different. Like the stakes are higher, even though the worst thing that could happen is a polite “no thank you” or even an apology to say he’s busy (regardless of whether that was true or not) and then maybe another closed door. He drums his fingers on his knees, restless, then stands to grab his water bottle on the other end of the bench where he’s sat, draining the last of it in two long gulps. The room spins, just a bit, and he welcomes it as proof that he’s pushed himself hard enough to earn a rest day tomorrow.

The gym’s clock ticks over to the hour, the lights overhead flickering slightly. Time to go.

He packs up, shouldering the small gym bag he brings, and starts to head out, sneakers squeaking softly on the linoleum. The walk is only a couple of blocks, but he takes the long way, circling past the corner grocery store and then detouring up a side street lined with trees and parked cars.

He tries to let his mind go blank, but it doesn’t work. Instead, he finds himself replaying every conversation he’s ever had with Freodore, all four of them. The pattern is always the same: Kaelix says something friendly, Freodore responds with what seems like all the effort it takes, in kind at least, and then disappears. Sometimes there’s a look, like he’s about to say more, but it never happens. It’s possible Freodore is just shy. It’s also possible that Kaelix is a walking social disaster and thinking about this too deeply than is warranted.

Either way, he’s not giving up yet.

He reaches his building just as the sun ducks behind a bank of clouds, turning the street from gold to gray.

He takes the stairs instead of the elevator, partly because he needs the extra burn and partly because the elevator always smells like pickles for some reason these days. He’s halfway up the second flight when the universe decides to put him on the spot.

At the top, something blurs into his peripheral vision, a flash of white with a yowl, followed by the soft slap of bare feet on concrete flooring. There’s a high, desperate almost, “ah—Gatita, come back here!” (in hurried Spanish) echoing down the hall. Before Kaelix can react, the blur resolves into a body colliding full-speed into his chest. And for a second, the world tilts.

He stumbles backwards, arms instinctively going out to catch the person before they can tumble down the stairs. His hand lands at the narrowest part of a waist, fingers splaying across the cool silk of a robe—only a robe. One that’s thin, and soft, cinched in a knot at the hip.

They sway in a moment of perfect, suspended panic before they both recover their balance. Kaelix tightens his grip just enough to steady them. He blinks and looks down, and there he is: hair loose and wild, eyes wide in shock, cheek pressed against Kaelix’s damp shirt.

Freodore.

In a robe. With nothing else, as far as Kaelix can tell, and from this vantage point, Kaelix can tell a lot, because the robe has parted just enough to reveal a streak of pale chest, the jut of his collarbone, the hollow at the base of his throat rising and falling with fast, startled breaths. Lower still, and Kaelix has to try very hard not to notice the precise shade of pink on Freodore’s nipples. He does not succeed.

For one somewhat internally devastating moment of clarity, Kaelix registers every detail: the heat radiating off Freodore’s skin, the clean scent of whatever body wash he uses, the exact shape of his slight waist beneath the robe, the absolute absence of anything else under it. His mind scrambles for purchase, but all he can think is: I am going to die here and now of embarrassment, in a stairwell, holding my hot neighbor if I get hard right now—don’t even think about it, Kaelix Jr.!!

Freodore blinks up at him, eyes wide and, god, that color is something else, as if someone had poured a sunset straight into them.

“Ah—” Freodore says, breath catching.

Kaelix’s brain is slow to catch up, probably because it’s been short-circuited.

“Uh,” Kaelix says, equally articulate. “Hi.”

Freodore, to his credit, does not freak out or shriek or even flinch. He just sort of blinks up at Kaelix, then at the wall that is his chest, then back at Kaelix again.

“Hi,” he responds, voice even smaller than usual.

“Sorry,” Kaelix blurts and he isn’t even sure why he’s the one apologizing right now. His hand is still on Freodore’s waist, and if anything, he’s squeezing tighter before he helps right him properly on the step he’s standing on, so maybe for that. “I—uh, that was—your cat is really fast.”

“Yeah,” Freodore breathes, cheeks now the exact color of his nipples (goddamn it, Kaelix Debonair, get it together!), “she is.”

Kaelix can’t tell if Freodore is mortified or just generally soft-spoken, but either way, he feels a powerful urge to fix the situation, or at least make it less weird. He runs a hand through his own hair, immediately regretting it because it’s still damp with sweat.

“Sorry about the, uh, gym smell,” he says, then wishes he could crawl under the stairs and never return.

Freodore shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

Gatita, traitorous feline that she is, is already on the landing of their floor, tail high and victorious, before she pauses, looks over her shoulder, and meows in a way that can only be described as smug before trotting right back down the general direction to 301.

Kaelix laughs, more out of relief than anything else. He lets go, but the warmth of the contact lingers. He tries to step off to the side a bit, give them room to walk up together the rest of the way later, but the stairwell is too narrow, and all it accomplishes is bringing him flush against the handrail.

Freodore, meanwhile, is still standing far too close, robe gaping slightly, exposing more leg, though likely without meaning to. Kaelix risks another look because he is a simple, simple man, and it nearly knocks the breath out of him.

“I see you’ve got yourself a little escape artist, huh?” Kaelix says, trying to turn his thoughts literally any other direction. “She, uh—does she run off a lot?”

Freodore shrugs, which does absolutely nothing to close the robe. “She might be bored… I’ve been keeping the balcony door closed lately because it’s been cold and she’s getting creative. I swear, she never used to do this, but she’s been trying her luck with the front door whenever I’m distracted.”

“Ahh,” Kaelix nods in understanding. “The old trash day route for her. Smart.”

He adjusts the strap of his bag on his shoulder, just to give his hands something to do. And for his mouth, well, it’s not really any better. He says, “sorry, by the way. I nearly took you out. Again.”

“Oh, no. No, don’t worry about it,” Freodore shakes his head, a wry smile curling the edge of his mouth. “You’re fine. This was… all on me today. Honestly, if you hadn’t caught me, I’d probably be back at urgent care by now.” He laughs, a short, embarrassed sound.

Kaelix grins, feeling the tightness in his chest ease up, just a little. “Wouldn’t want that. Your cat would never forgive me. But like, if it ever came to, just know I’m good with kitties.”

There’s a beat of silence as Kaelix tries to make peace with his choice of words. Freodore tucks a piece of his hair behind his ear, which distracts Kaelix from thinking properly altogether, of course. His other hand tugs at the sash of his robe, closing it more tightly, but Kaelix can’t help noticing the way it parts just at the knee still, a sliver of thigh peeking through.

They walk up the stairs together, the awkwardness receding slightly into something more comfortable. Kaelix feels suddenly and acutely aware of every inch of his own body again—sweaty, over-warm, and still tingling where Freodore had been pressed up against him. He tries to think of something clever to say, but his mind offers nothing except a looping playback of “there was skin and I saw it” and “don’t be weird, don’t be weird, don’t be weird.”

“So, uh, do you—do you work from home?” Kaelix asks, scrambling for any conversational lifeline.

Freodore looks at him like he’s trying to figure out if Kaelix is serious about this question or not, and for a second Kaelix thinks he might have crossed a line. Then Freodore’s lips twitch, and he nods.

“Yeah, another Millennial-something with an imaginary job to most parents.”

“Uhm…”

“Audio engineer,” he clarifies. “And yeah, it’s remote work most days. I do come in for shoots every now and then, but it’s been rare as of late. Which is honestly better for me.”

“That’s…” Kaelix tries to think of an adjective that hopefully won’t come off sounding like he’s saying something condescending. “Actually, that’s kind of cool.”

Freodore hums. They stop in front of their doors or close to somewhere between each of them, and lingering around outside for no discernible reason, but Kaelix isn’t of the mind to point it out or fight it.

“It pays the bills. What about you?”

“These days? Tutoring part-time in between shows. Or an open mic where I’m not playing usually if I’m feeling saucy.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Freodore says, nodding. “I heard you through the wall a couple of nights ago.”

“Oh god.” Kaelix wants to sink through the ground and into the earth’s molten core. “Was it too loud? I try to keep it down—”

“No, no. It was… it was good,” Freodore interrupts, then ducks his head, seemingly embarrassed. “You have a nice voice. And I’ve never heard it past 10 so… You’re good.”

Kaelix wants to make a joke, or maybe say something meaningful, but instead, all he can do is stand there and let the warmth of the moment settle between them. Gatita, for her part, has slipped back into the apartment on her own as if to say, let me leave you two to embarrass yourselves further in peace.

After a second, Freodore glances into his apartment. “I should probably—um, you know.”

“Yeah,” Kaelix says, stepping aside to stand closer to his own door, getting his key in. “Wouldn’t want her to make a break for it again.”

Freodore opens his own, likely meaning to head in finally, but then pauses, turning to Kaelix again, tilting his head slightly. “I, uh, really didn’t mean to, like, attack you,” he tells him.

Kaelix shakes his head, laughing a little. “Anytime. Seriously.”

Freodore snorts, rolling his eyes at the absurdity of it.

Kaelix just grins at him, saluting with his right, as he turns the knob, right before letting himself into 303.

“See you around then, neighbor.”

The little, “see you, Kaelix,” before Freodore gets into his own is so soft, Kaelix almost convinces himself he dreamed up the sound of his own name coming from Freodore’s mouth.

Chapter 2

When you’re neighbors, you can go days without seeing each other. Or, if the universe is in a particular mood, you can spend entire weekends running into the same person everywhere you turn.

The city is supposed to be built on anonymity, or so Kaelix was led to believe by a lifetime of movies and TV shows, but in practice, it’s more like a small town with a lot more walkable concrete and an occasional threat of street fairs. There are only so many grocery stores within radius, only so many places you can pick up a replacement charger at two in the morning, only so many laundromats that still accept coins. Even with Freodore, self-possessed and with a preference for being mostly indoors (that’s slowly made itself clear to Kaelix), they’d managed to cross paths at least half a dozen times since Kaelix moved in next door.

Today, it’s the grocery store down four blocks from where he lives, the sort of place you’d go to for essentials and not necessarily the ambiance.

The automatic doors shudder open for Kaelix, then stick halfway before he manages to wedge it the rest of the way, entering into a blast of dry, fluorescent-lit air. It smells of dish soap and a bit like under-ripe bananas.

He glances at the entrance to see a surplus of large carts and the only baskets left either cracked or nested too tightly for mortal hands to separate. And so it seems the crowd of weekenders has split into two evolutionary branches here: those wheeling full-sized carts, and those gripping what they can in the crooks of their arms, braving gravity and hubris alike with less baskets available for the number of people in here.

Kaelix does the logical thing and grabs a whole cart, because it feels like if you’re going to do a proper shop, you might as well lean into the bit.

He’s only a few paces in when he sees Freodore, who’s at the end of aisle four, wrestling a four-pack of seltzer under his arm while delicately balancing a bundle of herbs and a loaf of bread in the same hand. There’s an energy to him, a tightness at the corners of his mouth like he’s either about to drop everything or is deeply irritated at the way the cilantro keeps brushing his chin. For a moment, Kaelix considers sneaking up, but the seltzer teeters and he darts over with his cart instead.

“Hey,” he calls, jogging a little to catch up. “That looks like a battle you’re not gonna win.”

Freodore freezes, maybe because he’s undecided yet about where this fell between awkward ambush or genuine offer he might consider. Kaelix does his best to appear non-threatening, which, at six feet and change and currently wearing the ugliest grandpa cardigan known to man because he hasn’t done his laundry yet this week, is at least fifty-fifty odds.

Eventually, Freodore sighs. “One of many today it seems.”

Kaelix just smiles, pushing the cart he’d commandeered at the entrance a little in front of him, which is maybe overkill for what he thinks he needs but suddenly feels fatefully necessary. “Share? My relevant experience includes being the cart pusher in my family and guy who has to grab things from the back of the top shelf sometimes.”

Freodore considers this for a beat, clearly hesitant, but then nods, tucking the seltzer and bread to one side along with the herbs. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

Kaelix grins at his relatively easy acquiescence this time.

“So, what brings you out on this fine—” he checks his phone, “Saturday? Cat food?”

“I just noticed my fridge is empty,” Freodore says, shrugging. “And that it’s that way because I forgot to do any real groceries last week.” He glances down at the cart, as if embarrassed at how little he’s contributed. “You?”

“Just grabbing a few things,” Kaelix says. “I want to think I can be the kind of adult who keeps an actual pantry living on my own. Plus, it’s kind of fun to see what’s new in the cereal aisle. Did you know they make protein puffs now? Like, what’s that about?”

Freodore raises an eyebrow. “I did not, but I might consider it, honestly.”

“No way, seriously?”

A shrug. “The less I have to think about what to eat to keep from becoming fully nutrient deficient, the better.”

They head down the aisle together, the cart seemingly neutral territory between them until they fall into some sort of system where Kaelix will take things from shelves nearer to him and Freodore will carefully place them on whichever side they belong to while trading small observations and poke gentle fun at each other’s somewhat outlandish choices for things, or agree on some unexpected ones.

It’s somewhere around aisle seven, in front of an intimidating wall of dry pasta, that Kaelix finds himself stalling.

He stares at the endless variations in front of him, like the fettuccine, the penne, spaghetti’s varying numbers, the stuff shaped like little bow-ties, the stuff shaped like wheels, some that even look vaguely like dental implements—feeling, suddenly, a surge of indecision.

“I—okay,” Kaelix starts. "I am, frankly, a bit overwhelmed about the sheer amount of pasta choices being presented to me right now. Thoughts, Mr. Freodore?" He says this with an air of solemnity, as if the fate of his next four meals depends on Freodore’s input.

Freodore seems to consider it though and then responds, without explaining, “lasagna sheets.”

Kaelix smiles, grabbing a box immediately to hand to Freodore to put in the cart. “Ohh, good choice. My favorite.”

Freodore blinks, turning it over in his hands gently before setting it down near Kaelix’s stuff. “Wait, really? If you had a favorite, why bother asking?”

"Well, maybe I might want to try something new based on yours," Kaelix says with a shrug that doesn’t match how hard he’s trying to rein it in and keep it casual.

There’s a beat after that where Freodore’s eyes linger on his face, and for the first time since they started shopping, Kaelix feels a current of something he can’t identify, sparking across the air like static. Then Freodore looks away, feigning interest in the price tag of something else, and only says, “lasagna’s one of my favorites too.”

“I’ll share the spoils if I get around to making them soon,” he offers, following after him as they head into the next section.

Kaelix thinks it’s cute, how Freodore seems to be very careful about his extremes. He notices, that somewhere in aisle ten, where they’re clearing through, that Freodore would say he can tolerate some things or that he might sometimes enjoy one thing or the other for the most part. His favorites seemed to be very, very specific. Kaelix lets an errant thought flit past his usually personal safeguards, it’s all in his head, but he wonders anyway, whether he could be one of them too. Like, a favorite neighbor at least.

It’s not long until they’re done and clearing out. Freodore had, thankfully, come with the foresight to bring a reusable canvas bag for most of his items, which is hanging on Kaelix’s shoulder right now.

“Ready to brave the outside?” He asks, hefting the two other, heavier bags properly in his arms.

Freodore accepts charge of the smaller one with mostly the lighter dry items, eyes darting to the automatic doors as if expecting some new horror to be waiting on the other side. Or maybe he’s just not looking forward to the walk back in the sun. But when they do step out together, the street is actually pretty calm, a little overcast, and weirdly pleasant.

For a brief moment, walking side by side down the street, Kaelix lets himself imagine that this is a thing they do all the time. That there’s nothing strange or awkward about it. That he might get to keep discovering new, quietly fascinating facts about the guy who lives just on the other side of his wall if he’d just keep at it like today.

They walk home with the awkward grace of two people who have run out of excuses not to be friends but haven’t yet figured out how to act like it. At least, Freodore thinks as much.

Today the air is soft and a little humid for his taste, like summer is still refusing to give way to the next season, but it’s nothing incredibly bad.

Freodore blames his new neighbor for this, for the way everything today seems lighter, almost tolerable. His usual strategy is to keep his head down, get in and out of the store without being perceived, but with Kaelix beside him, things suddenly don’t feel as cut and dry and even now, he catches himself thinking, this is nice.

They don’t talk much at first on the way back.

Kaelix handles most of the groceries without complaint, one bag per arm and Freodore’s other, heavier bag on his shoulder. Freodore allows himself the secret relief of unburdened arms, save for the one light paper bag in them, trailing a little behind as he watches the way Kaelix walks, unhurried and present in the moment, taking in what the city has to offer by way of peering into almost every window they pass on the way home. He could get used to this, Freodore thinks, before immediately banishing the thought.

Half a block from their building, Kaelix slows at the corner, stopping in front of a coffee shop with a chalkboard out front announcing a two-for-one muffin sale in looping print.

“Want to?” Kaelix says, pointing. “It’s criminal to pass up a pastry deal, and I’m pretty sure you might be running low on blood sugar.”

Freodore snorts. “How would you know?”

Kaelix squints at him like he can physically scan Freodore’s health stats by sight alone. “You’re walking at two-thirds your usual velocity. Also, don’t think I didn’t see you eyeing their display.”

Freodore would deny this, but he’s feeling generous today so he just shrugs and says, “well, alright.”

They step outside with their muffins and coffee. The cafe’s patio is really just three high tables bolted to the sidewalk, but it’s a cool end October day with the sun out and the street is almost empty, so it feels luxurious and at least more temperate than earlier. Freodore leans on the cold metal, fingers idly picking at the wrapper. Kaelix takes a huge bite and then, mouth full, says, “oh my god, wait, this is amazing.”

He looks so earnest and childlike that Freodore almost chokes on his own laugh. “You, uh, really like those, huh?”

“Only at a discount,” Kaelix insists, a crumb stuck to his upper lip, that he manages to catch when he darts a tongue out, which Freodore, unfortunately, does not miss. “Did you see the regular price?”

Freodore winces, because he, in fact, did and would never, in good conscience, partake if he had to pay that much for a single muffin. “Unfortunately.”

He sips at his coffee idly, picks at his own pastry, and tries very hard not to obviously catch the way the wind pushes at Kaelix’s hair, lifting it so the light catches on all its bright undertones while he tells meandering stories about his home, his family, his friends. When Kaelix laughs, it’s always one that’s loud and unabashed, like he’s never had to apologize for the sound. And, really, Freodore thinks, hoping his face doesn’t reflect how warm it feels, he should never have to.

They stand like that for a while, trading muffin crumbs for observations.

Freodore has a complex relationship with stories. It’s not that he isn’t confident in it or ashamed or that he doesn’t have any interesting ones to tell, it’s just that he’s still at the tip of the learning curve where he’s trying to figure out the most natural way to fill any silence with it. But he’s good at responding in kind and he likes to listen. Something about the cadence of Kaelix’s voice makes it easy too, most of the time.

When Kaelix gestures animatedly, he risks a look at Freodore’s face, as if searching for a reaction. Freodore, baffled, can only smile a little back at him as he shoves more muffin into his mouth so he doesn’t accidentally risk saying something stupid like “cute” or ask him if he’s seeing someone or not.

Freodore sips his coffee, hoping it’ll drown out the tightness in his throat.

“Are you all settled in?” he asks, surprising himself.

“I should hope so,” Kaelix says, after a sip from his own to-go cup. “It’s been a few months. And you’ve been a big help, actually.”

“Me?” Freodore blinks. “I’m pretty sure the only thing you’ve done since you moved in is…” he flits through the small catalog of moments in his mind, and rests on, “carry stuff. Saved me once from an ER trip, if you think about it.”

“I—well, okay. True, true.” Kaelix says, leaning on the table a little, chin on his hand. His hair falls over his eyes only to be brushed gently aside by the wind and Freodore can only think it is SO unfair that even nature is on this guy’s side and can only make him look good.

“But still,” Kaelix adds, eventually, shifting to tuck his hands under his arms both elbows on the table, tilting his head as he considers the thought. “Even that helped.”

Freodore smiles around the rim of his cup, baffled at first, but with their combined interactions in mind, including today, it’s not hard to piece at least this one part about Kaelix.

“Let me guess,” he says, “you like to feel tangible purpose, and if not… necessarily needed—if you can be even a little bit helpful to someone, it makes you feel right at home?”

Kaelix’s eyes widen a little, as if he’s stunned and Freodore wonders if he’d crossed a line or made too brazen of an assumption and Kaelix was about to tell him that everything he’d said had all just been baseless conjecture. But his surprise, not long after, melts into a smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Kaelix reaches over between them to take a pinch from Freodore’s muffin, and the sudden proximity makes his breath catch despite the innocuous act of it. Kaelix probably doesn’t think twice before shoving it in his mouth.

Kaelix doesn’t say anything for a good few more seconds, chewing thoughtfully, but he eventually speaks up after washing down the pastry. “Hit the nail on the head, wow. Let me guess, this is your secret night job—”

Freodore freezes.

“—and you’re—”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that.” Freodore cuts in immediately. “Uhm, I just. It’s—you seemed like a… really helpful… person. And like you actually enjoy it, kind of? You mentioned being the oldest of your siblings before, and you’ve been uh… very nice to me, is all.”

Freodore winces.

Kaelix barks out a laugh at that. “I really should hope you think so.”

And then, biting his lower lip before leaning in further, and speaking in an almost conspiratorial whisper, he asks, “is that all?” blue eyes impossibly bright, hair still tousled just so by the wind.

“Is that all what?”

“All that you think of me?”

Freodore blinks, arrested somewhat by both the sight of him and the question.

The answer, to Freodore at least, is very obviously and very clearly no.

He has thought, most of the time against his will, about Kaelix plenty. In varying, sometimes (often) compromising ways. Sure, his warmth and kindness stands out; sure, he’s incredibly handsome; sure, he’s tall and can reach higher shelves. But Freodore has caught himself wondering more than once, if some of what he’s pieced together of who this guy might mean actual compatibility, might mean that, there was really something here, or if all that—this—everything, was just his best foot forward and fleeting, or, worse, whether or not he really just treated everyone else this way.

That, had literally any other person occupied 301 to Kaelix’s 303, they would end up under this same flimsy umbrella, at a tall table outside a cafe on a random Saturday splitting a two-for-one chocolate chip muffin deal after basically doing groceries together.

“Mostly,” he just says. “We’ll need to see what my cat has to say first.”

“Oh my gosh, you’re right,” Kaelix says, not missing a beat. “We’ve yet to be properly introduced.”

“Maybe later,” Freodore offers, “if she’s not asleep.”

It’s not long after until they’re finally back waiting for their creaky elevator that never lands quite flush with the floor, which is probably a recipe for some sort of hazard, but he can’t, in good conscience, let Kaelix carry their stuff up in addition so he insists they don’t take the stairs today.

The digital numbers blink at them from above the elevator door, slow and stubborn. Someone else is already waiting near them, a woman with her hair in a sharp bun and a shopping tote with a lemon print. Her eyes seem to sparkle immediately spotting them, and she smiles right at Kaelix, immediately launching into conversation.

“Oh, hello again, dear!”

Kaelix’s face flushes at the familiar greeting, but doesn’t even get to greet back before the lady starts talking again. “Have you given what I’ve said some thought at all? You are such a nice, handsome young man and I think you and my niece would make a very, very good match.”

“Oh! Ha-ha.” Kaelix says, hefting the bags in his arms up, as if that might shield himself from her better. “I have nooo time for that, ma’am. But that’s so kind of you to say about me!”

The elevator opens, signaling for all three of them to enter, and they do. This, however, has not deterred her at all.

“Come on now, there’s always time for love. You shouldn’t waste your best years single.” 

Kaelix just laughs awkwardly at that, and miraculously manages to shift the conversation into this week’s discount items at the grocery store earlier.

Freodore doesn’t know why this should bother him. Maybe it’s the casual way Kaelix brushes off the suggestion and his stance made clear on what he feels about being with anyone right now in that way. He says nothing, of course and lets the chatter slide over him, but it gets under his skin all the same.

He tries to focus on the elevator’s slow ascent, until the doors finally open to her floor. When the doors close again, leaving just the two of them inside, he avoids eye contact.

Kaelix exhales dramatically, the tension rolling off him.

“Phew,” he says, “I swear she’s got me on a watchlist.”

“Do you get that a lot?” Freodore asks, quieter than he means.

“What, people trying to set me up?”

Freodore nods.

Kaelix gives a shy sort of smile. “Uh, sometimes. My friends do it to tease me because they know I’ll panic very loudly about it. And maybe humor them if I’m up to it when they happen to bring it up, but it hasn’t happened in a long while. Thankfully, we only have that one persistent auntie here.”

And then, after a short bout of silence, Kaelix ventures, “do… do you? I mean, does this sort of thing ever…”

“Mm, not often.”

“But it has happened?”

“Sometimes.”

“Recently?”

“Before.”

The smile Kaelix offers him is one that’s clearly a little amused by his stingy, one-word answers, but won’t press him about that specifically but that he is still undeterred, trying to arrive at the line of questioning he wants.

“Then… how’d you deal with it?”

“I’d just say I wasn’t looking for anything at the moment.”

They exit on their floor and Kaelix walks Freodore to his door, setting the bags down gently. For a second, Freodore considers inviting him in. He’s even cleaned the living room, wiped down every surface, put away all the toys and samples that might raise eyebrows. But something about their talk earlier lingers and he decides to think twice about it.

Freodore doesn’t know why it disappoints him when it’s not really his business to care about stuff like that.

He pulls the door open a sliver, bringing in the groceries one bag at a time, and comes out for the last, which Kaelix dutifully holds out to him.

“Thanks,” Freodore says, quieter now.

“Of course,” Kaelix responds with a lopsided grin, and then adds, “same time next week?”

Freodore almost laughs. “You just bought enough groceries for a month.”

“You’d be surprised how fast a guy can go through deli meat,” Kaelix counters. “And milk, apparently.”

Freodore takes the bag, hesitating a bit. “I’ll, uh, see you when I see you.”

“Hopefully soon!” Kaelix calls, already backing up toward his own door. The light through the hallway window paints his face gold, and for a second Freodore is struck by how unfair it is, how easy it seems for Kaelix to exist in the world.

After their grocery run-in, Kaelix had parted ways with Freodore with high hopes, but in the week since it happened, they’d crossed paths only a handful of times in the hallway. Each encounter more stilted than the last—Freodore’s eyes darting everywhere but Kaelix’s face, responses clipped to single words. This morning, Kaelix had finally mustered the courage to suggest coffee, only to be rebuffed with a mumbled apology and vaguely mentioning that he had “something” before he gets the soft click of apartment 301’s door shut to his face once again.

And so Kaelix, that evening, decides to brave the cold despite it making his ears numb, so he can take his inevitable moping elsewhere.

The city is quiet today, but the bar he’s heading to is bright at the end of the block, windows fogged with the condensation of Friday night revelry. There’s a gentle murmur of conversation and the occasional clink of glasses that spills out whenever the door swings open, a couple of people are already loitering by the bike rack outside, laughing in their own orbit, immune to the wind slicing up from the river.

He tucks his chin deeper into his scarf and walks in, shouldering the door open. The bar’s sign is understated, just a small brass plaque with worn lettering that catches the streetlight. No flashy name, just a simple icon of a glass that somehow manages to look both sophisticated and welcoming. Kaelix had walked past it twice on his first visit before realizing it was actually the entrance, despite Zeal and Seible’s instructions for how to find it.

Inside, the place is already half packed. The lights are warm and low and most every table is already ringed with water stains and bits of old napkin. The smell is a comforting soup of spilled vodka, orange peel, and old leather. Zeal’s behind the bar, mixing a drink, and Wilson’s hunched into the corner nearest him, making a snowdrift out of discarded peanut shells. There’s a small group setting up at the open mic area, unpacking a keyboard and a couple of other instruments.

He beelines for the counter.

Zeal sets the shaker down with a soft clink, grinning a little as he approaches.

“Well, look who’s back,” he says, one eyebrow raised. “It's been a whole week. Thought maybe something was actually bad in those fries Seible brought in last time and you'd finally had enough.” His mouth quirks up at one corner, eyes warm with the joke.

Kaelix unzips his jacket, slinging it over the back of a barstool as he slides into a seat. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says. “Who would keep Wilson from dying of scurvy?”

Wilson grunts, not even looking up. “I’ll have you know, I’ve had three lime wedges in two hours. Ergo, I am immortal now.”

Zeal pours what might be a mudslide into a glass and pushes it across the counter toward Kaelix, who takes it with a grateful nod.

“Thought you might’ve gotten lost on the way over again,” Zeal says with a half-smile. “Not like you to show up past ten.”

“Had some things to take care of,” Kaelix says with a slight shrug, not knowing how to elaborate. “Thanks for this, though.”

Zeal moves to drying off a few glasses, letting the silence wash over them. He finishes one with particular care, holding it up to the light before setting it down with a soft clink. He works through a few more, methodical and unhurried, his gaze occasionally drifting to Kaelix’s face. The rag squeaks against the rim of the last glass as Zeal studies him, eyes narrowing slightly, taking in the shadows under Kaelix’s eyes, the tension in his shoulders. Until finally, he says, “Hm. You look like you could use a real one tonight.”

Kaelix blinks. “That obvious?”

Wilson, still hunched over his peanuts, mutters, “You’re about as subtle as a parade, Kaelix.”

Kaelix taps his fingers on the wooden surface of the table next to his drink, nodding like he’s considering his friends’ assessment of his mental-slash-emotional state.

“So,” Zeal says after a beat, “let’s have it. Nervous for your set next week? Or perhaps something spicier?”

“Or someone,” Wilson pipes up, eyes narrowing. He finally straightens up in his seat. “It’s always someone with this guy.”

Kaelix’s jaw works, and then he says, in something that’s close to a whimper, “not always.”

Zeal claps his hands. “Called it. Is it a bad someone or a good someone?”

Kaelix sighs, feeling the pressure build in his temples. “It’s nothing, honestly. Just uh… just, you know, neighbor stuff.”

There’s another lapse into silence before even Seible comes up from where he’d been bustling about with the books behind the counter to sidle up to Zeal and go “oohhh wait, wait for me. I want in on the saucy stuff.” A woman at a nearby table glances over, but none of them pay her any mind.

Zeal keeps up his probing. “Ah. Wait a minute. This is the guy you nearly flattened with a moving box?”

Wilson tilts his head. “Wha—I thought that was last month’s saga.”

Kaelix shrugs, trying to will away the flush climbing up his neck. “Same person, different day. I just—okay, this is going to sound kind of pathetic, but—but I thought, maybe we could… we were starting to get along?” And it does, by the way his voice pitches the more he speaks.

“You want to fuck your neighbor,” Wilson supplies, zero nuance.

Kaelix sputters, and protests this with a “what, noooo” but Zeal speaks over what was about to be a rare one-up from Wilson. “Don’t listen to him. That guy’s got the romantic sense of a gas station hotdog sandwich. Tell us more. What happened?”

“Gas station—hey! What do you know about gas station hotdog sandwi—”

“Gin-chan,” Seible nudges him. “You forget who this guy’s dating.”

“Oops. My bad. But anyway—before we all get derailed, back to you, Mr. Debonair. Floor’s yours.”

Kaelix stares at his drink for a beat too long, hoping Wilson's tangent might have successfully sidetracked the entire conversation. No such luck.

“I don’t know, nothing happened,” he starts. He doesn’t say in explicit terms that this might actually b the problem. “We recently went out for groceries together—don’t laugh—Seible, I said stop laughing—it wasn’t a date, just a ‘we’re both here’ thing—and it was nice. Just talking and h-hanging out? I thought maybe we could be friends and that we were. But then he started avoiding me… I think?” He drags a hand through his hair, messing it up further. “It’s like every time I try to get closer, he throws up a wall.”

Zeal blinks. “Huh. Maybe he’s just shy? Or maybe he’s waiting for you to make a real move instead of dancing around it like some middle schooler with a puppy boy crush.”

Wilson nods, agreeing with him for once. “Yeah. And I don’t mean this in a bad way, but you do… do that thing where you’re nice to everyone, which can be confusing.”

Kaelix tilts his head and turns on the barstool to squint at Wilson from where he’s seated. “I am not—”

“Sorry, my guy, but I’m giving it to Wilson this time, he’s on to something here.” Zeal says as he shovels some de-shelled nuts and other little bar snacks into a small bowl for Kaelix before setting it down in front of him, like that’s supposed to be his consolation prize (and one that makes him wonder if Wilson had actually been on peanut duty as enrichment this whole time).

Seible leans forward, elbows on the bar, eyes bright with interest. “But wait—what are you actually after with Mr. Hot Neighbor? A hookup? A few dates before you ghost each other and never speak again? Someone to play Chinese checkers with on slow days? Mail collecting buddy?”

Kaelix stares into his drink. “I don’t… I don’t really know. I mean, I haven’t really thought that far into it. I figured it’d be good to make a friend nearby, you know? And start with that. I know at least that he’s nice.”

“And nice to look at?” Zeal raises an eyebrow.

“And nice to look at.”

Zeal refills Kaelix’s glass and sends some water his way. “Listen, if you want my humble opinion, just ask him out. Not for groceries. For, like, real. Or at least do something that you can’t really misinterpret as anything else. You’re not going to die if they say no.”

Kaelix laughs, but it’s hollow. “I might.”

Zeal’s eyes crinkle. “You won’t. You’ll mope for maybe close to a month depending on how deep-in you actually are, write a really dramatic song about it—” (“—maybe two,” Seible cuts in) “—and then move on. Trust me.”

There’s a heavy pause, then Kaelix says, “He’s not even… I mean, I don’t even know if he’s—”

Seible cocks an eyebrow. “Alive?”

Wilson: “Into men having sex?”

Zeal looks between them both, squinting. “I was going to say ‘interested’ but yes, those too.”

Kaelix laughs, finally, letting the tension break. “I really don’t know.”

“Ask,” Zeal says. “Seriously. And if he’s dismissive of even that or wants to cut you off just because you might’ve been vaguely interested in the first place, then he probably isn’t worth all the trouble.”

The door chimes, and a gust of cold air sweeps in with Elira. She slides onto the barstool next to him, eyes sharp as she surveys the scene as they greet her with each of their own little hi’s and hello’s. “Oh, wow. Looks like I walked into an intervention. So who needs free therapy tonight, gentlemen?”

Kaelix groans. “Oh god. Please, not you too.”

Elira grins, wolfish. “Ha. Didn’t even try to hide it. Also, you’re blushing.”

“I’m not.”

“Are too. Zeal, is he blushing?”

Zeal chuckles. “Like a teenager whose browser history just popped up on the family TV during movie night.”

Kaelix puts his face in his hands again. “Why are all my friends like this?”

Seible is the one who leans over a little to pat his shoulder on the counter. “Because you keep us in business. So, out with it, what’s the plan with Mr. Hot Neighbor?”

“Stop calling him that, oh my god, Seible!”

“Oho—it’s the neighbor thing then?” Elira asks Wilson.

Wilson nods. “It’s the neighbor thing.”

Kaelix sighs. “Look, there is no plan, okay? There isn’t even a friendship, apparently. I think he hates me.”

“Mm,” Elira says mildly, “so just your type, then?”

Kaelix glares at her, but he’s notoriously not very convincing when he does this so she just laughs.

“Hehe, sorry,” she says with a light shrug, probably not really at all as she accepts a glass of water from Zeal. “But seriously, Kaelix, he can’t hate you. You’re scientifically incapable of being hated by most people.”

“Some have tried,” Zeal agrees. “Many have failed.”

“Also, by the way,” Elira starts, “didn’t you used to say ‘this isn’t what I came to the city for’ every time we talked about relationships? Actually, that’s probably still in my message history from when I told you you might meet someone cute. What changed?”

Kaelix picks at a table napkin, thinking. He opens his mouth meaning to deflect with literally all else, but ends up stopping himself and just going with the truth. If he’s gonna get as far as asking him out, his friends ought to know at least.

“He just… he seemed interesting to me at first. Like, he seemed almost intimidating, but also the longer I looked and the more we talked, the more that fell away too and he seemed kind? Also, the few times we actually got to have whole conversations, I could not stop thinking about them after. I’d replay everything in my head and notice new things and I just… it’s kind of embarrassing, but I’ve always found myself wanting to know more… about… him. Guuuys, stop!!!”

Their side of the counter erupts in a chorus of exaggerated “ooohs” and “awwws,” Seible even clutches his chest dramatically and pretends to wipe away a tear from his eye.

Elira pats his shoulder, her laughter tapering off, when she tells him, “welcome to adulthood, baby. It’s mostly existential dread and secondhand embarrassment.”

“Or firsthand in this case," Seible adds. “But honestly, that's so sweet, K-chan! I second what Zeal said, just ask him out.”

Two more drinks later and round of more encouragement (and blushing) during their goodbyes, Kaelix finds himself standing in the hallway outside 303, keys dangling from his fingers.

The warmth from the drinks has faded to a dull buzz that isn’t nearly enough. He strains his hearing towards signs of life from inside 301, but hears nothing. He moves a bit closer to the other door, knuckles hovering an inch from the wood as he bites his lip, before, ultimately, letting it drop back to his side. He sighs, running a hand through his hair. Tomorrow, he thinks. Maybe tomorrow.

He unlocks his own door instead, wondering if bravery had always felt just out of reach like this or if it was just him, just this door, just this neighbor who seemed to make things feel harder than most people make it out to be.

Chapter 3

Kaelix pushes into his own apartment, which welcomes him with its familiar darkness. He flicks on the lights and heads straight for the shower. Under the hot spray, he lets the day wash away, mind carefully blank. Clean and slightly more awake, he tugs on boxers and an old t-shirt with a faded logo. His stomach growls on the way to his bedroom and so he detours to the kitchen. Too tired to cook, he raids the snack shelf and settles for two slices of white bread and the last piece of cold ham, which he eats over the kitchen sink.

There’s something almost comforting about the city at this hour: the hush of traffic, the gentle hum of the refrigerator, the far-off thump of music from the main drag.

His apartment is warm, at least, and clean, just the way he likes it. After his little post-bar snack, he brushes his teeth, barely registering his reflection in the bathroom mirror, and then not long after, finds himself collapsing onto his unmade bed, muscles singing with the fatigue of a long day.

He’s almost out in seconds.

Except soft, unfamiliar sounds draw him awake. It’s not the insistent chime of his phone, which he’d left on silent, but it seemed a bit muffled and coming somewhere to the left of his head.

At first, Kaelix thinks it’s a dream, a holdover from some half-remembered fantasy and he was actually already on his way to full REM sleep, but when he opens his eyes, it’s still dark in his room lit up only by the moonlight, and the sound is still there.

He props himself up on his elbow, towards the noise, listening.

It comes in pulses: a quickening shuffle, a brief pause, then another sharper, almost desperate sequence. Maybe his brain is just slow because of the alcohol and the need for sleep. The walls here aren’t insanely thin, but he can sometimes hear the elevator or the pipes when the neighbor above flushes at two in the morning, but this is different. This is not heater clinking, not even 301’s cat.

He tries to ignore it, but the sound gets louder, and finally, it’s clear in Kaelix’s head that what he’s hearing are moans punctuated by the faintest thud. Kaelix blinks. For a split second, he wonders if he’s misheard, but then a voice slips through, quivering and unmistakable:

“Right—ah, right there—”

He sits bolt upright, blood thundering in his ears.

Kaelix does the math as a formality.

There’s no one else on this end of the floor except for the sausage dog unit but those three little demons were at a pet hotel while their owners were vacationing in Europe. The grad student with all those fish tanks was also supposedly back home for the holidays unless he was subletting again. Which means—

He presses his face into his pillow, mortified and electrified at the same time.

It’s Freodore.

Kaelix can’t help it. He listens. It’s not on purpose, of course. Not at first. But there’s something in the cadence of it, the un-self-conscious desperation in it that pins him to the mattress. Freodore’s voice, like this, can go higher than Kaelix expects, but it’s also so, so pretty that it makes his skin prickle. He’s not shy about it either, it seems. There’s a string of soft whimpers, each one spiking through Kaelix’s chest.

“Please—oh, fuck. Good boy, just like that—”

Kaelix’s eyes widen and he bites his lip, heat rushing to his face. The pieces start clicking together in his mind. Freodore’s careful distance, the way he always seems to pull back just when Kaelix thinks they’re getting somewhere—it all makes terrible sense now. And they are both thoughts that aren’t easy to stomach. Either Freodore couldn’t stand him at all and he’s been coming on too strong or he’s seeing someone. Someone who is, apparently, a good boy, for that matter. Kaelix frowns, thinking anyway, that, well, he can be a good boy too, before slapping himself mentally to get it together. The sounds keep coming though, merciless, through the wall.

He closes his eyes, lets it all wash over him anyway, despite his better judgment.

It’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong. Freodore is having a private moment with—what, his lover? A partner, maybe? Someone who knows just how to take him apart and put him back together again. It shouldn’t bother Kaelix, except that it does, deep and hot, and searing, and he can’t stop thinking about how Freodore must look right now, sprawled on his own bed, hair wild and sticking to his temples, mouth open and wet.

“Ah, come on, just a little more,” the voice from across the wall whines.

The groans get louder. Kaelix can vaguely hear the slick noises of something, the pace quickening, and it takes all of his willpower not to press his ear against the wall just to get an inch closer. Heat rising to his cheeks, he gives up the last shred of his resistance and slips his hand down his boxers, palm coming away sticky, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from moaning in echo.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he mutters, jerking himself slowly, every pulse and twist of his hand synced to Freodore’s noises. He pictures Freodore with his legs splayed, chest heaving, hands shaking as he works himself open. Maybe he’s got someone there with him, holding him down, teasing him until he’s had enough and demands for more. Kaelix’s breath stutters, his cock hard in his grip.

He tries to be quiet and tries not to make any sound that might somehow travel back through the wall, but another high moan slips from Freodore and Kaelix’s hand only knows how to tighten instantly. He strokes himself from base to tip in one long drag, thumb smearing over the head until slick collects there. His hips jerk up into his fist, shallow and restless, trying to meet a rhythm he has no business chasing.

He sits up, leaning against the headboard of his bed as he squeezes harder, pumping himself slowly at first, then faster when Freodore gasps again. He can almost see it, he thinks, his free hand curling into a fist on the sheets next to him. Freodore spread out beneath him, flushed from the chest down, thighs trembling as he arches into every deep stroke. Freodore’s pretty cock leaking against his stomach. Freodore’s mouth parted, voice cracking every time Kaelix pushes deeper.

“Oh fuck,” Kaelix whispers, breath hitching, stroking himself harder as the fantasy takes root.

He pushes his boxers down farther, baring himself fully to the cool air. His free hand braces against the mattress as he starts to thrust into his fist, slow at first, then with more urgency. His breathing grows fast and uneven, matching every moan that spills from the wall. He rocks up into his grip like he’s lining up the timing to Freodore’s sounds, grinding into his palm when he imagines Freodore clenching around him.

His thighs tremble. He lifts his other to hand to bite down on his own knuckles, trying not to groan too loudly. He fucks his fist harder, hips snapping up, cock sliding through the tunnel of his grip over and over. His breath breaks into quiet, desperate whines he can’t control anymore, that he’s hoping are, at least, muffled enough. The slick sounds of his hand stroking him fill the room, mixing with every pleading noise from Freodore next door.

Kaelix’s stomach tightens. His whole body curls forward instinctively, working his cock with quick, sloppy strokes now. His toes curl just as his spine arches into his own touch. He thrusts into his hand like he needs it, like he’s trying to bury himself in the image of Freodore begging beneath him.

Every sound, every plea from the other side of the wall, winds him hotter and tighter. His shoulders flex as his hand speeds up until the friction is almost too much. He chases the peak blindly, hips driving upward in fast, jerking thrusts, cock throbbing in his grip.

“Ah—ah, please—”

The tension snaps, sudden and white-hot, his whole body seizing as he spills into his palm with a strangled groan, hips lifting a little off the bed. Pleasure spikes through him, bright and overwhelming.

He falls back against the wood of his headboard, panting, sweat cooling on his skin, eyes blown wide before he shuts them, trying to center himself again. For a few seconds, he’s floating, limbs numb and tingling, and he almost forgets where he is or when he is. Until Freodore moans again, needy and wrecked, and clearly still going.

Kaelix feels his heart drop straight through him. He lies there, sweaty and boneless, staring at the opposite wall of his bedroom, the taste of shame bitter in his mouth. What kind of freak gets off to his neighbor’s noises, like a total pervert? He should have put on headphones, or at the very least, not bite into his own fist to muffle his own moans and just stood up and left.

He drags an arm over his eyes. Freodore is still at it next door moaning in open desperation, like someone who has no reason to hold back. Every sound reminds Kaelix that he is entirely alone in his room, sticky, over-warm, and pretending he didn’t just lose his mind over his neighbor.

He breathes in and out, thinking about what the correct next move is. Should he meditate? Should he call someone? Should he exile himself from the building for a week? Should he move? Should he apologize to the wall? Should he Google whether soundproofing foam actually works?

He winces, because none of these are realistic for him right now, except for maybe looking into soundproofing.

He tries again, with more sobriety. He could stay here. He could lie very still. He could stare into the dark of his bedroom until Freodore finishes and hope he can be a big boy for both their sakes and then pretend none of this happened. But that thought lasts about three seconds before Freodore moans again, sharp and needy this time, and Kaelix nearly throws himself from the bed in shock but also fear that he might get hard again.

No. He can’t stay here. He is going to combust.

He decides the best possible course of action is to remove himself from the scene of the crime.

Kaelix wipes himself off quickly with a handful of tissues, tossing them into the trash. He pulls his boxers back up, avoiding eye contact with his own reflection in the darkened window. Then he quietly scoops up a clean blanket and one pillow, ignoring the way his hands shake like he’s attempting a midnight prison escape.

He tiptoes out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him as softly as possible, as though Freodore might somehow hear that too and magically know everything.

The living room is likewise dark when he enters. He doesn’t bother with the lights and just moves to drag the blanket over him, after setting the pillow down against one arm rest and lying down with a long exhale.

The city hums outside the window. Cars pass. Someone yells faintly down the street. Maybe a motorcycle revs. Everything feels blessedly normal and halfway sort of decent like this.

Nothing like the frantic, breathless sounds he knows are still drifting faintly from the opposite side of his bedroom wall.

Kaelix forces himself not to think about it. He squeezes his eyes shut and pulls the blanket up to his chin. The city noise fills the quiet of the room, and he tries to focus on these sounds instead, hoping they’ll eventually lull him to sleep.

Freodore hadn’t been planning to get off tonight. Really.

His last stream was forty-eight hours ago and he’d just been editing the clips, slicing and splicing moans and gasps into marketable hunks for the crowd that might want to consider paying for the full thing (the recordings—the live was mostly free, of course, cut in only by the occasional ad reel). He’s been at his laptop for a little over two hours, IEMs in, half-watching the footage but also half scrolling through a grocery list, cat food coupons, the latest drama on the Discord group for a few active and decently frequented streamers on the same site.

Somewhere around midnight, he pours himself a third glass of wine. In the living room, Gatita sprawls across the top platform of her cat tree, paws dangling over the edge, whiskers twitching in sleep despite the perfectly good plush bed sitting unused at the base. Her tail occasionally flicks as though chasing something in her dreams.

Freodore’s body hums with a slow, lazy hunger. It’s not just the wine. He’s been wound up for awhile now. He tells himself, at first, that this happens sometimes in his line of work, until his own defenses fall away, at least to himself, and he’s admitting things quietly and in small increments.

Lately, he’s taken to saying it’s just a crush, an artifact of isolation… but the way his skin tingles when he thinks of all the small moments piling up betrays him anyway, and the longer this goes on for, naturally, the harder it becomes to ignore.

Freodore catches a glimpse of the hallway through the crack in his door when he goes to refill his wine for the fourth (he tells himself he’s also been pouring just a third of the glass so a fourth pour was nothing). He sees that the light under Kaelix’s door and the part, at least, closer to the entryway seems to be off, the apartment across the way silent.

Earlier, they'd crossed paths at the stairwell, Freodore coming up with his mail, Kaelix taking two steps at a time on his way down. Their eyes had met for a second too long before they’d exchanged awkward hellos and goodbyes. He remembers, vaguely, Kaelix mentioning something about meeting up with his friends, which Freodore took to mean he wouldn’t be home for several more hours.

Freodore stretches out on his bed now, laptop balanced on one thigh, and clicks through the video he was working on. His own moans echo back at him in a loop of need and gratification. He watches himself fuck a glossy toy, one hand braced on the bed, the other twisting it deep and slow. The mask hides most of his face, but the desperation is obvious at the point in the video he’s on. He spares himself one more scrutinizing glance before he snaps the laptop shut, tired of the playback, moving to set it carefully on his nightstand.

For a moment, he just sits on his bed, staring at nothing in particularly. He likes to think his mind is blank right now, but his teeth catch at his bottom lip as he glances toward one of the dressers in the room. Rising, he crosses to the drawer tucked in the corner and pulls the middle layer open. He trails his fingers along the row of silicone (and then some) before selecting three and arranging them on the rumpled sheets.

He tells himself he’s just checking the fit, the way some people might try on clothes. But the truth is, he’s been experimenting for awhile now, working through the collection like a horny Goldilocks: too short, too stiff, too thick, too real. Somewhere in the middle is just right, but he’s never sure until he’s already shaking on it.

He’s not going to film this one, because not everything is for public consumption. He goes through the whole excruciating ordeal of getting out of his underwear, although he does keep his shirt on and climbs back into bed.

The first toy is a slim one. Smooth and maybe a bit too clinical in shape. He coats it with lube anyway until it shines and he wastes no time, parting his legs and working to press it in. The head slips past his rim with a soft, slick little sound, and he gasps, letting the sensation takeover. His cock twitches against his stomach, although he’s unsure where and to what thought got him this hard. The toy glides deeper in easily, almost too easy, and his breath starts to grow heavy with a low hum as he starts to move his hips in small rolls.

“Aah… mmph.” His moans are soft and testing, as if he’s listening for something specific inside himself.

But the stretch is mild at best and just enough to tease without really satisfying. After a minute, he grimaces at the slick little squelch that accompanies each thrust before pulling it out with a wet slide. It’s not scratching the itch gnawing at him, so it’s set aside on a towel at the corner of his bed.

The second one is a little pale and curved with a bit more intent to its design. He holds it for a moment, feeling the give of the material under his thumb, before he drags the length along the crease of his thigh, teasing himself without meaning to. He lines up and then presses it in without much fanfare.

“Oh—” his voice jumps in a slightly higher pitch. The curve hits something sweet inside him immediately. His eyes flutter shut as he sinks down on it inch by inch, body tightening around each new depth.

“God, yes,” he murmurs, trying to breathe through it. His hands shake faintly as he builds a steady rhythm, the toy tapping against a really, really good spot with each thrust just because of the angle. His cock leaks onto his stomach now, pink and needy. His moans get higher and breathier too, each one spilling out with less control the longer he goes.

It fills him up well enough and stretches him open nicely, but he’s greedy tonight and so, so keyed up, that it isn’t enough. He pulls the toy out with a tremulous breath, and with slightly trembling thighs, panting hard. The emptiness is almost unbearable.

Freodore reaches for the third.

He knows there’s a joke among his fans about this being his favorite one because its use frequently meant longer streams, and he’d spend a bit more time after talking as well, even answering questions about recent products he’s tried.

Though Freodore isn’t fond of people making calls about his preferences or his personality, he acknowledges they might not be totally out of left field with that assumption.

This toy in particular is a little longer, a bit more weighted, and thick at the base. It feels shaped to hit every part of him that would make his breath falter just the first push of it inside him alone. Now, he holds it in his palm the way some people hold an answer they’re afraid to admit they might need. He feels the soft catch of the silicone against his skin, sending a shiver straight up his spine, as he takes it down to where it needs to be.

He lines the toy up, where he’s already slick and pliant from the earlier ones, and nudges the head against his rim.

“Mm—” he winces at the stretch, because it’s still definitely a little more than the last two. It’s not painful, just slightly uncomfortable as he gets used to being slowly stuffed by it.

When he pushes it in fully, he swears he nearly blacks out for a moment.

Freodore’s mouth falls open around a broken moan.

The stretch is perfect. It’s full. Deep enough that he feels his breath hitch and tremble through his chest as he sinks onto it. His thighs shake and his cock twitches helplessly. He pushes down again, and the pressure blooms into something that makes his toes curl.

“Please…” he whispers to no one. Or maybe to the toy. Or maybe to a thought that he hasn’t let himself think yet.

“Oh god, ah—yes… more—”

Freodore starts fucking himself in earnest, hips lifting and rolling down, the toy driving into him again and again, each thrust pushing a new sound out of him. It’s louder than anything he’s ever let slip on stream, uninhibited and raw.

His cock bobs with every move, spilling fresh precum across his stomach. He braces one hand behind him, using it to meet each thrust with more force. He’s moaning openly and much more unfiltered than earlier, the wine softening the edges of his restraint.

He imagines the toy isn’t silicone. He imagines long arms caging him in. A body pressing him down. A voice in his ear telling him he feels really, really good to be inside of.

Freodore’s thighs tense as he own train of thought betrays him. His breath speeds up. The image takes root too easily, unfolding all the way down his spine.

He fucks himself harder, letting his knees slide apart, keeping his hips arched, one hand gripping the base while the other teases his chest. His nipples are sensitive, flushed and pebbled, and he can’t resist pinching them as he rocks the toy into him deeper. His cock, hard and leaking, stays tucked up against his belly as pounds the toy into the waiting clutch of his ass.

Freodore swallows thickly before he closes his eyes and lets the fantasy spool out in full color: Kaelix, shirtless, hair mussed from the gym, bracing him against the mattress with hands leaving faint imprints where he holds him hardest to fuck into him deepest. He imagines a warm breath against his ear, the soft brush of lips dragging down his throat, the low sound of someone trying not to moan too loudly. He imagines that voice cracking and begging for his permission to come.

“Fuck,” he whimpers, the sound sharper than he means it to be. He works the toy in faster, fucking himself hard, the wet slap of it echoing off the wall.

“Please, please, more, fuck me—” he gasps, raw and sweet with desperation.

The fantasy Kaelix obliges. In his mind, strong hands flip him over with ease, palms anchoring at his waist, dragging him back onto each thrust. Freodore buries his face in the pillow and cries out, pushing back eagerly, starved for every inch. He imagines Kaelix smiling against his cheek, breath shaking as he murmurs, that’s it, you’re taking me so well; imagines him kissing into his mouth as he pounds into him without pause.

A whine tears from him as he drives the toy deeper. His thighs tremble wildly. His cock twitches untouched, leaking onto his stomach and he’s drooling now too, a thin, warm line slipping from the corner of his mouth down the line of his neck, but he doesn’t care. Heat blooms through every one of his nerve endings, his body caught in the relentless, dizzying rhythm of his own fantasy.

Freodore’s breathing breaks. Something hot and reckless pushes past the edge of caution in his head as he thrusts the toy in faster, fucking down onto it so hard his whole body shifts up the bed. He drags his legs higher, knees nearly to his chest, opening himself wide for no one but the fantasy he can’t contain anymore. Sweat gathers at his hairline; the sheets twist under him.

“Good boy,” he gasps again, louder now, chasing the words as much as the pleasure. “Fuck, yes, right there, please—keep going for me—don’t stop—”

His cock leaks steadily, smearing his stomach each time he jerks forward. He fucks himself open with that rhythm, with that voice, with those words, until his toes curl hard, his thighs shake violently, and his breath comes in short, punched-out gasps that signal that he’s about to spill over the edge.

“Ah—yeah, yes—” Freodore’s words dissolve into a broken cry as his body seizes, back arching off the mattress. His cock pulses, painting hot stripes across his trembling stomach and chest, some even reaching the hollow of his throat. His thighs tremble as he continues to work the toy inside himself through each wave, gasping at the intensity of each aftershock.

After a while—and it’s a long while—Freodore finally lets himself come for the last time. He doesn’t even remember when he started. Time blurred somewhere between toy number two and the moment he flipped onto his stomach to grind down against the mattress for relief. By the time he decides this is it, he’s more than three and a half orgasms deep into the night, shaky and overstimulated, teetering on the edge without meaning to.

This last one crashes right through him, his vision going white momentarily. It comes the moment he imagines Kaelix pushing him open with slow, deep thrusts, voice low in his ear, chanting his name, begging for him to open up, telling him that he’s taking him so well, urging him to come for him just one more time.

His back arches off the mattress as his hips stutter upward. The toy once again hits something perfect inside of him and his cock jerks, barely a drop left to give as his entire body convulses.

“Kae—ah—!” he chokes out, the name dissolving into a high, broken whimper.

He clutches desperately at the sheets, knuckles white, as the pleasure crests and shatters him completely.

When he comes down from it, he feels scorched through.

He drops sideways onto the mattress, eyes unfocused. His hair is plastered to his forehead, damp from sweat. The toys he cycled through are scattered around him in a pattern that looks disturbingly like some amateur exorcist’s first attempt at a summoning circle for some kind of evil sex demon (this may or may not be him at this point).

His body feels spent, empty and full at the same time, like every nerve inside him has been rung out and strummed raw. When he finally manages to sit up, he glances at the digital clock to see that it’s well past three in the morning.

“Oh god…” he whispers, voice hoarse, as if that can undo the last two or so hours he spent in depravity.

He forces himself upright, legs shaky, and somehow manages to make it to the bathroom. The shower he takes is quick and half-conscious. He scrubs himself clean but doesn’t linger; he’s too tired and too aware of the way his mind keeps circling back to the same face.

When he returns to his room, he doesn’t bother remaking the bed and just tugs on a shirt. He leaves the carnage for future-him and collapses over the top blanket, tugging a clean one over his hips.

A soft creak at the door announces Gatita, who manages to nose it open just enough to slip through. She pads over with the patient indignation of a creature who believes she owns the whole place. She circles twice on the pillow before settling directly on his head like a warm, purring hat. Her tail flicks now and then, brushing his forehead.

Freodore stares at the ceiling, dizzy and drained, heart still beating too fast for someone supposedly done with the night.

He doesn’t know what’s worse: that he wants his neighbor so badly he’s run himself ragged over a fantasy about him, or that he can’t stop imagining what it would feel like to give in completely, to someone like Kaelix. To let Kaelix have everything he’s been trying not to admit he wants to offer.

Freodore closes his eyes, willing the thoughts away, but they sit at the back of his mind, tender and raw and far too sweet to shake off entirely. Sleep takes him only when exhaustion steals the last of his resistance.

Kaelix stands in the vestibule of the building, shivering a little, hands tucked deep in the pockets of his jacket. The lights in here are perpetually too bright and give everyone walking through a faintly ghoulish cast. This time of early evening or the hour between end-of-work and what counts as dinner, makes the city outside look blue and impossibly far away, even through the glass of the front door. It’s a comfort, somehow.

He shuffles past the main area of the lobby into the mail room, empty save for a dying potted plant and the wall of battered mailboxes. He unlocks his own, jimmies it open, revealing a flyer for low-interest credit cards and a small cluster of envelopes which he collects (one padded from his mom, probably more handwritten recipes and socks). On the floor beneath his box sits a small pile of cardboard packages: the capo and picks he’d impulse-ordered from the music supply shop at two in the morning, a paperback mystery novel from that online bookstore with the suspiciously fast shipping, and a sampler of artisanal barbecue sauces he'd convinced himself he needed after watching cooking videos until dawn.

As he turns to head upstairs, his gaze catches on a cluster of mail on the next column of boxes over. Most for Unit 301. Freodore’s box is packed full. Like, “stuffed to the gills with at least two magazines and a sheaf of envelopes” full. On the floor though, are an assortment of small to medium-sized packages, one, which he starts to pile onto his own load, is a bit heavy and roughly the size of a large shoebox, is labeled and plastered with several warning stickers: “FRAGILE” “DO NOT SHAKE” “HANDLE WITH CARE” and a couple of cuter, quirkier stickers dotting the exterior.

Kaelix stands there for a second, debating whether it’s nosy or just polite to bring up someone’s packages if you’re headed up anyway and also kind of vaguely sort of know the guy. Possibly like the guy.

He decides on polite, tells himself it’s the neighborly thing to do, and starts picking them up, fingers splaying to keep the whole arrangement from toppling over. Something in his chest warms at the thought of saving Freodore a trip downstairs, even if his knuckles are already whitening from the weight. It feels good to be useful, even if it’s just in the most basic, neighborly way.

He balances the two sets of mail, bracing one under his chin, and books it for the elevator before anyone can catch him acting like a package thief.

The elevator is mercifully empty, so he stacks everything neatly on top of his own things and presses to three. The ascent is slow, humming, and he watches the warped reflection of himself in the metal panel as he waits. He wonders if Freodore would think this is weird. Or if he’d even answer the door.

The doors open to the hallway’s faint aroma of reheated soup and someone's questionable attempt at incense. The wall lamps cast everything in a faded gold, and for a moment, Kaelix feels like a little kid again, delivering misaddressed mail to the wrong neighbor for a dollar a trip.

Kaelix stops at his own place first, fumbling with his keys while trying not to drop everything. Inside, he dumps his own mail onto the kitchen counter, then hesitates, suddenly second guessing himself, glancing down at Freodore’s packages. He takes a deep breath anyway and steps back out into the hallway, using a knuckle to tap on 301’s door instead of a full knock.

He waits, rocking back on his heels. There’s a shuffling sound, then the door opens a cautious six inches, chain still engaged.

Freodore peers out, hair loose. He looks tired in a way that means “busy” and not “sick” which Kaelix finds reassuring. His sunset-colored eyes flick from Kaelix’s face to the stack of packages, then back.

“Hey,” Kaelix says, offering a grin. “Sorry to bother, but your mail was threatening to take over the lobby and I figured you wouldn’t want to do a double mail run when you finally got around to it.”

Freodore blinks, then the door closes. Kaelix hears the chain rattle free, and then it swings open properly.

“Thank you,” Freodore says, a little quiet, but there isn’t a hint of flatness in his voice. His gaze lands again on the pile. “That’s… a lot.”

Kaelix hands them over one at a time, giving Freodore the space to pad back inside to drop a few bigger things down somewhere careful. He watches Freodore, who is in a loose shirt that clings to still-damp patches of skin and what might be pajama pants riding low on his hips, move. His hair is freshly washed and, Kaelix realizes, falling over his eyes. It’s when Freodore’s back at the door again for the last package that he catches the one droplet sliding tantalizingly down his neck before disappearing beneath his collar. He catalogs, without meaning to, the light flush coloring his cheeks, probably warmed from a hot bath.

Gatita appears briefly a few paces behind him, giving Kaelix one judgmental glance, before scuttling deeper into the apartment, as if unwilling to witness whatever embarrassing thing was about to unfold at her owner’s doorstep.

“Uh, thanks again,” Freodore repeats. “Really. I appreciate it. You didn’t have to.”

He shuffles back a little, like he might invite Kaelix in, then checks himself maybe and instead just holds the door a second longer.

Kaelix takes that as his win for the week, for now. He lets his eyes flick past, trying not to be obvious about it, but all he catches is a glimpse of the entryway, the living room, a neatly stacked shoe rack, and part of Gatita’s cat tree.

“Any time,” Kaelix says, stepping back and doing a little salute with two fingers, which is definitely overkill, but it gets a half-smile from Freodore. He wants to say something more, maybe something funny or clever, but he’s become too aware of how close they’re standing and the faint scent of soap and clean skin coming from the other man.

After a beat, Freodore looks up at him again. “Did you want something?” he asks, softer, like he’s already regretting the words.

Kaelix’s brain blanks for a second. The words “want to grab a coffee sometime?” form in Kaelix’s mouth but die there as the memory of last night ambushes him at the worst moment. His pulse quickens. No, he needs to think this through first. So, instead he shakes his head with a smile.

“Oh, no, sorry! I’m—that’s all I really stopped by for,” he elaborates, already wincing at how much of a dork he sounds like this way.

“Uh, good night then,” Kaelix manages to say too.

Looking a little baffled, Freodore tilts his head, smiling a little when he responds with a small “good night,” as well.

Kaelix turns, heart hammering against his ribs as he retreats to the sanctuary of 303.

He doesn’t start dinner as soon as he’s back inside his own place and decides to take his mind off things by putting away the new packages and sorting them out into proper storage. He starts opening each of them, going through the motions. Picks in a drawer in the living room, capo on the shelf, book on the living room table, a few snacks into some cabinets. He finally gets to the heaviest one, not really thinking as he slices it open with a box cutter. Inside is a slightly smaller, matte black box, almost swallowed by the peach-colored packing filler that’s surrounding it. There are a few other things he sees hidden in the paper grave, the tops of bottles, a squeeze tube or two, and some wine red silk ribbons.

Kaelix squints.

He doesn’t remember getting any of these.

The box is embossed but Kaelix doesn’t bother reading it, just shimmies out the top half of it and blinks, brain stuttering when he sees what’s inside.

Kaelix doubles back to the embossed letters on the box and sees, well, what’s in here is exactly as it says on the tin, tastefully typeset: VIBRATING 7” LUXE, and in finer print: waterproof, rechargeable, hypoallergenic silicone. It’s a modest shade of pastel blue-gray. There’s another, slightly smaller box that’s not as heavy, and its label, this time, reads: ANGLED PROSTATE MASSAGER. This one is a deep shade of red. He pulls out the fabric neatly folded among the box filler, which is still attached to a square-shaped craft hanger and the print on it tells Kaelix that it’s supposed to be silk bounds that can also be used over the eyes because it doubles a blindfold. Huh.

The rest of the box seems part of a whole set: two bottles of water-based lubricant (one warming and one just the regular kind) and an alcohol and paraben free cleansing spray, presumably meant to clean the toys after use.

There’s a card too and Kaelix pulls that out and unfolds it, reading over the stylized print:

Kaelix stares at the card for a long moment.

He picks the black box up again and takes a good, long look at its contents once more, then at the card, as if alternating between staring at them both (and the other items within the heavy package) will reveal a rational explanation for how this ended up in his mail. Had he drunkenly signed up for some bizarre influencer program? Was it a prank? The wrong addre—wait.

The way his brain finally supplies a different answer is kind of slow going, mostly because he needs to get over the hurdle of believing it. He thinks about the pile of packages at the mail room earlier and which side he’d gotten the heaviest one from.

Kaelix takes a seat. He stares at the dildo on his table.

There is really only one explanation at this point, but it’s so absurd that his mind had immediately rejected it in favor of several more convoluted options.

He glances at the name on the card again. The glittery print winks up at him like it knows something he doesn’t (clearly, another part of his brain supplies helpfully). His brain is like a GPS recalculating after a wrong turn: “In 500 feet, realize your neighbor is a sex toy influencer.”

This isn’t some random package that fell into Freodore’s lap—though clearly things fall into his lap professionally. This is a whole operation with affiliate codes, viewer discounts, and... demonstrations?

Kaelix’s breath catches in his throat, his mind struggling to reconcile two incompatible realities. Freodore—the same guy whose entire existence seemed to be crafted around his self-contained solitude, whose life felt like a fortress of carefully cultivated privacy (which, okay, now it’s kind of making sense)—demonstrating sex toys on camera and online to strangers. The thought of Freodore’s body, exposed and vulnerable, testing these products with methodical care sends a rush of heat through Kaelix so intense he has to press his palms against his burning cheeks. His heart hammers against his ribs as if trying to escape this new, disorienting knowledge.

Freodore’s username sits there on the card like an invitation. He could find it right now. Just open his laptop and search. His fingers twitch with the possibility, but something in his chest tightens. Watching without Freodore knowing would be crossing a line. He’d basically be breaking into a part of Freodore’s life he had no permission to enter. Sure, possibly thousands of strangers were already looking, but Kaelix wasn’t just any other stranger to him at the very least. He wasn’t going to go looking.

What had his friends told him? Re-consider his approach and really think about what he wants out of this little dance he’s been doing with Freodore.

Well, Kaelix kind of knows now.

He wants to be invited into Freodore’s life, if at all possible. Not just this part of it, with all the saucy stuff, but just—whatever Freodore was willing to give Kaelix, even if it was going to be in very, very small increments. (And also, if he doesn’t get sued for accidentally stealing his mail.)

Chapter 4

Kaelix has been trying to get real sleep for two nights straight. Actual, uninterrupted, sleep. The kind where he doesn’t have to be so scared about the prospect of waking up hard for straight days in a row at the faintest suggestion of a moan echoing in his dreams. Now that he knows a little bit more about Freodore mostly against his will (...and possibly Freodore’s), every sound his neighbor makes has unwittingly become a psychological minefield.

Tonight though, he finally thinks he’s got it.

He engineered it, actually, by dragging himself through a day’s worth of errands, scrubbed his apartment to a level that would impress a health inspector, and then hit the gym harder than was remotely necessary. He’d even added extra cardio at the end in the desperate hope that physical exhaustion might outmuscle his brain.

And it seems to have worked, and in the horizon, Kaelix can already taste the promise of drifting off without any accidental audio-assisted fantasies. He exhales, sinking into his pillow, muttering a hopeful prayer to whatever higher force that might govern apartment buildings. And the lights go out in his brain, finally, peacefully, for the first time in days.

Naturally, this is also when the universe decides to ruin his life.

The fire alarm splits Kaelix’s sleep in half, a shriek boring straight through the thin membrane of a dream about being trapped in an elevator with his high school choir teacher and then yanking him upright in his bed with such force that he nearly launches himself headfirst into the drywall. His hair—already a losing battle most mornings—now sticks out wildly at every possible angle, flattened hard on one side and sticking out awkwardly on the other where he’d been mashing it against the pillow. For one dense, confused second he’s certain the building is under missile attack, or maybe it’s just a particularly vivid sound from his phone’s new notification tone, but then his brain shakes loose enough to clock the nature of the noise, the angry, mechanical “EVACUATE. EVACUATE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

“Oh, hell,” he mumbles, shoving his comforter aside with a panicked tangle of limbs. His phone is nowhere to be seen and his eyes sting from the sudden blast of red emergency light bouncing off every surface in his bedroom, which does not help at all in finding where he’s chucked his pajama pants the night before. He gives up and grabs the closest clothing item within reach (jeans on a nearby chair), wrangles it on, and nearly knocks himself unconscious working the metal zipper up while doing so.

The coat rack by the door stands sentinel, exactly where his mom told him to keep one (“for emergencies, Kaelix. Trust me.”) so he yanks a sweater over his head and piles his heaviest jacket, the one in deep burgundy that’s fleece-lined, within reach on top of it for good measure. Shoes next. He shoves his feet into sneakers (untied, because who has time to tie them in a fire?) and lurches into the hallway, eyes blinking hard to adjust to the nightmare palette of red and white strobe now stuttering through the corridor.

The stairwell is already a moving parade of half-dressed, confused residents. Someone in a robe, someone else in a towel, one guy in what might actually be a full three-piece suit, like he’d slept in it. Kaelix weaves through the crowd, chest tight, pulse jackhammering in his ears as the alarm continues its mechanical screech.

He hits the street in a flood of people and instantly regrets not grabbing his scarf before remembering that he just lost it recently. The late fall air is a razor, slicing through the thin fabric of his hoodie to rake what feels like ice up the sides of his neck. His body stings with the shock of it, but he tries to stay focused, to inventory his own survival: shoes, pants, coat, okay, he’ll live. It’s only when he takes a breath to steady himself and scans the crowd of residents outside that he realizes something is deeply, existentially wrong.

He can’t see Freodore.

A panic, far more visceral than the alarm, lances through him. It takes every shred of willpower to keep from turning on his heel and charging straight back into the building, but there are security and maintenance staff actively shepherding people away from the doors, talking into radios and urging everyone to “please stay calm, the fire department is on its way.” He weaves through throngs of people, craning his neck, scanning for the thin shape of his neighbor—he doesn’t even care, at this point, whether it would look weird or desperate to anybody watching him do it.

He starts counting: that’s the lady with the lemon tote, the guy with the silver husky lounging at his feet looking perfectly content in the freezing air, the woman in the pink silk bonnet clutching her robe closed at the neck, the maintenance worker who always smells like cigarettes and peppermint. But no Freodore. Kaelix’s heart tries to wriggle right out of his chest. He considers, for one white-hot, idiotic second, pulling the classic “rush the barricade and scream his name up the stairwell” maneuver, but a second, slightly more sensible part of his brain says maybe—just maybe—wait another minute before embarrassing yourself that completely.

And then, with a jolt, he sees him.

Freodore emerges from the building’s main entrance like the aftermath of a magic trick gone a little sideways: barefoot, hair yanked into a lopsided, half-broken bun that trails threads of teal down his neck, wearing a pair of sleep shorts and a shirt several sizes too large for him, clutching a very vocal white cat to his chest. His arms are bracketing the cat in a way that’s more “cradling newborn” than “house pet,” and his eyes are two stunned saucers of color, blinking as if he’d just now arrived in the world.

The sight nearly floors Kaelix. He charges straight to him, all but shoving aside a cluster of bystanders to close the distance.

“Freo!” he blurts, voice a jagged edge. “Are you—did you—?”

Freodore stops, turns, and stares at Kaelix like he’s not fully sure how he got here, or maybe like he’s in the middle of reconstructing reality from scratch. Gatita yowls in complaint and tucks her face against Freodore’s jaw. For a few seconds, Freodore doesn’t say anything, just keeps standing there on the sidewalk, the bottoms of his feet going from white to the beginnings of red-ish.

Kaelix immediately shrugs off his own jacket and, before thinking too hard about what it might look like, swings it around Freodore’s shoulders. Freodore flinches a little, more in confusion than protest, and lets Kaelix maneuver the jacket onto him, slipping his arms in. If this was already decently oversized on Kaelix, Freodore swims in it. The sleeves dangle over his hand and he swears it might come up to just over his thighs, and the collar nearly swallows the lower half of his face.

Gatita gets momentarily smooshed in the process, meows furiously, but clings tight to her owner’s chest.

Freodore peers up from under the heavy jacket, looking even smaller than usual, lips pale and hands shaking a little around the cat. He blinks slowly, like the concept of “wearing a jacket” is one he hasn’t encountered before.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, though the breath he exhales after that trembles.

Kaelix’s hands move before his brain can stop them, patting down Freodore’s arms and shoulders, fingers skimming over exposed skin checking for burns or cuts. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” he asks, voice cracking with worry. He freezes mid-motion when his fingertips brush against Freodore’s collarbone, suddenly aware of how close they’re standing, how cool Freodore’s skin feels beneath his touch.

Freodore just nods. “Yeah, just… cold.” His voice comes out flat and a little raspy, that end-of-the-day tone might be weaker for under different circumstances.

The building staff has corralled everyone into a loose circle across the street, trying to keep people from crowding the lobby. Kaelix steps aside with Freodore, guiding him away from the thick of the group. His neighbor is still shivering and it makes Gatita’s tail lash in agitation.

“Oh no, your feet—god, your feet,” Kaelix exclaims, finally seeing how red Freodore’s toes have gotten.

Freodore looks down, as if seeing them for the first time too.

“Was in a hurry,” he mutters, which is so much an understatement that it makes Kaelix want to simultaneously laugh and cry.

“Come on, you can’t stand here and let them freeze off.” Kaelix scans for anywhere to sit, then gestures toward the wide stone plant box on the opposite sidewalk. “Let’s—uh, here.”

Freodore limps behind him, wincing a little with every step. When they reach the box, he goes to perch on the very edge, but the second his legs touch the cold stone, he lets out a sharp gasp and recoils like he’s sat on a live wire. Gatita yowls and claws at the jacket, digging in for purchase.

Kaelix hovers, unsure. “Shit, sorry, does that hurt more?”

“It’s fine, it’s just…” Freodore curls in tighter around the cat and under the jacket, clearly doing math in his head about whether sitting or standing is worse. The entire time, he is very carefully not making eye contact.

Kaelix can’t stand the sight of him freezing. He blurts, without thinking, “okay, plan B. Sit on me.”

This draws Freodore’s attention, at last. He stares at Kaelix, expression somewhere between “I did not hear that right” and “please do not elaborate.”

Kaelix, of course, elaborates. “I mean, just—” (exactly like that, if you want—but also, they’re probably not ready to have that conversation yet, so Kaelix has to table this) “—until you warm up, and your feet, uh, won’t get as cold. I can handle it.” He’s suddenly very aware of his own body temperature, and how it’s going up by the second.

Freodore opens his mouth, closes it, then mutters, “oh no, it’s—I’m fine. Not that cold,” even as his toes curl, clearly uncomfortable bare and straight on the ground.

Kaelix lowers himself onto the edge of the planter and pats his thighs. “Come on, it’ll help and it’s practical,” he says, his voice gentler now. “And you might get sick otherwise. We’ll get you a blanket as soon as the rest of emergency services show with them, but for now, you’ve got to keep warm.”

Freodore looks down at his own bare feet, then at the stone, then at Kaelix. He sighs, something tired and long-suffering. For a moment, he just stands there, shifting his weight from one freezing foot to the other, clearly calculating the exact threshold of dignity he’s willing to sacrifice. Then his shoulders slump in defeat.

“Fine,” he murmurs, barely audible over Gatita’s disgruntled meow.

He lets Kaelix guide him by the elbow, hesitating with each step. When he finally lowers himself onto Kaelix’s lap, awkward and light, perched on the very edge as if he making sure he’d be ready to flee if needed. His body is tense, a comma of resistance, but the cold wins out and he inches backward, never once letting go of the cat, who seems to have resigned herself to this new nesting arrangement with feline indifference.

It’s the softest, weirdest, best feeling Kaelix has experienced since moving to the city. Freodore’s hair smells nice and clean, muted and something, dare he say, baby-soft and powdery, the fine threads of it tickling under Kaelix’s chin. Kaelix shifts slightly, adjusting Freodore’s weight on his lap, and tentatively wraps his arms around the smaller man’s midsection. Freodore stiffens for a heartbeat before, finally, exhaling and settling back against Kaelix’s chest, his body melting into the curve of warmth. Gatita’s purring kicks in almost instantly, a low, defiant engine against the world.

Kaelix sits very, very still. For the next five minutes, neither of them say anything, listening instead to the shrill pulse of the fire alarm, the shuffle of their neighbors on the pavement, around on the street, and the brittle sound of wind scraping leaves across the sidewalk.

A staff member (one of the two maintenance guys, the one with the blue badge) walks past and calls out updates: “Situation’s nearly under control! No fire in the main building, just smoke from the trash chute, but you’ll need to wait for the all clear! Blankets on the way, just hang tight, folks!”

Freodore shivers. Kaelix feels it through every inch of him, a delicate, involuntary vibration. He tightens his arms just a little, careful not to make it weird, but intent on keeping as much body contact as he can. In steady, dependable heat transfer, of course.

“Sorry,” Freodore whispers after a long while, voice barely audible over the ambient noise of literally everything else going on around them.

“For what?”

He shakes his head, embarrassed. “For being, like, a health hazard. I didn’t mean to, uhm, endanger your knees.”

Kaelix can’t help but snort. “Believe me, I’m strong enough for the both of us. This is nothing. You could have probably brought her cat tree down here and I’d still be fine.”

Freodore laughs, so soft it could almost be mistaken for a cough. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It’s only then that the full force of reality dawns on Kaelix: he is sitting in the middle of the street, with the guy he’s been losing sleep over for months at this point in his lap, pressed back to chest, wrapped in his own jacket, under the pretense of a (sort of) life-or-death emergency. There is a small, perverse joy in knowing that, for a little while, Freodore needs him.

He tries to look normal, tries not to fidget, but every time Freodore shifts—adjusting Gatita, tucking his knees up tighter, reaching for the edge of the jacket—Kaelix feels it everywhere. Thank god Freodore’s facing away, unable to see the heat creeping up Kaelix’s neck and into his cheeks. His face is probably the color of a fire truck by now, but at least in this position, his mortifying transparency remains his secret alone.

After a few more minutes, a pair of paramedics appears, armed with a bundle of scratchy blue wool blankets. They hand two to Kaelix and, without question, he tucks both over Freodore’s lap, covering those ridiculous running shorts that have been driving him quietly insane all night. As the thin fabric disappears beneath layers of wool, Kaelix feels an absurd pang of loss, quickly replaced by satisfaction at the way Freodore’s shivering begins to subside. He wraps the edges up around Gatita as well, making a cocoon of warmth and static.

“There you go,” Kaelix says, softer than he means to. “That should help.”

Freodore nods, eyes already half-shut, like he might drift off right here on the sidewalk. The end-of-the-night rasp in his voice is even more pronounced when he finally murmurs, “you’re ridiculous.”

“Hey, I got you mostly out of the cold, didn’t I?”

Freodore doesn’t answer, but the cat does, kneading her claws into the wool blanket and purring at a volume that could rival the generator down the block.

Kaelix lets his head tip back and stares at the blinking sky, still awash in emergency reds and the blues of the evening. He wonders, for the first time in a long time, if maybe the city has been right all along—if sometimes it really does take an actual crisis to cut through all the reasons you’d have to keep your distance.

A tinny, distorted voice cuts through the night, followed by the hollow echo of someone tapping a megaphone. The building manager stands near the entrance, megaphone raised to his mouth, not quite as apologetic as the situation might warrant: “Attention, all residents. The fire has been contained to a lower-level utility chute. Floors three and above are now safe to re-enter. Please proceed with caution. Maintenance will be on-site to assist anyone needing support.”

Almost instantly, the crowd outside lurches back into motion in an urgent, sleep-deprived migration toward the front door. Kaelix feels Freodore tense a little in his lap, and then, before he can process the next step, Freodore tries to lever himself upright.

“Looks like we’re good to go,” Freodore says, voice still carrying that low, gravelly exhaustion in it. He makes a half-hearted attempt to stand, which is when Kaelix’s instincts hijack the moment. He gets a solid grip around Freodore’s waist and under the knees, bracing to lift, and the next thing anyone knows, he’s standing with Freodore in his arms, jacket and blankets still bundled around them both.

Freodore makes a small, incredulous noise and blinks up at Kaelix, Gatita sandwiched between them.

“Wait. Wait, Kaelix! I can walk!” Freodore protests, struggling to keep the cat secure as he flails for a grip on the jacket and the blanket both.

Kaelix doesn’t put him down.

“You’re barefoot, Freo,” he points out, managing to keep his voice even. “It’s freezing. Think about it. You have to cross the street and then go up three flights of stairs. I—honestly, it’s easier if I just carry you.”

This is not, strictly speaking, true. Freodore might seem delicate in his eyes but he’s not weightless, and the adrenaline from earlier is wearing off, but Kaelix has already committed. He starts toward the building, holding tight. Gatita buries her face in Freodore’s arms, as if to tell them, ugh, embarrassing.

“Seriously, I’m fine,” Freodore mumbles, but there’s no real fight left in him. He’s pink to the tips of his ears and seems mostly focused on keeping his cat from squirming out of the blanket. After a second, he finally sighs and tucks his face against Kaelix’s collar, and then mutters, “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

Kaelix grins, a little dumbly, and shifts his grip to make sure Freodore's as comfortable as he can possibly be in his arms. “I told you, I’ll be fine. Plus, I think it’s against the law somewhere to let cute neighbors get frostbite.” The word hangs in the air between them, and Kaelix feels his face grow hot. He swallows hard, suddenly very aware of how Freodore’s weight feels against his chest. Freodore just blinks up at him, lips parted slightly, before looking away and nestling deeper into his arms without comment.

He makes it to the lobby, dodging a few straggling residents and pretending not to see the double-take from the old man at the mailboxes and lemon tote bag lady. He heads straight for the stairs, skips the elevator (which is always slow, and besides, the seniors were all rightfully lined up there).

The climb is awkward but manageable. Every step, Kaelix feels Freodore’s body pressed tighter to his chest, warm despite the cold night. Gatita purrs louder with every floor. The echoes of their ascent bounce off the painted concrete and land squarely in Kaelix’s brain, where he is already running this moment on repeat for the rest of his natural life.

Halfway up the first flight, Freodore finally breaks the silence: “You really don’t have to. We’re already inside and I know it’s—”

“I want to,” Kaelix says. He’s not sure if he meant to say it quite that honestly, but there it is, out in the open. “Besides, you basically weigh as much as my gym bag and my guitar if I’m carrying them both at the same time.”

“Rude,” Freodore says, but there’s the ghost of a laugh in it.

Kaelix takes the stairs two at a time, not because he needs to show off, but because he kind of wants to get this over with before his own nerves get the better of him. At the second landing, he slows down, partly because his arms are starting to really feel it, but mostly because he doesn’t want to let go just yet.

They’re nearly at the third floor when Freodore speaks again, softer this time. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, the words barely audible.

“For what?” Kaelix asks, his voice gentle, a little bewildered that Freodore would apologize for anything right now.

Freodore tucks his chin against Kaelix’s shoulder, then peeks over it, eyes widening slightly at how far up he’s been carried. His lashes flutter as he checks their progress, head tilted at an angle that makes something in Kaelix’s chest squeeze tight.

“My feet are, uhm, kind of really sensitive, so I do… I really appreciate it,” Freodore mutters after a beat. “It’s a texture thing. I’m like that with food too.”

“Oh! I see,” Kaelix says, voice catching slightly. “You’re gonna have to tell me more about that one of these days. I mean, about the food. I’m so curious.”

This new information absolutely does not help. Because while he is definitely interested in the food bit, he also kind of wants to chance asking, well, now, how sensitive are we talking? He doesn’t, of course.

Kaelix feels his grip tighten just a fraction, feeling the heat creep up into his own face. He cannot possibly explain to Freodore how much hearing these small, specific details Freodore rarely shares undoes him and so he forces himself to nod, to look anywhere but at Freodore right now, because the urge to press his face into that sleep-rumpled hair is suddenly overwhelming. He swallows hard and counts the remaining steps up, focusing on the mechanics of walking rather than how perfectly Freodore fits against him like this.

When they reach the landing, Kaelix pauses outside 301, not sure if he’s meant to set Freodore down now or if he’s supposed to, like, continue this ritual all the way into the apartment. He stands there, still holding Freodore in his arms, and for one charged second, neither of them moves.

Freodore looks up at him, cat blinking serenely from the crook of his elbow, and says, “you can put me down now.”

Kaelix doesn’t move right away.

“If you’re sure…” he says eventually.

When he finally lets Freodore’s feet touch the ground, he does it gently. Kaelix takes the blanket and folds it over his arm, watching as Freodore adjusts his grip on Gatita, the cat’s white paws kneading against the jacket still draped around her owner’s shoulders. Gatita looks like she’s gone ten rounds with a vacuum and lost, her white fur now a little streaked with grit and lint from the blanket. The both of them are a sight, half-dazed under the glow of the hall lights.

“Thanks,” Freodore says, almost sheepishly. He shifts Gatita into a more manageable position, then turns to face the door. His feet look a bit better at least but still kind of pinkish and Kaelix immediately feels bad for not carrying him the last five meters or dropping him straight back into bed or running him a warm bath or—

Before he can so much as think or say anything else, Freodore’s hand reaches for the doorknob, then hesitates. He looks to his side, at Kaelix, eyes sunset-bright, and for once, they don’t look away immediately, something rare and unguarded in his expression.

His voice softens when he speaks. “Seriously, though. Thank you—not just for tonight, but uhm, you know...” He gestures vaguely at the space between them. When Kaelix’s expression remains blank, brain slow to catch up, Freodore hugs Gatita closer and adds quietly, “everything, I guess.”

Kaelix’s heart pitches sideways in his chest.

“I—yeah—anytime, Freo,” he stammers, shifting his weight. “That’s what neighbors are for. Or friends. Or whatever we—” He manages to rein in the word vomit. “You can count on me for stuff like this. Or anything, really.”

Freodore’s mouth curves into a small, tentative smile. “I’m starting to believe you actually mean that.”

“What? No, I do!” Kaelix says quickly, eyes widening. “I really do. I can only give you my word, but for what it’s worth... I’m literally just a knock away.” He almost says wall but catches himself, heat climbing up the back of his neck as his brain helpfully supplies memories of exactly how thin that barrier between them really is.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Freodore says, maybe feeling generous. He hugs Gatita closer, chin dropping down to nuzzle at the cat’s ears, like he’s in the habit of it. Gatita accepts this begrudgingly.

Then Freodore says, “well… good night, Kaelix. Sweet dreams.”

The use of his name knocks something loose in Kaelix, as it does usually, but tonight he wants to believe Freodore’s saying it a little different, sweet around the syllables of it. He grins, wide and honest, and says, “good night. You too, Freo.” He raises a hand in a half-wave, fingers wiggling at Gatita too, for good measure. She blinks at him, unimpressed but not hostile.

Freodore fumbles for his key, then gently lowers Gatita to the floor. The cat lands with a soft thump and stands perfectly still beside his bare feet, tail curled neatly around her haunches. He manages to get the door open, and Gatita immediately darts inside in a streak of white disappearing into the darkness. Freodore pauses in the threshold a moment longer, looking back with eyes sunset-bright in the thin corridor light.

“Hey, Kaelix?”

“Yeah?” His voice cracks, a little.

Freodore shifts his weight, eyes darting to the floor then back up.

“Actually, I was thinking—let’s grab that coffee one of these days? On me, since I owe you one.” He tilts his head to the side a bit, hair falling in soft sweet waves over his shoulder and Kaelix has to put all his mental restraint to work because, god, does he not know how cute that is?

He rubs the back of his neck, key suspended halfway to his own lock. “Oh? Wait, really?”

Freodore nods. “Mm, yeah,” he just murmurs mildly.

Kaelix’s brain isn’t working fast or snappy enough now that the adrenaline’s mostly drained out of him.

He manages to at least tell him, “yeah! Yeah, of course. I’d love that.”

Freodore’s lips curve into another small smile at that before he bids him another quiet little “alright, well, night night, then Kaelix,” and slips inside his apartment.

After 301’s door clicks shut, Kaelix’s eyes widen and he finally lets out the loud, shaky exhale he’s been holding back through his mouth. He stumbles into his apartment too, and sinks right down to the floor, back against his closed door, heart going a thousand miles a minute as he lets himself replay the entire night in his head, trying to make peace with the fact that he hasn’t actually hallucinated it all.

The coffee shop is already buzzing when Freodore walks in, hands stuffed deep in his jacket pockets, trying to look anywhere except at the register where Alban is manning the fort, because he knows he’ll catch him, he always does.

It’s a crisp early December morning, the kind that’s cold enough to drive everyone inside seeking warmth, leaving the streets nearly empty. The coffee shop windows are fogged with condensation, each pane a canvas of swirling patterns where the heat meets cold. There are three other people ahead of him in the queue, which is more than usual for this hour, but Freodore likes that—it gives him time to recalibrate, to line up his social batteries for what is, for all intents and purposes, a date.

Well. Not a date-date. Kaelix called it a “coffee thing” last night, with that breezy nothing-to-it confidence that would have made even a root canal sound like just another item on a weekend to-do list.

And yet, here Freodore is, wearing the one nice jacket that doesn’t make him look like an extra in a Netflix drama, the rest of his outfit coordinated, which he hopes looks effortless, because the effort is not supposed to show.

He’s not nervous. He’s absolutely not nervous.

What he is, is slightly on edge because he’s not sure what the protocol is for bringing a hot guy you’ve been flirting with for the last few months into your favorite third space, where the baristas just ask “the usual today, Freo?” without him having to specify his drink order.

Freodore’s lost count of how many cafes they’ve been to in the immediate area before this one. He hadn’t planned to fall into such an easy rhythm with Kaelix, but after, well, most everything that’s taken place in the last couple of months, it just kept happening.

Kaelix would appear in the hall, or the mail room, or at the corner store, and Freodore, would, at first, do that thing he always does when someone starts hedging into his space—keep them at arm’s length, then feel a little bit guilty, then accidentally let them in by increments until he’s realizing after the fact that, oh, he actually looks forward to their run-ins. That he actually wants to hear about the weird dream Kaelix had last night, or the drama with the food delivery app, or the song that’s been stuck in his head for two weeks.

It’s… nice.

And kind of terrifying.

And so he’s here, next in line when he hears a bright “there you are!” from behind and turns just in time for Kaelix to sidle in next to him, hair a little damp at the temples from the walk.

Kaelix grins, that easy, teeth-baring thing he does, and nudges him with an elbow. “I was gonna text to see if you were here yet, but figured you’d beat me anyway.”

“You figured right,” Freodore deadpans, but there’s a lilt at the edge of it. “I got us the corner window.”

Kaelix says “nice,” with a small, pleased smile.

Freodore’s own words echo back to him for a single startling second. Hold on. Did he just say us? When had that happened? It’s a simple pronoun, but it sits between them, unexpectedly weighty, and Freodore feels his pulse quicken as he tries to will himself into calming down internally.

Alban looks up from behind the counter and, seeing them together, lights up like it’s his birthday. “Ohhh, Freo! And friend! Welcome, welcome. We’re running a couple’s promo, just saying—” he waggles his eyebrows— “so if you’re feeling lucky, today’s the day to go public with it.”

Freodore flushes, immediately. “We’re not—”

Kaelix puts a hand on his shoulder, perfectly timed, perfectly light. “Just say yes to the free coffee, Freo,” he says, turning to Alban. “I’m not above it.”

Alban cracks up, already tapping at the POS. “Ha! I like this guy already. He’s right. Just say yes to the free coffee, Freo. Let me know if you want to start a loyalty card too and work together on the two free drinks after ten visits while you’re at it.”

Freodore shoots him a look but it’s hopeless. Alban just beams, unrepentant.

Alban pauses, looking between them with a mischievous grin.

“Wait a minute. Show me your most convincing couple acting. Like, give each other your best ‘we’re madly in love’ eyes and I'll throw in a free pastry. Each.”

Freodore feels his face heating up, mouth opening to stammer out a protest. When he catches Kaelix’s eyes, there’s a playful twinkle there, like a dare, almost. Before Freodore can even process what that look means, Kaelix slides behind him, arms wrapping around his waist with casual confidence. The gesture is familiar yet entirely new. Because now there’s no pretense of an emergency to justify it and there’s only Kaelix’s chest pressing against him, his breath warm on the back of Freodore’s head, and nowhere to hide from how his own pulse quickens at the contact.

Kaelix leans in closer, looking over his shoulder at the menu. The warmth of him radiates through the thin fabric of Freodore’s jacket and it’s—okay, it’s fine, it’s not a big deal, it’s just proximity. He’s allowed to be near. Actually, wait. How has this man gotten away with this twice?! And why on earth was Freodore letting him? He’s embarrassed when his own brain betrays him and he realizes, too, that he only just leaned back slightly, into the heat of him on instinct.

For some reason unknown to even Freodore, he finds himself putting his own hands over Kaelix’s, blinking forward at the pastry display while his brain tries to reboot.

Their reflection in the glass is a little ridiculous. Kaelix’s chin on the side of his head, Freodore’s hands braced over the other’s, both of them looking like—well. Like, Kaelix fits against him with an ease that makes Freodore’s throat go dry, as if he had been practicing this exact embrace, like their bodies were designed with this configuration in mind.

Behind the counter, Alban is shamelessly eating it up. “Oh, you’re nailing this. If you can keep it up until I print out the receipt, I’ll give you two stamps too, instead of just one for the visit.”

Freodore wants to die. Kaelix just squeezes him a little and whispers jokingly, “you’re gonna have to let go so I can pay, or they’ll think we’re one of those people.”

“God forbid,” Freodore mutters, but when he steps forward, Kaelix just follows right up to get closer to the counter and Freodore, still flush against his back. He can feel the vibration of Kaelix’s laugh in his chest, and it’s unfair, how nice it is.

Alban taps a finger on the counter, mock-impatient. “So, what’ll it be?”

Kaelix is the one to clear his throat and speak first. “He’ll get a hot pour-over of, uh… Any single origin today?”

Freodore blinks.

“Ah, we still have the nice Colombia one,” Alban says, twisting around one of the bags of beans nearest to check. “Light roast, with a long after.”

Kaelix leans in further, resting his chin on Freodore’s temple. "Mm?" he asks, and the sound vibrates through Freodore’s skull, down his spine.

For a split second, Freo’s brain unhelpfully supplies an alternate reality where that same hum forms words—"Mm, baby?"—whispered against his ear in lieu of asking what he thinks. Heat floods his face so quickly he’s certain the entire café can see it. If the floor opened up and swallowed him whole right now, he’d consider it a small mercy. He doesn’t even like pet names! Or he, at least, thinks he doesn’t… ugh.

Freodore’s voice comes out slightly higher than normal.

“Sure,” he says, before he can think too much about it. “That sounds nice, actually.”

He makes the mistake of glancing at Alban, who’s watching them with a shit-eating grin and raised eyebrows, mouthing something that looks suspiciously like “you’re welcome” while Kaelix is distracted by the menu.

“Ohh, good one. That’s got pretty interesting notes—loquat, cherry, something else I can’t remember right now. Smooth finish,” Uki says, the owner, who is pulling a shot for someone at the other end of the bar. “But actually, yeah, I think you’d like it, Freo.”

“Alright, that and a—” Kaelix squints at the beans display. “Can we try the Ethiopia one too?”

“Oh wow, trained already?” Uki teases from across the bar, with a breezy little laugh.

Freodore ignores this to the best of his abilities, his shoulders tensing slightly in Kaelix’s hold. He tilts his head up, just barely, just enough that he can see Kaelix’s face without shifting their bodies into a timeline where he’ll know what it actually feels like for Kaelix’s lips to brush against his temple, by the soft skin just beside his hairline.

“Do you actually want to?” he asks. “You don’t usually drink black coffee.”

Kaelix shifts his weight, arms sliding lower around Freodore’s waist as he leans down to answer. “I'm mostly guessing!" he admits to Uki with a good-natured laugh, his voice vibrating through Freodore’s back. The slight readjustment brings them flush against each other, Kaelix’s fingers splaying wider across Freodore’s abdomen in what feels like a gentle squeeze. His breath tickles Freodore’s ear as he adds, for Freodore, “but it says it’s got a sweet finish, so I might be able to handle it.” Freodore blinks, suddenly unsure if the pressure of those fingertips against his stomach is real or if his touch-starved brain is starting to invent sensations.

Freodore eyes the display case warily, shoulders slumping slightly as if the weight of this minor social performance has drained him completely.

“Give us the pain au chocolat,” he tells Alban, who is still smiling at him—at them, at least, up until he mentions which pastry he wants. He pauses, thinking about the tasting notes on the Ethiopian beans and adds, "and a madeleine too."

Alban’s face scrunches up. "What!! But the pain au chocolat is the most expensive one, Freooo," he whines, and Freodore just stares back impassively. Uki glances over from the espresso machine. "That’s what you get for making our regular and a soon-to-be regular play house," he calls, and Alban sighs dramatically before adding both pastries to the order and tagging them as comp anyway.

“Also a slice of cheesecake,” Freodore adds, already pulling out his card.

“I just said tw—”

“I’m paying for it.” He sighs, long suffering, as he taps it on the terminal.

Kaelix, still latched onto him, murmurs “woah, thank you,” directly into his hair in what feels like—no, it can’t be—a nuzzle. He’s just selling it, Freodore thinks desperately. Just selling it. He’s. Just. Selling. It.

As they head to their table, Kaelix’s arms finally unwind from his waist, but somehow their hands find each other instead, fingers intertwining as Freodore leads them to the corner by the window. It is, thankfully, a short walk.

Kaelix pulls out the chair for him before sitting across. Now, finally separated by a table-width, Freodore feels the absence of him acutely. Their conversation starts with nothing out of the ordinary. How’s the last few days been, how’s Gatita—when Kaelix’s hand slides across the table, fingertips brushing Freodore’s knuckles. The casual touch sends electricity up Freodore’s arm. Neither of them acknowledges what’s happening. Freodore fixes his gaze on the window, just past Kaelix’s ear, nodding mechanically as Kaelix continues talking about his friends’ minor life disasters that he can share, his thumb absently tracing circles on Freodore’s palm while he laughs about his cousin’s new puppy.

It’s cut short only by Alban calling their attention to grab the snacks on the pickup counter. Kaelix squeezes Freodore’s hand once before letting go to retrieve their order with a soft, “I’ll be right back.”

To which he dazedly responds with, “mm, take your time.”

Kaelix lingers at the counter, phone out to capture Uki preparing coffee in a series of stories or reels or whatever people do these days. Freodore watches him from across the café, the way his eyes crinkle when he laughs at something Uki says, how his shoulders relax into the conversation. Kaelix has this way of telling stories that makes Freodore want to lean in closer, makes him forget to maintain the careful distance he keeps from most people. It’s at this moment he kind of realizes that he’s been sharing more about himself lately, and he finds he doesn’t really mind. Barring, of course, the on-camera stuff, which… he has no idea how he’d broach that, or if he ever will.

Freodore watches Uki talk Kaelix through the drip coffee process and slip in a few little quips about being handsome (among other things). Kaelix’s shoulders inch up toward his ears, a nervous laugh escaping him as he thanks him. A small, vindictive part of Freo enjoys watching him squirm under the attention, even though he knows Uki flirts with everyone for fun most of the time (that and he’s, well, married). It’s just Uki being Uki.

What’s less amusing is how Freodore’s own resolve has crumbled lately in the face of all that. In those moments, Freodore has never felt more like Just A Guy. Just a guy whose breath catches when Kaelix pushing past their building’s lobby doors post-gym, towel slung around his neck and his shirt clinging to his skin in wet patches. Or those evenings when a knock at his door means Kaelix is standing outside, often shirtless always hopeful, holding out a spoonful of something or a small plate for Freodore with an expectant “try this, Freo? If you like it, I’ll come back with a bit in a container. I made too much again.”

Kaelix comes back to the table, setting everything down before moving to quickly return the tray and sliding in the seat across again.

Freodore watches Kaelix take a cautious sip of his coffee. Kaelix’s eyebrows lift, then knit together in mild betrayal.

“Not to your taste?” Freodore asks after a beat.

Kaelix shakes his head slowly, as if he’s trying to re-negotiate the flavor in his mind. “Wow, that’s… that’s something.”

He tries again anyway, as though a second sip might magically improve it. It doesn’t and he sets the cup down with both hands like it needs gentle handling.

“You can add sugar or milk,” Freodore offers. “Or, you know, both.”

Kaelix waves him off, pouting. “No, I want to try it how you like it. For the full experience.”

Freodore eyes him but then just shakes his head before sliding his own cup across the table. “Here. Swap.”

Kaelix takes a tentative sip again, and hums in approval, brightening up. “Oh! Oh, this is so much better. Kind of like tea.”

Freodore finds himself laughing a little at that. “You can keep it.”

“Or we can share,” Kaelix says, shy in a way that loops right back around to charming. He nudges the cup closer to the center of the table like it’s a peace offering.

They pick at their pastries while talking about more of nothing in particular—cats, the most recent HOA drama. The conversation drifts into a comfortable quiet as the plates empty and the drinks dwindle. Kaelix leans back in his chair, tapping his fingers lightly on the tabletop in a rhythm Freodore is starting to recognize as a prelude to when he’s about to say something earnest.

Freodore meets his gaze in silent question despite his mild trepidation.

“Thanks for today,” Kaelix says, voice dropping a little. “I had fun.”

Freo shrugs, feeling the prickle of a blush at his collar. Fun is… maybe not the first word he would’ve chosen for the slight humiliation ritual Alban just put them through. Though now that he sits here, coffee in hand, Kaelix smiling at him like that, it kind of is.

He can feel the warmth creeping into his cheeks. “Me too. I… I like hanging out with you.” Big day. Freodore says something embarrassing and true.

“Yeah?” Kaelix grins. “I wondered how many cafes I’d need to drag you around to for you to start thinking so.”

“You’re going to bankrupt me if you keep this up,” Freodore deadpans, but he smiles, and Kaelix’s own smile grows wider in response.

“I can pay sometimes,” Kaelix offers.

Freodore shakes his head. “I’m older.”

“So?” Kaelix asks, halfway to laughing.

“So,” Freodore repeats, as if that settles the cosmic law of café etiquette.

“Whaaat? No, come, on Freo. We’re friends, right?”

The question lands heavier than it should. Freodore freezes for half a second, the memory of Kaelix’s thumb tracing circles on his palm still lingering like phantom heat. Half the things they did today might toe the line and the word slots into place for Freodore with a faint ache.

He sees Kaelix’s expression flicker toward concern, and that jolts him back into motion.

“Yeah,” Freodore says quickly, correcting himself before Kaelix can misunderstand. “Yes. We are.”

Kaelix exhales, shoulders loosening in relief.

Freodore wraps his hands around his coffee up, willing his pulse to settle. Across from him, Kaelix watches him with soft attention, warm in a way that makes Freodore’s chest feel too tight.

As the hour winds down, Kaelix leans back in his seat, hands folded over his stomach, and surveys Freodore with a kind of affectionate squint. “So,” he says, “what are you up to the rest of the day?”

Freodore shrugs. “Just work, probably. Maybe some editing.”

“Editing what?”

“Just… clips,” Freodore says, waving a hand. “Sound stuff. Nothing interesting.”

Kaelix looks like he wants to say more, but instead just hums, “well, let me know if you want a distraction. I’m great at them.”

“I believe you,” Freodore says, and they both laugh.

It’s easy, here, like this. So easy that Freodore almost forgets about the other part of his life—the one he keeps squirreled away safely at home. He’s started to lean into using his own streams as an outlet these days, but he hasn't quite pieced together what Kaelix might think about Freodore having a hat in that ring. Part of Freodore wants to believe that Kaelix wouldn’t change, because he definitely seemed far from the type to, but that, and considering dating a guy who comfortably and frequently does this for a sizeable portion of his income might give him more pause, and Freodore’s not sure if he’s ready for that kind of rejection, even if Kaelix would probably be nice about it.

He feels a twinge of guilt, which is new, because he’s never felt the need to justify his own existence to anyone before and he still kind of doesn’t. His camera persona had always been a locked room he could enter and exit at will, a space where no one else’s opinions really mattered.

But lately, he finds himself lingering at that threshold, one hand on the doorknob, wondering what it might feel like to leave it cracked open—uncomfortable with the idea of exposure yet suddenly hungry for Kaelix to see him fully, to witness all his contradictions and still choose to stay.

But the idea of Kaelix finding out about it all? The idea of him knowing, really knowing, and still wanting to do this with him? It’s almost absurd, and definitely too much to ask of him.

He files the thought away for later, tucks it into the same box where he keeps all the other dangerous, pretty things.

Oblivious to what’s going on Freodore’s head, Kaelix stands, circling the table before tugging Freodore up by the hand, quick and easy, like it’s not even a question.

“Come on,” Kaelix says in a conspiratorial whisper. “Let’s get out of here before Alban decides we need to do a kiss for the punch card.”

Freodore’s heart stutters. He schools his expression into something he hopes reads as casual indifference rather than the sudden, breathless wanting that’s actually flooding his system. He arranges his features into what he hopes is a convincing performance of someone who could take it or leave it. As if he hasn’t already imagined the press of Kaelix’s lips against his own a hundred different ways.

“You’re right,” Freodore sighs, letting himself be led out anyway onto the street, into the cold, into the bright, sharp air of the city.

Chapter 5

In the privacy of his own home, Kaelix can admit to the fact that he has never really been a shirt guy. Or like, clothes guy in general. His preferred sleeping attire is nothing at all, which was a consequence of generally just running kind of warm right before bed and wanting to feel unrestricted for the most part. Going out, of course, was another thing. He was no exhibitionist but he was a guy who at least knew how to dress appropriately if it meant he’d be in public. But right now, he’s on a mission, so if that means walking around in progressively less fabric (within reason and distance from home), well… he’s at least willing to risk it up to a point.

One problem? He’s probably at the cusp of that point.

This is not a proud realization. It’s a late-stage, post-self-acceptance spiral that comes on slowly one week, like the first chill of real winter, and then hits with full force. He can even name the moment: coming home from the gym, sweating out the last set in a sleeveless top under a light jacket, sleeves pushed up, and spotting Freodore just after exiting the elevator, the kind of accidental collision that, on another day, might have just been another “oh, hey” and a nod. Instead, Freodore’s eyes linger just a second too long. Not on his face, but on his visible forearms and the little swoop of clavicle on display above the line of his shirt.

It is not a very overt or very telling look of want exactly. But Kaelix is, unfortunately, very good at cataloguing the micro-reactions of other people, and the hitch of Freodore’s breath, and the very, very slight changes to the way he holds that gaze is enough to seed the possibility that, yes, this might be something Freodore actually wants to see.

The rest is history.

For the last three weeks, Kaelix’s post-gym routine had been: towel off, jacket, and walk the three blocks home in what little he can get away with under it. Sometimes he times it just right and meets Freodore in the hall, but not always. Still, the anticipation of the possibility is enough to make whatever he’d decided for his last set go faster.

Of course, the first time this had actually worked (after he’d decided to put a little more intention into this), Kaelix wasn’t ready for it. Freodore was kneeling on the floor in front of his door, arms elbow-deep in a cardboard box full of packing peanuts. From what it looks like, it seemed he’s been ferrying off its contents slowly into his apartment, probably so he can drag the box down easily later (Kaelix makes a mental note to offer his help with that at some point). The shirt Kaelix is wearing today is a black compression one—so not even truly revealing, but there’s enough of a pump still in his arms that when Freodore glances up, his eyes go round. There is a short, electrified pause, and then the world resumes.

“Hey,” Kaelix manages, voice winded from taking the stairs up two at a time, but hoping that he at least reads it as more endearing and not pathetic.

“Hey yourself,” Freodore replies, one hand stilled in the packaging material, the other gripping the edge of the box a little too tightly. Kaelix tries not to smile too wide. He tracks how Freodore’s gaze flickers from the cut of his bicep where his jacket has fallen off his shoulder, like he’s running a diagnostics test for his own safety.

There’s a moment where neither of them speaks, only the ambient sounds of the hallway and outside filling the space.

“You picked a new gym day?” Freodore asks, tone nearly neutral, as he takes his hand out of the box and sits on his haunches to have a proper conversation with him.

“Trying to keep up with my New Year’s resolutions. It’s not even February yet.”

A small smile tugs at the corner of Freodore’s mouth. “Impressive. Most people barely make it to the second week. You couldn’t count on me for that either, personally.”

Kaelix beams, encouraged, and leans against the wall, propping himself up like he’s doing a casual pose for a shoot. He’s about to ask what Freodore’s own resolutions are, but just then, Gatita emerges from behind the box, from the open door of the apartment, tail swishing behind her, and plants herself directly between them, looking from Kaelix to her owner and back.

“Hey, Princess,” Kaelix says, bending down to offer her a hand.

The cat sniffs, then headbutts his knuckles. Freodore sighs, but it’s fond, and he gives the cat a little scratch behind the ears before she quickly scuttles back into the apartment, done with them both for now.

“You should be careful, though,” Freodore says eventually, and Kaelix, at first thinks he’s talking about touching his cat. “It’s starting to get really cold,” Freodore elaborates, before reaching out to touch where the sleeve of the shirt ends just above his elbows and the skin there.

“See?” He hears Freodore say, who’s already lifting that same hand up to touch his face. “Your skin’s so cold.” He frowns.

Kaelix should win an award for not gasping out loud or gulping down the lump in his throat too audibly. There are two things going on here for him. First is that Freodore is touching him of his own volition (if only to make a point), and, second, this is also the closest thing to concern that Freodore has ever directly expressed, and the warmth that blooms in Kaelix’s chest is enough to make him nearly forget that his whole M.O. here had been to look effortless cool and hot at the same time and not like, incredibly touched and so, so down. Insanely down.

He wonders if Freodore can feel the temperature change on his face in real time because Kaelix can. Maybe he’s still distracted with very mildly telling off Kaelix for his early winter clothing choices (Kaelix can still hear him say something like “you should bundle up more”), but maybe warranted after how much of a fuss Kaelix had made too during that time with the fire.

Unfortunately, Kaelix has lost all ability to think of anything witty to say, even when Freodore has taken back his hand.

“I will,” he just mutters weakly to an unimpressed neighbor, eyeing him with, somehow, both concern and slight amusement at the same time. Kaelix feels like he is five and being scolded for eating the dessert first before his sandwich for lunch.

“Good,” Freodore starts to say.

After a quick shower, he comes back out to help bring the box down and when they reach the dumpster, Freodore suggests grabbing coffee somewhere around the corner. Kaelix agrees so fast, he nearly trips over his own feet.

Kaelix is nothing if not a good boy, and so three days later, he takes a proper hot shower at the gym, and shoves on a clean shirt, and gets back into a proper sweater and a dark blue work jacket he found because his favorite one, which one of his siblings thrifted for him years ago (“only you would fit in this, you big oaf.”), was mysteriously missing.

The walk back is finally more forgiving, but he’s a little disappointed at the prospect of returning to Just Some Guy Who Lives Here to Freodore. He could tell himself he can try again in the summer, but Kaelix knows that while he’s plenty capable of exercising patience and restraint, he is simultaneously the most impatient man in the world.

Kaelix doesn’t spot Freodore in their hallway once he’s up, and that’s a double whammy on his dismay today. Just as he’s about to unlock his door, searching his gym bag and pockets for his keys, the elevator dings open, and out steps Freodore with some takeaway from a rice bowl place near-ish and… pause.

Kaelix freezes mid-key-hunt. Freodore turns slightly to hold the elevator for an elderly neighbor heading the opposite direction of the hall, and that’s when Kaelix sees it—the clean line where it now ends just above his nape. His side-swept fringe still swoops in those familiar tousled waves, but now there’s more skin behind him. Actual skin. The back of Freodore’s neck is visible even with the turtleneck peeking from beneath his jacket and Kaelix’s brain short-circuits between mourning the loss of those long strands he’d imagined running his fingers through and celebrating this unexpected gift of new territory.

He stares unabashed while Freodore is distracted but has to quickly recoup whatever is left of the part of himself that is normal and can still be trusted with an exposed neck when Freodore starts down the hallway and spots him.

“Oh, hey,” Freodore greets, voice mostly level but his eyes soften upon meeting his.

“Warm and alive,” Kaelix says, spreading his arms to show off how many layers he’s wearing today.

Freodore hesitates for just a heartbeat, then steps forward into the open arms, wrapping his own around Kaelix's middle. “Good boy,” he murmurs, likely as a joke, a small laugh warming Kaelix's neck.

Kaelix’s brain stutters to a complete stop. Then autopilot kicks in, and he’s hugging back, careful not to crush the takeout bag squished between them. When he pulls away (and casually, he hopes) his voice comes out only slightly strained. “Smells good. What’d you get?”

“Curry rice bowl,” Freodore says, lifting the bag. “Actually, you can have the pickled vegetables. I won’t eat it since it has actual pickles.” He scrunches his nose in distaste, digging it out of the bag and handing it to Kaelix. “It feels like a waste to throw it out.”

Kaelix takes it, trying not to very obviously look like he's busy taking in his neighbor’s new look, but he’s also only human.

“Your haircut looks nice,” he blurts, then immediately regrets opening his mouth. “I really liked it before—” Oh god, he’s oversharing, why can’t he stop talking? “—and I was working up to being the kind of friends who braid each other's hair.” Freodore’s eyebrows shoot up. “But this is really nice. You look really nice.”

“Thanks,” Freodore’s eye crinkle as he laughs softly. “The length was starting to weigh on me, and it felt right with the new year coming up,” he says. “But I’ll keep your aspirations in mind. Maybe it’ll be long enough by the time we have our first sleepover.”

He stops suddenly, eyes widening.

“Oh, wait—” He moves to quickly unlock his door, and leaving it open just a crack. Kaelix watches as Freodore toes off his shoes inside, hears the rustle of the takeaway bag being set down, followed by sock-muffled footsteps moving deeper into the apartment. Thirty seconds crawl by before Freodore reappears in the doorway, slightly breathless, holding a thick light brown scarf between his hands.

“Here,” he tells Kaelix, holding it out to him. “I just picked it up from somewhere.”

Ha. Adorable. It looks and feels new.

“I thought you might… well, you said you lost yours to the wind, right?”

Kaelix has to bite his lip to keep from grinning like an idiot. He remembers telling Freodore about it at the coffee shop awhile back, how his old scarf was taken by a gust of wind and ended up tangled in a tree, where it would likely stay for the rest of the season, a tiny blue flag against bare branches.

“That’s so nice of you,” Kaelix says, voice breaking around the edges. He takes the scarf, and for a second, they’re both just holding it together, fingers brushing in the soft knit.

“Thank you,” Kaelix says, quieter this time.

“It’s just a scarf,” Freodore mutters, face flushed, pulling back finally.

Kaelix is standing on thin ice trying not to accidentally overwhelm Freodore by just how much affection that’s been welling up in him (and he’s taken hit after hit today), and so he exhales, resuming unlocking his door before thanking him again.

“I mean it,” he says, unable to help himself anyway. “I’m really grateful.”

Freodore shakes his head, but there’s a little smile on his lips. “Try not to lose this one to the forces of nature again, alright?”

“No promises,” Kaelix says, which earns him another small laugh and a soft “see you, Kaelix,” before they both slip into their respective apartments.

Kaelix can admit that lately he’s been greedy. There’s a term for it, he thinks—intermittent reinforcement—where you get a taste of what you want and the absence of it becomes a thousand times worse. He isn’t proud of it, but he’d kind of been enjoying the way Freodore’s attitude toward him had gone from “I will be polite because you are my neighbor” to “I might actually look forward to running into you at the trash chute at three in the morning.” It’s nice. Even when it’s nothing (yet), it’s nice.

But wanting more than he’s getting is making him strange, and there’s a restlessness in him that neither a brisk walk around the block nor three attempts at starting a new show can fix.

Which is the classic pitfall of every Kaelix Debonair Life Project ever, because the moment “nice” crosses the threshold into “really good,” his brain kicks into overdrive and starts coming up with ways to maximize returns. To “optimize the relationship pipeline,” as Seible might put it, and, sure, sometimes that was applicable to work or music, but mostly it was about people. Maybe it’s weird to admit, but that was his one consistent hobby: figuring out a person and then finding the most efficient way for them to want to be around him.

So, yes, he can admit to himself, he’s being greedy.

And the worst part is, for the first time in years, he’s not even sure what the next move is supposed to be. Things with Freodore are… delicate. Like if he makes the one wrong move (again) (because Freodore’s errant package is still tucked in his closet while he thinks about a better approach as he’s already made the unfortunate mistake of opening the damn thing), Kaelix gets the distinct sense that if he pushes even a little too hard, that whatever was building between them up this point would shatter, and he’ll have to spend the rest of his lease avoiding eye contact on his floor and in the mail room.

Which is why he’s sitting in his apartment tonight, legs up on the couch, staring at his phone and replaying the events of the last week, trying to game out the scenario where he can just ask: “Hey, want to go on a real date with me, where we maybe also talk about how I know you are a sex toy reviewer on the internet?” (You know, just crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s or something like that.)

He’s gotten as far as the words “hey, about your side hustle—” and “I don’t really watch much porn like ever but—” in his notes app before the panic spiral hits, and he ends up deleting the whole thing.

By eight in the evening, he’s running low on distractions.

He’s already put in two hours on an arrangement for a new demo he’s working, cleaned the entire kitchen, and gotten through three episodes of an old, very cancelled dating reality show. It’s been raining all evening, making the cold even colder, and he’s considering making a cup of tea, when a sharp, metallic clatter rattles outside, past the glass door leading to his balcony.

At first, he assumes it’s the wind. Maybe the neighbor above dropped a plant pot or maybe he’s just been watching too many sitcoms in his downtime. But the sound comes again: a distinct, hollow thunk, followed by the unmistakable scratch of something on the table outside. He stands, heart already thumping, and crosses to the door, peering through the glass.

There, perched with supreme confidence on his patio table, is Freodore’s cat, eyes glowing back at him in the dark.

It takes Kaelix a second to process this.

First, because the cat is not supposed to be on his balcony. Second, because she is somehow already looking straight at him, as if she had planned this exact moment down to the minute and is now waiting to see if he’ll rise to the occasion. Third, because, wow, that’s a serious drop from the ledge between units. It is, at least, is wide enough, so he’s just glad the wind didn’t randomly pick up or something to throw her off balance.

Kaelix yanks open the door without thinking.

“Hey there, Princess,” he greets, pitch soft and gentle. “How’d you get over here, huh?”

Gatita arches her back and immediately hisses at him on sight, which is maybe warranted. The temperature outside is a full ten degrees below freezing and he’s standing in a ratty pair of sweats and nothing else, shivering at the threshold. She stares him down with a posture that says, “I dare you to try it.”

Kaelix is not that much of an idiot usually, so he leaves the door open and steps back. No sudden movements. He pulls on a hoodie and pads into the kitchen to look for a bribe. It takes all of ten seconds to find a can of plain tuna and another ten to dig out a can opener.

He works the can open, wrinkling his nose at the sharp, metallic scent. He turns the contents over into on a small plate, then edges his way back to the living room, careful to keep his movements slow and predictable for his wayward guest not to startle.

At the door, he spots Gatita, sitting on the patio table with her paws tucked primly under her body, watching birds or whatever else might be out there, like she’s got nowhere better to be. Her eyes cut to him as he approaches, then flick dismissively back to the street below.

He places the plate just inside the door, sets it down as conspicuously as possible. Then he returns to the couch, settling in a way that makes it look like he is definitely not watching her from there.

It takes a full two minutes for her to even acknowledge the existence of the tuna. She turns her head, blinks slowly, then rises with the deliberate, ceremonial movements of a tiny queen inspecting an offering from a lesser subject. She hops down, pads to the threshold, then pauses, her cute little pink nose twitching.

Kaelix can see the thought process play out in real time. She is not dumb. She knows she’s been lured, and she knows what that means. But she is also, at the end of the day, a cat, and after thirty seconds of internal debate, she slips inside.

Gatita moves fast and dives straight to the tuna, ignoring Kaelix completely as she begins eating with furious, tiny bites. He watches her from the corner of his eye, fighting the urge to say anything lest he break whatever fragile truce has formed between them. He thinks about how this feels a lot like approaching her owner too.

Once she’s settled, he rises to shut the door, trapping her inside. He breathes a silent sigh of relief, because at least she won’t freeze to death or, worse, leap off the balcony and end up a street pancake.

And that’s when he hears, from just past his living room wall, “hey, seriously, where you—?” and variations thereof (her name, her name at a higher volume, and rising slightly in panic), Freodore’s voice.

Kaelix’s brain makes the connection at the same time as his body: Freodore has realized his cat is missing, and is probably already cycling through all the worst-case scenarios he could possibly think of, which, even though he’s known Freodore a handful of months, he actually is sure he’s pretty good at. Seeing as the cat is still mostly busy polishing off the small plate, he slips out of his apartment, shutting the door of his unit behind him softly.

He hesitates for a second in front of 301, listening to the muffled sounds from inside.

There’s a frantic energy to the way Freodore is moving. He can hear a broom being dragged along the tile, the muffled slam of a window being yanked open, and then, after a second, the softest, most heartbreaking “hey, I’m sorry I replaced your favorite fish toy instead of fixing it, I’ll find someone to sew it for you, so please come back,” as if the cat might understand the English language and obey. Kaelix does not know how to sew, but he is already considering to volunteer.

Kaelix knocks, then stands there, shifting his weight nervously until the door swings open.

Freodore is a mess. His hair is stuck to his forehead in loose, panicked clumps, cheeks blotchy, and he’s wearing a threadbare shirt and loose pants. His bare feet are pink against the dark floors, and he’s breathing hard, like he just ran a marathon in the confines of his own apartment.

“I uhm, I think I have your little fugitive,” Kaelix says, and Freodore visibly relaxes at that. “And I’m not sure if you’re gonna believe this but—”

He leads Freodore to his apartment and opens the door, ushering him in quickly and closing it behind them (trapping both owner and cat). “—she uh, jumped from your balcony to mine?”

“Oh!” Freodore exclaims, genuinely surprised, blinking rapidly as he watches his cat attack the tuna with near savage delight. He doesn’t approach her immediately and Kaelix figures it’s because Gatita’s naturally skittish and might freak out at sudden movements in a new environment even if her person was in the room.

“Sorry,” Freodore says, with a sigh. “I was cleaning and airing out my living room. She must’ve slipped out…” he trails off. “She’s never done that before,” he murmurs, as an afterthought.

Kaelix shrugs. “Well, there’s a first for everything.”

He watches for the changes in micro-expressions on Freodore’s face. The way his eyes soften watching her eat, and the relief loosening the way he holds himself together. She’s almost done by this time and when she spots her keeper, pads over to him like she hadn’t just unleashed her chaos upon them both.

Kaelix opens the door to see them out and Freodore tries to pick her up, but she doesn’t even let herself be carried. She just darts out and they both nearly panic, but she just runs straight to 301’s door. Freodore quickly opens it, lets her jump in and then closes it immediately after, letting out another exhale as he sags back against the wood, eyes wide.

Kaelix smiles, allowing himself some amusement because, well, they’re all fine, at least. He leans against the adjoining wall, just watching Freodore collect himself. He also tries very hard not to stare at his neck, which he’s still getting used to seeing more of.

“Thank you,” Freodore says again, turning to look up at him. “I was so worried. I had hoped she was just hiding out in some weird corner of my place, but, I mean, there are only so many square meters in a one bedroom unit. My balcony was open, and I feared the worst.”

“Hey, no, it’s all good.” Kaelix assures, and he means it. “I’m glad she made it safely across and I’m happy to give her a little pre-dinner snack.”

“Oh, that’s her dinner,” Freodore says flatly. “She had a big lunch because she wouldn’t keep quiet while I was working earlier this afternoon.”

Kaelix’s intrusive thought tells him to ask: which work? But his self-preservation wins out this time.

There’s an awkward pause where neither of them seems to know what comes next. Kaelix wants to linger, but he’s not sure if he’s supposed to. Is this a “thanks and goodbye” situation, or a “do you want to stay and talk about it for another hour” scenario?

Freodore clears his throat. “She probably would have just stayed out there all night, huh?”

Kaelix shrugs. “Maybe, but I like to think she would have come back eventually. Or knocked. She’s resourceful. Like her owner.”

This draws a look from Freodore, something shy, but also pleased. He glances away, gazing at nothing in particularly as they wait for something to fill the silence. Kaelix bites his lip, and then decides to chance it. “Hey, so, I actually made way too much soup for dinner tonight. Like, embarrassing amounts. Would you want to come over and help me eat it? I'd otherwise be having the same thing for lunch all week.”

He knows he's doing a little too much with that ask, but he dares to look a little hopeful anyway.

Freodore hesitates, his fingers fidgeting behind him as he considers what to say. Just as Kaelix is about to backpedal, Freodore nods. “Actually, yeah. That would be nice.”

Kaelix tries not to look too surprised as he leads the way back to his apartment, gesturing vaguely at the counter. “Make yourself at home. I'll just set the table.”

Dinner is supposed to be casual, and Kaelix keeps telling himself that as he arranges the two steaming bowls on the counter, trying and failing not to overthink every detail. He’d always assumed his own kitchen looked warm and inviting, but now the overhead lights seem too harsh, the chairs too wobbly, the mismatched mugs by his selection of tea on the edge of sad rather than …charmingly quirky.

Freodore looks small in the seat, sleeves pulled over his wrists, posture so contained it’s as if he’s prepping for a formal interview rather than a Wednesday night in the neighbor’s apartment. Still, his expression softens visibly at the aroma that floats through the room—star anise, beef, the almost floral note of cilantro and the rough edge of dried chili.

“Smells like actual restaurant food,” Freodore says, twisting the spoon between his fingers with a motion that looks more like fidgeting than hunger. “You sure you made this?”

“Cheeky. But, yes, I swear.” Kaelix perches on the adjacent seat, legs kicking out under the counter. “It’s an aunt’s recipe. Kind of. I just take shortcuts with the stock because life’s too short to simmer bones for ten hours. But it’s still good, promise.”

He slurps up the first mouthful, trying to set a precedent for informality, and lets the heat of the broth scald his tongue. “Ow. Okay, it’s hot. But good.”

Freodore copies his motion, and for a minute there is just the slow, careful clink of spoons against the sides of the bowl, and the steam curling from the noodles.

Conversation starts slow. Kaelix resists the urge to fill every silence, but then remembers how much he hates letting things dangle and just… starts talking, the way he always does.

“So, is your mom still asking if you’ll ever get a ‘real’ job?” he asks, grinning around the spoon.

This earns him a sharp, narrow-eyed look and a snort. “She’s expanded her concern portfolio, actually,” Freodore replies. “Now it’s, ‘are you still not eating breakfast, Freodore?’ and ‘did you get the fish oil pills and the three other supplements I told you to drink everyday’ and ‘not seeing anyone yet?’”

Kaelix laughs, nearly spilling soup. “To be fair, she is right. You should be taking your multivitamins.” And you could be seeing someone, but Kaelix does not say this out loud.

“I did get a bottle of gummy vitamins from a friend recently,” Freodore says.

“Those barely count,” Kaelix teases, shifting in his seat. His foot bumps against Freodore’s under the table, their socked feet touching briefly. Neither does anything to acknowledge it, but Kaelix feels the contact like a small electric current.

They keep eating, and eventually fall quiet, the clink of spoons against ceramic the only sound as they finish their meal.

After the soup, Freodore offers to help clean up, and for a while they move around each other in the kitchen, trading plates and towels and utensils with a rhythm that feels like this isn’t the first time that they’ve ever done this.

“Sorry, I’m not much of a talker,” Freodore says drying off his hands. Kaelix is finishing up pouring out hot water into two mugs waiting with tea bags in them.

Kaelix shakes his head, handing him one of them. “It’s fine. I usually talk enough for two people anyway. And besides,” he adds, leaning back against his counter. “I think I slayed with the soup too hard. So I zoned in on eating it.”

“You did,” Freodore agrees softly. “I really enjoyed it.”

He cradles the mug between both palms, steam curling around his face. Kaelix fidgets with his own cup, suddenly aware of the silence stretching between them.

“Sometimes I get nervous when it gets too quiet,” Kaelix admits, eyes fixed on the rippling surface of his tea. “And end up thinking too much. But with you it just feels like... there’s no pressure to fill the quiet with anything. If that makes sense?"

“Yeah, no. I get you,” Freodore tells him after taking a sip, voice less guarded than usual. His eyes meet Kaelix’s over the rim of the mug. “You could do whatever you want with me, honestly.”

Kaelix’s heart stutters before his brain catches up with the context.

And as if Kaelix isn’t already quietly going through it, Freodore adds: “I don’t really mind the quiet, but I like listening to you talk.”

It’s said so offhandedly, but Kaelix feels the heat creep up his neck all the same. He glances at Freodore, searching for signs of irony, but there’s nothing but an easy, almost shy honesty in his eyes.

He decides, in that instant, that he wants to keep that look for as long as possible.

They move on to lighter subjects by sheer force of will for Kaelix because he is also acutely aware of the thing hiding in his closet that actually belongs to the person standing across him drinking tea in his kitchen. He tells Freodore about the true stuff (rehearsing, tutoring, singing) and the slightly more embarrassing stuff (his sister wants him to cat-sit while she goes on a “friends trip,” which is code for three days in some beach villa and twenty-four hours in a fetal position afterward, but maybe Gatita can be friends).

Freodore perks up visibly when a cat is brought up, although what he has to say is “ah, she’s not very uh… social.”

Kaelix squints. “You mean she’d throw hands on sight?”

“She would throw hands on sight, yes.”

Kaelix laughs. But then, Freodore adds, “—so they probably can’t meet, but I can help if your sister does decide to have you take care of her cat for a bit. What’s her cat like?”

“Orange and very rotund.”

Freodore makes a small sound of delight, the kind that’s more air than voice. “So, Garfield?”

“Practically.” Kaelix smiles, and it feels almost stupidly easy, like they’re just two people who’ve been eating dinner together for years.

When they’re done with the tea, there’s a lull, and Kaelix, emboldened by the warmth still lingering in his chest, decides to ask, “you want to watch a movie or something? I’ve got that new one with the aliens, or the one about the jazz singer who turns into a ghost.”

Freodore hesitates, and Kaelix immediately regrets asking. He can see the old shields go up, the way Freodore’s shoulders tense and his fingers tighten on the towel he’s been using to dry the mug. “I… maybe another time? I promised myself I’d finish a project tonight.”

The disappointment stings, but Kaelix swallows it, forcing a casual smile. “Of course. Work first, play later.”

“Thanks again for dinner,” Freodore tells him, once he’s outside after unlocking his door. “And uh, finding my cat. I’ll bring you something nice next time.”

“Technically, she found me,” Kaelix corrects. “And I’ll hold you to that, neighbor.”

After exchanging a last good night, and the door to his own apartment finally closes behind Kaelix with him inside, he sighs, running a hand through his hair, trying to shake of this whole two steps forward one step back thing they still have going.

But hey, he thinks, as he goes to start the movie for himself anyway, at least Freodore’s the one who said next time this time around.

Kaelix isn’t sure if it’s technically night yet when he decides to call it, but the clock app on his phone says it’s some time past ten and he’s already shirtless and on the couch, so the body’s vote wins out over whatever consensus time it is. Besides, his day has been a marathon of social sprints (office hours at the tutoring academy he works part time at, one long recording session, then two unplanned phone calls with friends who apparently can sense when he’s trying to wind down), and he’s got a set tomorrow, so he’s allowed to bow out early, maybe mess around with his guitar before hitting the sack.

He’s sprawled longways, one ankle braced on the opposite armrest and the neck of his battered acoustic propped up on the end table, the entire left half of his body a patchwork of faint pressure marks from the cheap fabric. He’s mostly warm, except for the exposed bits that the apartment’s spotty heater has decided to neglect. The solution: an ancient, pilled throw blanket, which he tucks under his chin and uses to mummify himself for maximum songwriting efficiency.

The notebook balanced on his knees is open to a page scattered with orphaned phrases that he’s making no progress on because his brain keeps skipping between each line and playing word association games until he’s buried under a stack of unfinished lyrics and half-remembered conversations with his neighbor.

Neighbor. There’s the problem. He’d be more productive if not for the persistent ghost of a memory, or several of them, really. Kaelix knows this crush is getting out of hand. He knows because he’s been treating their chance encounters like a quick time event over the last couple of weeks, and because he’s started writing lyrics that are actually just metaphors for wanting to catch his attention, to let that careful guard he keeps around himself down, to crack open a door into whatever quiet world exists in 301.

He’s mid-strum on a minor chord, humming out a half-melody, when something hits the glass of his balcony door with a dull, metallic thud.

He freezes, heart thumping. For a second, he thinks it’s the wind (again), maybe a stray bird. But then it comes again: a persistent little tap, tap, tap.

He peeks out over the lip of the couch and is greeted by a familiar pair of slitted eyes peering into his apartment from the window. Gatita is perched on the table outside, tail flicking in long, lazy sweeps. She’s staring directly at him.

Kaelix blinks once, then twice. He gets up, shuffles over, and then slides the door open. Instantly, the chill hits him, slicing straight through his blanket over his shoulders and into his bones (which, really, is the price he’s paying for being shirtless under a blanket), but he steps outside anyway.

“Hey there, Princess,” he greets her like this is an old routine. Gatita answers with a low, judgmental chirp, then turns her back to him as if she’s already grown bored with his attempts at basic conversation. Her fur, white and luminous in the city night, stands out like a spotlight against the steel-gray of the table. She’s beautiful, but also 100% not supposed to be here.

He glances to the left, at the darkened window of 301, but doesn’t see much more than the light shining out of the living room. He half-expects a knock at his door, an awkward plea for assistance, or at least the sound of a neighbor calling for their missing cat. But for the few minutes he spends waiting, there’s nothing of the sort.

Kaelix pads into the kitchen. He opens the pantry and reaches for the treats he’d bought last week—a “just in case” sort of purchase that had seemed ridiculous at the time. Well, apparently “in case” is happening right now. Funny how these things turn out, he thinks as he eyes the treat’s packaging with its cartoon cat licking its lips in anticipation.

Kaelix goes back to the balcony, the treat packet crinkling between his fingers, and he can already see movement from her, ears twitching unmistakably towards a sound that’s probably familiar to her. He squeezes the pink-brown paste onto a small plate and sets it just inside the doorway like last time, and steps back. Gatita's nose twitches. Her ears perk forward before she jumps down from the table and creeps toward the offering, whiskers quivering with suspicion that dissolves the moment she takes her first lick. Her tongue scrapes the plate clean while Kaelix slides the glass door shut. She barely even notices when he does this and happily eats her fill.

Gatita finishes her snack with meticulous attention, pink tongue darting out to clean each paw, then swiping across her nose until every trace of the treat is gone. She circles Kaelix’s ankles, fur brushing against his pajama pants.

“Well hello there, pretty girl,” Kaelix murmurs, bending down to scoop her up. “Enjoying the five-star accommodations?”

She tolerates being cradled against his chest for almost a full fifteen seconds, just long enough to lull him into a false sense of security, before her ears flatten and she twists in his arms, back paws scrabbling against his skin. One quick swipe of claws later, she’s pushing off his chest and landing with perfect feline grace, trotting purposefully toward his front door, tail held high.

Kaelix assess the damage. It’s not so much painful as it is a little inconvenient and he’s had his fair share of similar encounters before (sister’s cat, their own house cat too back home).

At the door, Kaelix crouches to get level with her, fishing a tube of churu from his pocket. He squeezes a dollop onto his finger, which she delicately licks clean. Then, because he has, apparently, committed to his ridiculous months-long scheming, he only hesitates a second before squeezing a small amount directly onto his bare chest. Gatita’s eyes dilate with interest at the prospect of more snacks, and she climbs back into his arms without protest.

“What the hell am I doing,” he mutters, balancing the cat against him with one arm while turning the doorknob with his free hand.

The hall is quiet in the specific kind of silent that only exists in apartment buildings closer to the middle of the night, when even the elevator stops dinging as often and the hum of the fluorescent lights feels a little more oppressive. He hesitates for a moment at the threshold, then raises his fist and knocks softly.

It takes a full thirty seconds before the door swings open.

Freodore stands there, haloed by the warm light from inside, his hair damp and clinging to his temples, a fluffy white robe wrapped around his body. The belt is loosely tied, revealing a sliver of chest that Kaelix has to force his eyes away from. He swallows hard and shifts his weight, Gatita still cradled against him.

Kaelix lifts Gatita slightly. “Delivery for 301,” he says, voice cracking on the last syllable. Freodore’s eyes widen in recognition.

“Oh! Oh my god. Not again, I’m so sorry.” Before either man can react, Gatita launches herself from Kaelix’s arms, landing with a soft thud right before she darts back into 301, disappearing into a hole in her cat tree like she knows what she just did and that her owner is going to have words with her later.

But first, Freodore’s gaze drops to Kaelix’s chest, where three angry red lines have begun to well with tiny beads of blood.

“You’re hurt,” he murmurs, fingers reaching out to brush just under the scratches, perhaps testing for pain. The touch sends electricity through Kaelix’s bare skin and he feels like he’s actively malfunctioning now. Keep it together! He thinks to himself desperately. They’re just fingers. On your chest. Freodore’s fingers. On your bare chest—

“Come inside. Let me clean that up.” Kaelix’s mouth opens, closes, opens again, meaning to say he’s a big boy and he’s fine, that he can handle it. But his brain is suddenly unable to process basic social protocols. The proximity of Freodore’s hand to his bare skin might’ve short-circuited something vital.

“Wait—really? You sure?” Are the only words that finally tumble out, embarrassingly earnest. Freodore’s expression softens as he steps back, creating a space in the doorway for him to walk in. “Yeah, of course. Sit on the couch. I'll just dry off properly and grab the first aid kit.”

He’s never actually been inside before, and the first thing he notices is the neatness. It is decoratively sparse, to say the least, but in a way that every piece of furniture feels especially chosen. It’s tidy with touches of personality everywhere—a stack of coffee table books (about coffee too), a half-finished cup of something on the kitchen counter, a few houseplants for color, a cat bed pushed against a wall, and a cat tree with a fluffy white tail sticking outside a little cave. No signs of Freodore’s double life here, though, not that he’s looking to prove something by looking. He’d just been curious is all.

Kaelix’s thoughts scatter as Freodore returns in a worn shirt and flannel pajama pants, first aid-kit in hand. He settles beside Kaelix on the couch, close enough that their thighs nearly touch. One slight shift and he could practically crawl into his lap. Kaelix fixes his gaze on some potted plant in the corner, anchoring himself before his imagination can sprint ahead of him.

“Sorry again, I really should’ve been more careful,” Freodore murmurs, dabbing antiseptic on a cotton ball. “I hung up some hand-wash only stuff and thought I’d close the door enough, but…” he gestures vaguely toward the cat tree where his cat remains hidden.

“Apparently just enough for a talented escape artist,” Kaelix supplies, smiling a little, before he has to inhale sharply as the cool antiseptic touches his skin.

“Seriously,” he adds in the middle of a wince because it does sting a little. “Don’t worry about it, Freo.”

“You're being very understanding for someone who keeps getting attacked by my cat.” Freodore mutters, dabbing the cotton over his skin with slow, careful pressure.

“Can’t complain,” Kaelix shrugs and Freodore tries to hold him down from it to no avail, and so he winces again. “She—ow—brought me good company.”

Freodore mercifully says nothing, but smiles a little, a small, private thing. Instead he just tells him, “you’re lucky she only grazed you. If you catch her in a mood, it could’ve been way worse.”

Kaelix huffs out a laugh that sounds far more breathless than he intended. “I’ll… keep that in mind, next time I offer her a diplomatic bribe.”

Freodore’s mouth lifts at the corner. “You bribed her?" With what this time?”

“Churu.”

Freodore pauses mid-dab, looking up at him with an expression that sits somewhere between incredulity and amusement. “You used churu to lure her into being held?”

Kaelix shrugs helplessly. “Hey, it worked!”

“That’s because she has no dignity,” Freodore says, returning to his task. His fingers brush against Kaelix's skin as he tears open a small bandage, the wrapper crinkling between them. “She pretends she does, but she’d sell her soul for a little chicken in a tube.”

“I guess we all have weaknesses.”

Freodore smooths the adhesive edges of the bandage with his fingers, his touch lingering a moment too long.

“There,” he murmurs, patting Kaelix’s chest gently, just over the fresh bandage. His gaze flicks up, perhaps meaning to check if the bandage is sitting comfortably by looking for signs on his face, but instead, they end up just catching each other’s gaze. They both freeze, neither able to look away in time.

Before Kaelix can say anything, Freodore clears his throat suddenly and pulls back, gathering the cotton balls and wrappers. “Let me just clean this up,” he says, voice slightly strained as gets moving.

“Th-thanks,” Kaelix rubs the back of his neck and leans back against the couch cushions, feeling the ghost of Freodore’s touch still warm on his skin.

When Freodore returns from disposing of the first-aid debris, Kaelix rises to his feet, suddenly cognizant of how late it’s gotten. Still, he hesitates at the door.

“I… I’m playing a set tomorrow at my usual spot. If you’re not busy, I’d love for you to catch it.” The invitation hangs in the air between them for a beat before Freodore’s eyes drop, a flash of regret crossing his face.

“Sorry,” he says softly. “I’ve got something on tomorrow evening.”

Kaelix nods to quickly, eager to show him it’s really no big deal. “Oh no, all good—”

His fingers fidget with the hem of his shirt before he looks up again. “But maybe we could grab dinner sometime this week? Let me treat you—least I can do after you tanking that from my cat.”

Kaelix’s disappointed expression transforms instantly, the corners of his mouth lifting. “I’ll definitely hold you to that,” he says, trying very hard not to bounce on the balls of his feet.

“Please do,” Freodore replies, a shy smile playing at his lips.

As Kaelix finally moves to take a step back towards his own apartment, Freodore suddenly says, “ah, by the way, she has all her shots—just, you know, in case you were worried about that.”

Kaelix laughs, his hand unconsciously touching the bandage on his chest. “I should’ve probably asked about that first, but I, uh, got kind of distracted.” His eyes lock directly onto Freodore’s, holding his gaze for a moment.

Freodore just rolls his eyes at that, shaking his head. “Good night, Kaelix,” he calls out instead, already retreating to his unit.

Satisfied with this for now, Kaelix opens his door from behind himself, pushing his tongue into a canine to keep himself from smiling too wide as he bids him a, “g’night, Freo.”

Chapter 6

If Kaelix has one pre-show superstition, it’s to overthink everything before he gets anywhere near a stage. Not about the performance itself—he’s discovered over the past few months that he actually feels right at home under the lights—but it’s more that his brain still insists on its ritual: the half hour before every set, it goes into a kind of diagnostic panic, scanning for emotional malware, worst-case scenarios, and self-sabotage routines that may or may not have anything to do with the music. The minute he steps onstage, it’ll all evaporate like morning mist (and maybe this is why they all come at him just right before), but until then, his thoughts scatter like startled birds.

Case in point: tonight, his head is filled not with the music, or his set list, or the gentle hum of a crowd already a couple of drinks in since the bar opened this evening, but with the question of what exactly Freodore might be doing right now, and with whom.

He’d made a throwaway comment last night about “having something on” tonight, and Kaelix had obviously played it cool with a “no worries, maybe next time,” breezy and fine, but now, as he tunes his guitar in the back room of the bar, he’s imagining every possible alternative that doesn’t involve himself. Is it a work thing? A secret third job? Or worse, a clandestine meeting with a lover? The mind is an enemy in these moments.

He’s halfway through picking out the first chorus of his opening number, thumb catching a little on the D string, when Zeal pops his head in. Zeal, the least dramatic of the bar’s two co-owners, has perfected the art of looking both extremely busy and terminally chill at the same time. How he does this, Kaelix has no idea.

“Soundcheck’s good, just FYI,” Zeal says. “We’re starting in like, twenty, so finish your sad little pre-set ritual and come out whenever.”

“Marinating in the dread helps with the high notes, trust,” Kaelix replies, barely looking up.

“Sure.” Zeal shrugs like he hears that kind of sentiment hourly (he probably does). “Audience is mostly regulars, and Seible’s actually here early, at the bar with me today.”

“Love the moral support,” Kaelix says, rolling his eyes as Zeal disappears, leaving the door open so that the early crowd noise filters in. It’s a comforting sound of plates clinking, voices tumbling over one another, the odd expletive lobbed at the game on the bar TV. The air smells like yeast and citrus, with an undercurrent of something smoky that makes Kaelix’s stomach rumble.

He runs through the chorus again, then a verse, then another chorus, less because he needs it and more because the act of repetition is a substitute for actual courage. He wonders, briefly, if Freodore’s night is going better than his.

The thought is promptly dismissed. He stands, slings the guitar over his back, and heads out into the heart of the place, weaving through the tight crush of bodies and snagging a quick “good luck” and two thumbs up from Seible, who’s actually behind the bar tonight instead of out handling one of his three other businesses. It’s rare to catch the real owner of this place on a weeknight, especially during Kaelix’s early slot. Usually Seible’s rushing between whatever his family has him on (for the most part managing some property) and other mysterious ventures he’s made vague references in the last couple of years (Kaelix has never really gotten a straight answer beyond “oh, uh, just retail—” which he knows to leave well enough alone).

The stage isn’t much of a stage, really. Just a slightly elevated platform with a stool, a mic stand, and an amp that has to be angled just so or it feeds back in protest. Kaelix settles onto the stool, adjusts the mic, and spends a minute with his head down, fiddling with the capo. The bar stays lively, filled with the background chatter of the people in it, glasses clinking, someone laughing too loud near the back, and he likes it this way, the pressure diffused by their distraction. When he finally opens his mouth to sing, though, a ripple of attention spreads outward from the stage, not quite in silence, but more of a softening, like the volume’s been turned down just one notch.

He opens with a cover tonight. Some old pop song stripped of all its gloss and rendered in slow, moody acoustics. His voice threads through the ambient noise, finding pockets of listeners, like a woman at the bar who stops mid-sentence or that couple near the front who lean in closer to each other. The first two songs pass in a blur, muscle memory doing most of the work, and Kaelix is starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he can coast the entire night on autopilot.

That’s when he sees him.

He almost misses it at first, focused on the second verse, eyes on the fretboard, until an unexpected flash of teal catches his line of sight, standing at the far end of the bar. There, leaning in over the counter, is Freodore. He’s wearing a light sweater over a turtleneck, collar bunched high around his throat, hair soft and feathered down to just above his nape (Kaelix is still yet to get used to not seeing the curtain of waves behind him), and he’s bracing one arm on the bar top, listening intently to whatever Seible is whispering in his ear.

Kaelix stumbles. It’s nothing earth shattering or dramatic, but it is a half-beat out of time where the chord progression hangs a little longer than intended. It’s not a delay that’s long enough for anyone else to notice, but it is enough for Kaelix feel it and start making his palms sweat more than usual. He looks again, convinced his eyes are playing tricks on him, but Freodore is still there.

His fingers hover for half a second over the strings, muscle memory carrying the melody while his brain tries to recalibrate. The pick slides slightly against his thumb, slick with a thin film of sweat.

He finds the rhythm again, letting the song carry him forward. His voice at least stays steady even as his thoughts feel all over the place. He finishes the number without looking directly at the bar, afraid that making eye contact might break whatever spell brought Freodore here tonight. Instead, he focuses on his playing, on his breathing, on anything but the fact that his neighbor is watching him perform.

Freodore watches with a kind of quiet, rapt attention. At least when Seible isn’t talking his ear off. Every so often, Freodore will throw Seible a look that is so full of resigned exasperation that it’s almost funny, like a cat being forced to listen to a puppy explain the concept of fetch for the thirtieth time.

The set ends with polite applause, as it often does. Kaelix unplugs, packs up, and spends an entire minute in the backstage hallway trying to slow his heart rate before he faces the bar proper.

When he does, he beelines directly to Seible and Zeal, both of whom are leaning against the far end, near Freodore, who is perched on a stool with a glass of something that’s amber-gold and catching in the bar’s dim light.

Zeal is the first to speak. “Oh wow, you actually went with it,” he says, surprised but genuinely pleased. “That bridge section sounds so much better with the key change.”

Seible laughs, swirling his own drink. “Yeah! Great job out there. You only looked like you wanted to die during like, one number.”

Kaelix opens his mouth to retort but the words catch in his throat as he realizes that Freodore is looking directly at them, expression unreadable.

He blurts out the only thing his mind can muster, too, in this moment: “Seible, you know Freo?”

The three blink back at him in perfect, stunned unison. Then, as if a switch has flipped, Seible barks out a loud laugh.

“Oh—oh my god, wait. Wait. When you were talking about that neighbor of yours last, K-chan, you meant… you meant Furi-chan?!” He balks a little, setting his glass down with a thunk on the wood, pointing to Freodore. Freodore, for his part, just shakes his head.

“Apparently,” he mutters, seemingly just as bemused as Kaelix.

“Uhm,” Kaelix supplies, feeling his brain melting a bit at the edges.

Freodore sighs. “I’ve known these two for... awhile,” he explains, gesturing vaguely between Zeal and Seible. “Seible and I went to the same university.” he adds.

“‘Awhile,’ he says,” Zeal interjects, eyebrows raised. “You’re so stingy, Freo. Not like we haven’t known each other for the last, what, six years?”

Seible nods vigorously, eyes darting between Kaelix’s stunned expression and Freodore’s increasingly uncomfortable one. “Yeah, Furi-chan,” he says, leaning forward with theatrical indignation. “Went to the same university.” He mimics Freodore’s matter-of-fact tone before clutching his chest in mock hurt. “Did the year we dated mean nothing to you? You’re still one of my emergency contacts!” Beside him, Zeal's shoulders shake with a quiet laughter.

Zeal clutches his heart with both hands. “Oof.”

Freodore just rolls his eyes and fires back, “Yeah? Put me back in number one and then we’ll talk.”

“Actually, no, wait. Don’t do that,” Freodore says. “Zeal can keep it. I don’t want to be on speed dial one for when you get another ‘fun idea’ at two in the morning.”

Kaelix watches this play out, reeling. The world is so, so small, he thinks. Or maybe it’s just the city, the way it compresses lives into little, overlapping circles until you end up shoulder to shoulder with people you thought belonged to entire other universes. It’s funny and somewhat terrifying at the same time.

After a beat, Freodore cuts through the noise, turning to Zeal. “So, about that thing you wanted me to help with. The demo mixing?”

Zeal blinks, then seems to remember what he’s talking about. “Oh, right! Yeah. That. He’s the one,” Zeal says, nodding at Kaelix.

Kaelix and Freodore both stare at each other, stunned for a moment. Then, Freodore’s eyebrow lifts slightly. “You know you could’ve just asked me, right? You already know what I do for a living.”

Kaelix’s mouth goes dry at that, because, oh boy, sure he does. Images unbidden flash behind his eyes that are decidedly not related to the PG-13 one of his jobs. His ears burn hot. “I… I didn’t want to impose.”

“You wouldn’t be,” Freodore says sincerely.

Seible, sensing a shift, pushes off their side of the bar. “Hey so, I’m gonna go see if the kitchen’s still alive,” he announces. Zeal follows with a short, “we’ll leave you two to it then. Long night ahead of us all.”

As they wander off, Kaelix and Freodore are left staring at each other in the gentle chaos of the post-set/pre-set bar, the next performers already getting ready on stage. There’s a brief, awkward silence, then both of them start to speak at once.

“You—” says Kaelix.

“Do you want—” says Freodore.

They stop, laugh a little, and try again.

“You wanna get out of here?” Kaelix asks, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah,” says Freodore eventually, already sliding out of his seat. “I could use some air.”

They leave together, neither of them quite sure whose idea it is to walk the long way back toward the apartment, but both falling into the rhythm of two people newly aware of the spaces they occupy in each other’s lives.

They walk, hands in their pockets, Kaelix’s guitar slung over his shoulder, trading stories of worst sets and least-favorite exes. The air is cold but not cruel, and the city feels, for once, like a place you could actually find yourself in. Like there’s a map being drawn between them, and every step might be a line connecting past and present, disaster and possibility.

By the time they reach the front of their building, Kaelix feels the nerves in his chest settling into a hopeful, steady hum. He glances at Freodore, who is watching the night sky with a look that is, for once, completely unguarded.

Kaelix shifts his weight, guitar case bumping against his back. “Hey,” he says, earnest. “Thanks for coming tonight.”

Freodore looks over, eyes sunset-bright in the streetlights, somewhat amused as he regards Kaelix. “You’re welcome...? I was just meeting Seible for drinks about another thing and Zeal had asked for that favor… I didn’t know you’d be playing until I got there. But for what it’s worth, I would’ve gone earlier if I did.”

Something warm blooms in Kaelix’s chest. Of all the bars in the city, Freodore had wandered into his regular spot, with friends they already seem to share. The coincidence feels like a gift he hadn’t known to ask for.

“Still,” Kaelix grins, nudging him gently as they walk past the vestibule. “you don’t have to be nice. I saw you talking to Seible the whole time.”

Freodore shakes his head, knocking into his side back as they make their way to the elevator. “I was just—he can be very persistent. But I liked the set. Especially that new one Zeal was talking about it. I’ve said this before, but you sing really well. It… weirdly feels like I can tell how much effort you put into it, but at the same time, you make it seems so easy, if that makes any sense.”

Kaelix feels like his heart might be beating a little louder. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Freodore says.

In front of them, the elevator finally dings, doors sliding open with a tired wheeze. They step inside together, shoulders almost touching in the narrow space. Kaelix watches their distorted reflections in the brushed metal as the doors close. Freodore pulls out his phone, thumbs moving rapidly across the screen, the blue light casting shadows across his face.

Kaelix clears his throat, for some reason, feeling like it’s now or never. “Have you had dinner yet? I’ve, uh, got a few leftovers I need to polish off. And I just realized those two forgot to pay in bar snacks.”

Freodore looks up, thumb pausing mid-scroll, eyes meeting Kaelix’s in the warped reflection. A moment passes and for a good few seconds, Kaelix is already thinking about what to say to cushion the blow of being rejected yet again.

“Actually, sure,” he says eventually, pocketing his phone, “I haven’t eaten yet.”

Kaelix’s apartment is warm, softly lit, smelling faintly of honey and clean linen from the candle he’d lit earlier that morning. He pushes the door open, flips the light switch, and gestures Freodore inside with a casual wave.

“Make yourself at home,” he says, toeing off his boots and hanging his jacket on the hook by the door. His heart skips as Freodore steps past him, mind racing all of a sudden. Did he remember to put away that pile of laundry? Is there anything embarrassing visible? His eyes dart around, taking stock of all the surfaces within sight. The counter gleams under the kitchen light, and he notices with relief that everything is mostly where it should be. He pats himself on the back for spending an hour earlier today cleaning.

Kaelix glances at the takeout containers in the fridge, then hesitates. He could do better than that. He pulls out cold cuts, provolone slices, and the fresh bread he’d picked up from the bakery downstairs that morning. As he arranges everything on the cutting board, he wishes he’d known this was happening tonight. He could have prepared something actually impressive instead of this thrown-together meal.

“Sorry, I know I said leftovers, but—” Kaelix gestures to the makeshift spread, “—it’s sandwiches. Unless you’d rather the actual leftovers, in which case we can always do that instead.” 

Freodore hovers near the threshold of the kitchen, hands tucked into his sleeves. “Oh. No, this is great,” he says, voice even. “You didn’t have to do all this.”

Kaelix tries not to sound so much like there’s water in his voice. “It’s literally bread and processed meat. I’ll make you something for real next time.”

Freodore’s mouth twitches. “Thank you. I’ll look forward to that then.”

He assembles the sandwiches with more precision than necessary, layering slices carefully and then cutting them into triangles because he remembers Freodore had said offhand once that the angle sometimes makes it taste better. He arranges them on a plate, adds a little pile of chips on the side, and hands it over.

They eat at the counter and swap a few more stories about life lately, which tapers off enough easily considering how many times they’ve started running into each other on purpose these days.

Freodore, he notes again, is a careful eater, precise and quiet. 

“It’s good,” he says after the first bite, and when he says it, he means it. Kaelix feels a dumb thrill of victory. 

After the meal, Freodore sets his napkin beside his plate and stands. “I should check on Gatita after washing up, make sure she’s not reorganizing my closet again.” He gestures vaguely to the sink, asking without words if he can use it, but Kaelix gets up immediately to take the plate instead.

“Oh no, here—” he murmurs, stacking it up with his own. “Let me. Go check on your little troublemaker.”

“I’ll just be a minute, if that’s okay?” Freodore responds, voice soft with hesitation. Something in his eyes, perhaps in question as he peers at Kaelix, waits for him to respond. It’s surprisingly not a real goodbye yet or bidding him good night and it catches him so off-guard that he almost misses his cue.

“Take your time,” he assures, trying to sound casual despite the flutter in his chest. “I’ve got some chocolate cake left in the fridge. I’ll cut some up for us after the dishes,” he calls out, already turning towards the sink to get started.

“Sorry for ducking out during cleanup,” Freodore offers, hovering by the door.

“Really, I’m serious!! It’s super fine,” Kaelix cuts in quickly, laughing a little, hoping how red he is isn’t so apparent from the door. “And, hey—once she’s settled, I’m stealing you back for a bit, so, as long as she’s alright, I’m not letting you escape that easily tonight.”

There’s a beat before he hears anything else and at first Kaelix thinks he’s said something stupid or weird (it kind of is, now that he thinks about it… but it’s also kind of too late to take it back as usual). But eventually, he hears Freodore murmur a small, “okay, I’ll be quick, promise,” right before slipping out into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind him.

Kaelix stands alone in his kitchen, feeling his heart pound at a dangerous tempo. Maybe, he thinks, this is the night he finally comes clean. He can see the package in his mind’s eye, tucked deep in his bedroom closet, the contents no longer a mystery but a looming source of guilt. He’s been rehearsing the confession for overlong and some days it’s easier to think that he’s ready, but now, in the silence of his apartment and at the cusp of something that feels like, finally, things are slotting into place, it feels impossible.

He busies himself by tidying up, washing the dishes, scrubbing down the counter, pulling out a new small plate and deciding if he’s gonna do two or one and decides to go with one in the end. He’s pretty full and he figures Freodore isn’t going to eat much either (or mind that they’re sharing).

When Freodore returns, he’s holding a slim bottle of wine that’s full but already open. He sets it on the counter.

“Peace offering,” he says, almost sheepish. “The wine was a client gift. I don’t know if it’s actually good, but I thought you might like it.” He glances at the label, then shrugs. “It’s Italian. That’s really the only thing I know about it.”

“Whoa, thank you!” Kaelix can’t help but smile at the gesture. “Looks fancy.” He retrieves two glasses from the cabinet.

They move to the couch, the small plate of cake in hand, the wine glasses sloshing just a little as Kaelix sets them on the coffee table. The TV is already on, left at a low volume, some documentary about high-speed trains flickering on the screen. Neither pays it much mind. Instead, they sit side by side, not quite touching, passing cake between them.

It’s a comfortable sort of quiet at first.

The wine is surprisingly good: dry, with a kind of deep berry finish that coats the tongue and lingers. Freodore sips it slow, savoring it. He does the same with the cake, cutting off small bites and eating them with the same concentration he’d brought to his sandwich earlier. Kaelix gets a kick out of watching him eat, even though he’s careful not to stare.

It isn’t long either before they slip into easy conversation again, picking up stray threads from earlier and weaving them into something new. They talk about it all as usual. Like what Kaelix is working on (“a demo for Zeal’s friend, actually, which is kind of embarrassing, because he’s always pulling these favors for me”), and what Freodore’s been busy with this week (he scrunches his nose in distaste as he recalls it, and Kaelix has to try very hard not to call him cute for it out loud, “podcast about maximizing your LinkedIn connections… yuck”).

Eventually, their talk steers toward the bar, and the people there, and the fact that Freodore apparently knows both Zeal and Seible, the latter intimately enough that Kaelix has to wonder if there are still emotional landmines scattered across the conversational terrain.

Kaelix brings it up as lightly as he can, one, because he’s a little bit nosy, and two, because he feels like he should at least try to ask before he gets in too deep about this even though he already feels like he kind of is. “So, you and Seible…?”

Freodore takes a moment, fork paused mid-air, he sets the plate back down on the coffee table beside them.

“Mm,” he hums, considering, perhaps, how best to speak on it, and eventually settles with: “We dated for a while. Back in school.” He shrugs. “It was mostly curiosity, I think. That, and he could be very persistent.”

Kaelix snorts, laughing a little. “Ah, well, that tracks. He’s still like that.” He swirls the contents of his glass, looking down at the sloshing red liquid. “But you’re just friends now?”

“Yeah,” Freodore says, voice soft as he speaks about their friend. “He’s a good person, honestly. We just… weren’t it for each other, I guess? It’s a no hard feelings sort of thing.”

Kaelix nods, absorbing this. A pause grows between them, not so much tense as it is heavy with possibilities. Freodore is quietly sipping at his drink, eyes on the television, his feet pulled up on the couch. It's nice like this, Kaelix thinks. The way Freodore’s profile catches the light of the screen, the small unconscious curl of his fingers around the stem of the glass. They could stay just like this forever, sharing wine and cake and the gentle hum of conversation that seems to flow so easily between them. He could let himself be satisfied with this version of Freodore in his life: the neighbor who’s become the friend and a person in his life who exists in the same space without any demands. But the thought makes something twist painfully in his chest, too: he wants more than this careful dance they’ve been doing. Because while this—Freodore’s quiet presence, the casual intimacy of their knees almost touching—is good, it’s also nowhere near enough. His want has grown too large to contain, and Kaelix finds himself more terrified of never knowing what could be than of risking what already is.

He just has to get over one, slightly giant hurdle… that is waterproof, rechargeable, made of hypoallergenic silicone and sitting in his closet.

Kaelix attempts a grounding sip of his wine, breathes in and out quietly, and then says his name.

“Freo?”

Freodore turns a little in his seat toward him. He’d been sitting with his knees pulled up beside Kaelix on the couch, wine held in his hand in a somewhat funny way in this position. Maybe instinctively, he sets it down on the table again and turns a bit more fully to regard him properly.

“Hm?”

Kaelix takes another inhale for himself and it’s a bit scary, he’ll admit, how Freodore looks like he’s bracing himself for something too because now it’s clear Kaelix is. Great, he’s made them both kind of quietly panic.

“You… you’re not… seeing anyone else, are you?” He can’t believe he just said that, but, well, now cat’s out of the bag.

“Oh,” Freodore says mildly, but he doesn’t look away when he adds, “no. I’m not.”

Kaelix wants to say, “good,” but that would lack the true depth of what he wants to convey. He tries for a joke instead. “Cool, because it would be very awkward to find out you had a secret lover hiding in the building. The walls are thin, but not that thin.”

Freodore laughs at that, a soft thing that hitches in his chest, even though Kaelix is already reeling from what his mouth just thought was okay to let out. He leans back against the couch, hands on his lap. “Are you?”

“Am I what?” Kaelix knows exactly what he means, but he is nothing if not greedy and wants to hear him say it.

“Seeing anyone,” Freodore says, speaking softer this time, perhaps unconsciously.

Kaelix shakes his head. “No. I’ve been way too busy with work and…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. The last person I dated turned out to be allergic to both cats and commitment, so I decided a break would be good.”

There’s a silence, but it’s not uncomfortable. If anything, it feels like the static, expectant charge just right before lightning. Kaelix debates, again, whether to admit to opening Freodore’s package, and again decides to punt the confession downfield to make way for all else.

Instead, he asks, “can I tell you something?” and before Freodore can answer, he blurts, “I really like hanging out with you.”

Freodore’s eyes widen just a fraction. “Same,” he says, voice barely more than a whisper. “You make things feel…” He hesitates, searching for the right word. “Easier. Which isn’t usually the case, for me.”

The air tightens between them. Kaelix is acutely aware of the proximity of their knees, of the way the light from the TV paints Freodore’s cheekbones in blue and gold. He wants to reach out, but he isn’t sure if he’s really allowed to yet.

Freodore helps him out, unfurling from his curled up position. He nudges his foot, just barely, against Kaelix’s calf. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” Kaelix plays dumb, but his voice is rawer than he intends.

“Like you’re trying to decide if I’ll run away if you touch me,” Freodore says, blunt and honest. “I won’t.”

Kaelix’s heart stutters. He sets his wine glass on the table too, careful not to spill whatever’s left of its contents, and then places his hand on top of Freodore’s where it rests on his thigh.

Freodore’s hand is cool to the touch; his fingers are long and elegant, but slighter against his own. He doesn’t flinch or pull away when Kaelix does this. Instead, he laces his fingers through Kaelix’s, squeezing gently. “See?” he says, eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiles up at Kaelix to show him.

Kaelix laughs a little at that, a lilting, incredulous sound, as he brings their joined hands to his mouth to kiss the back of Freodore’s hand. “Yeah. I see.”

They sit like that for a long moment, not moving. The TV drones on, a train hurtling across a snow-dusted landscape, but neither of them is really paying attention.

“Can I…?” Kaelix starts, but then loses the thread, the question dissolving into the static between them.

And so it’s Freodore who leans in to close the distance, kissing him.

It’s soft at first. Just a brush of lips in something that’s exploratory and hesitant. Freodore leans in like he’s testing a boundary he can still pretend he didn’t cross if he pulls back fast enough. Their lips meet in a featherlight brush that sends a warm, startled ripple down Kaelix’s spine. It’s the kind of contact that isn’t really asking for anything yet.

Kaelix answers without words.

He tilts into it, closing the scant distance between them so the kiss stops being theoretical. His lips move against Freodore’s in a slow, searching way, matching the hesitancy with something steadier. Freodore exhales, quiet and surprised, and the soft breath ghosts over Kaelix’s mouth, pulling a small sound from him in return.

Kaelix’s hand finds its way up, fingers sliding along the line of Freodore’s jaw before settling at the warm curve of his neck. His thumb rests just beneath Freodore’s ear, the touch gentle enough that Freodore leans into it instinctively.

The kiss deepens, not by force but by gravity, and in increments, both of them angling in at the same moment. Their noses bump a little. Freodore shifts half an inch. Kaelix follows. It’s clumsy, utterly human, and still, somehow perfect.

When they finally pull apart, they’re close enough that Kaelix can still feel Freodore’s breath brushing his lips. Freodore’s eyes are half-lidded, his mouth parted, his cheeks flushed in a way that sends heat roaring through Kaelix’s chest.

“Wow,” Kaelix says, dazed. “I, uh. Wanted to do that for awhile.”

Freodore’s lips curve into a smile. “Good. Because I was going to lose my mind if you didn’t.”

They kiss again. Kaelix’s thumb traces the line of Freodore’s jaw, tilting his chin up as their lips meet. The lingering sweetness of the chocolate mingles with the wine as Freodore’s tongue brushes against his.

“Mmph—Kaelix,” Freodore breathes, and Kaelix answers with more kisses, suddenly ravenous. His fingers find the strip of warm skin where Freodore’s shirt has ridden up, almost dizzy at how perfectly slight Freodore’s waist feels beneath his palms. The couch cushion dips with a soft creak as Freodore shifts closer, the heat of his thigh pressing against Kaelix’s. Kaelix’s rest more firmly on Freodore’s waist, guiding him gently.

“Come here,” he murmurs against Freodore’s mouth, leaning back against the couch and drawing him forward. Freodore follows the motion, one leg crossing over until he settles with a soft exhale against Kaelix’s lap. Kaelix moves to pull him closer, heart thundering against his ribs because it finally, finally feels like Freodore wants this just as much, and the realization might just kill him.

For a minute, the rest of the world recedes. All that exists is the two of them: mouths and hands and their quiet, hungry, mutual need. Freodore’s arms wrap around Kaelix’s neck, his body leaning forward, asking to be kissed deeper.

They don’t talk, not for a while, because they’re busy pressed against each other in that sort of slow-building intensity, which sends electric currents down through Kaelix’s veins. Freodore’s lips are softer than he imagined, moving with a hesitant confidence that threatens to burn down Kaelix’s self-control entirely. His fingers trace the delicate ridge of Freodore’s collarbone, feeling the flutter of pulse beneath warm skin. He’s aware, dimly, that this is still a very new, very fragile thing, and that if he goes too fast he might spook the other man. So he reins it in, just barely, letting himself get lost in the press of lips and the pulse of heat between them, in the gentle scrape of teeth against his lower lip that makes his breath catch in his throat.

Freodore’s fingers thread upward through the short hairs at Kaelix’s nape, tightening just enough to send tingles down his spine. Kaelix’s hands, again, find the curve where Freodore’s waist narrows, his thumbs pressing into the hollow above hipbones, then slide to the small of Freodore’s back, pulling him closer. The small gasp against his mouth sends a thrill through Kaelix as he trails his lips to Freodore’s neck, savoring each soft sound that escapes until Freodore cups his face and guides him back up, pressing their lips together with newfound urgency.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that—ten minutes, an hour? Time bends around the edges this way on his couch. But eventually, the silence is broken by a sharp, electronic chime from somewhere beside them.

Freodore’s phone buzzes between the couch cushions with it. He leans sideways to reach for it, but Kaelix chases his lips, stealing one, two, three more quick kisses as he goes. Freodore laughs against his mouth, a warm puff of air.

Freodore makes a soft noise against his lips. “Mn—stop,” he whispers, but tilts his chin up for another peck anyway, smiling against him. Kaelix grins, triumphant, as Freodore finally manages to grab his phone with one hand, the other still curled around Kaelix’s neck.

Freodore manages to slide the alarm off without looking, his thumb finding the button by muscle memory as Kaelix captures his lips again.

“Hold on,” Freodore murmurs between kisses, likely meaning to check his phone.

“Kaelix, wait—” But his protests dissolve when Kaelix finds his mouth again. Freodore’s fingers tighten in Kaelix’s hair, his phone momentarily forgotten as Kaelix’s tongue traces the seam of his lips. Their breathes mingle, hot and urgent, until Freodore breaks away with a breathless laugh. “Come on, let me just—” another kiss steals his words, softer this time but no less insistent.

When Kaelix finally relents, it’s because Freodore’s phone rings with another alarm that he has to shut off, and so they can both catch their breaths, foreheads pressed against each other. Kaelix’s eyes drop to the phone’s screen inadvertently, catching the alarm’s label right before Freodore dismisses it: live in 25.

Kaelix’s stomach drops. He swallows thickly, moving to pillow his head on Freodore’s shoulder, biting his lip and hoping that when he raises his his head again, it doesn’t betray that he’s seen anything at all or his thoughts now that he has.

Freodore sighs. “Sorry,” he mutters, planting a kiss to the side of Kaelix’s head, likely because it’s what he can reach right now. “I have a work thing in a bit that I can’t really put off.”

Kaelix swallows his disappointment but also the lump in his throat and the guilt gnawing at him because he realizes now, with startling clarity, that he’s gotten the order woefully wrong; he forces a smile. “No, of course. Go be… productive.”

Freodore grins, a little crooked. “You have no idea.”

He stands, smoothing his shirt, and heads for the door.

Kaelix follows, heart still pounding. At the threshold, he catches Freodore’s wrist and pulls him in for one last, lingering kiss unable to help himself anyway.

“Good luck at work,” he murmurs, lips still grazing Freodore’s.

Freodore smiles against his mouth, kissing him back one last time. “Thank you. I’ll probably need it.”

He leaves, the door closing after him with a gentle click. Kaelix leans against the frame, replaying every second of the last hour in his mind, head in his hands. He’s really done it now.

Kaelix Debonair has always prided himself on his ability to handle uncomfortable situations with at least a bit of level-headedness most of the time, but the last month of his life has been a parade of humiliations and every up and down you could think to take place emotionally, each one a little more creative than the last. It, of course, starts with nearly bumping to each other (quite literally) more than once and snowballs somehow into accidentally stealing someone else’s mail—which, in turn, leads to the knowledge that his neighbor is a literal sex toy reviewer online. That’s already a tall order for any normal human psyche, but the part that really gets him is not the content itself, not even the nature of the work, but the context: the timing, the person, the way every little new detail about Freodore within the backdrop of this all chips away at Kaelix’s self-control until he’s spending more time thinking about him than his own day job.

This is not ideal, regardless of how much things have suddenly progressed in such a short amount of time. They have yet to talk in-depth about anything pertaining to them exactly, although they really should. But between Freodore’s text of: 

—the next morning, to Kaelix’s: 

(To his credit, he only sent two emojis this time, thinking that the five his thumbs immediately pressed might be overkill for Freodore.)

—right before he presumably started work, there hadn’t really been much else and Kaelix has mulling for at least several hours now what the best course of action was now that there was last night. 

Because he’d sworn to himself, just a little bit after mistakenly taking The Package, that he’d give Freodore the courtesy of privacy, or as much of it left he can give this way. That he’d let Freodore reveal what he wanted, in his own time and terms, without Kaelix prying or even hinting that he knows what Freodore does for money on the side. He’d even bought earplugs awhile back, and not the cheap foam ones mind you, but those fancy musician-grade ones that filter noise without muting everything, just to make sure he wouldn’t be accused of listening in on the thin walls. As gestures of quiet atonement go, it’s kind of overkill. But Kaelix has never known how to do things by halves (and he’s also not quite ready to bring it up of his own volition and grovel with an apology).

This is why he is, at this very moment, sitting on his couch, strumming slow, melancholy scales on his guitar, and trying not to think about Freodore, who is probably three meters away doing something infinitely more interesting. Or possibly just watching something on Netflix with his cat this evening. Or both. The boundaries between work and leisure are loose when you’re a freelancer, he figures.

Overall, he’s proud of how disciplined he’s mostly been. He never tried to find the streaming platform he’s on, even though he already knows the username. Boundary setting is a hardline he likes to think he wouldn’t ever think to cross.

But boundaries are, of course, only as strong as the people keeping them.

And sometimes when they’re breached, it’s never really by the person you expect.

The breach comes the following day, via a text message from Seible. Which, in context, is all in all weird, because there’s no prompting this time. There’s usually a precedent to these things and more often than not, they are Kaelix. So when his phone pings and he sees his name when he least expects it, he sets his guitar aside to check it right away.

It is, at a glance, a standard “Look at this wild thing” text, a link and a couple of words—but to Kaelix, they don’t really make much sense, reading:

Kaelix squints at this and then stares at it for a good thirty seconds before his curiosity gets the better of him, ignoring perhaps, every internet safety lecture or post he’s ever scrolled past online or the big red warning signs in his head saying this might not be for you.

His thumb hovers over the link.

Don’t do it, he tells himself, but then his thumb moves anyway, long press to open upon up his native browser. It opens and the preview starts to buffer.

Kaelix expects a jump cut into something wild, something maybe scary, or something that will either mortify or desensitize him within seconds. He does not expect the slow, almost artful build of the video: a soft lit room, a tangle of sheets on a bed than can only be described as tastefully practical, and, front and center of all that, his neighbor, looking directly into the camera, face masked but unmistakable even in profile.

His brain stutters, then leaps forward. He recognizes that burgundy jacket over those slight shoulders immediately; it’s the one he’d lent out after the fire. The sleeves are too long for Freodore, and every so often, as he props himself up on one elbow or shifts in the frame, the fabric puddles around his hands, swallowing them in rich, wine-red folds. It looks better on him than it ever did on Kaelix.

The video is titled: “trying something new.”

There is, within seconds, a sense that this is different from Freodore’s usual output. The chat confirms it, scrolling by at a speed Kaelix can barely keep up with. People are losing their collective minds:

Etc, etc.

Kaelix can barely process it.

He should close the window. He really should. This is a violation of everything he’s tried so hard to respect. But there’s a gravity to the moment, a feeling that if he looks away he’ll miss something irreversible, some secret that will evaporate the second his finger hits the back arrow.

And so he watches.

The setup is simple: Freodore on his bed, jacket draped over his bare shoulders and nothing else visible beneath. His legs are folded under him, and every movement is a slow, almost bashful unfolding, as if he’s not used to the way the camera is focusing on him now or what he’s showing to his audience. The mask covers his mouth, but his eyes are clear in its brightness, almost feverish, lashes sticking together with sweat.

Kaelix doesn’t know if it’s the lighting or the illusion of intimacy, but the sight punches him right in the sternum. He feels himself harden immediately, a quick, hot rush that is more about proximity than the actual content.

There’s a tastefully arranged silicone dildo in sky blue resting against the pillow, not yet in play but clearly a planned feature. The chat erupts again, speculating on when and how it will enter the scene. Kaelix feels his own pulse spike with anticipation.

He’s about to close out, save himself from making this any worse, when Freodore speaks.

The audio is way too good, probably a side effect of using a professional-grade microphone (and like, that’s literally his other job, so that also kind of checks out). His voice is roughened by slight exertion, but likewise dipped in a sort of earnest shyness. Nothing truly prepares Kaelix for what comes out of his mouth next.

“Hey,” he says, as if addressing a specific someone and not his audience as a whole this time.

“Sorry this is a little last minute. I was just thinking about…” He trails off, then laughs, quiet and self-conscious. “Well, I guess I was thinking about you. About what you’d want to see.”

Kaelix breathes out, slow and shaky.

“Is this okay?” Freodore asks, fingers curling around the edge of the jacket. “I, um—you left it behind the last time you were here. Hope you don’t mind.”

He does not mind. He cannot begin to describe how much he does not mind.

The next ten minutes are a blur. Freodore works himself up with methodical care, never moving faster than the camera can follow. He keeps glancing at the chat, but it’s clear he’s in a headspace that has nothing to do with digital noise and everything to do with whatever narrative he’s spinning out for himself. The mask muffles the little sounds he makes sometimes, but his eyes are expressive enough to fill in the blanks.

Kaelix is transfixed. He has never felt so acutely seen and unseen at the same time.

Despite his better judgment, which is shot by now anyway, he palms himself through his sweats, already half-hard, then slides his hand inside, just to test the waters. It’s not a decision, exactly. It’s more like his body moving on instinct, following the script that’s being written for him on the other side of the wall.

The first time Freodore says, “do you like this?” it’s so direct, so nakedly vulnerable, that Kaelix almost comes right there.

He lets the feed play, turning his phone sideways for a better view and angling it toward his lap. He doesn’t turn the volume up any higher as if that might somehow absolve him of what he’s doing. His hand finds its own rhythm, stroking slow and steady, unconsciously mirroring Freodore’s movements on the small screen.

The chat is in full meltdown right now. There are arguments over whether the “boyfriend” is real, speculation about who he might be, jokes about the jacket being stolen from some hapless ex. Someone sends in: “he’s thinking about someone fr, i can tell.” The idea is so thrilling to Kaelix specifically it almost hurts.

Freodore’s performance builds in intensity, as these things often do (not that Kaelix can say he’s seen plenty of Freodore or otherwise). He can see him grind against the mattress, making a show of how the jacket slips off his shoulder, baring the smooth curve of his shoulder. And then he reaches for the blue dildo. Kaelix’s breath hitches.

“Should I?” Freodore asks, and the chat explodes in YES, YES, YES and PLEASE and DO IT.

Kaelix bites his lip, looks up at the ceiling to say a small prayer to the universe and maybe an apology, and then pulls his pants down. He slicks his palm with spit, stroking with more purpose this time.

Onscreen, Freodore lubes up the toy, his hands shaking just a little as he works it in. His breath comes in ragged gasps. The mask muffles most of the sound, but the microphone picks up every little whimper, every whispered curse, every sweet, needy little gasp this time.

“Wish you were here,” Freodore says, voice raw. “It’s not… it’s not as good when I have to do it myself.”

That does it, really. Kaelix fists himself proper as he matches the pace. He can’t look away. He’s not even sure he’s still breathing.

The feed lags for half a second, or maybe skips ahead. Kaelix’s brain is doing that thing where he’s caught between whatever is happening on the screen in front of him, and supplying all this as an imagined conversation that, of course, never happened, and might not ever.

Freodore is on his back, the jacket tangled around his arms, the mask slightly askew, but thankfully still on for the most part. He’s fucking himself on the toy, legs spread wide on the bed, cushioned against his many, many pillows, eyes glazed and unfocused.

“Don’t laugh,” he whines. Kaelix knows it’s part of a script and that Freodore’s just performing for an audience, but his instinctive response is already there, a rush of tender panic that makes him want to say, out loud, I wouldn’t dream of it.

“But I—ah,” Freodore’s breath catches a little on the glide of the toy, perhaps getting the angle right. “I miss you,” he says, finally, softer this time, his gaze a little faraway, before his eyes fluttering shut as he moves his the toy in and out of his himself.

“Wish you’d come over and—ngh, fuck—wish you could come over here and touch me properly.”

Kaelix’s breath stops. Every muscle in him pulls tight like a string being plucked too hard. Something molten coils low in his belly, heat rising up his spine until his vision blurs at the edges. Chat is moving even faster now, but all can see and hear is the raw, trembling way Freodore tells this imaged lover what he wants.

Freodore arches on the bed, back bowing so beautifully it feels like a punch to Kaelix’s lungs. His hips lift into the thrust of the toy, and Kaelix’s pace stutters. He strokes faster, chasing the friction on his own, thighs tensing as he clenches the pillow beside him with his free hand to keep from making noise.

“Please, want you so bad,” Freodore moans, head falling forward in concentration. “Want your hands on me, your mouth—your—ah, want your cock to—fuck, want you to fuck me open—”

Kaelix moves his hand desperately now, fucking into his fist with sloppy, urgent thrusts, breath hitching uncontrollably. He watches Freodore on the screen, all sweaty, shaking, panting, and it feels like the world narrows down to just them, like the distance between their apartments has managed to shrink to a single breath.

His heart slams against his ribs.

The gradual build stops being so gradual as Freodore starts fucking into himself harder, hips lifting off the mattress with urgent, rhythmic need, his toes curling every time the toy fills him just right. The wet sound of it pushing in echoes through the stream. He still does his best to breathe out broken fragments of fantasy, voice rough with effort but no less aching with need.

“If you were here,” he murmurs, almost shy, swallowing thickly before he breathes out the rest of it. “You’d go so deep… make me feel so full. Think about—think about how I’d take you. How tight I’d be.”

Kaelix nearly blacks out on impact when he hears that.

He knows Freodore isn’t talking to him. This is all just for the camera, for an imagined lover who may not even exist, but at this point, his body doesn’t really care. Something hot and remorseful twists low in his stomach. It’s the part of himself that knows he shouldn’t want this and shouldn’t want it like this, that he shouldn’t pretend, even for a second, that those breathless pleas are meant for him, but it also occupies the same space as the part of him that’s already sold on the story—he wishes he could be there for Freodore and he’s sorry that he’s not.

Freodore moans again, higher this time, breath fracturing around it as he slams the toy back in, thighs trembling. His hips lift off the mattress in tight, desperate little arcs, each one smoother than the last as he finds the angle he wants. The toy disappears into him with a wet, eager sound, his body giving around the stretch, clenching down as though trying to pull it deeper. His stomach tightens; the muscles along his hips flex and release as he rocks harder, his free hand fisting in the sheets for leverage. Every downward push makes his breath stutter, eyes shining and dazed.

“That’s good,” Freodore says, gaze project soft for the camera as he turns his attention toward it, like he’s watching him too. He tilts his head, and though no one can really see it, Kaelix knows what that smile looks like behind that mask. “Miss me too, huh?”

Kaelix’s chest aches so badly for that to be directed at him, for him. Of all the little moans Freodore has let out tonight, it’s this one that might actually undo him, somewhat innocuous as it is. It reminds him of the small things about Freodore he’s come to know and fall stupidly in love with. His careful attention, his quiet, understated kindness stitched into everything he does.

Kaelix has liked people before. He’s had little crushes, brief sparks of interest that never really grew past certain stages or ones he’d outgrow too quickly by contrast. He’s never spent much time imagining the shape of the person he thinks might actually, truly be for him. But lately, he catches himself mid-thought about what that could look like. And often, he finds himself hoping that it could be Freodore.

As if pulled from the back of Kaelix’s mind, Freodore gasps, the sound sharp enough to lance through his meandering thoughts. Kaelix can see the way his hips jerk, the toy sliding in deeper, and he moans again, in that open, and ruined, and wanting way.

“Doing so good. Don’t stop,” he pleads into the mic, voice trembling. “Just like that, harder—”

Kaelix strokes himself faster to that, chasing the friction, chasing the cadence of Freodore’s voice. He thinks about their ragged breathing, the sound of it joined, up close, and kissed up into each other. He imagines the way Freodore would gasp against his mouth, how Kaelix would swallow every one of his moans with a press of their lips together, how it would, Freodore’s thighs trembling around his hips as he drives into him slow, then deep, then harder when Freodore asks for it.

The thought guts him, and he shudders, hips jerking as he pulls a long, hot stroke upward, timed perfectly with Freodore urgently gasping out, “—more, please, right there!”

Kaelix’s body locks, shaking by the time it hits him.

He comes hard, cock pulsing violently in his grip as the orgasm tears through him, a low desperate moan that echoes in the quiet of his apartment. The first spurt hits his stomach in a hot, messy arc, before the rest of it spills over his fist. His fingers slip along his shaft as more cum gushes out, warm and slick, dribbling over his knuckles, coating the heel of his palm, each spill of heat dragged out of him by the sound of Freodore panting on the other side of the screen. His breath stutters as the last few drops leak down into the mess already pooling across his hand.

For a moment, he just sits there, chest heaving, vision blurry. The world feels far away, muffled under the haze of release. His hand slows, loosens, falls away from his cock. His mind starts to catch up with what his body just did and what he just let himself do.

He moaned our loud, didn’t he?

“Oh no, oh no, oh nooo…” he whispers, though a small part of him tries to soothe the panic. It’s probably fine. It wasn’t that loud, right? And things seem to be as normal as they can be in his situation for all of five seconds, until he realizes, that Freodore’s stream is delayed.

He looks back at the screen, just as Freodore freezes for just a beat. It’s probably quick for a casual viewer, but Kaelix can see the way Freodore’s eyes snap upward, sharp and searching, like he’s listening for something that shouldn’t exist.

The toy is still buried inside him, and his body is still trembling faintly around it. He swallows, like he’s trying to force down a startled sound.

He starts moving the toy again, perhaps to redirect chat’s attention from the sound, but they’ve already fixated on it.

Freodore flushes visibly, pink flooding his cheeks and neck.

He recovers quickly, it seems, and it looks like he’s still trying to work himself through it, gasping out another series of moans before he lets himself come with a choked-off sound.

Kaelix watches Freodore sag back against his pillows for a minute, hair damp with sweat and sticking too his forehead. For a moment, he’s just sat still there, flushed and undone as he slowly returns to himself by the second.

Freodore lets out a long and shaky exhale before reaching out to pull out the toy with a soft, we sound that makes Kaelix’s breath catch again. Freodore winces, likely from the sensitivity, and sets the toy aside on something out of frame.

He talks to the audience as he goes about his small post-nut ritual.

“So that’s tonight,” he murmurs, cleaning himself off with a rag Kaelix doesn’t remember seeing earlier. He can see that Freodore’s cheeks are still flushed as he wipes lube and then some from his thighs. “Hope it was an interesting one.”

He speaks calmly, as if he hadn’t just spent the better half of the the hour moaning and fucking a sky blue dildo up his ass in bed. He reaches offscreen for a water bottle and takes a long drink, throat working visibly while chat still goes feral. It’s mostly unacknowledged until Freodore says, “ah, it was something you guys liked?” clearly ignoring all the stragglers probing for the source of the voice.

Kaelix is suspended in a state between flight and fight, even as he cleans off with a couple of tissues from a box nearby and pulls up his pants. There aren’t really a lot of options for where he can hide, logistics all considered, maybe he might be able to hide out at Seible’s place or even Wilson’s for a few days? Or, he thinks, with a grounding breath, or he could tidy up in full, put something nice and clean on (or, at least, vaguely presentable with the circumstances in mind), and walk right out the door and just rip the band-aid off finally, come clean.

Freodore’s still talking to his chat as Kaelix spirals on his couch.

He hears him distantly say, “thank you for tuning in today,” and the distinct, roughened rasp of his voice. “No promises about more scripts in the future, but, I’ll consider it. As always, I’ll upload the recording with the other streams from this week on Saturday for tier two and up subscribers. See you next time.”

He kills the stream after that without much fanfare.

The screen goes black.

Kaelix is left staring at his own reflection, the sound of his own heartbeat loud in his ears, feeling the hot, stupid rush of shame and desire still buzzing under his skin. He lets out a shaky breath, crumpling the tissues into a ball before standing up to throw it in the nearest trashcan, wondering if he’s just destroyed the very thing he was trying to really, really hard not to.

Chapter 7

If anyone asked, Freodore would say the thing about living alone is that, when things go wrong, there’s a certain stark clarity to it. Just you and the silence and the thing that’s gone wrong. No distractions. No roommate to perhaps offer a different take. There might be the one friend available to drop by with a snack and some wine, but more often than not, it’s just you, handling it yourself, like you’ve handled everything else. Most of the time that means you’re trapped with the looping, bottomless vortex of your own internal monologue, a white box echo chamber for all your most mortifying theories.

That’s how Freodore spends the hours after his stream: curled around his pillow with the taste of shame burning the inside of his mouth. He replays the moment, the part right after, when he froze on camera, trying to will away the sinking, sickening clarity of what had happened.

Freodore likes to think he’s always been good at suppressing the big feelings during a broadcast, but this time, the best he could manage was a kind of soft-spoken autopilot, running the remainder of the script while his brain outed in the background.

It could have been anything, really, he tells himself. A sound effect from a show that got too loud, some sort of audio artifact. But he just… has an inkling it wasn’t.

He wishes, so badly, that he could’ve just been angry, or even properly jealous, but all he feels at this point is kind of hollowed out. Gutted after months spent patching together the hope of something, and then, in a single, off-kilter moment, finding out he’d never even been in the running in the first place.

Freodore gets up and manages to at least bring himself to shower. It’s all muscle memory carrying him. He does his elaborate skincare routine by rote, then stands in his bedroom after, wondering—well, what now?

He can’t sleep, so he gives up. The internet says that, when your mind is spinning, the best thing you can do is make yourself busy with a task. Any task, really. And so he runs diagnostics on his own setup. He sits at his desk and checks the recording, scrubbing the waveform back before playing it again, zeroing in on the frequency profile of the sound. It comes through right side of the wall. He adjusts the fit of his IEMs and isolates the spike. His heart stutters. There’s really no denying it now.

He taps his table, closes his eyes.

He thinks, okay, this is getting out of hand, because he can’t afford himself the grace to be this pathetic any longer. Letting his mind wander, imagine futures from a few pleasant exchanges here and there. Or at least not talking it over first and allowing himself to get carried away in the moment when they finally kissed. The disappointment sits like a stone in his gut, but not at Kaelix, not really, mostly at himself for being desperate enough to mistake basic kindness for something more.

Freodore sighs, and gets to work. There’s nothing, of course, except a hairline gap along the baseboard where the insulation has probably deteriorated. He kneels, presses his ear to the wall, and listens. It’s only silence that greets him at first, but then he hears a soft curse followed by the distinct sound of a door opening and closing. Freodore blinks, startled by how clearly it carries through. The sound is so much louder than it should be, like Kaelix is somehow in the room with him. So this was the culprit, this innocent-looking crack.

He stays there for an embarrassingly long time, pulse racing, before he moves to grab a screwdriver from his tools drawer and pops the vent plate off, just to check. He inspects the ductwork. He finds nothing but old dust and a dead bug, which he wipes away with a tissue. When he finally closes it up, he sits on the floor, back against the wall, and just… thinks.

The evidence stacks up against him in a way he can’t really dismiss anymore. It wasn’t that Freodore had an overly complicated relationship with… well, relationships. They’d simply never materialized in his carefully structured life. Always another thing occupying his time, always another reason to stay in his perfectly comfortable solitude. But now Kaelix exists three feet away and just past a wall, carrying with him what felt like the promise of possibility, the exciting prospect of what more you could extricate from the one life you get to live, and a bright, twinkling laugh.

It’s a bit crazy how this works and comes completely out of left field. No amount of mental preparation or thinking back to familiar patterns or observing others’ experiences readies you for when it finally happens. Freodore could spend hours delineating the practicalities and nuances of love versus like, but sitting here on his bedroom floor, with his back against the wall that separates them, does it even really matter?

Freodore wakes the next morning (which is generous because it’s a little after lunch by now) with Gatita kneading into the backs of his knees and the sharp bite of December sunlight through the window. He takes longer than usual to get up, his throat raw and his limbs stiff from spending the night curled into himself like a fist. The mirror shows him nothing he wants to see. He brushes his teeth mechanically, then heads to the kitchen to feed her the good stuff as penance for ignoring her the night before.

As he moves around his apartment, he feels the wound of it all. The thing with Kaelix, or the thing not with Kaelix, blooming fresh, ugly colors of deep blues and bruise yellows, every time he pauses to breathe and it worms its way back into his brain.

It’s especially bad when he steps into his bedroom and sees the jacket again, hanging over a chair. He walks past it to his closet, slips on a cardigan, then braces himself for what he has to do next. He needs closure, if not for them then at least for himself. He owes it to the person he’s spent the last few months fixating on to at least try for a clean break.

He stands in front of 303 for a full minute, psyching himself up, then knocks, loud enough that he knows Kaelix will hear it even if he’s still in bed.

The door opens after a beat. Kaelix stands there in a rumpled shirt, hair wild, his face crumpled with exhaustion or maybe something worse. There’s no sign of anyone else in the apartment. Freodore is thrown by that, just for a second. Then he rallies.

“Hey,” he greets, trying hard not to wince at the sound of his own voice and the effort with which it takes to use it.

“Hey,” Kaelix echoes, and steps aside, ushering Freodore in without a word. The apartment looks much the same as the last time he was here. Guitar case propped neatly against the wall, books arranged by color and height on the shelf, not a dish out of place. Freodore’s eyes dart to the couch where they’d kissed, and heat crawls up his neck at the same time his stomach twists. He stops just inside the doorway, before deciding he can hover near the kitchen counter where Kaelix now stands, but he’s unable to make himself venture any deeper into the space.

He faces Kaelix, sighing, arms crossed.

“Want to tell me what that was about?” he asks.

Kaelix blinks, then rubs a hand over his face, like he’s trying to scrub the last twenty-four hours out of existence.

“I… shit, I’m so sorry,” Kaelix says, voice raw. “I didn’t mean for you to… I didn’t think—” He makes a noise halfway between a groan of frustration and whimper. “This is the worst possible way to have this conversation.”

Freodore waits, face carefully blank despite the strange flutter in his stomach. This is new territory for him. He’s never actually stood before someone who might reject him, never put himself in a position to be let down gently or even at all. He’s never particularly avoided this precise scenario in his entire adult life, but he supposes, it was about time the universe threw him a curve ball, that it was at least inevitable that someday he’d have to face something like this. He just never expected it would be with the neighbor from 303.

In the lead up, Freodore tries to logic himself out of his own feelings. He runs through every possible explanation: a guest, a lover who moved in late, a one-night stand. He cycles through the same three thoughts: You know what? 1) Good for him. 2) It’s none of my business. 3) It maybe should have been a little bit my business when I kissed him and he kissed me back, but it’s whatever now.

This is also why, whatever Kaelix says instead, throws him in for a loop.

Freodore watches him take a deep, grounding breath, hand on the table to brace himself when says, “I was watching your stream, Freo.”

Freodore’s brain lags. He had not, in a million years, expected that, of all things.

“I know, I know.” Kaelix paces, bites his lip, rakes a hand through his hair, then stops in front of the kitchen island again. Before he braces himself on the edge, as if physically holding himself together. “It’s just… last night. Your stream. I—” He glances up, then down again. “I ended up watching.”

Which is really just what he said in more than five words and more stuttering. And for a full second, Freodore’s brain refuses to accept this as a possible answer. But he articulates this new information back, just to check if what he’s heard is real.

“You were… watching me?”

Kaelix nods, face a brilliant shade of pink. “Yeah. It just— The link just… showed up and I clicked it. And I realized what was on it and I know, I know, Freo, I should’ve stopped watching, and it’s really not my place and none of my business, but I didn’t. And I’m really, really sorry.”

There’s a long, dangerous pause as Freodore digests this information. He’s too stunned to even reach for an emotion; he can’t even place where he’s at on that map right now.

Kaelix nods, face still red. “Yeah.”

The cat would have meowed by now just to save them both, but Gatita is back in the other unit, no help at all.

Finally, Freodore says, “so, just last night, then?”

Kaelix’s expression grows more sheepish. “Uh. Not… exactly. I mean, yesterday was the first time I watched. But. I, uh. I found out about it a little while ago. By accident! Honest.”

Freodore frowns. “The whole time? How?”

Kaelix hesitates. He picks at the seam of his sweatpants, eyes darting everywhere. “Well, not the whole time. Just… it was awhile. You remember that I brought up some of our mail? There was a package that I accidentally took and I opened it by mistake. It was totally my bad and I didn’t look at the label or anything before opening it, and then it just… it kind of dawned on me when I saw what was inside and the card addressed to you. I honestly thought it was a replacement for my mic cable, but like, it was so heavy for some reason?” He groans, burying his face in his hands. “I didn’t want to say anything because I thought I’d ruin things with you, and I… I really liked what we had going. I just wanted to be your friend, or, you know, maybe more. I mean, clearly more. But I didn’t want to make it weird. And I didn’t want to hurt you by saying I saw something private for the most part that I wasn’t supposed to.”

Freodore just blinks at him. It’s the most naked, unvarnished truth anyone’s ever confessed to him. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s so used to people hiding what they want that this level of honesty almost makes him dizzy.

He’s quiet again for a long time, just watching the way Kaelix is vibrating with remorse and panic and hope, all at once.

He sighs, before he crosses his arms tighter, processing all this. “So you were just scared to bring it up?”

“Yeah,” Kaelix says, voice small. “Well, yeah. I mean, it’s not every day you meet a guy who—” He stops, catching himself.

“Stuffs their ass online for public consumption?” Freodore finishes, dryly.

Kaelix chokes. “Something like that,” he says, voice cracking.

There’s a silence, soft and thoughtful like the hush between movements in a song. Freodore sighs, the fight draining out of him all at once. He looks up at the ceiling, then back at Kaelix.

Freodore’s chest constricts painfully, his heart doing something it hasn’t done in his close-to-thirty years of carefully managed existence. “It’s fine, Kaelix. I get it.” His voice sounds a little hollow even to his own ears. “I’m not mad about the package, or that you watched. If it should be none of your business, as you say, then it’s none of mine either… what you end up doing on your downtime, accident or not.” The lie tastes bitter in his mouth.

“In fact, I'll just take the box and go. We can put this behind us and forget it ever happened, if that’s what you want.” He moves back towards the door, expecting Kaelix to just grab the offending box and meet him there to hand it over, already mentally calculating if breaking his lease would cost more than enduring this new, unbearable awareness between them. Maybe his cousin’s place had an opening.

Kaelix immediately follows after him instead of that, moving to stop him from reaching for the doorknob. “No, no wait—wait, Freo! I want to worry about it. I don’t want to forget it.”

Freodore squints. “You have five seconds to start making sense.”

He takes a shaky breath, meeting Freodore’s eyes for the first time all morning. “I want this. You. Everything.”

Freodore blinks up at him, thrown off by his bluntness. “And a ten second extension. Why would you even—?”

Kaelix laughs, desperate and bright. “Is it not already obvious that I’ve been trying to get somewhere with you?”

“I figured you were just being nice,” Freodore says, quietly.

Kaelix groans, crumpling into himself, hands over his face again. “Oh my god, my friends are right about me.”

Something in Freodore softens at the sight of Kaelix folding in on himself like this in both an embarrassment and earnestness that Freodore’s come to know is also so typical him. His fingers twitch at his sides with the instinct to reach out to soothe him, but they aren’t in the green zone quite yet, so he just stays where he is.

Still, he finds himself smiling, small and wry. “That… they might be, but honestly, maybe there were signs and I just,” he mulls, feeling generous. “Didn’t want to read them wrong.”

“You were scared too?”

“Yeah.”

They stand there, the tension dissipating, slowly replaced by something warmer and more electric.

Kaelix finds himself inching closer; Freodore doesn’t back away but he doesn’t close the distance between them either, waiting for him to speak more. “I get it completely. I do, 100-percent. Honestly, even I have more questions than answers at this point but I can at least tell you that I’m in love with you.”

Freodore splutters. “It’s too early to say—”

“It might be,” Kaelix agrees, but also rushes ahead, “but that doesn’t make it any less true. And look, if you want to get technical, I’ve known you going on four months. There are people who’ve gotten married on less.”

“Whoa. Okay. Let’s uhm,” Freodore starts, feeling his ears go red, “let’s… maybe back up a little.”

Kaelix grins, sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry. But you get what I mean, Freo. I know you do.”

Freodore ducks his head, flustered too. “Of course. Because you could tell that I already had a crush on you from way back, too.”

Kaelix tilts his head, thoughtful. He looks like he’s choosing his words carefully before he speaks again. “Is that what’s upsetting you? That I knew for so long but didn’t do anything about it?”

Freodore freezes, stricken by the accuracy and being read so easily. He stares at the ground, glaring at it to find some sort of indignation in himself to respond back with, but he gets nothing. And so he just lets out a heavy exhale before looking back up at him again. “I was just… I was interested, I’ll admit. And you could probably tell… But I was so worried about what you’d think about, I dunno, how I live my life.” He sighs, more exasperated with himself at this point, really. “Actually, sorry. I shouldn’t be projecting my insecurities onto you.”

Kaelix leans against the wall of his entryway, arms at his side, watching Freodore with eyes gone soft at the corners. “You’re a little hard on yourself, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Freodore says, because it’s true.

They take a moment to just kind of take each other in after all that, and then after a beat of consideration, Kaelix opens his arms, quietly inviting Freodore into it.

Freodore hesitates, caught between years of careful distance and the magnetic pull of what’s standing before him. Kaelix raises his eyebrows slightly, patient but questioning, his hands still extended in that silent offering. Something in Freodore’s chest gives way then, ice breaking over the frozen river of his feelings. He takes a hesitant step forward before barreling into him fully. He melts against Kaelix’s chest, breathing in the familiar scent of him, letting those arms fold around his shoulders. He nuzzles into the hollow of Kaelix’s neck, feeling the way the tension drains out of both of them at the same time. If he thought it was crazy that this sort of thing was in the cards for him, it’s somehow even crazier to think that this might just solve everything for him, being held like this.

He nuzzles into Kaelix’s chest who laughs a little when he does that, feels those warm hands thread through the hair on the back of his head, holding him in place.

Eventually, Kaelix pulls him towards the couch, and this time, he goes willingly. He sits, tugging Freodore onto his lap, arranging them so they fit perfectly together.

“How are we feeling?” Kaelix asks, softly.

Freodore considers his question. “Kind of relieved? Kind of terrified? 50-50.”

Kaelix laughs, pressing his cheek against the top of Freodore’s head. “I’m sorry. I should’ve just come clean from the get go instead of… you know.”

“Live thirst trap and enlist my cat as an accomplice?” Freodore teases.

Kaelix laughs again, louder than the last. “That. And just… I could’ve tried to be brave about it. Instead, I kind of just made it seem like I was waffling. And I stole your mail. I’m sorry if, like, that cost you something, by the way. I know I held onto the package for a while.”

“You’re fine,” Freodore assures, sighing. “The card in those things is just a formality. Seible just sends whatever, whenever. The interns like to yap on the cover.”

“…………………”

Freodore tilts his head, confused. “What?”

Kaelix, when he recovers from being frozen, can only to exclaim, “Seible?!”

Freodore blinks. “Wait. You didn’t know he owns—?”

“No???” Kaelix sounds a bit hysterical, jostling Freodore a little on his lap. “I did not know my friend was… was some sort of sex toy merchant!”

Freodore’s shoulders start to shake, laughter bubbling up from his chest despite his best efforts to contain it. His hands clutch at Kaelix’s shoulders for balance, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt as he dissolves into full-body laughter that makes his eyes water a little at the corners. When he finally catches enough breath to speak, his voice comes out wobbly. “Oh well, you’re not wrong. But, I mean, you know him. He’s got a finger in a lot of pies.”

“…No kidding.”

Freodore snickers as Kaelix groans, holding to him tighter, perhaps for grounding as he rubs his head on Freodore’s shoulder.

There’s a lull as the laughter finally ebbs, tapering off into little hums of amusement that soften eventually into a companionable silence. Freodore shifts on Kaelix’s lap, breath still uneven from laughing too hard, and Kaelix lifts his head from his shoulder.

Their eyes meet, in that sort of arresting way it does sometimes, where they can feel the weight of their emotions settle into the air, like the natural next step, as though the room just drew in a careful breath and was just waiting to see what they’d choose to do with it.

This is it, really, for Freodore.

Kaelix in moments like this. Kaelix close enough to touch, and enough for Freodore to read every flicker of feeling cross his face. It’s exactly the kind of complicated that makes Freodore’s heart trip over itself. A little exciting, a little overwhelming, but also so, so simple when he’s being held like this. Looked at like this.

Freodore’s chest tightens, not unpleasantly.

Kaelix raises a hand and brushes a strand of hair behind Freodore’s ear with a featherlight touch. “Hi,” he murmurs, almost sheepish, like the moment might be too big for anything louder or anymore than that.

Freodore’s mouth curves. “Hey.”

Freodore’s hands slide up to cradle Kaelix’s jaw and Kaelix cups the back of Freodore’s neck, thumb sweeping over the warm skin there, before they let gravity take care of the rest.

Freodore leans in first or maybe Kaelix does. It doesn’t really matter at this point. Only that their mouths meet in a slow, tentative press before Freodore’s lips part a little, testing the give of Kaelix’s lower lip, and Kaelix answers with a soft inhale that ghosts against Freodore’s cheek.

Freodore feels himself tipping forward without meaning to, thighs tightening around Kaelix’s hips to steady his balance. Kaelix’s hands slide to his waist, fingers spreading wide like they’re making room for him there, grounding him without really pinning him in place.

With a tilt of his head, Freodore’s mouth opens more fully this time as heat flares down his spine at how easily Kaelix follows with the faint scrape of teeth, in that slow, careful exploration of someone just given the permission to want more than he’d once previously thought.

He’s hyper aware of everything at once: the solid breadth of Kaelix’s chest under his palms, the warmth radiating up from Kaelix’s thighs beneath him, the way Kaelix’s breath stutters when he swipes his tongue along the edge of his mouth to taste him. And beneath all of that, he has to marvel at the quiet wonder maybe, or disbelief. The very real sense that he is so not used to wanting someone like this, wanting this much, or even wanting this close.

Freodore finds himself pressing in again, chasing the way Kaelix’s lips part for him. He angles his hips just slightly, enough to feel the faint give of Kaelix’s stomach under him, and he can feel the way Kaelix’s fingers tighten reflexively at his waist.

That squeezes a soft sound of Freodore that’s barely audibly, but he figures, against Kaelix’s mouth, he’d probably caught it. He can feel warm hands slip under the hem of his shirt, a large palm meeting the bare skin there. It’s another testing touch, but it sparks through Freodore anyway, breath hitching as they kiss again, letting Kaelix respond with an eager little pull to guide him closer.

Freodore shifts fully onto his lap, chest brushing Kaelix’s as their mouths meet and part and meet again, losing their initial restraint.

When they finally pull back, they’re both breathing harder than the pace of it truly deserves.

“Is it… too fast if we just…” Kaelix trails off, swallowing, clearly terrified of saying the wrong thing. “If we… keep going? Or—more? Or, god, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a creep.”

“It’s not,” Freodore assures. “I’m fine, I promise.”

Kaelix’s shoulders drop like he’s been holding tension for twenty years straight. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Freodore’s fingers trace the edge of Kaelix’s jaw, gentle. “And even if it were too fast, I honestly don’t think I’d care.”

Kaelix laughs, quiet and relieved.

Freodore hesitates then, worrying at his lower lip as his eyes lower before he speaks again, softer this time. “But I should tell you… I’ve never actually slept with another person before.”

Kaelix stills beneath him, his hands pausing their gentle exploration at Freodore’s waist. His expression doesn’t shift into surprise or disappointment or any of the reactions Freodore might’ve rehearsed first in his mind when he decided to kind of give him the head’s up about this. Instead, the look in his eyes warms like honey in sunlight as his lips part slightly in wordless understanding.

“What? Of course, it’s totally fine,” Kaelix says immediately. His hand smooths a slow line up Freodore’s back and again. “That you might’ve wanted to wait or…”

Freodore lets out a breath. “Oh, it’s not that I was waiting,” he shrugs. “It just… I dunno. Never really crossed my mind, I guess. And everything else I had going on was pretty serviceable for the most part.”

Kaelix’s mouth quirks up at one corner, adjusting his hold around him. “Until now?” he asks, eyes crinkling with mischief.

Freodore rolls his eyes, but affirms him anyway. “Until now.”

His fingers twitch with the urge to grab Kaelix’s stupidly handsome face between his palms and squeeze, just to make him stop looking so pleased with himself.

Before he can follow that impulse, Kaelix leans in again, catching his mouth in a kiss that’s nothing like the earlier ones. It’s deeper, hungrier, full-bodied in a way that steals whatever air Freodore thought he had left. Freodore’s hands curl in Kaelix’s shirt, pulling him closer, trying to meet him halfway and failing because Kaelix beats him to it every time. And then, in one smooth, absolutely infuriating motion, Kaelix lifts him straight off the couch.

Freodore’s breath punches out of him. “Kaelix—!”

“What?” Kaelix grins against his jaw. “You’re light.”

“That’s not the point.”

He means to sound dignified, but only sounds breathless instead.

Kaelix doesn’t even pretend to struggle with him. Freodore feels himself being carried through the short hall, his legs instinctively curling in closer as if holding on might disguise how outrageously easy this is for Kaelix. He gives up resisting, partly because it’s useless and partly because being in his arms this way does something warm and dizzy to his insides.

They reach the bedroom and Kaelix sets him down on the edge of the bed, staying close enough that Freodore can still feel the heat coming off him. Kaelix braces one knee on the mattress and reaches for the hem of his shirt.

There’s really no other way to put what Freodore does. He stares.

He doesn’t want to sit there doing nothing, so he shrugs off his cardigan and tugs his own top off, tossing it aside. In theory, this shouldn’t be new to him, undressing for someone else. But it’s also kind of different this way, when you hope the other person, specifically, is seeing something they want. From the way Kaelix’s eyes darken, attention tracking every inch of skin revealed, it seems like he does.

Freodore swallows, heart kicking in his chest.

Kaelix drops his own shirt, fingers moving to loosen the drawstring of his sweats. Such a mundane gesture shouldn’t be as erotic as it ends up being to Freodore, but his mouth goes dry watching the way Kaelix’s knuckles brush his hips, pulling the strings loose.

Freodore’s already down to his underwear, a sliver of thin black lace that hugs his hips and leaves little to the imagination, the same pair he’d chosen this morning intending on an unplanned stream tonight to take the edge off. Heat crawls up his neck and spreads across his chest at the realization of how deliberate this must seem. Here he is, practically naked in Kaelix’s bedroom with afternoon light streaming through half-drawn curtains, wearing the lingerie he usually saves for strangers who pay to watch him. It’s thrilling, in a way, the way his two lives are meeting in the middle like this.

He watches Kaelix’s eyes travel downward, lingering on the contrast between dark lace and pale skin.

Kaelix leans in again, lips meeting Freodore’s with such careful attention that Freodore feels it everywhere, from the pit of his stomach to the backs of his knees, to the spaces between his fingers. They shift backward together until Freodore feels the cool press of pillows beneath him, Kaelix’s weight settling above.

“You okay?” Kaelix whispers against his jaw, voice rough.

“Mm,” Freodore hums, pulling him closer. “Go on.”

Freodore cages a hand behind Kaelix’s neck and drags him back down when he tries to break away, kissing him harder, needy in a way that startles him. Kaelix groans into his mouth, hips grinding down. Freodore’s thigh slots between his; they rut against each other with a clumsy, hungry rhythm, both mostly naked, both breathing like they can’t get enough air between kisses.

He hooks a leg around Kaelix’s hip, pulling him closer, letting their bodies align perfectly, heat grinding against heat.

Kaelix’s breath stutters. “Freo—”

But Freodore tightens his hold and kisses him again, swallowing whatever softness Kaelix was about to offer. He can feel Kaelix’s restraint in the tension of his shoulders, in the way his hips move like he’s holding back. Freodore doesn’t want him to. Not tonight.

Kaelix reaches blindly toward the bedside drawer, fumbling it open with one hand, while still kissing him. He hears the faint clatter of the bottle knocking together with the drawer’s other contents before Kaelix fishes it out. When he flips the cap, Freodore places his hand over Kaelix’s and takes it.

“I’ll do it,” he insists.

Kaelix surrenders the bottle to him, but busies his hands, sliding Freodore’s underwear the rest of the way, tossing it to the side of the bed.

Freodore doesn’t say more and just squeezes lube into his palm.

Kaelix leans down again, pressing slow kisses along Freodore’s neck, the slope of his shoulder, the quickening pulse beneath his jaw. His mouth trails down to Freodore’s collarbone, linger­ing there.

Freodore settles back against the pillows, spreading his legs wider. The afternoon light catches on his skin, on the glossy sheen of lube coating his fingers. He can feel Kaelix watching him even as he kisses down his chest, open-mouthed and hungry.

Freodore brings his hand lower to himself. The first touch always makes him tense with the anticipation curling up his spine, but he does his best to push past the bracing. He circles himself once, teasing the rim, just before pressing in with a slow and testing push.

Kaelix pulls back just enough to watch.

And, oh.

Freodore realizes with a start, he might like that, actually. Like the heat in Kaelix’s eyes, the hunger, and the awe in his gaze.

Kaelix shifts back but stays between his legs, one hand lifting Freodore’s thigh higher, hooking it around his hip. His thumb rubs slow, soothing circles into the soft skin there, a contrast to the burning want he can feel everywhere else.

“God, Freo…” Kaelix murmurs, voice wrecked.

Freodore exhales shakily as his finger slides in deeper. He adds another, the stretch familiar to him, but different now with Kaelix’s gaze trained on him. Kaelix strokes the inside of his thigh in time with the movement, grounding him in the rhythm.

Kaelix’s free hand drifts downward, wrapping around his own cock. He strokes himself slowly at first, matching the cadence of Freodore’s fingers. Their breaths start syncing, falling into a shared pattern of ragged inhale, shaky exhale, repeat.

Freodore bites his lip, eyes fluttering as he curls his fingers just right. Kaelix groans low, like he felt it in his own body.

“Keep going,” Kaelix whispers. “Let me see you.”

Freodore’s chest tightens at the words, at the attention, at the way Kaelix’s eyes never leave him. He pushes his fingers deeper, breath breaking in short, uneven pulls. Kaelix’s grip on his thigh grows firmer, steadying him, and guiding his rhythm. They move together, with Freodore opening up for him, Kaelix stroking himself in time, breath catching every time Freodore’s hips lift toward his touch.

He’s lost in it, for god knows how long, only realizing that Kaelix is moving again when he feels that hand finally leave his thigh, gliding inward. Kaelix catches Freodore’s wrist, easing it aside with a touch so gentle it sends a shiver up Freodore’s spine, distracting him from the motion too, with a kiss. He doesn’t notice when Kaelix’s fingers take over, just that the change is instant for him.

Kaelix’s fingers are longer and warmer than his. Freodore’s mouth falls open on a startled sound as two slide into him, before curling with an instinct that feels tuned to his body and so incredibly unfair. Kaelix works him faster, because Freodore had gone slow with coaxing himself open. His fingers pump into him in a rhythm that makes Freodore’s breath stutter with every insistent press. When Freodore’s breathing steadies and the tension melts out of his shoulders for a moment, Kaelix takes it as cue to add another one, stretching him fuller, stroking the places that make Freodore gasp and reach for the sheets.

The pressure builds and settles in waves. Freodore can’t look away from Kaelix’s face, at the concentration and the hunger there; at the softness too. Kaelix watches every reaction, thumb smoothing the inside of Freodore’s thigh, urging him to relax, to take more, to let him in.

By the time Kaelix withdraws his hand, Freodore is trembling beneath him, warmth pooling low in his belly.

Kaelix shifts forward, close enough that Freodore can feel the heat of him against his entrance. He reaches under Freodore’s knee, hiking his leg up higher and sliding in close. The tip presses against him, slick and thick, and the breath leaves Freodore’s lungs in one slow rush.

He knows he needs a moment. The toys he’s used on stream never felt like this, none of them were, of course, attached to someone looking at him like this. But he’s greedy for it too. His heel digs into the mattress, hips tilting up in helpless invitation.

“…Kaelix,” he breathes, barely audible.

Kaelix pauses, lips hovering over Freodore’s throat.

“Yeah?” he whispers back.

Freodore swallows hard, heat crawling up his neck. His fingers clutch at Kaelix’s shoulders, nails dragging lightly. “Just… Just put it in, already,” he says, voice thin with wanting. “Please.”

Kaelix nods, bending to kiss the corner of Freodore’s mouth, before finally doing as he’s told.

Freodore arches, back lifting from the mattress, a sound tearing out of him that doesn’t resemble anything he’s made on camera. Kaelix sinks deeper in a slow and steady stretch, that none of his toys have ever quite managed. Freodore clutches at him, jaw slack, eyes fluttering as every inch of Kaelix knocks another coherent thought loose.

“Ah—oh god,” Freodore breathes when their hips finally meet. He snags on his next breath hard, eyes wide and wet at the edges. He feels so incredibly full that he can barely breathe.

Kaelix lets out a laugh, soft and pleased, brushing a kiss to Freodore’s cheek.

He looks far too smug for someone who quite nearly folded him in half.

Freodore tightens his leg around Kaelix’s waist, pulling him closer, glaring up. “Don’t,” he whispers, voice shaking.

Kaelix kisses him slowly again, if a little too satisfied with himself. “Can’t help it,” he murmurs. “You feel incredible.”

“You are way too pleased with yourself,” Freodore points out, frowning.

“Well,” Kaelix replies, nudging deeper until Freodore gasps softly again. “If you could feel what I’m feeling right now, you’d be pleased too.”

Freodore slaps a hand weakly against his shoulder. “Shut up.”

Kaelix only grins, kissing him again with a warmth that melts straight into Freodore’s spine. “You shut me up,” he murmurs against his lips, “I’m busy losing my mind over you.”

Freodore doesn’t want to call it a whimper, but it’s certainly adjacent. Kaelix bites back a groan, his hands sliding under Freodore’s hips to tilt him just right.

“Freo,” he says, voice hoarse. “Tell me if I need to slow down.”

“You don’t,” Freodore breathes, arching into him. “You really don’t.”

Kaelix’s answering exhale is shaky.

“Okay,” he whispers, forehead resting against Freodore’s as he starts to move. “Then hold on to me.”

The first proper thrust in is slow and rolls through Freodore like a shock. His fingers sink into Kaelix’s shoulders as if his body needs something to anchor itself to, just as Kaelix pulls back and drives in harder.

Freodore’s spine curves off the mattress again as a sharp, helpless gasp is punched out of him. Kaelix finds a rhythm quickly, hips snapping forward with a force that rattles the headboard behind them, each stroke landing deep enough that Freodore swears he can feel it all the way up his throat. The mattress dips and rebounds under them, creaking under every pulse of movement.

Kaelix fucks him with purpose, with hunger, with something reverent threaded into the roughness of it. He braces one hand beside Freodore’s head, the other sliding under his lower back to angle him perfectly. Every time he shifts his hips, it feels like Freodore’s vision whites out.

Kaelix pauses once, even though he’s still inside him, chest heaving. “You okay?” he murmurs, thumb brushing the back of Freodore’s thigh.

Freodore’s eyes flutter open, hazy with pleasure he can’t hide even if he wanted to. “Kaelix,” he pants, voice thin with need. “Just… you can do more. Just keep going.”

Kaelix pauses, breath pulling tight. “Harder?” he asks, almost disbelieving.

Freodore wants to roll his eyes, maintain some modicum of composure and clinging to whatever’s left of his nonchalance (zero, by the way), but instead, he’s nodding, a bit frantic. “Yes. Really. Just, please, fuck me already.”

The sound it tears out of Kaelix is one that’s low and rough and deeply satisfied. He pulls out almost to the tip and slams back in with such force that Freodore’s vision blurs.

Freodore makes a noise that absolutely, definitely teeters back into whimper territory. He refuses to acknowledge it. But Kaelix hears it, and his eyes go dark, hair falling a little over his face as he looks down at him in concentration.

He pounds into him fast and relentless, each thrust knocking a broken sound out of Freodore’s throat.

“A-ah, Kaelix! Fuck—oh—”

“You’re taking it so good, Freo,” Kaelix groans, kissing down his neck between thrusts. “Just like that—god, you feel so good.”

Freodore is shaking, legs trembling around Kaelix’s hips. Each time Kaelix bottoms out, the pressure spikes white-hot inside him. Kaelix kisses any part of him he can reach, his jaw, the line of his throat, the slope of his shoulder, like he’s mapping out where Freodore breaks the most beautifully.

Kaelix’s hand slips between them, wrapping around Freodore’s cock. The added touch rips another moan from him, louder this time, his head tipping back into the pillows as he grips it, letting Kaelix do whatever he wants with his body.

“Kaelix, oh god—Kaelix—please—”

The slick, wet sound between them is obscene. Every thrust drives their bodies together in a messy, hungry rhythm. When they kiss, it’s desperate and clumsy, their mouths slipping apart with each forceful snap of Kaelix’s hips, but they keep trying, chasing each other through the motion, gasping into each other's mouths between thrusts.

Freodore can only feel; can only take the stretch, and heat and weight of Kaelix above him, inside him. The way Kaelix groans into his skin when Freodore tightens around him. The way Kaelix keeps stroking him in time with every push forward.

“Freo, look at me,” Kaelix manages, voice wrecked.

Freodore forces his eyes open, and the sight nearly undoes him. Kaelix flushed and sweating, lips parted, pupils devoured with want. Everything about him says, I want you. All of you, heavy and overwhelming.

Freodore pants through it, chest rising and falling visibly. His hand lifts without thought, reaching for him, searching for any part of Kaelix he can touch. His fingers find Kaelix’s cheek, thumb brushing the warm skin there. Kaelix turns into the touch immediately, nuzzling into Freodore’s palm. The tender contrast between Kaelix’s cheek against his hand and the brutal pleasure of Kaelix’s cock pushing him open, filling him up is so dizzying it’s almost unbearable.

Kaelix shifts his head, lips grazing Freodore’s palm in a soft kiss. Freodore’s eyes flutter shut again, letting the sensation wash over him. Kaelix’s warmth, the slip of sweat, the pressure inside him, the way his whole body tenses in anticipation of every next thrust.

Kaelix leans down eventually, catching his mouth in a kiss that swallows what might’ve been a moan. They both feel it when the angle changes, Kaelix sinking deeper, and hilting in a way that pushes out another strangled sound from Freodore’s throat.

“Yes—there! Kaelix, don’t stop,” he cries out, legs tightening around him, body shuddering at each heavy stroke.

Kaelix drops his forehead to Freodore’s shoulder, voice breaking. “I won’t. I won’t stop, I promise. Just hold on to me, baby—god, you’re perfect—”

And Freodore does, clinging to him like he’s the only solid thing left to anchor him into the present as their bodies rock the bed with every thrust, pleasure curling tight and hot at the base of his spine, threatening to pull him under entirely.

Freodore can feel it building hot inside of him, coiling tighter and tighter each time Kaelix thrusts upward. Kaelix’s cock keeps hitting the same spot, deep enough that Freodore can’t catch his breath, deep enough that his fingers tremble where they clutch at Kaelix’s shoulders.

Kaelix must feel it in the way Freodore’s body tightens around him, the way his thighs shake. He syncs the tug of Freodore’s cock with his thrusts, every pump sending another bolt of pleasure through Freodore until he’s gasping, head tipping back, mouth open around sounds he can no longer tamp down.

“Kaelix, ah—please,” he breathes, voice unraveling.

Kaelix shifts, changing the angle, feet digging into the bed, and Freodore’s body bows off the mattress. The pressure crests for Freodore, and breaks, and then it’s happening.

Freodore comes hard, voice giving out on a sharp cry as he spills over Kaelix’s knuckles in thick, hot pulses that coat his hand and the smooth plane of Freodore’s stomach. His inner walls clench around Kaelix, milking him and so much that Kaelix gasps at the vise-like pressure drawing him in impossibly deeper.

Kaelix groans at the feeling of Freodore tightening around him, his breath breaking against Freodore’s neck. He pulls his hand back just enough to look at the slick dripping all over it and then he brings those fingers to close around Freodore’s cock again, stroking the sensitive head of it in small, teasing motions that make Freodore’s hips jerk helplessly.

Freodore tries to push weakly at his wrist. “Kaelix, ah—wait,”

“Sorry,” Kaelix whispers, though he doesn’t fully stop. He slows the strokes but keeps touching him him to feel him clench around his cock better. “Just feels so good when you get tighter. I couldn’t—sorry.”

Freodore groans, helpless but to take it anyway.

Kaelix leans in again to kiss him, still hungry for it. He pulls Freodore closer, pounding into him harder now, sweat slicking their skin where it meets. Freodore holds on, gasping into Kaelix’s shoulder.

“Inside,” he murmurs, delirious with overstimulation. “Kaelix, want it inside.”

Kaelix stills for a heartbeat, eyes darkening, breath hitched like he’s hearing something he’s imagined way too many times.

He loses the last of his restraint, driving into Freodore in short, deep thrusts that knock soft cries from his mouth with each one. His rhythm falters as the pleasure spikes for him too, his breath breaking against Freodore’s collarbone. His hand fists in the sheets beside Freodore’s head. The tension builds fast, climbing sharp and hot until he’s burying himself up to the hilt, groaning into Freodore’s neck until he spills, pulsing deep, filling him with warmth that Freodore feels bloom inside him. Kaelix trembles with it, his whole body pressed tight to Freodore’s, riding each wave until he collapses against him, chest heaving.

They stay like that, tangled together, catching their breath while the late afternoon light slants across the room. Kaelix kisses whatever skin is closest to him, Freodore’s jaw, his cheek, his shoulder. Freodore runs a hand through Kaelix’s hair, dazed and floating.

Freodore wants to say they rightfully stop here for now, but they end up just falling into a rhythm where one kiss leads to another and every spark lit from each one has Kaelix sliding right back into him.

They don’t know how long they go, but it’s certainly long enough that the sun starts tilting toward evening by the time they finally untangle.

The shower together is also a meandering thing where it starts with them trying to wash off properly only for Freodore to end up pressed against the tile, Kaelix kissing down his neck until he melts all over again in his hands. They barely make it out the bathroom the second time around.

Freodore is exhausted in the best way but also in a most unfamiliar way. His body feels heavy and loose, pleasantly hollowed out.

They cobble together the fastest dinner they can with whatever’s left of their energy, dumplings, toast, leftover chicken, anything vaguely edible in Kaelix’s fridge at the moment. Freodore glances at his phone and startles. “Ah, hold on, I need to feed the princess.”

Kaelix smirks. “I just did with my—”

Freodore kicks him lightly in the shin. Kaelix laughs, rubbing his leg.

“Let me take care of it. Be back quick.”

Freodore relents with a tired sigh, relinquishing his keys to him. “Third cabinet from the left.”

Kaelix presses a kiss to his forehead before disappearing down the hallway.

It’s not long before he returns after tending to her, maybe a few minutes later, hair a little more mussed from having to possibly wrangle his cat.

“I think she may have tried to trip me twice,” he says, coming up next to him. “Maybe she knows what I just did to her owner.”

Freodore snickers, shaking his head but sets down the steaming plate he’s just rescued from the microwave to set it down on the counter and rises on his toes slightly to kiss Kaelix hello and thank you anyway.

Later, sated and drowsy from both food and everything else, Freodore finds himself sunk into the couch cushions, where Kaelix had insisted he rest. Freodore watches him bustle around, cleaning up dinner, slipping in and out of the bedroom from stripping the sheets and shoving them into the bag he needs to drag down to the nearest laundromat tomorrow; he hears the sounds of Kaelix in the room, shaking out a clean duvet cover and fluffing pillows.

Freodore blinks slowly, suddenly feeling a bone-deep tiredness settle in him and he stands up from his seat, walking toward the bedroom door, and it’s just as Kaelix turns around.

“Oh, perfect timing,” Kaelix says, brightening. “I was just about to come get you.”

Freodore brushes past, close enough that their shoulders bump, and lands a playful smack against Kaelix’s bicep. “Stop showing off,” he murmurs, the corner of his mouth lifting into an exasperated smile.

Kaelix laughs, warm and delighted, trailing after him.

They crawl into bed with clean sheets and dim light. Kaelix lifts his arm in silent invitation and Freodore hesitates only for a heartbeat before sliding into the space. Their limbs find each other without much awkward negotiation. Kaelix’s arm settles around Freodore’s shoulders while Freodore’s leg hooks over Kaelix’s thigh.

Freodore lets out a small sigh, sinking into the mattress and the warmth of Kaelix’s chest. The feeling that blooms in him is both unfamiliar and inevitable, like waking from a dream he didn’t want to end only to realize it was, in fact, still happening or that he was perhaps already living it.

Kaelix brushes his fingers along Freodore’s arm, light and absent, clearly mulling something over.

“I swear,” Kaelix finally says to cut into the quiet. “If you tell me right now you’re not in it for anything serious…”

“I am.” Freodore assures, and then after a beat, asks, “…that really doesn’t scare you?”

Kaelix shifts just enough to look down at him, lower lip jutting out slightly. “That doesn’t scare you? I thought this whole time you just didn’t want anything like that.”

“I mean, I didn’t really.” Freodore hums, thoughtful, punctuating it with a small shrug. “I don’t usually spend much time thinking about it.”

Kaelix lifts an eyebrow. “Oh? What changed?”

Freodore exhales, lips pressed together in a flat line that somehow still manages to look fond. “Well, I got a new neighbor for starters.”

Kaelix’s smile unfolds across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. His expression radiates such unguarded affection that Freodore nearly has to look away. “And?” Kaelix prompts, voice gentle but expectant. Freodore can almost see the tail wagging behind him.

Freodore blinks, confused. “What do you mean and?”

Kaelix nudges him. “And, tell me about your new neighbor. What’s he like to be able to make you thaw out like that?”

Freodore makes a small noise in the back of his throat that’s half scoff, half surrender, though he makes no effort to hide how he burrows in closer. “He’s tall.”

“…”

“And has blue-green eyes.”

When Kaelix doesn’t speak again, Freodore adds, “and his hair doesn’t match the shade of his eyebrows.”

“And he’s a person—also that vaguely sounds like a complaint, by the way,” Kaelix pouts again. “You’re just stating the obvi—”

“Let me finish,” Freodore says, flicking his fingers against Kaelix’s shoulder, unable to keep the warmth from seeping into his voice despite the attempt at being stern.

“—ous…” Kaelix trails off, smiling despite himself.

Freodore takes a slow breath, his gaze dropping to where his fingers fidget and trace a lazy pattern near Kaelix’s collarbone.

“He’s um…” He clears his throat, cheeks warming. “Sweet. And attentive.” The words feel inadequate in his mouth; just clumsy approximations of something much larger that he doesn’t know how best to articulate yet. He glances up briefly, shy suddenly, when he sees Kaelix looking at him with gentle intent despite it all.

“And kind,” Freodore adds softly, after a pause. “And he loves my cat,” he finishes, hoping these simple truths might be enough until he has the right words.

“And her owner,” Kaelix quips.

Freodore looks up again to find Kaelix smiling at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, all softness beneath the teasing. Instead of answering with words, Freodore leans forward and presses his lips to Kaelix’s mouth in a kiss that’s both sweet as it is sure.

“Yeah, and me. Apparently.”

They sink into a shared silence that’s, for the most part, comfortable, both of them letting it happen as they take everything in. Freodore watches Kaelix’s chest rise and fall, the steady thrum of it almost hypnotic.

Kaelix closes his eyes for a moment, breath steadying. His palm slides up to cup the nape of Freodore’s neck, thumb brushing against the soft hair there. Freodore tucks himself even closer, settling under his chin. Kaelix’s jaw rests lightly atop his head, fingers tracing down Freodore' s spine in slow sweeps.

He feels Kaelix kiss where his forehead meets the line of his hair, lips lingering there for a beat in what Freodore recognizes as hesitation. Kaelix presses another one to the same spot, before letting go of a deliberate exhale that ruffles Freodore’s hair gently.

“Stay,” Kaelix murmurs against him eventually. Then, after a pause where his arm tightens almost imperceptibly around Freodore’s shoulders, “please.”

Freodore, this time, smiles, something small and private and mostly for himself. He leans in closer until his nose brushes the warm skin at the center of Kaelix’s chest. He inhales deeply, drawing in the scent of clean sheets mingled with the lingering traces of Kaelix’s soap and sweat. His eyelashes flutter closed as he nuzzles into the steady thrum of Kaelix’s heartbeat, not even bothering to pretend to think about it.

“Mm, of course.”

The thing about December, Kaelix realizes, is that it’s the most hopeful month of the year. Every other season is defined by its beginning: spring is new grass, summer is the first day it’s warm enough for shorts, fall is that edge in the wind that turns the air to soup. But December? December is the slow build toward a single night that only ever arrives in retrospect, the accumulation of expectation layered so thickly that, by the time you get there, you can’t believe it wasn’t like this all along.

Maybe that’s why he’s spent the whole day in a state of suspended, twitchy anticipation. Or maybe it’s because, in a few hours, he will be having sex with his boyfriend on camera, for an audience of thousands.

Kaelix is not, in any traditional sense, an exhibitionist.

He’s always enjoyed being watched (onstage, in conversation, in the way that suggests a kind of plausible deniability: “oh, I didn’t even notice you there, haha”), but he’s never had the urge to stream himself with the level of raw and unfiltered honesty that Freodore does for a living.

Still, from the first time the subject came up (maybe a joke, maybe not) he could see how badly it sort of haunted them both. He means, this is kind of how things came to a head, right? The idea settled between them like a fourth entity in the room, growing in definition with each iteration, until “maybe someday” became “so, what do you think about in between Christmas and the New Year?” and after that became “okay, so, two days from now?”

It is two days from then.

Time bends in a funny way during the holiday season. The clock on the wall seems to tick with a mocking slowness, each minute stretching like taffy between the hour.

Freodore is quiet in the hours leading up to it, but not the kind of quiet Kaelix remembers from before. This one is focused, procedural, the calm of someone who is about to attempt a delicate, high-stakes operation. He’s doing all the things that make him feel safe: cleaning every flat surface, leaving Kaelix to the chores while he runs and reruns the checklists on his setup. At one point, Kaelix peeks over his shoulder at the desk and finds a page-long bullet list, including items like “test lighting on ass angles” and “prepare safeword if K gets too nervous.” When Kaelix lets his presence known, pointing to “remind K not to call me by my government name on stream,” Freodore slaps his hand away and closes his notebook with the intensity of someone guarding nuclear launch codes. (It was super cute.)

Still, and because it’s mostly for and about him, they go over the list anyway, maybe some two hours before.

“Wow,” Kaelix says, finally getting a good look at the list. “You really planned for everything, huh?”

Freodore shrugs, still in his robe as he sits on the bed across from his desk where Kaelix is leaned against. “I thought it would help if any of these scenarios seemed predictable, then it’s not so scary.” Then he adds, “also, I don’t want you to get cold feet.”

Kaelix feels something flutter in his chest, a silly, full-body warmth. “What if I get cold everything?”

Freodore’s eyes flick to him, amused. “Then you can fuck me in your full winter gear. Parka, scarf, the works.”

Kaelix grins, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Oh, I bet your audience would eat up a snowed-in scenario, wouldn’t they? Think about it. Two strangers trapped in a cabin during a blizzard, the heat slowly dying, needing to share body heat...” He leans forward, voice dropping dramatically. "...and then, you run out of supplies and someone has to ea—"

“Save it for tier three,” Freodore deadpans, but there’s a smile in his voice, a secret edge of delight that only Kaelix seems to bring out in him.

They have a pre-stream shower, together, because “we’ll save time this way,” which is the kind of lie neither of them bothers to correct. Freodore is careful, methodical, but he doesn’t hide his body the way he used to, not from Kaelix. He moves through his own routine, as he always does: soft exfoliants, an unscented cleanser, a careful pat dry before they migrate back to the bedroom.

By unspoken agreement, they keep the bedroom cold, even though both of them hate it. Kaelix is shivering before he’s even out of his towel, but Freodore looks composed as ever, used to this and meticulously double-checking all the equipment. Down the minute-mark, he grabs two black surgical masks from the box on his desk and hands one to Kaelix.

“Camera’s going live in five,” Freodore intones, then glances at him sidelong. “Last chance to run.”

Kaelix holds up a hand, palm steady. “No takebacks.”

“Alright,” Freodore says, and his voice is suddenly softer. “Let’s do it.”

He gets everything going, lights on and all, and the world shifts into another plane of reality.

For ‘trying something new (2),’ the thumbnail is an image of a bedroom, nothing too risqué, just the outlines of two bodies under warm lighting. Already the chat is a slow boil of people speculating on the contents of today. Somebody says ‘OMG BF TIME YESSS’ next to another all-caps comment of ‘SOFT LAUNCH?’ which almost makes Kaelix laugh out loud before he’s properly intro’d into this.

Freodore doesn’t really spend much time beating around the bush after the usual pleasantries. “Tonight’s going to be a little different. My boyfriend is here—” he glances at Kaelix, whose expression flickers between this is so cool and I’m about to faint on camera.

“And he’s agreed to help me out with a few things you’ve all been curious about. But, be nice, he’s new to this,” he warns them.

Kaelix tries not to read too much of chat where every other message is either thirsty for Freodore, although some, he’s noticed, are polite and weirdly earnest about consent for being online …or, for today, at least, screaming about Kaelix’s chest, but he keeps his focus on the man in front of him, not the thousands of strangers behind a screen.

They ease into foreplay, and it’s not… going bad, at least. Kaelix will give it that.

In the short intervening weeks before this and since they got together, they’ve predictably done plenty as a result of 1) decidedly being very into each other, and, 2) being in close proximity. Which really means that they’ve had every opportunity to fuck and he can probably count on one hand how many such opportunities they’ve let slip by them.

So they’re comfortable, to say the least, around each other’s bodies. On it, under it, whatever.

Freodore sits between his legs, naked too, save for the mask, both of them facing the camera. This isn’t how the stream started after the greetings were had. The show had really opened with him in a loose shirt, a pair of shorts, and Freodore in only one of his soft sweaters, gone though, by the five-minute mark. The chat lost its collective mind when Kaelix’s shirt came off and has not really recovered since.

Though he’s a quick study and has learned, by now, not to fixate on chat so much, Kaelix is still acutely aware that the camera light is on. It’s a small, intense pinprick of blue just above the lens, but in the dimmed apartment it feels as bright and hot as a stage spotlight. Kaelix tries not to look at it, but regardless, his brain cannot yet figure out where to slot in being cognizant of the live, anticipating audience behind that lens.

The negotiation for whichever one of them is going to get the teasing upper hand is usually more natural, and Kaelix barely even notices that there is one, even after the fact, but tonight he can tell that Freodore’s giving a little more, trading Kaelix’s nerves for a kind of open, wanting submission that he never really leans into fully, just the two of them.

It’s strangely intimate despite the wild, public manner in which this is happening right now.

Freodore sits up straight and plants his feet just so, letting Kaelix’s hands wander down his chest, slow and admiring. Kaelix finds this unspeakably hot. He slides his palms down Freodore’s chest, thumbs circling his nipples, fingers splaying wide across his ribs.

“Tell them how you feel,” Kaelix murmurs, pitching his voice for the microphone but letting it run low and slow for Freodore’s ears alone.

Freodore, to his credit, doesn’t even hesitate. “It’s good,” he says, and then, as Kaelix pinches his nipple a little harder, “oh—fuck, yes, that’s better.”

Chat moves fast and Kaelix is truly beyond tracking it now. He presses the pads of his thumbs in harder, rolling the small buds between his fingers until he can almost feel the goosebumps ripple out across Freodore’s skin.

“Want it harder?” he asks, and there is an edge of anticipation in his voice that even he can hear.

Freodore’s breath catches, chest rising in a slow, shuddering inhale. “Ngh—yeah, don’t stop,” he says, softer this time, “please.”

He rolls his hips up just a little, cock nudging between the small of Freodore’s back and the firm line of his ass. It’s not accidental. He wants Freodore to feel it, to know how much this is getting to him. Freodore makes a small, breathy sound in reply and rocks back against him, which is all the encouragement Kaelix needs.

He reaches down, one hand traveling south to wrap around the base of Freodore’s cock. He gives it an experimental squeeze, marvels at the heat and the weight of it in his hand. The camera is perfectly positioned to catch the motion: his large hand enveloping Freodore’s cock, the slow slide of his fist up to the tip and back down again. Freodore’s breath hitches, body arching into the touch.

Kaelix strokes him in slow, deliberate pumps, each one timed with a squeeze at the top, teasing just under the head before sliding back down.

“You’re leaking so much, baby,” Kaelix murmurs, letting his thumb brush over the slick bead of pre-cum at the tip. He glances up at the camera and, emboldened, presses his thumb into the slit, smearing the wetness over the sensitive head before working it down the length.

“Because it feels good,” Freodore explains, breath quickening with every slide of Kaelix’s hand.

“Yeah? Show them how good this time.”

Freodore’s reply is a choked-off groan, the sound barely muffled by his mask. He spreads his legs wider, cock twitching in Kaelix’s fist. His hands fly to Kaelix’s knees for leverage, nails digging in as if to anchor himself in the sensation.

Kaelix feels a rush of pride and pleasure so intense it almost throws him in for a loop. He fucks his fist up and down, faster now, until he feels Freodore’s thighs tremble. Every little reaction is amplified by the presence of the camera, by the thought of being watched by thousands, by the fact that this is the first time he gets to see Freodore give in so fully with the world (all 1,193 of it) as witness.

He brings his free hand up to toy with Freodore’s nipple again, twisting and tugging until he can see the flush spreading across Freodore’s chest, staining his skin with color. He can feel Freodore’s breath coming faster, hear the faintest stutter in the way he tries to keep himself together.

“Close?” Kaelix asks.

Freodore shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“Tell me, then, when you’re—”

Freodore’s voice is a shaky whisper. “You’ll know.”

Kaelix pumps his cock faster, twisting his wrist on the upstroke the way he knows Freodore likes, while simultaneously rolling and pinching his nipples until they’re stiff and dark pink. He feels the shiver start in Freodore’s stomach, sees the way his toes curl into the sheets, how his hips jerk uncontrollably into each stroke.

And then, because he can, Kaelix leans in and presses in close to the shell of Freodore’s ear, speaking in a whisper that’s mostly for Freodore, though he knows the mic will still catch it. “You look so good like this,” he breathes, then adds, quieter still, “want to make you come while everyone watches, so they can see what only I get to feel.”

Freodore’s whole body shakes, a tremor that starts at his core and ripples outward. He moans at that, fingers digging into Kaelix’s thighs, scrabbling for anything to anchor himself with.

Kaelix slows his hand, switching to lazy, teasing strokes. He lets go entirely for a second, resting the slick tip of Freodore’s cock against his stomach, smearing a thin line of pre-cum along it. With his other hand, he guides Freodore’s chin back toward the camera.

“Why don’t you show them how you touch yourself, sweetheart?” Kaelix says gently.

Freodore’s eyes flutter shut, then open. He hesitates for only half a second, and then, with a gentle hand, he wraps his own fingers around his cock and starts to stroke himself, slow and careful at first. The camera catches every motion, every tremble of his hand, the way his breathing gets harsher with each pass. Kaelix lets the audience have their fill while his own explore elsewhere: tracing the inside of Freodore’s thighs, squeezing at the soft, vulnerable skin there to part his legs better for their audience.

“You’re so beautiful,” Kaelix whispers, and Freodore’s hands stutter on his cock, grip tightening just for a second before resuming.

The chat is a blur of emojis and declarations, but the only thing Kaelix cares about is the way Freodore is falling apart in front of him. He moves his free hand downward further, finding the tight little entrance he knows so well, and presses his slick middle finger inside. Freodore’s body yields immediately, drawing him in deeper, made easier with earlier prep. Kaelix adds a second finger, curling them forward in a steady rhythm that has Freodore’s hips stuttering, his cock jerking between his hand as he struggles to maintain his composure.

“Do you want me inside you?” Kaelix asks, and the words send a pulse of heat through him. He’s shocked at his own voice, at how desperate he sounds, but it’s nothing compared to the look in Freodore’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Freodore says, thick with need, hips chasing the steady pump of Kaelix’s fingers into his hole. “Want your cock, please.”

Kaelix grins, taking on a teasing lilt at first. “Since you asked so nicely...”

Freodore’s eyes flash with something hungry behind his mask. “Want to show them—” his moans, “—how good you always give it to me.”

He turns his face slightly away from the camera, but not before Kaelix catches the flush spreading all the way up to his ears, the way his throat works as he swallows. Kaelix’s heart hammers against his ribs at the raw honesty in those words.

He wants to kiss him so badly, wants to rip the mask off and claim his mouth, but he knows he can’t stop in the middle of it all just because. Instead, he settles for guiding Freodore down onto his back, arranging him on the bed so the camera has a good angle of Freodore sprawled out, legs open, cock leaking against his stomach.

Kaelix moves between his legs, hands roaming over Freodore’s thighs, his chest. He takes his time, letting Freodore feel every touch, every gentle press and squeeze. He slides his hands under Freodore’s ass and lifts him up just a little.

He lines himself up, cock dripping with lube and pre-cum, nudging the tip against Freodore’s entrance. Freodore is more than ready for him but he pushes in slow anyway, savoring the way Freodore’s mouth falls open in a silent gasp behind the mask, the way his whole body tenses before melting into it.

“God, you always feel so good,” Kaelix moans, driving in to the hilt. He stays there for a moment, letting both of them breathe, then starts to move, building a rhythm that eventually has Freodore panting and grabbing at the sheets.

He fucks Freodore hard, the slap of their bodies loud as they both focus on the motion. Freodore is so more vocal now too, every thrust wringing another moan from him.

Kaelix fucks into him deep enough that Freodore’s breath stutters every time their hips meet. Each thrust driving slick heat around the base of Kaelix’s cock, the hot sound of it filthy in his ears, making his spine tingle.

His hands grip Freodore’s waist as he moves, fingers sliding easily along skin gone slick with sweat and lube. The slip of it only makes the rhythm more intoxicating. Every time Kaelix pulls back, his palms glide upward along Freodore’s sides; every time he slams back in, they slide down a little again as he drags him closer, using that slippery grip to fuck into him harder.

Freodore is pliant beneath him in a way that punches all the air out of Kaelix’s lungs. His body yields beautifully, hips rolling up to meet the thrusts, thighs trembling from the effort to keep himself open. His head tips back, exposing the line of his throat.

Kaelix tries to watch for the security of that mask, but it’s hard. He can feel the camera somewhere trained on them, but even that he can say he’s barely aware of now too, trapped in the heat of Freodore’s body.

Freodore pants through each thrust, fingers dragging across the sheets in search of something to hold on to but finds nothing steady enough to brace against. Every time he reaches for purchase, Kaelix’s next thrust rocks it right out of his grip. His hips lift anyway, rolling up in small, frantic pulls, offering more of himself without thinking.

“Oh—” he gasps when Kaelix angles deeper, voice breaking around the sound. “Right there! Keep going.”

Kaelix keeps hold of his waist, thumbs pressed into the dip where hip meets thigh, and drives forward in long, steady strokes, feeling Freodore open around him in a way that makes him want to push even deeper. He watches the way Freodore reacts; how he clenches on each withdrawal, the way he softens as Kaelix sinks back in.

Freodore lets Kaelix pull him up a little higher on his lap for leverage to drive in better, crying out when the angle changes.

“Ngh, please—!”

Kaelix only knows how to move faster at that, the mattress shifting beneath them and creaking with each heavy push.

“Look at you,” Kaelix rasps. “Taking it so well.”

Freodore shudders beneath him, body going soft under his hold, muscles tightening only when Kaelix hits true. He can feel the way Freodore’s thighs shake, every time his entrance pulls at Kaelix’s cock in tight pulses that make him groan too.

He breaks only long enough to reposition him, guiding Freodore before sliding out and turning him over, just short of manhandling him outright when he does it. Freodore exhales hard as he’s moved onto his elbows and knees with a soft, startled “ah—!” caught off guard. Kaelix doesn’t give him time to adjust; he fits right back inside in one deep, hilting stroke, stretching the sound punched out of Freodore, who can only cry out again when he realizes how deep Kaelix can go like this.

Freodore chokes on every next breath as Kaelix loses the thread of everything except the obscene slide of his cock inside that slick, grasping channel. It’s way too good, the tight pull of Freodore’s body dragging him in with each thrust. Kaelix braces his hands on Freodore’s waist and drives forward, muscles tightening along his back with every movement.

His own posture sets into steady line: spine straight, shoulders flexing with the force he’s using, the faint tremor in his arms betraying how hard he’s holding himself above Freodore. Sweat gathers at the edge of his hairline, dampening the strands that fall over his mask. His breathing turns rough inside the fabric, in hot and uneven exhales against the material.

“Fuck,” he curses, watching where their bodies meet, seeing that stretch around him, the slick shine at the base of him and the way Freodore’s ass rolls back to take him deeper.

Kaelix’s head dips lower, hair falling forward as he thrusts harder, slipping into a rhythm that’s all instinct. His eyes shut for a moment, jaw tightening beneath the mask because he’s feeling every inch of Freodore around him and nothing else.

He doesn’t notice how long he’s been going, nor does he register the faint tremor in Freodore’s legs. He doesn’t catch the soft, repeated sounds Freodore keeps making, voice hoarse and breaking on every exhale, cock spilling in quick, helpless spurts onto the sheets beneath him every time Kaelix’s hips smack into him.

All of it disappears under the noise consuming him: skin hitting skin, the wet suck of Freodore taking him, and Kaelix’s own ragged breathing tearing out of him in short, desperate bursts. The pleasure is too hot, too sharp, crowding out everything else until there’s only the rhythm and the heat around his cock.

It takes Freodore’s hand tapping weakly but insistently at Kaelix’s thigh to cut through the haze.

Kaelix freezes mid-thrust as air slams back into his lungs. The motion cuts through his haze like ice water. He withdraws immediately, hands trembling as he helps Freodore onto his back, arranging pillows beneath him with frantic care.

His heart hammers against his ribs when he finally sees Freodore’s face, or as much of it as he can with the mask on—hair plastered to his forehead, eyelashes clumped with moisture. The red rims around those eyes send a spike of terror through Kaelix’s chest. Had he hurt him? Gone too far? His throat closes and he bites his lip, unsure of how to ask after him in this situation.

Freodore’s gaze finds his, glassy and unfocused at first, then warming with something Kaelix desperately wants to read as forgiveness because he’s probably the least deserving of his affection right now. But the panic still scratches up his spine, making his hands tremble where they hover uselessly above Freodore’s body. It’s only when Freodore’s thumb traces a small circle against Kaelix's wrist reassuringly does his breathing begin to slow.

Kaelix’s throat works around a shuddering breath. He tries to speak or to verbalize an apologize but comes up empty.

Freodore just rubs his wrist more, still tracing circles with his thumb that somehow calm the shaking in Kaelix’s hands. He lifts Kaelix’s palm to his masked face, miming a kiss against it even though the barrier of his mask prevents any real contact. Kaelix cups Freodore’s cheek, feeling the heat of his skin through it.

“I want you back inside,” Freodore whispers, eyes on Kaelix. Dimly, Kaelix is aware that this might be some sort of play and Freodore’s just trying not to spook his viewers, but Freodore doesn’t even look to chat. Just up at Kaelix, focused on him alone.

“Let me,” Freodore murmurs when Kaelix fumbles, taking him in hand, stroking once, twice, testing, before guiding him back to his entrance. Kaelix follows helplessly, fucking into the warmth Freodore is offering up to him.

Kaelix’s hand braces around Freodore’s waist, fingers pressing into the damp skin there, thumb tracing the slight hollow above his hip bone as Freodore takes more of him back inside.

“That’s it,” Freodore says. “Don’t stop. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Kaelix starts moving again, small shallow thrusts at first, finding the path back into Freodore’s body. Freodore meets each one with a soft sound, body loosening under him, opening with every push. He keeps his hand where Kaelix holds him, tracing his thumb over Kaelix’s skin, guiding him without pressure.

When Kaelix pushes deeper, Freodore’s voice breaks into a soft, startled “oh” that hangs between them.

Freodore’s eyelids flutter closed. “That’s good,” he says, fingers digging into Kaelix's forearm. "Keep going."

Kaelix’s hips snap faster, urgency melting everything into heat, ready to zero in on what Freodore needs from him right now and not anything else. His breath roughens inside the mask as each thrust lands harder, slicker. Freodore moans with every impact, hips rising to meet him.

“Like that… more,” Freodore pants, urging him on.

Kaelix braces his hand beside Freodore’s head, back flexing as he drives deeper. Freodore’s breath can only fracture into soft, rising sounds, thighs trembling open; still, his body demands more of Kaelix rather than retreating from the pace.

Freodore’s breath hitches with each thrust, his fingers twisting in the pillow beneath his head. “Good. There—right there, Kae—oh—” He cries out as Kaelix shifts slightly, angling deeper.

Each press of Kaelix’s hips brings them closer, the pressure building with every slide until even he can tell he’s got it right again. It doesn’t take very long either, until his cock drags across something inside Freodore that has him clenching hard around him. Freodore’s eyes fly open, pupils blown wide just as the next thrust rams into him next.

Kaelix does it again and again and again.

Freodore’s back arches as the pleasure snaps through him. Kaelix can feel Freodore grab the hand at his waist, tightening over his knuckles, breath shaking.

“That’s—ah—good boy,” he gasps. “You’re such a good boy for me.”

Something fractures inside of Kaelix. His rhythm stutters, hips jerking forward without finesse. A small, needy whimper breaks from him, helpless but to squeeze his eyes shut, throat working around nothing as heat floods his chest, his face. He swallows thickly, buoyed by the praise, by Freodore’s pleasure beneath him. He leans down, needing any sort of contact, his damp forehead brushing against Freodore’s temple.

Freodore reaches for him, arms slipping around Kaelix’s neck, pulling him closer in a half-embrace, the motion a desperate stand-in for a kiss they can’t have right now.

“Inside, alright?” Freodore says, tightening his legs around Kaelix’s hips, threading his hands in his hair, tugging gently, perhaps to keep him anchored. “You’ll come inside, right?”

“Yeah, yes,” Kaelix nods against Freodore’s cheek, nuzzling into the warm skin there.

Kaelix whimpers as he fucks him in sharp, hungry thrusts. The pressure building fast, climbing up his spine with every push. Freodore keeps his legs tight around Kaelix’s waist, pulling him deeper each time, guiding him right into the place that makes Kaelix lose all semblance of a rhythm.

Freodore’s fingers scratch lightly at the back of Kaelix’s head, then curl in his hair, gripping him each time Kaelix batters his prostate. The faint pull sends heat up Kaelix’s chest, mixing with the pulse of pleasure low in his belly.

Freodore squeezes around him. “Want all your cum inside me,” he says, voice rough from moaning. “Please. All of it.”

The plea breaks something open in Kaelix. He groans deep and raw, the sound torn out of him as his body tenses. His next thrust falters, only giving him room to drive in hard one last time as he spills into Freodore, pulse after pulse dragged from him. His breath comes out in jagged bursts against the mask, his face pressed against Freodore’s cheek.

Freodore holds him through it, legs still locked, keeping him buried while he comes. Kaelix pants as every wave of it shudders through him, still releasing when he finally lifts his head enough to meet Freodore’s gaze again.

Freodore swallows, throat moving visibly. He lifts a hand and with warm fingers, brushes damp strands of hair back from Kaelix’s forehead gently, tucking what he can reach behind his ear. His eyes crinkle at the corners as he looks at him, soft in a way that sends Kaelix’s heart tumbling over itself.

For a few suspended seconds, the only thing in the room is the shallow, ragged pulse of their breathing. Kaelix blinks, momentarily stunned by the fact of the world: the warmth of Freodore’s body below him, the silky mess slicking the inside of Freodore’s thighs, and the muffled, weirdly cheerful whir of the equipment in the room.

He means to say something, anything really. Instead, the first thing that happens is that Freodore gently tenses, as though he’s about to sit up, but then changes his mind, and instead just slumps boneless under him. His hand drifts lazily along Kaelix’s side, knuckles brushing his thighs. Kaelix waits for instruction, but Freodore only lets out a long, contented exhale.

Now sobered, Kaelix’s awareness of the camera comes back to him fully. The blue indicator is still shining which means—right, they’re still live.

Kaelix’s mind races: protocol, choreography, the slow extrication of bodies post-fuck in a way that doesn’t look like a car crash or a postmortem scene. He should probably move, but not too fast. He also doesn’t want to crush Freodore (who is, for all practical purposes, a bit smaller than him and also currently pinned by about eighty percent of his weight).

He tries to shift his hips back, but that only makes the fullness more apparent, along with the slow, hot pulse of him as he starts to soften inside Freodore. A moment of mortification: he didn’t realize he could make this much of a mess inside someone. He’s not new to bodily fluids but he’s new to them mattering this much. Kaelix flounders for the right etiquette. Do you just… pull out fast and all the way? Do you warn the audience? Is there a ceremonial phrase?

He’s spared the decision. Freodore, eyes half-lidded and a little dazed, meets his gaze, and Kaelix, with rapidly growing fluency of his boyfriend’s cues, takes this as: go ahead. Kaelix pulls back, biting his lower lip and moving as as gently as he can. He has to brace himself on the mattress still, because he feels embarrassingly off-kilter for someone who arguably has done this with decent frequency since they got together. He tries to angle his hips so the withdrawal isn’t abrupt, but even so, when he slides out, the sound is absolutely obscene. Worse, there is a small, slow-motion disaster of cum that follows, beading at Freodore’s entrance and then leaking down his thighs in long, viscous dribbles.

Kaelix bites back a moan; Freodore doesn’t.

He can almost hear himself apologizing out loud, but manages to tamp that down too. Instead, he grabs a towel that was thoughtfully staged on the side table, and gets wiping, catching what he can before it stains the duvet any further. He’s so intent on his task that he almost misses the way Freodore’s mouth twitches under the mask, like he’s holding back a laugh.

“Thank you,” Freodore murmurs, raspy with afterglow and the particular rawness of having been worked open on live camera for a little over an hour and then some.

Kaelix beams at him, relieved to be useful. He helps nudge Freodore up, supporting his shoulders so he can rest in a more dignified pose for the camera.

Freodore rolls gingerly onto his knees, letting Kaelix support his weight from behind him, towel clutched modestly over his lap. His cheeks are bright pink; the mask is sticking slightly to the sweat on his face.

When Freodore speaks again, it’s to the audience, and the sound is so hoarse and soft that Kaelix isn’t sure anyone will hear it.

“Thanks for joining us,” he says, voice breaking like he’s swallowed a fistful of gravel, and then immediately blushes so red that it travels down his neck. He clears his throat and tries again: “We went for awhile, huh? But, um. I hope that was… interesting for you guys.”

The chat explodes with reactions, but Freodore doesn’t spend too much time looking at the monitor this time. Instead, he launches into a familiar post-stream ritual—usual spiel, timing, etc.

“I’ll be uploading the full session to tier two and above this weekend, but I won’t be on again until after New Year’s. I’ll try to post a little on the community page, but we’re going to be out for a bit. Thank you for all the support this year.”

He tilts his head slightly. “Have a good night. See you next time.” And with that, he leans forward to kill the feed.

The light goes out.

And it’s in that moment that Kaelix finally has time to run it all back in his mind, with the adrenaline slowly leaving his body. He feels his stomach drop, that same anxious lump in his throat clawing back up, as he thinks back to what had happened. Kaelix’s hands go clammy at the thought.

Kaelix waits, unsure what to do with his hands or his face, or any part of himself, really. The post-coital hormones are doing strange things to his brain. He has the urge to apologize again, or to clean, or to wrap Freodore in a blanket and spoon him for six hours.

He’s about to reach for the latter when Freodore, without warning, peels off his mask and drops it on the nightstand, and climbs directly into Kaelix’s lap, straddling him with the sort of lazy, inexorable momentum of a boulder rolling downhill. His thighs bracket Kaelix’s hips; his hands find Kaelix’s face, and he tugs the mask down to kiss him, soft and quick, on the cheekbone.

“Hey,” Freodore says, gently. “You good?”

Kaelix nods, but Freodore studies him, eyes narrowing with concern. “You’re making your ‘processing’ face,” he says.

Kaelix exhales shakily. “I—sorry, I thought I scared you and that I was doing too much and I—” His voice cracks a little. “I didn’t mean to push you so hard.”

Freodore blinks once, then twice, and something gentle melts across his expression in understanding. He takes Kaelix’s face in both hands, kissing him again, the press of his lips slow at first.

“No, no, you didn’t,” he says, and then, gentler, “that was me. I just… really wanted to say your name.” He bites his lip, and Kaelix watches, transfixed, as the flush blooms even brighter on his cheeks. “I almost did, so I had to stop us for a second. I thought it’d be good to break the momentum of that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to resist.”

Kaelix’s shoulders sag, the tension finally draining from him. He lets out a long sigh and leans into Freodore’s touch.

Freodore smiles, brushing back a piece of Kaelix’s hair. “It’s really okay. We don’t have to do this again if it’s too much—”

But Kaelix immediately shakes his head. “No. That’s not—” He gathers himself, hands sliding to Freodore’s waist. “The thing is… I don’t mind any of this. In theory. Or, well, in practice either. It’ll just take getting used to, I guess.”

Freodore tilts his head, amused. “Get used to it, he says.” His eyes linger on Kaelix’s face, the corner of his mouth lifting in a small, knowing smile as Kaelix’s ears turn pink.

“I didn’t mean—well, I mean, I did… I j-just—” Kaelix stammers.

Freodore kisses him again to shut him up, smiling into it.

“…Me too, I guess,” he admits quietly. “It’s not like I’ve ever partnered with anyone for these things ever.” His voice softens. “Just you.”

“And we’ll keep it that way,” Kaelix huffs, pulling him closer. “Just Kaelix.”

Freodore laughs as he goes willingly, letting the quiet afterglow finally wash over them properly. He leans into it, nuzzling Kaelix’s temple with his nose, almost catlike, before resting his forehead against Kaelix’s. They sit like that for a moment, letting the affection and fading adrenaline simmer between them in a comfortable silence.

Winter settles over the city in a way that slows everything down. This is an objective truth. Outside, the world is a mess of frozen sidewalks, curbside mountains of dirty snow, and air so dry it burns the inside of your nose with every breath. The streets are quiet, less because people are gone and more because nobody wants to be out in it if they can help it. The days have blurred together into that strange liminal zone between holidays, where the calendar still insists it’s the old year, but every storefront and TV commercial is ready to crown the new one.

After they’ve put the bedroom back together, a gentler quiet falls across the place.

Kaelix is planted firmly on the living room couch with a slightly indignant cat sprawled across his lap.

Gatita is tolerating this only because it’s a prime location for observing everything that matters: the glow of the TV, the slow movement of Freodore in the kitchen, and, occasionally, the flake of pastry that Kaelix sneaks her every time Freodore isn’t looking. She purrs like an idling engine, but every so often, she casts a glance at Kaelix as if to remind him that this is a conditional truce, and he is not to get ideas about prolonging the arrangement.

Kaelix’s hands are still a little shaky from earlier, and he’s aware, in the self-conscious way that comes with new love, of how each gesture, each glance across the apartment, is now charged with something bright and fragile. He sips at the mug of hot chocolate Freodore set in front of him not long ago, the sweetness coating his mouth in a way that is equal parts comforting and overwhelming.

If he’s honest, he’s still reeling from earlier today. It’s the first time he’s ever done something like that—have sex in front of a live audience, and it’s a bit funny that the only comparison to its newness and foreignness he can juxtapose it with (at least, in his mind) is that it is also the first time in his adult life that he’s spent the holidays with a lover. The optics of this are wild to him as a man who had mostly grown up in a small town and only really knew its small-town problems for majority of it; the move to the city, the weird luck of finding not just a decent apartment, but a person who somehow made everything about this place a little bit better.

The city is in that stretch between Christmas and New Year’s where time seems to slide off its axis and every day feels like a Sunday, so Kaelix’s mind has time to wander. Kaelix glances at the clock and is surprised to find it’s barely four in the afternoon.

In the kitchen, Freodore stands on his tiptoes reaching into a cabinet as he waits for the kettle to boil to finish making his own drink. He’s gone for maximum coziness in just an overlarge sweater of Kaelix’s and a pair of shorts somewhere underneath it, his hair, a bit damp from a just-finished shower, sticks out in soft tufts that remind Kaelix of the first time he ever saw him, even though it’s shorter now.

Kaelix leans his head back, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about how none of this was what he expected. He never imagined he’d be this person, but also now supposes, well, he probably is after all.

He’s still processing this when Freodore pads back into the living room with his own warm mug of cocoa, barefoot. He crouches to nudge his cat with a whisper of hurried Spanish that Kaelix vaguely picks up as “my seat.”

Gatita glares with clear offense but only makes a show of leaping off the couch and jumping up her cat tree with an air of “I was going to do that anyway. Bleh.” She settles down eventually, curling herself up there in a compact, snowy ball.

Freodore slides into Kaelix’s lap, stealing back the real estate he considers rightfully his, reaching over momentarily to set his mug down on the table too, like the first order of business for him was crowding into Kaelix’s space rather than considering the logistics and efficiency of mug down to boyfriend vs shoo cat, boyfriend, mug down. Kaelix adjusts automatically, circling his arms around Freodore’s waist. The warmth of him seeps in, blanketing the chill that’s started to creep into Kaelix’s hands.

He nuzzles into the side of Freodore’s neck, lips brushing just under his jaw, then says, “is it weird?”

Freodore tilts his head in question, but otherwise, let’s him continue.

“I mean, that we’re already spending the holidays together.”

Freodore hums, thoughtful as he considers this. “Is it weirder than holding onto your neighbor’s discreet packages for weeks on end? Or eavesdropping on him through the wall while he’s stuffing his ass in private?”

Kaelix laughs, head tilting back against the couch. “Point.” His fingers drum against Freodore's hip where they rest.

“Besides,” Freodore adds, “we’re heading out for New Year’s. With everyone else, remember?”

Kaelix smiles, the mention of their friends a comfort. “Ahh, yes. Against your will.”

“Exactly,” Freodore sighs, resigned to it long ago, especially after the news broke to two people they happened to both know.

They sit for a while, in the kind of easy quiet that is only possible when both people are totally fine with it, and in that quiet, Kaelix thinks about everything that’s led up to this: the awkward hellos, the endless moments of almost saying something and then not, long nights and longer days spent wondering if he was the only one feeling that pull.

He’s thinking about how, for all the randomness and static of the city, some things just seem to happen with a logic all their own—which is precisely the exact moment Freodore decides he wants to suddenly turn and tackle him down onto the couch.

It’s not a hard tackle, just enough force to knock the wind out of Kaelix for a split second and pin him between the armrest and a cushion. Freodore straddles him, perched like a victorious cat (or with that look Gatita likes to make when she’s claimed a particularly coveted spot on the windowsill even though no one else is really fighting for it), his hair fluffed from the collision.

Kaelix laughs, “wait, wait, Freo! What—what are you doing?”

His hand instinctively slides up Freodore’s thigh, fingers hooking at his waist to steady him.

“Cashing in on my free ‘shove Kaelix down for whatever reason’ pass.”

Kaelix barks a laugh, head thrown back. “Ha! I was wondering when.”

His thoughts snag, suddenly, on the memory of his first day here, that instant click of chemistry, the feeling that something important may as well have shifted in the universe, even though he didn’t really know what yet at the time.

The thing about this weird urban magic, he thinks, is that it’s meant to be unpredictable; sometimes cold and isolating, but sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get exactly what you need. The right time, the right place, the right person.

Freodore’s thumb brushes against his cheek, a gentle pressure that draws Kaelix back from the depths of his thoughts. Their eyes meet, and Kaelix realizes he’s been silent for too long again, lost in his own head. Freodore, for his part though, only leans down and kisses him gently, lingering in a way that says, “you are thinking too loud, but I won’t ask,” and “maybe tell me when you’re ready.”

Kaelix wraps both arms around him, pulling him close and smiling against his mouth as he lets himself sink into the heat of it, the rightness of this—their whole messy, wonderful thing.