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The apartment may not be much — and in all honesty, it’s actually pretty shitty, just a pokey little place with depressingly grey furniture — but it’s cheap and it’s his. He may be dirt poor, but, Wylan thinks as he hauls the last of his boxes up the stairs, there’s a sense of freedom that comes with finally leaving his father’s house, a quiet little sliver of joy lodging itself in his chest.
So here he is, red-faced and sweating through his t-shirt after moving his meagre collection of possessions up four flights of stairs, because of course the lift in the apartment block doesn’t work. He’s still happier than he’s been in a long time, and the thought is enough to keep his feet moving as he finally reaches the top of the stairs and shoulders open the door to his corridor.
Outside his flat door, he dumps the box on the floor, wincing as his back twinges in protest, and attempts to wrangle his keys out of his pocket. A sound behind him has him glancing over his shoulder, just in time to see the door to the flat opposite swinging open and revealing the most attractive man that Wylan’s ever seen in his life.
He’s tall, with tightly-coiled hair, dark skin and legs that seem to go on for miles. He’s dressed casually in black jeans that cling to his legs and a dark green t-shirt that shows off the wiry muscle of his biceps. The man looks up then, catching Wylan’s eye and offering him a crooked smile, and Wylan’s traitorous little gay heart promptly starts thumping in his chest.
“Hey,” the man says. “I’m Jesper. You must be my new neighbour.”
He steps closer and Wylan tries to be normal, really he does, actually succeeds in stuttering out his own name, but then Jesper extends his hand in a handshake and Wylan just sort of squeaks and—
Drops his keys on the floor.
Oh God.
Jesper’s smile only widens and he bends to grab the keys, dropping them into Wylan’s waiting palm. “You must be knackered, moving all your stuff by yourself.”
“The only benefit of having barely any possessions, less stuff to move,” Wylan says, before realising exactly how tragic it sounds. Jesus Christ, why did he say that?
But Jesper just laughs, the smile on his beautiful face quickly wiped away when his phone pings and he seems to realise the time. “Shit, I gotta run. I’ll see you around, yeah? If you need anything, you know where I am.”
And then he’s gone, endless legs quickly carrying him down the corridor, leaving Wylan alone and even more red-faced and sweaty than he was before.
The shower won’t turn off.
It’s 10 at night and the shower won’t turn off.
Wylan stands, naked apart from his towel, slowly dripping water onto the bathroom tiles, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot.
The shower had been fine yesterday, and every other day before that. God, why is he so useless? It’s only been a week and a half and he’s already breaking things in his flat. Why did he ever think he could manage by himself? Maybe his father was right after all, maybe he really is too soft-headed to be able to survive.
The spray of the shower thunders on. His water bill is going to be atrocious.
On the verge of a panic attack and at a complete loss for what else to do, Wylan leaves the bathroom, opening the door to his flat and peeking out into the corridor to check if anyone else is around. Thankfully, the corridor is empty, so he pads across to Jesper’s flat, knocking loudly on the door before he can talk himself out of it.
He only realises that he’s still wet and in nothing but a towel when the door opens.
Jesper stares at him for a moment, eyes widening in barely concealed surprise. He’s wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and nothing else, and faced with the sight of his bare chest, broad and smooth and toned – fuck, the man has actual abs – Wylan almost forgets why he’d knocked in the first place.
“Sorry to, err, disturb you,” he says, forcibly dragging his eyes upwards and hoping that Jesper hasn’t noticed how red his face will undoubtedly have gone. “My shower won’t turn off and I, umm, panicked, I guess?”
For a moment, Jesper says nothing, then he gives himself a little shake. “Ah, yeah, they do that sometimes. Shitty pipes or something, y’know?” Wylan nods, even though no, he doesn’t know. “There’s a trick to it,” Jesper continues. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Together, they cross the corridor back into Wylan’s flat, back into his bathroom where the shower continues to run, though from the lack of steam in the air, Wylan thinks that the hot water has probably run out at this point. He has a horrible feeling he’ll be receiving some kind of complaint from the building manager in his e-mail inbox tomorrow.
Jesper leans under the spray, fiddling with the taps and the knobs in such a way that the shower finally turns off.
“There,” he says with a smile. “You just have to turn them at the same time and it somehow works. Learnt that the hard way when I first moved in.”
Wylan breathes a relieved sigh. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sunshine. Have a good night.”
With a wink and a little wave, he heads back to his own flat, leaving Wylan to lock the door behind him and slowly sink to the floor in a daze.
Having his own flat means that Wylan now has the luxury of doing whatever he wants without fear of his father complaining about it. Whether it’s playing his flute in the evenings, watching trashy TV shows or simply eating the food that he chooses. Honestly, he’s starting to think that getting disowned is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
This morning, his luxury is sleeping in late.
It’s a Sunday, and he has no plans, so Wylan doesn’t feel bad about the fact that it’s closer to lunchtime than breakfast by the time he finally wakes, stretching contentedly in bed like an oversized cat and fumbling for his phone on the bedside table.
He also doesn’t feel bad when he inevitably slips his hand inside his boxers to wrap around his morning hard-on. God, it’s been ages since he last got laid. Maybe he should download Grindr again.
Wylan lets his eyes flutter closed, focusing on the sensation of his hand on his cock as pleasure drips slow and syrupy down his spine. He sighs, mind starting to wander to appropriately vague scenarios, miscellaneous hands and bodies and cocks, dark skin, surprisingly muscled torsos, long legs and a crooked smile–
Fuck.
His eyes fly open as he pauses in his movements. He cannot jerk off over thoughts of his neighbour. It just feels wrong, even if Jesper is so ludicrously attractive that Wylan’s mouth goes dry every time he catches a glimpse of the man.
Before his thoughts can spiral further, he’s interrupted by a knock on his door.
His erection fortunately subsiding now, Wylan scrambles to throw an oversized t-shirt over his head and answer the door. The universe must truly hate him, because Jesper is standing there, two cups of coffee balanced precariously in his hands.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” Jesper asks, eyes travelling down the length of Wylan’s body.
Wylan clears his throat and awkwardly tugs at the hem of his shirt, wishing it was just a little bit longer. “No, I was…” literally just wanking and thinking about you, he doesn’t say. “About to get up anyway.”
“Okay, good. Cos the girl at the coffee shop made my order wrong and I didn’t want the drink to go to waste so…” Jesper gestures at his – apparently surplus – coffee cup. “I thought you might want it. But I have no idea if you actually like coffee or not, so I guess I probably should’ve checked first, or just let the barista drink it or–”
“I do,” Wylan says, interrupting Jesper’s rambling mid-sentence. “Like coffee, I mean.” Jesper’s entire face seems to brighten as he hands Wylan the cup. “Thank you, that’s kind.”
“You’re welcome. Well, I’ll leave you to it. See you around.”
He turns on his heel to unlock his own apartment, whistling a jaunty little tune, and Wylan manages to mumble out a see you before letting his door close, staring down at the coffee cup in his hands.
He's so fucked.
Wylan resolves to ignore his obvious crush on his neighbour. He downloads Grindr again, goes on a couple of mediocre dates, hooks up with a few people. It doesn’t help.
Jesper is everywhere.
He runs into the man in the corridor, in the lift — finally working again, thank God — when he’s leaving the building to go to work in the morning, when he comes back at night, even in the coffee shop just down the road. And every time, without fail, Wylan makes a complete and utter fool of himself.
Jesper doesn’t seem to mind though, and they fall into some weird kind of friendship, even starting to spend time in each other’s flats some evenings instead of loitering in the corridor to talk.
It all comes to a head one Friday evening, about a month and a half after Wylan first moved in. He’s lounging on his sofa, watching some mindless TV show and debating ordering some food out of sheer laziness, a glass and a half deep of a bottle of wine, when there’s a knock on his door. Opening it, he finds Jesper there holding a carrier bag of what smells like Chinese takeaway.
“So, I ordered way too much food,” he says by way of greeting. “Wanna help me eat it?”
Wylan suppresses a smile. “Sure, come in. I’ll grab some plates.”
They sit at Wylan’s tiny table to eat, takeaway boxes taking up most of the space as they talk easily about their days. Jesper complains about his work, tells him about his two best friends who are obviously in love with each other, Wy, they just won’t do anything about it, shows him pictures on his phone about the stray cat his da’s adopted, and Wylan smiles and laughs so much his cheeks hurt, and all the while his hopeless crush grows ever more intense.
Once they’ve eaten and tidied up, Wylan pours them both another glass of wine and they move to the sofa, both far too full.
“So I was thinking,” Jesper says, fingers drumming lightly on his thigh. “Maybe we could go out sometime? Like a date?”
Wylan’s brain goes abruptly and startlingly blank. “What?” he asks dumbly.
“A date?” Jesper repeats, suddenly looking more nervous than Wylan’s ever seen him. “Fuck, unless I’ve seriously misread this entire situation, in which case just pretend I never said anything.”
“No, you haven’t, I mean…” Wylan puts his glass of wine down on his coffee table and tries to get his words in order. “I just, you want to go on a date? With me?”
“Yes?” says Jesper slowly, questioningly. “Did you… Wylan, I’ve been flirting with you for weeks!” Burying his flaming face in his hands, Wylan groans. “Did you honestly not realise?”
Gentle fingers coax Wylan’s hands away from his face, and he determinedly does not look at him, instead staring down at their joined hands as Jesper rubs a thumb soothingly over Wylan’s knuckles.
“I thought you were just being friendly,” he mumbles.
Jesper laughs, but not unkindly. “So is that a yes to a date?”
“Yes,” Wylan replies, probably far too enthusiastically, but he can’t find it in himself to mind, not when he finally looks up to meet Jesper’s eyes and finds him smiling so dazzlingly it makes his chest ache to realise it’s because of him.
“Good,” Jesper says.