Archive of Our Own

The boxes weren’t going to unpack themselves, but at the rate Teetee was going, they might as well have tried.

“What the hell are you doing?” Wave said, turning from the couch.

“I’m doing adult work here.”

“You’ve been staring at that same lamp for four minutes.”

“Shut up and eat your goldfish. I’m deciding on where to put the lamp.”

“It goes on a table.” North appeared from the hallway, sweaty and mildly irritated, having single-handedly wrestled a bookshelf through a doorway. “Put it on a table, Tee.”

“Which table though—”

“Any table.”

Teetee set the lamp down on the nearest flat surface and immediately forgot about it, moving instead to tear open a box labeled KITCHEN MISC in his own handwriting, which turned out to contain three candles, a phone charger, and a framed photo of his dog back home. 

He held the photo up. “This isn’t kitchen misc.”

“You packed it,” Wave reminded him.

“I packed under emotional distress.”

“What emotional distress? You had a whole month of preparation.”

“My dads were pressuring me. And you know how my dads are.”

“…fair enough.”

The apartment was good though—he felt that even through the chaos of cardboard and bubble wrap sprawled across the floor. Third floor, corner unit, big windows. It smelled like fresh paint and possibility, which Teetee decided was a good omen. 

He’d told his dad this was going to be a good chapter and he intended to be right about it.

He was on his knees digging through another box when he heard a sound through the wall—a soft domestic knock of movement, a cupboard maybe, or a door. 

Teetee sat up straight. “Someone’s next door,” he said.

Wave didn’t look up from where he was. “Okay.”

“I should introduce myself.”

“You should unpack.” North shot back, walking to the bedroom.

“It’s polite, North. It’s neighborly.” Teetee was already standing, already looking around the kitchen. 

His eyes landed on the tin he’d brought from home—Papa Yim’s cookies, the ones he’d pressed into his hands at the door with his mouth wobbling like he wasn’t going to cry and then absolutely cried. 

Soft brown sugar cookies, still good, still wrapped carefully. “I’m bringing the cookies.”

“Hey wait! Isn’t that supposed to be mine?!” Wave complained, arms reaching out.

“You hogged all my snacks! Stop being a greedy rat!” Teetee stuck his tongue out.

North came back into the living room and read the situation immediately. “Teetee.”

“Neighbors should know each other. What if there’s an emergency? What if something happened to me and the police asked my neighbor ‘what’s the name of the man living next to you?’ And they couldn’t answer because they never met me before, and before you know it my body will be eaten by forest animals.”

“…what.”

“Five minutes,” he said, already at the door.

“Save some cookies!” Wave called after him. The door clicked shut.

The hallway was quiet and smelled like someone had burned toast earlier in the day. Teetee stood in front of unit 3B—his was 3A, direct neighbors, practically sharing a wall—and smoothed down his shirt with his free hand. 

He was wearing a light blue hoodie, slightly wrinkled, a little dusty from the boxes. Not ideal first impression clothing. But it was also authentic, he told himself. Genuine. He was a genuine person.

He knocked.

Silence.

Then the soft sound of movement, closer now, and the light under the door shifted, and Teetee straightened up and arranged his face into an expression he hoped read as friendly and trustworthy neighbor rather than a creepy man who had been stalking and waiting for a moment to attack.

The door opened.

Teetee’s carefully arranged expression dissolved completely.

The person standing in the doorway looked like he’d been asleep, or nearly asleep, or like sleep had very recently released him yet.  His hair was soft and disheveled. His eyes were heavy-lidded, half-shut, blinking slowly at the light like a cat disturbed from a sunbeam. 

He was wearing an oversized shirt, pale yellow, that hung off one shoulder slightly. And he was pale. Very pale, in that particular way that made the shadows under his eyes look lavender, made his cheek pinker than anyone’s he’d ever seen.

Pretty in a way that was almost painful to keep looking.

The pretty boy blinked at him.

Teetee’s brain, which had been preparing a small speech, quietly packed up and left.

“Hi,” he said. It came out smaller than intended.

The pretty boy blinked again. Waiting.

“I’m— I live next door.” Teetee pointed at his own door, finger extended, then immediately felt strange about pointing and lowered his hand. 

“3A. I just moved in today, so. I wanted to. Because it’s nice to know your neighbors? And I thought—” He held out the tin, his brain completely offline and his body just doing things now. “I brought cookies.”

Por’s eyes, which had been resting somewhere in the general vicinity of Teetee’s face with polite and sleepy attention, dropped immediately to the cookies.

Something in his expression shifted—his eyes, half-shut a moment ago, opened a little more—just enough to be noticeable. He leaned forward, almost imperceptibly, like a flower tilting toward the sun.

“Cookies,” Por said. His voice was soft and slightly rough with sleep.

‘Cute..’ Tee spoke in his mind. 

“Yeah, my dad made them, he always sends me with— they’re brown sugar, he does this thing with the edges where they’re a little crispy but the middle is still—”

Por’s gaze had not moved from the cookies. Not once. And it felt as if Teetee was describing the cookies to the cookies. Essentially he was telling the cookies about themselves while Por watched them with the quiet devotion of someone reuniting with something beloved.

“—so anyway.” Teetee extended the tin a little further. “They’re for you. As a welcome gift. Well, as a hello gift, you were already here, I’m the one who’s new, so it’s more of a—”

Por reached out and accepted the tin with both hands, carefully, the way one accepts something that matters. He looked down at them. His expression did something soft and private.

“Thank you,” he said, and he was still looking at the cookies.

‘Cute..’

Teetee was standing six inches away from the most ethereal person he had ever seen in his life and that person’s entire soul was currently directed at baked goods and somehow that made it worse, somehow that was doing more to him—

‘FUCK HE’S CUTE.’

“OKAY!” he said. Loudly. “Great. Okay. Welcome to the floor, I’m Teetee, come knock if you need anything, okay, bye—”

He turned around. He walked to his door with the measured careful steps of someone trying very hard not to run. He got the key in the lock on only the second try, which he considered a victory. He pushed through the door.

Wave looked up. North looked up.

Teetee closed the door behind him. Put his back against it. Slid down approximately four inches. His hands came up and covered his face. 

“Oh no,” he whispered into his palms.

“Four minutes,” North said. “I timed it.”

“I don’t see a tin— Tee, did you give all of the cookies away?!”

“Guys.”

“Wha— what happened?” They both stopped whatever they were doing, now a worried expression replaced their usual cheeky smile.

‘What happened.’

Teetee pressed his hands harder against his face. Behind his palms he was absolutely grinning like a menace.

What happened was that he had knocked on a door expecting a neighbor and the universe had opened it and shown him someone pale and sleepy and pretty and unbothered.

“I think I just saw an angel,” he said, voice muffled, slightly unhinged. And then, helplessly, he made a sound that was not quite a word—something between a giggle and a small noise of despair—and slid the rest of the way down the door until he was sitting on the floor.

North and Wave exchanged a look over his head.

“He’s crazy,” Wave concluded.

“Crazy,” North agreed.

Teetee made the noise again, face still buried in his hands, ears warm, heart completely ridiculous.

.

.

The thing was, Teetee had always considered himself reasonably good with people. He was friendly. He was warm. He remembered names and asked follow-up questions and laughed at the right moments. 

Wave had once described him as “aggressively likeable,” which Teetee had taken as a compliment despite the specific word choice. The point was: talking to people was not something he struggled with.

And then there was the pretty boy next door.

It started three days after move-in, when Teetee heard the distinct sound of keys in the hallway and made it to his own door in approximately four seconds, opening it with what he hoped was casual timing.

“Oh, hey!” he said. “Neighbor.”

The pretty boy, who had been about to put his key in his lock, turned and looked at him. Unhurried. Blinking once in acknowledgment.

“I was just—” Teetee gestured vaguely at the hallway. At the air. “Going out.”

He was wearing his indoor slippers.

Por’s gaze dropped to the slippers. Rose back up. He said nothing. Nothing. Not a single word.

“So how are you settling in? Have you been here long? I meant to ask before but I forgot, which is funny because usually I’m— anyway the building seems nice, the elevator is a little slow but I’ve been told that’s a known issue and they’re working on it, do you use the elevator or the stairs? I’ve been using the stairs because I read something about—”

Por turned back to his door, unlocked it, and stepped inside.

“—incorporating more movement into your daily routine… yep. Okay.” Teetee finished, to a closed door.

He stood in the hallway for a moment. Then he went back inside and sat on the couch and thought about the slippers.

He tried again a week later, in the laundry room on the ground floor, which he had identified as a garden from the amount of plants there were down there.

Por was there, moving clothes from the washer to the dryer quietly.

He was wearing a loose grey shirt and his hair was doing the same soft disheveled thing it had been doing the first night, which Teetee was beginning to suspect was simply its natural state. A cute natural state.

“Oh wow, laundry day for me too,” Teetee said, holding up his laundry bag as some sort of evidence. 

Por glanced at him. Glanced at the bag. Returned to his task.

“You know what they say, great minds think alike,” Teetee said. “Or, well. Same Tuesday, which is—statistically we probably have similar schedules, which when you think about it is the foundation of a lot of great—” 

He put his clothes in the washer. Put the detergent in. Realized he’d forgotten to separate colors from whites and had to take everything back out while Por watched without expression. 

“I know what I’m doing,” Teetee said.

Por closed the dryer door, pressed start, and left.

“Nice.. um, nice talk,” Teetee told the washing machine.

There was the time Teetee knocked to ask if he knew the wifi password for the building network, which he answered by wordlessly holding up his phone screen, which had the password written on a saved note—clearly not the first time he’d been asked—and then closed the door before Teetee could convert the exchange into a conversation.

There was the time Teetee positioned himself in the hallway with a book, sitting against the wall, telling himself this was normal and not a stakeout, and when pretty boy emerged and stepped over his legs without comment, he scrambled up and said “Reading out here because of the light!” and Por looked at the fluorescent hallway ceiling light and then back at Teetee and continued to the elevator.

There was the elevator incident, which Teetee had decided to simply never think about again.

.

.

“He hates you,” North said. His voice was flat. His face, visible in the small rectangle of the video call, matched it perfectly.

“Or maybe he’s mute,” Wave offered.

“He can’t be.” North turned to look at Wave off-screen. “Didn’t Tee say he talked the first time he introduced himself?”

“Yeah he did. He said thank you.”

“Maybe he’s selectively mute. My classmate was talking about it the other day, apparently—”

“Nah.” North’s voice carried the particular certainty of someone who had considered and discarded the charitable interpretations. “He just hates Tee. Think about it—you’ve been trying to make conversation with this guy for what, five, six months now? And in all those scenarios you were asking questions he could have answered if he wanted to. Simple ones. But he didn’t.”

A soft crunch came through North’s mic—he was eating something, unbothered by the gravity of what he was diagnosing. “The pattern’s pretty clear: Tee talks, neighbor just ignores it and walks away.”

“Well.” Teetee was lying on his stomach across his bed, phone propped against a pillow, chin resting on his folded arms. “I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.”

“Then how would you put it?”

“I would say—I talk, and pretty boy listens. He stands nearby, in the same physical space, passively receiving my words.” He paused. “Like a wall receives sound.”

Silence from both rectangles on his screen.

“Tee,” Wave said carefully.

“Yes.”

“You just described a wall.”

“A listening wall.”

“That’s—that’s not better.” North set down whatever he was eating. “And genuinely, how pretty can this guy even be? We have loads of attractive people at university, plenty of them interested in you, by the way, actual people who would respond when spoken to, who presumably have the ability and desire to hold a conversation—why are you wasting your time on a neighbor you’ve heard speak only two words?”

Teetee was quiet for a moment.

“Because,” he started.

“Because what,” North said.

Teetee rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

“I just—the first time I saw him, it was just…” Teetee trailed off. Tried again. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the way he moved. Like he had his own pace. Like he didn’t feel the need to match whoever he was with, or adjust himself for whoever was talking to him. Like the world could move at whatever speed it wanted and he’d already decided on his.”

He paused.

North and Wave were quiet. Which, for North especially, was definitely something.

“And the way he looked at the cookies I brought him—” Teetee’s voice did something involuntary, something fond and helpless. “God, North, you should’ve seen it. He was so— I don’t even have the word for it. Ethereal sounds ridiculous but that’s the one that keeps coming back.” 

Teetee sighed. “And it’s not like he’s ignoring me, that’s the thing. That’s what I keep trying to explain. Every time I talk, he waits. He always waits until I’ve finished my sentence—never walks away mid-word, never cuts me off, never looks somewhere else while I’m still going. He just stands there and receives it and then lingers for one more moment, like he’s making sure I’m done, and then he leaves.”

Silence.

“Oh my god,” North said, eventually. Quiet. “YOU’RE FUCKING IN LOVE BRO.”

“Hoooooolllyyyyyy fuck. WHO IS THIS NEIGHBOR, WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU, WHAT IS THIS?”

The group falls into laughter.

“I just—” Teetee starts again, making North and Wave calm themselves down. “I don’t know how to explain it. The university people—they respond, right? They fill the silence and ask the follow-up questions and the conversation moves the way conversations are supposed to move. But I walk away and I haven’t thought of anything. I haven’t felt anything.” 

He stared at the ceiling. “And then this pretty boy stands in a doorway and just looks at me or at least just be in my presence, just at whatever I brought upon him, and I think about it for the rest of the week. But.. I don’t know, I can’t help but wish he would..talk. Say something. If he’s uncomfortable I wish he would tell me that, then I'll stop immediately.”

It should have discouraged him.

It did not discourage him.

It made him, if anything, more interested in the specific quality of Por’s silence—the way it wasn’t unfriendly, exactly, just contained, like Por had a certain amount of words allotted per day and had made careful decisions about their distribution.

Teetee just apparently wasn’t in the budget.

.

.

The realization came on a Thursday.

He’d been to the patisserie near the train station on his way home—not for any particular reason, just because the little almond tarts in the window had looked like they were asking for it—and he had, without much conscious thought, bought two. 

He’d knocked on 3B and held one out and the pretty boy had looked at it and then something had happened to his expression, that same subtle shift just like the first day.

“It’s um, an almond tart,” Teetee had explained unnecessarily.

Por had taken it. Looked at it for a moment. Then said, low and soft and unhurried, “Thank you.”

Two syllables.

Teetee had made it back to his apartment, closed the door, sat down on the kitchen floor, and absolutely lost his mind.

He sat there for a solid minute just pressing his hands over his mouth while his shoulders shook.

Thank you. That was all. That was the whole thing. 

And yet his entire nervous system had lit up like someone had flipped a switch, like those two words were currency he’d been waiting weeks to receive, like—

‘Wait.’ He thought back.

The cookies, the first night: “Thank you.”

The time he’d brought back extra char siu bao from the place downstairs because he’d gotten too many: “Thank you.”

The slice of birthday cake from North’s party that he’d wrapped in cling film and carried over: “Thank you.”

Every single time—every single time he had brought something sweet, something edible, something the pretty boy could hold in his hands and look at in that specific devoted way—he had spoken.

Never much. But something.

“Oh,” Teetee said, to his kitchen.

Oh, he had discovered the cheat code.

After that it was less discovery and more dedicated research.

Mochi from the Japanese grocery two streets over: “Thank you.” Said while already opening the packaging.

Homemade castella cake, slightly lopsided but correctly flavored: “Thank you.” 

And he had looked up at him for just a half-second before looking back down, which Teetee had thought about for approximately four hours.

A cup of tteok he’d made too much of: “Thank you,” and then, unprompted, “It’s hot,” because Teetee was holding the container without a cloth and his pain must have shown on his face. 

That one had been four words. Teetee had practically floated back to his apartment.

The system was not dignified. Teetee was aware of this. He was, in effect, bribing his neighbor into verbal communication with a steady supply of confectionery, like trying to gain trust from a very beautiful cat.

North had asked why he was baking so often and Teetee had said he found it relaxing, which was true, and that it produced too much for one person, which was also true, and that he certainly wasn’t engineering opportunities to hear a specific person say two words to him, which was a lie he told with impressive composure.

But here was the thing.

Thank you, in his voice, low and a little rough and genuine—said to the dessert mostly, but still technically said—was enough. 

It was enough to send him back to his apartment grinning into his hands. 

It was enough, frankly, to be embarrassing, and Teetee had made a private peace with that.

He just wanted to hear it. He would provide whatever goods and services were required to hear it.

.

.

It was a Saturday when things changed.

Teetee had made financiers—the small French almond cakes, golden brown, slightly crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. 

He’d made a full tray because the recipe didn’t scale down easily and he’d boxed up six of them neatly and brought them over.

The pretty boy opened the door—and just as he usually would be at this time of hour—he was wearing a loose homey shirt, eyes all droopy, then looked at the box with immediate and focused attention.

“I made too many,” Teetee said, the standard explanation, which was sometimes true. “Financiers, they’re—”

“Thank you,” he said, taking the box.

There it was. The two words. Delivered in that particular quiet voice, directed primarily at the box, and yet Teetee felt them like a small warm impact in the center of his chest.

‘Cute.. too cute.. TOO CUTE… ABORT ABORT—‘

Teetee raised his hands to wave. The pretty boy was already turning back into his apartment. The door was swinging closed. And then it stopped.

He paused. Half-turned. The door held at an angle. 

He looked back at Teetee with an expression of someone who had thought of something, a small vertical line appearing between his brows—like he was arguing with himself to ask something.

“Is your dad a baker?”

Teetee blinked. “What?”

“You always have desserts.” He gestured, slightly, at the box in his hands. “Is he a baker?”

“Oh—no, I bake most of these. Sometimes I buy them.”

He looked at him. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Why are you always giving them to me?”

Teetee opened his mouth. “Because I’m a friendly neighbor,” he said.

The pretty boy considered this with the expression of someone reviewing evidence and finding it circumstantial. “…Very friendly, huh.”

“Yes.”

A pause.

Teetee’s mouth made a small decision that his brain had not entirely signed off on. “And because it’s the only way I can hear your voice.”

The hallway was quiet. The pretty boy stood with the box of financiers held in both hands and looked at Teetee with an expression that was doing something Teetee couldn’t quite read—not closed off, but processing.

“So you’re buying my voice with snacks,” he said.

“…Can I?”

He looked at Teetee for a long moment. “My name is Por, by the way.”

He said it simply, like it was a small thing, like it wasn’t the most information he had voluntarily offered in six weeks of hallway proximity. 

Like he wasn’t handing something over. And then he looked down at the box once more, and the ghost of something crossed his face—something that wasn’t quite a smile but was the territory adjacent to one.

The door swung to close.

“You can stop buying me desserts,” Por said, from the narrowing gap. “Save your money for yourself, Teetee.”

The latch clicked. Teetee stood in the hallway.

Teetee.

His name. His name, in Por’s voice, low and soft. 

Teetee. 

Teetee. 

Teetee. 

Teetee. 

Teetee’s hand came up very slowly and covered his mouth. He stood there for five full seconds. Then he walked very quickly back to 3A, shut the door, took approximately three steps into the apartment, and collapsed against the wall with both hands clamped over his face.

“Teetee,” he whispered into his palms, mimicking the cadence with catastrophic accuracy, and then made a high-pitched noise that he would deny under any questioning.

“You good?” Wave said from the couch, not looking up from his phone.

“He said my name—he, he—oh my god. Oh my god.”

“Huh? Who? Your neighbor?”

“Por.” And even saying it—the name, Por, the word that belonged to the person in 3B—felt enormous and ridiculous. 

“His name is Por. He told me his name. And then he said my name and told me to save my money—”

“Romantic,” Wave said, still not looking up.

“It was,” Teetee said, voice climbing. “Wave it was, it was incredibly— he was being thoughtful, he was thinking about my—” He made the noise again, helpless, and slid down the wall incrementally. “He said my name.”

“There goes homotron back at it again.”

“He said my name, Wave. HE SAID MY NAME.”

Wave finally looked up. Looked at Teetee, crumpled against the wall with his hands over his face and his ears visibly red. Looked back at his phone.

“You’re going to bake something again tomorrow, aren’t you,” he said.

Teetee thought about it.

He thought about save your money for yourself, said in that voice, with that almost-smile. 

“He said I could stop,” Teetee pointed out. “He didn’t say I had to.”

Wave stared at him.

“Those are very different things,” Teetee said.

He pushed off the wall and went to check what he had in the pantry.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

“Okay can I atleast have some?” Wave complained. “#loveyourfriendstooplease.”

“Fine. But only if you accompany me to buy some eggs. I ran out.”

.

.

Teetee continued. Pandan custard tarts on a rainy Saturday. 

“Thank you.” Por had looked at the pale green filling and something in his face had done the soft private thing, and Teetee had gone home and looked up twelve more pandan recipes.

Sesame cookies from a recipe his grandmother had written on a card in handwriting that took ten minutes and a call with his dad to decode.

“And b— Teetee I can’t read that, what does that say.” Yim asked, eyes squinted at the camera.

“If I knew what granny wrote I wouldn’t be calling you, pa. Was granny a doctor or something, what is this handwriting?”

“Is that blueberry or burgundy? I can’t— TUTOR! Come here! You should know how to read your mother's handwriting better than I do.” 

Yim’s face was replaced with Tutor, using thick lensed glasses and squinting. “Belgium? What is this? Are we talking about countries and city now?” 

Teetee sighed and ran his hands down his face. This was going to be the longest night ever.

“Thank you.” 

And then suddenly it was all worth it.

As Teetee was turning to leave, “what kind of sesame?” Words that were actually a question, which was new, which was enormous, which Teetee answered for approximately four minutes straight while Por stood in the doorway eating a cookie with the same focused devotion he brought to all food, and nodded once, and went back inside.

Teetee had called North immediately.

“He asked me a question.”

“About what.”

“Sesame.”

A pause. “I can’t keep doing this with you.”

“North. He asked. A question. Voluntarily.”

“Go to sleep, Tee.” North said, but this time laughing.

.

.

The questions kept coming, in the particular way Por did things—unhurried, sparse, arriving when Teetee had stopped expecting them.

“Is this homemade?” 

About the milk bread, which yes, obviously, Teetee had woken up at seven to prove the dough.

“How long did this take?”

About the layered crepe cake, which Teetee answered honestly—about three hours—and Por had looked down at it with an expression that suggested he found this information important.

“Your friend helped you make this?”

About the mango sticky rice, which Wave had absolutely not helped with, had in fact been hogging up all the mangoes instead, and Teetee said as much at length while Por listened at the doorframe and ate a spoonful with his eyes closed for a moment.

That one had been Teetee’s favorite so far. The eyes-closed moment. He had stored it somewhere very carefully.

The conversations—if they could be called that, and Teetee was choosing to call them that—were still largely one-directional. Teetee talked. Por received. 

But the receiving had changed quality somehow. There was more of it now. Por stood in the doorway longer. 

He asked his small precise questions and listened to the answers with the same attention he brought to everything, that unhurried full-presence quality that made Teetee feel, in a way he couldn’t quite articulate, heard—even when the response was just a single nod.

“He’s doing the thing again,” Wave reported one evening, from the couch, not looking up from his phone.

“What thing?” North’s voice came through the speaker.

“The staring at nothing while smiling thing.”

“I’m not staring at nothing,” Teetee said. He was staring at the middle distance. “I’m thinking.”

“About the neighbor.”

“About a recipe.”

“For the neighbor.”

“I need you both to mind your respective businesses,” Teetee said, and went to check on the thing in the oven.

.

.

It was a Saturday in what had become simply the routine when Teetee knocked on 3B with a small box of earl grey shortbread and Por opened the door.

He looked the same as he always looked at home. 

Cute. Cute. Cutecutecutecutecutecutecute.

From somewhere inside the apartment, Teetee could hear dialogue being spoken. 

“Oh.” Teetee held out the box. “Are you watching something? Sorry—hope I didn’t interrupt.”

Por shook his head. He took the box and looked into it and did the thing with his eyes.

“What are you watching?” Teetee asked.

Por glanced back into the apartment, as if confirming. “Paddington.”

“Oh,” Teetee said, with the specific delight of someone recognizing a name. “I’ve heard of it but I’ve never actually watched it—my friend Kong, actually, he kept telling me to watch it, he went on about it for like a whole semester, he has this thing about bears in general, he had a phase with bear documentaries too which was—” He caught himself. Redirected. “Is it good? I’ve seen the memes—”

“Teetee.”

Teetee stopped.

Por was looking at him. Not at the shortbread, not at the doorframe. At him. 

“Do you want to come in and watch with me?”

The hallway did the thing where it became very quiet.

Teetee’s brain presented him with the sentence again, helpfully, in case he’d missed it the first time.

“Do you want to come in and watch with me.”

“Yes or no is fine,” Por said, which might have been the most words he’d strung together unprompted, and also the most gentle thing anyone had ever said to him.

“Yes,” Teetee quickly said. “Yeah. Yes. Yes I would. I would love to. Yes. Yes.”

Por then pressed his lips together, like he was holding back a smile. He nodded, “okay.” Por stepped back from the door.

The apartment was tidy and calm. There were things on the shelves, two cactus plants on the shelves that looked genuinely cared for, a blanket on the couch that had clearly been in use before Teetee knocked. 

Teetee sat on one end of the couch. Por sat on the other, pulled the blanket back over his legs, and picked up the remote.

On the screen, a small bear in a red hat was navigating London.

Por opened the shortbread box. Set it on the cushion between them. Teetee looked at the box. Looked at the television. Carefully and slowly looked at Por, who was already watching the screen.

He immediately regretted the action and quickly faced away, eyes clenched shut.

‘Take a shortbread,’ Teetee told himself. ‘Watch the bear. Be a normal person.’

He looked at Por again. And yet again he faced away hurriedly.

‘I CAN’T. He’s too cute.. AAAAAAAAAAA—’

“Are you cold, Teetee?”

“H—huh? Oh, no, um, no? No. Yeah. No, i’m not.” He mentally slapped himself.

“You can tell me if it’s cold. Because I like the cold and sometimes it gets to a point.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s not too cold.”

Por nodded and turned back to the TV.

They watched until the credits. Por ate four shortbreads. Teetee ate two, which was a personal record for restraint. 

At some point the light in the apartment shifted from evening to night and neither of them moved to turn on a lamp and the screen provided enough.

When the credits finished Por picked up the remote and the screen went dark and for a moment they sat in the comfortable kind of quiet.

“Good movie,” Teetee said. “Should’ve never doubted Kong.”

“Mm.”

Teetee stood. Smoothed his hands on his jeans. Felt the particular pleasant disorientation of someone who had been somewhere unexpectedly good.

“I should—” He gestured at the door. “I’ve got stuff. But thank you. For— yeah.”

Por looked up at him from the couch. Something easy in his expression.

“Same time next week?” he asked. He said it lightly, like it didn’t matter much either way, which was the single greatest acting performance of his life.

Por considered the television. Then, without looking over: “I’ll be here.”

Teetee made it to the hallway.

He made it to his own door.

He got the key in the lock on the first try.

And then he stood inside his own apartment in the dark, and smiled at nothing for a very long time—before screaming and running around the apartment.

.

.

The Saturdays movie night became a thing. Teetee would knock at seven. Por would open the door. Sometimes there were desserts, sometimes there weren't.

“You don’t have to keep on bringing food, Teetee.”

“But I want to. I like seeing you eat. Plus I also like baking, I don’t mind.”

“But I do. Buying ingredients is expensive.”

“As if that’s a big deal to me,” Teetee murmured to himself. He looks up and smiled, “hehe.”

Por looked at him, sighed once. And that does it, “okay, I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.”

.

.

The first change was small. Three Saturdays in, Por had a second blanket on the couch when Teetee arrived. Folded, set on Teetee's usual end. 

Por said nothing about it. Teetee said nothing about it. He unfolded it and put it over his legs and Por started the movie. 

Teetee thought about the blanket for four days.

The second change was that Por started having tea ready. Two cups, already poured, set on the coffee table when Teetee came in. 

"Oh," Teetee had said.

"Sit down," Por said. And pressed play.

Teetee thought about the tea for approximately a week.

The third change was harder to name because it wasn't a thing but a quality—a shift in the atmosphere of Por's apartment on Saturday nights, something that had loosened when you worked through it slowly and with patience.

Por still didn't talk much. That hadn't changed and Teetee never forced him to.

But the silences felt different now. Por's shoulders had changed. That was the most specific way Teetee could describe it, in a non weird way possible.

He sat easier. He reached for his tea without that slight fractional pause.

He laughed sometimes, small and mostly internal, at things on screen—a single exhale through his nose, the corner of his mouth moving—and didn't seem to register that Teetee had noticed and was storing the information like someone saving a very important file.

Teetee stayed later, some nights.

The first time it happened it was an accident—they'd watched something long and the credits rolled at nearly ten and Teetee had been mid-sentence about something he couldn't now remember.

And Por was listening, and Teetee simply.. kept talking.

Por didn't stand. Didn't look at the door. Refilled Teetee's tea cup from the pot without breaking eye contact with Teetee, which Teetee interpreted as permission.

He left at eleven fifteen.

The following Saturday he left at eleven forty.

.

.

“Hi,” Teetee smiled. Showing the hojicha cookies he brought. 

Por took the bowl, “thank you.” He walked inside. “It’s different.”

Teetee closed the door, running after Por. “Different good or different bad?”

Por ate one. Considered. “Different good.”

Teetee had sat down on his end of the couch feeling like he’d won something significant.

The film was quieter than Paddington. A Studio Ghibli one—The Cat Returns, which Por had put on without preamble and which Teetee had seen once as a child and remembered only in fragments. 

They watched. Por ate cookies with the slow systematic attention he brought to all food. 

The film ended somewhere around ten. They sat through the credits, which Teetee had noticed Por always did—not out of obligation but with the same quiet attention he gave everything, like the names deserved to pass.

Then the screen went dark.

And Por, who was in the corner of the couch with his legs pulled up and the blanket loose over them, made a small sound that wasn’t quite a word. 

His head dropped slightly. Then fully, resting back against the cushion. His eyes closed. 

Teetee looked at him. 

Looked at the dark screen.

Looked back at him.

Oh, he thought.

Twenty minutes passed. Maybe more. Teetee didn’t move to check his phone. He sat with his tea—still warm—and listened to Por’s slow breathing.

His chest rising and falling in a rhythm. His face was entirely unguarded. He looked younger. He looked like the person he probably was when no one was watching.

Teetee watched his tea instead.

Then the ceiling.

Then, because he was only human and the room was dim and quiet and there was nothing else to reasonably look at, back at Por.

The blanket had slipped a little at some point. Por’s shirt—looser than usual tonight—had shifted with it. 

Teetee’s gaze traveled, without permission, from Por’s jaw to the long line of his neck to the place where his collar sat and then further to where the fabric had pulled away to reveal the slope of his shoulder and the clean line of his pale collarbone—

Teetee threw his face away. Turned his head one hundred degrees in the opposite direction and stared very hard at the bookshelf on the far wall.

Nope.

No.

Absolutely not. We are not doing that. We are a guest in this home and we are going to look at the bookshelf and think about literally anything.

The sudden sharp movement must have disturbed the air in some way, because from the couch came the soft sound of Por shifting.

A small exhale. A pause.

“Mm.”

Teetee kept his eyes on the bookshelf.

“How long was I out?” Por’s voice was rough with sleep, slower than usual, each word arriving at its own pace.

“Not long,” Teetee said. Immediately. With confidence.

The sound of Por moving. Then the specific quiet of someone reading a clock.

“It’s midnight,” Por said.

“…yes.”

“Teetee.”

“You looked comfortable,” Teetee said, still addressing the bookshelf. “I didn’t want to wake you. And it felt wrong to leave without saying goodbye, so.” He kept his hands around his cup. “I just sat here.”

Another silence. Longer this time. Por didn’t say anything. 

“I should go,” Teetee said, and turned. His brain stopped. 

Stopped completely. Mid-sentence. Mid-thought. Everything just poof—bye bye—and say hi to homotron1000.

Por, who had clearly not moved much since waking up, was still in the corner of the couch with the blanket pooled around his legs and blinking at Teetee with the slow heavy blinks. 

But that was not the problem.

The problem was the shirt.

Teetee had registered it as loose earlier. He had been fine about it.

He was not fine about it now.

Because Por had shifted in his sleep and the already-loose collar had shifted further, and the fabric had fallen to reveal the full line of his shoulder.

That pale, clean, entirely unremarkable shoulder that was somehow doing tremendous damage.

Por was just sitting there being completely unaware, blinking those slow sleepy blinks, waiting for Teetee to finish the sentence he’d started.

“I should—” he tried again.

Por tilted his head slightly, the smallest question. Still waiting. Still patient. His eyes half-open and soft, the room still dim, hair going in three directions. 

He looked like something out of a painting.

Shoulder, Teetee’s brain supplied, unhelpfully. 

Collarbone. Pale. Very pale. Why is it so—

“OKAY.” Teetee stood up. “Goodnight! Thank you for— the tea was great, really great, you have a very nice apartment! I’ll see you—” He was already moving toward the door. “Sleep well, you should sleep well, I think you need water before bed, that’s a thing I read, so—”

“Teetee.”

He froze, hand on the door.

“Goodnight,” Por said.

“NIGHT!!!” Teetee closed the door.

He made it into the hallway. 

He made it to his own door.

He put his back against it from the inside and slid down it fully this time, all the way to the floor, fingers clutched to his chest, and sat there in the dark of his entryway while his heart practically screamed at him.

THUD THUD THUD GAY THUD THUD THUD GAY THUD THUD THUD GAY

Teetee pulled his knees up and buried his face in his jacket.

He was going to need a hobby. A different hobby. Something that took him far away from this building on Saturday evenings. Hiking, maybe. 

Or he could learn an instrument. He could join a club. He could do anything other than sit in his neighbor’s quiet apartment drinking tea that his neighbor had made him while his neighbor slept ten inches away looking like something Teetee had no appropriate words for—

“I’m so normal,” Teetee told his knees. “I’m being so normal about this..”

Silence.

“FUCK WHY AM I HARD. NOT RIGHT NOW DUDE!”

.

.

It was a documentary night—something about deep ocean creatures, which Por had put on with the pre-emptive explanation of "you don't have to like it.”

Which Teetee had found both endearing and slightly funny, because Por had never once asked if Teetee liked anything he'd picked and Teetee had never once not liked it.

"I'll like it," Teetee said.

"You don't know that."

"Por. I liked the three-hour French film with no subtitles—"

"You were asleep for most of that."

"I liked the sleeping I did during it."

Something happened to Por's expression. Not a smile, exactly, but the area around his mouth shifted in a way that made Teetee feel WOHOOO!

"They're beautiful," Teetee said, about a particular jellyfish. "Kind of terrible but beautiful."

"Yeah," Por said.

Teetee glanced at him. Por was watching the screen with the same focused attention he brought to most things, chin tipped up slightly. The blue light from the television made his face look like something underwater.

Teetee faced forward quickly.

Dangerous. Looking at Por was genuinely dangerous and he needed to exercise better habits.

Then a narwhal appeared on screen. And the narrator said something about their tusks being sense organs, porous and full of nerve endings, essentially a ten-foot tooth that could detect changes in temperature and pressure.

Teetee said, mostly to himself: "Imagine having a giant tooth on your face that can feel the weather."

Por was quiet.

"Like what would you even do with that. You're just swimming around and then suddenly you know it's going to rain and you've got nowhere to be."

Silence.

"Do narwhals have anywhere to be? I don't think narwhals have appointments. The horn is just giving them information they have no use for. It's purely academic narwhal data."

And then Por laughed.

Not the small exhale. Not the corner-of-mouth movement. A real laugh, and it transformed his whole face, crinkled his eyes, showed his teeth, made him tip his head back slightly like the laugh had momentum.

Teetee stopped existing.

That was the most accurate way to describe what happened. Every process running in the background of his mind—the narwhal thoughts, the ocean documentary, the tea cooling in his cup—ceased completely.

He just looked at Por laughing.

It lasted maybe four seconds. Por pressed his mouth together afterward, like he was recollecting himself. Glanced at Teetee. Looked back at the screen.

"Purely academic narwhal data," Por repeated, to the television, quietly, like he was confirming it had happened.

Teetee was still not existing.

His heart was somewhere outside his body. 

He could feel it in his ears.

Por looked at him again, probably because Teetee had gone very still and very silent, which was unusual. "What?"

"Nothing," Teetee said. The word came out strange. He turned back to the screen. 

The narwhal continued its undignified journey. The narrator said things. None of it reached Teetee.

He was sitting perfectly still on his end of the couch, both hands wrapped around his tea cup, very carefully not looking at Por, thinking about four seconds of unguarded laughter and the way it had changed the whole geometry of Por's face and he was not going to say anything about it, he was not going to do anything embarrassing, he was going to sit here like a normal person who had not just had something happen to him—

"Are you cold?" Por asked.

"No," Teetee said. A little strangled.

"You're not moving."

"I'm just. Watching."

Por looked at him for a moment, with the slightly perplexed expression he sometimes got when Teetee was being difficult to parse. 

Then he turned back to the screen.

.

.

The musical was Por's pick. 

Teetee looked over at Por once, during a particularly lovely piece, and Por was watching the screen with his chin in his hand.

Teetee looked back at the screen.

When it ended and the credits rolled, neither of them moved immediately. 

"Wowowow amazing,” Teetee clapped. “Do you like musicals, Por?”

Por nodded. 

Teetee nodded back, “I am just starting to realize how you have almost every instrument in your room.” He looked around, then back at Por. “Do you play?”

"Yeah," he said.

"You play all of these."

"Yes."

"Por."

"Yes, Teetee."

“Have you always liked playing or it was a recent hobby?”

"I’ve been playing since I was small," he said. "My grandmother played. She taught me piano first." He paused. "I liked it. So I kept going. Found other instruments.”

“Wait,” Teetee straight upright, like he clicked everything. “So it has been you playing the songs. I’ve always thought that it was your TV speakers.”

“You listen?”

“Of course I did. Por, do you even realize how good you play to the point I had to call Siri to find the exact song cover, never finding them because it was you all along.” Teetee grinned. Por looked away. “Can I hear you play?”

“Which one do you want to hear?”

“Piano!” Teetee pointed at the piano.

Por nodded and stood. Walked across the room to the keyboard and lifted the cover off the keys—white and black and clean, clearly maintained.

He pulled the bench out. Sat. And then he looked back at Teetee, still on the couch, and made the smallest motion with his head.

Come here.

Teetee crossed the room and sat beside him on the bench.

Close. The bench wasn't small but they were close—Por's shoulder near his, the warmth of him present, and Teetee made himself look at the keyboard and not at Por's face because looking at Por's face right now felt like trapping himself.

Por's hands settled on the keys. Then he began.

— Serendipity by Laufey

The opening notes came slowly, a melody that Teetee half-recognized and then fully recognized, something that had played in films and playlists.

And then Por sang. His voice was so melancholic and beautiful that Teetee had unnoticedly held his breath. 

“Time’s moving so much slower lately. It’s like the world is playing a joke. Laughing at me for falling foolishly again. But something’s different with you.”

And within the pauses of piano. Teetee thought, in the complete and uncomplicated way that certain truths arrive.

‘I'm in love with him.’

Not new information. But it was the first time it had arrived fully formed, without scrambling or qualifying—without the shy flinching deflection of maybe or kind of or it's just because he's pretty.

Just the fact of it, plain and enormous, sitting in his chest like it had always been there and had simply been waiting for this exact moment to stop being a hypothesis.

“This must be, it must be love.”

Por sang the last line.

His hands slowed over the keys. The final chord opened in the air between them and faded. Silence settled back into the room. 

Por opened his eyes. He looked at the keys for a moment. His hands rested motionless on the ivory, and Teetee noticed, in the dim light, the slight tremor in them. The smallest trembling. Like the music had taken something out of him to give.

Por drew in a slow breath. Let it out.

“It’s been a while since I played the piano in front of somebody,” he said quietly. 

Teetee didn’t say anything. He sat with it, the way Por had taught him to sit with things—not rushing to fill the space, just receiving it. 

He looked at Por’s profile, the way his eyes stayed down on the keys. Reading whatever he could from a face that didn’t give things away easily.

“Because you get nervous?” Teetee asked. Gently.

Por shook his head. Then paused, as if the real answer was somewhere nearby but needed a moment to be found. “I—” He stopped.

And then he turned.

He turned and found Teetee already looking at him, had been looking at him, and Teetee knew he should probably glance away—give him the courtesy of not being watched so openly—but he didn’t. He held it. 

Steady and without apology.

Por looked at him for a moment. Something moved through his expression that Teetee couldn’t name.

Teetee tilted his head and smiled. Not the big bright smile he used on most people—the one that was friendly and easy and asked nothing in return. 

“I really love your voice,” he said. “And I know you’ve probably heard that before, and I think you deserve every single word of it.” He paused. “I used to wonder why you were so quiet, why you would rarely talk, rarely show any emotion.” 

His eyes stayed on Por’s face, gentle and sure. “But I understand now. I understand that you have your own way of expressing your feelings.” 

He wasn’t expecting anything in return—had long since made peace with that, had learned to find the shape of Por’s presence enough. But Por didn’t look away this time. 

He sat there, then Por frowned.

Like something had pulled him inward. Like a thought had arrived that he didn’t know what to do with yet.

“Por?” Teetee said, softly.

Por’s gaze dropped back to the keys. “It’s late,” he said. “You should go back.”

“Oh.” Teetee blinked. “Okay—yeah, of course.” He moved to stand, then stopped. “Por. Did I say something wrong? If I did, please tell me.”

Por shook his head. His eyes stayed on the piano, on the keys his hands were still resting on.

Teetee looked at him for one more moment. Then he nodded.

He didn’t push. He had learned, across all these months, the particular shape of Por’s silences. Whatever was happening behind Por’s eyes was real and present and not yet ready to be handed over, and that was okay. 

“Goodnight, Por.”

No reply came.

Teetee let himself out quietly, pulling the door shut behind him with both hands so it wouldn’t make a sound. He stood in the hallway for a moment with his palm still flat against the door.

Then he walked to his room.

He didn’t giggle this time. Didn’t press his hands over his face or slide down the wall or whisper Por’s name into his palms the way he usually did.

He just sat on the edge of his bed in the dark.

.

.

“HE&1@@1! I DIDNT I—I— HUHUHUHU UU UEUEUE HUHU HUAAAAAAA HUHU UUU UE UE EEE UE UE HUHUHU HUEHUE.”

Wave looked at North.

North looked at Wave.

They both looked at Teetee, who was face-down on the living room carpet—the bunny-printed one he’d bought specifically because it was soft—with his arms folded under his forehead and his legs doing a slow, grief-stricken kick behind him.

“HUAAAA—”

“Is he,” Wave started.

“Yeah,” North said.

“Should we—”

“Yep.”

Neither of them moved.

Teetee made a sound that did not belong to any language currently spoken on earth. It was grief rendered purely as frequency. 

Wave’s expression did something complicated—the specific contortion of someone trying very hard not to smile at something they absolutely should not be smiling at.

“Tee,” North said, from the couch. Carefully.

“HUEHUE—”

“Tee. Buddy. We need words.”

“I CAN’T—” A sob swallowed the rest of it. Teetee’s legs kicked once, helplessly. “HU—”

Wave pressed his lips together very firmly. His shoulders were doing something suspicious.

“Okay,” North said, in the tone of someone who had decided to be the responsible party by default. He slid off the couch and sat on the carpet beside Teetee’s crumpled form. “Deep breath.”

“HUUU—”

“That’s not a deep breath, that’s a different thing entirely.”

“I RUINED IT.” The words arrived suddenly, semi-coherent, muffled by the carpet. “I RUINED EVERYTHING NORTH.”

“You didn’t ruin—”

“I DID. I SAID SOMETHING AND NOW HE’S WEIRD AND HE DIDN’T SAY GOODNIGHT AND HE ALWAYS— EVEN WHEN HE DOESN’T TALK HE DOES THE THING WITH HIS FACE BUT HE DIDN’T EVEN—” The sentence collapsed back into sounds. “HUEHUE.”

Wave turned away. His shoulders were definitely shaking now.

“Wave,” North said, warning.

“I’m not,” Wave said. His voice was strangled. “I’m not laughing. I’m concerned. I’m deeply, deeply—” He made a sound of his own, swallowed it heroically. “Concerned.”

“UUUUUU.” Teetee rolled sideways on the carpet, now staring at the ceiling, eyes red and streaming, one hand flung over his face. “I told him I loved his voice. I said he had his own way of expressing himself. I was being— I was being sincere, Wave—”

“I know—”

“I was being GENUINE—”

“I know, Tee—”

“AND HE WENT ALL QUIET AND AWKWARD  AND TOLD ME TO GO HOME.” A fresh wave hit. “HUAAAA. HUHUHUU.”

North reached out and patted Teetee’s shoulder with the careful energy of someone defusing something. “Okay. Okay, listen. What exactly—”

“I made him uncomfortable.” Teetee said it to the ceiling with the flat certainty of a man reading a verdict. 

“I made him uncomfortable and now he probably doesn’t want to see me anymore and I’ve been—I’ve been going over there every Sunday for months, North, what if he was just being polite this whole time, what if he felt bad saying no to the desserts, what if—”

“That’s not—”

“WHAT IF HE ONLY OPENED THE DOOR BECAUSE I KEPT KNOCKING.” He sat up suddenly, hair destroyed, cheeks fully wet, eyes wild. “WHAT IF EVERYTHING WAS JUST— WHAT IF HE WAS JUST WAITING FOR ME TO LEAVE AND I NEVER LEFT—”

“You’re spiraling,” North said.

“I’M ACCURATELY ASSESSING THE SITUATION.”

“You’re really not.”

“HUHUHU—” Back down. Face in the carpet again. “I just wanted him to know that I—that it was— I wasn’t trying to be weird, I just wanted him to know that I saw him, you know? I just wanted him to know that I— UE UE UE UE—”

Wave had given up. He was sitting on the far couch with his face buried in a throw pillow, shoulders heaving in silent, guilty, genuine laughter that he was doing his absolute best to contain and failing completely.

“WAVE. ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME.”

“NO.” The pillow muffled it to about forty percent. “I’M NOT. I PROMISE. I’M SAD. I’M SO SAD FOR YOU.”

“YOU’RE LAUGHING—”

“I’m CRYING, Tee, I’m CRYING for you, these are TEARS—”

“HUAAAA—“

“Okay.” North physically repositioned himself in front of Teetee, blocking Wave from view, adopting the expression of someone who was going to be mature about this if it killed him. 

He put both hands on Teetee’s shoulders. “Look at me.”

Teetee looked at him. Devastating. Absolutely devastating. Red nose, glossy eyes, the bunny carpet’s texture imprinted on one cheek.

North’s mouth twitched. He controlled it. Barely.

“You,” he said steadily, “did not ruin anything.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You told him you loved his voice and that you respected the way he communicates. That’s not weird, Tee. That’s—” He searched for the word. “That’s actually really—”

“He told me to leave, North.”

“It was midnight.”

“HE ALWAYS LETS ME STAY PAST MIDNIGHT.”

“That’s— okay, that’s a little concerning but we’ll come back to that—”

“HUHU—”

“Stop. Stop the huhu.” North tightened his grip on Teetee’s shoulders slightly. “Listen to me. I say this with love, okay? With genuine, complete, total love.” He paused. “You are a disaster.”

“NORTHUUGGHHHHH—”

“I wasn’t finished.” North waited. Teetee sniffled. “You’re a disaster, but you’re not a person who makes other people uncomfortable by being kind to them. What you said was kind. It was embarrassing, obviously—”

“NORTH—”

“—embarrassing in the sweet way, not the bad way. And Por is—” He exhaled. “From everything you’ve told me, Por is someone who needs time with things. He needed time to talk to you. He needed time to let you in. He probably needs time with this too.”

Teetee stared at him. “…yeah?” he said, small.

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“But what if—”

“Tee.”

“But what if—”

“I will put you back face-down on the carpet.”

Teetee closed his mouth.

From behind North, Wave had removed the pillow from his face and was now just openly watching with the expression of someone at a very emotional theatre production. 

He mouthed you’re doing great at North. North did not acknowledge this.

“He played piano for you,” Wave offered, voice only slightly unsteady. 

“Tee. He played piano and he sang and apparently he rarely plays for anyone. From what you said he had only ever played for his grandma, probably.” He paused. “You’re practically his grandma.”

“WAVE.”

“That came out wrong.”

“Oh my god,” North sighed.

“I MEANT IT AFFECTIONATELY—”

“HUHUHUUUU—”

“OKAY I’M SORRY, BAD JOKE, FORGET THE GRANDMOTHER!”

North closed his eyes briefly. Opened them. “What Wave is trying to say,” he said, with the patience of a man running on fumes, “is that he chose to show you something he doesn’t show people. And then you said something real back. And maybe that was a lot. Maybe he needed a minute.” 

He looked at Teetee steadily. “That’s not you ruining it. That’s just— two people figuring out how to be honest with each other.”

The carpet was quiet for a moment. Teetee’s breathing had slowed from catastrophic to merely uneven. He sat there on the bunny carpet, ruined and red-faced, and looked at his hands.

“I really like him,” he said quietly.

“Everyone can see that,” North said. 

“Like— a lot. Like embarrassingly a lot.”

“We really know.”

“Like I think about him all the—”

“Tee. We know.”

Teetee exhaled. Long and shaky. He looked up at the ceiling, then across at Wave, who had arranged his face into something appropriately sympathetic and was only slightly betrayed by his eyes.

“You were laughing,” Teetee said.

“I was processing,” Wave said. “Also I saw a bunch of sliced cakes at the fridge earlier, can I have some?”

“No. That’s all for Por.”

“OH C’MON!”

“NOOOOOUGGHHH, that’s all for Por. Just because i’m too scared to face him doesn’t mean I don’t want him to stop giving him what he likes.”

“Then how did you give them?” North laid beside Tee, leaning on his palm. 

“Place it on his doorstep, knock, run.”

“Smooth,” Wave laid on Teetee’s other side with a wide grin that made North bite back his smile. 

“So when are you going to deliver them by person?” North asked.

Teetee closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t. I’m scared.”

“Here comes pussytron.”

“Wave you're not my friend, I hate you.”

Wave chuckled and poked Tee’s cheek. “I’ll help you deliver them to Por.”

Teetee opened his eyes and turned to Wave slowly. “Seriously? You would do that? For me?” His eyes lit up.

“I will help you deliver them,” Wave said, holding up a finger. “But we’re going out for dinner tonight.”

Teetee paused. Stared at the ceiling. Covered his eyes with his arm. A long silence passed

.

“So?” Wave said.

“…Okay. Deal.” Teetee dropped his arm. “But hurry up, it’s already half past seven. And remember to run back.”

“Aye aye.” Wave nodded toward the door. “C’mon, North.”

The door clicked shut behind them.

Teetee lay quietly on the carpet, staring up at nothing in particular. The apartment was very still. He could hear his own breathing. 

He thought about the honey cake sitting in its box. He thought about Por opening the door and doing the thing with his eyes when he looked at food. 

He thought about whether Por would know it was from him. Of course he would know. Who else would leave honey cake at his door at nearly eight in the evening.

He was mid-thought when the sound of rattling keys came from outside—the specific fumbling of someone fighting with a lock in a hurry—and then the door burst open. Wave and North ran in.

Teetee sat up, frowning. “The hell happened?”

“NO WONDER YOU’RE SO HEAD OVER HEELS, TEE.” North’s voice came out at full volume with no preamble whatsoever. “HE’S A FUCKING ANGEL BRO.”

“YOU—” Teetee pointed. “I told you to run back!”

“He was too fast,” Wave said in his own defense, collapsing onto the couch like a man who had witnessed something and needed to lie down about it. “Way too quick. Like he was already waiting by the door.”

“Oh my god.” North was pacing. Actually pacing, which he never did. “I didn’t believe you, Tee. I’m sorry. I doubted you and I was wrong and I am deeply, genuinely sorry because he’s— he’s so— what— what—”

“STOP.” Teetee grabbed the nearest pillow and hurled it at him. “STOP THINKING ABOUT HIM.”

North caught it without even looking. Still had the expression of a man whose worldview had been rearranged. “He opened the door and I just— Tee, nobody told me—”

“I TOLD YOU. I HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR MONTHS.”

“I thought you were being dramatic—”

“I AM NEVER DRAMATIC!”

Wave made a sound from the couch that was technically not a laugh but functioned as one.

“I RESERVED HIS HEART FIRST,” Teetee continued, pointing aggressively at North. “FIRST. BY SENIORITY. BY PROXIMITY. BY MONTHS OF INVESTMENT AND BAKED GOODS.”

“You can’t reserve a person’s heart—”

“I ABSOLUTELY CAN.”

“That’s not how any of this—”

“NORTH.”

“—works, legally or emotionally—”

“I WILL MOVE YOUR THINGS INTO THE HALLWAY.”

Wave had given up all pretense and was simply lying on the couch laughing with his whole body, one arm flung over his face. 

“He held the cake,” he managed, between breaths. “North just— stood there. Holding the box out. Not speaking. For an embarrassing amount of time.”

Teetee whipped around. “HOW LONG.”

“Long enough,” Wave said.

“It was a normal amount of time,” North said.

“It was not a normal amount of time,” Wave said.

“NORTH.” Teetee’s voice had gone dangerously quiet, which was somehow worse than the yelling. “Did you make a face at my Por.”

“I didn’t make a face—”

“He made a face,” Wave confirmed.

“I was surprised—”

“He made a very specific face,” Wave said, sitting up now, getting comfortable, clearly enjoying himself enormously. “And then Por looked at him and then looked at the box and did the—” Wave gestured vaguely at his own face. “The thing.”

Teetee stopped. “What thing.”

Wave gestured again. “You know. The thing you say he does.”

The soft thing.

Teetee made a noise that was not a word. He turned and walked three steps toward the wall, then turned back. “He did the soft thing and you were both there to see it and I was on the CARPET.”

“You chose the carpet—”

“I WAS GRIEVING, WAVE—”

“And then he said thank you,” Wave added pleasantly, in the tone of someone who knew exactly what they were doing. “Very quietly. Looked right at the box.” A pause. “It was honestly very—”

“If you say pretty I’m revoking your dinner.”

Wave pressed his lips together. Eyes bright.

“I wasn’t going to say pretty,” he said.

He was absolutely going to say pretty.

“I hate both of you,” Teetee announced, dropping back down onto the carpet face-first.

“No you don’t,” North said, finally stopping his pacing, dropping onto the floor beside him. His voice had come down from the stratosphere somewhat, settling into something that was still entertained but also, underneath it, genuinely soft. “Tee.”

“What.”

“I get it now.”

Teetee turned his face to look at him sideways, cheek against the bunny carpet. North was looking back at him with an expression that, stripped of all the chaos of the last five minutes, was simply honest.

“I really get it now,” he said.

Teetee stared at him. Then he buried his face back in the carpet. “He said my name,” he said, muffled and miserable and fond. “In case you needed any more reasons.”

“I didn’t,” North said. “But noted.”

Wave reached down from the couch and patted Teetee’s head twice, the way you’d comfort someone at a funeral.

“Dinner,” he said. “Let’s go to dinner. You’re buying mine as tax for the delivery service.”

“I’m not buying your—”

“We saw your person, Tee. We suffered. We were moved. We deserve a meal.”

Teetee lay on the carpet for three more seconds. Then he got up.

“Fine,” he said. “But nobody talks about him at dinner.”

“Absolutely,” Wave said immediately.

“Of course,” North agreed.

Teetee talked about Por for the entirety of dinner.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

.

.

The thing about sadness was that it didn’t always arrive loudly.

Sometimes it came quietly, slipping into the cracks you never knew was there. And by the time you registered it, it had already made itself in.

It had been eleven days since the piano night.

Teetee knew it was eleven because he had not knocked on 3B in eleven days, which was a record since the whole thing had started, and his body had apparently decided to keep count on his behalf.

He still baked. He baked more than usual, actually, the way some people cleaned when they were anxious. Filling the apartment with the smell of brown butter and cardamom. 

Wave ate what he could. The rest sat in tins on the counter, covered, waiting.

“You should just bring them over,” Wave said one evening, not looking up from his laptop.

Teetee didn’t respond, dead silence from the couch. He was horizontal. He had been horizontal for some time. 

“Teetee—”

“I wonder if any of this affected him in the slightest bit,” Teetee stopped. Pressed his forearm over his eyes. “Forget it.”

Wave looked at him then. And didn’t say anything else.

.

.

North noticed on a Tuesday, over video call.

“You look terrible,” he said, by way of greeting.

“Thank you.”

“I’m not stating. I’m asking. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Tee.”

“I’m fine, North.”

North looked at him through the screen for a long moment with the expression he used when he was deciding whether to push. He decided not to. 

Which, somehow, was worse.

“Okay,” he said. Gently. “Okay.”

They talked about other things. North did most of the talking.

.

.

Then the worst possible thing came hitting him like a train wreck on a random Thursday.

Teetee had stayed late at the university library, not because he had a particular reason to but because going home meant being in the apartment, which meant being twelve inches of plaster away from someone he was currently afraid of. 

So he stayed until the librarian’s cart started making its rounds, the universal signal for wrap it up, and then he packed his bag and took the long route home and stood in the lobby for a moment before deciding on the stairs.

He was on the second floor landing, adjusting his bag strap, when he saw him.

Por was sitting on the steps between the second and third floor, back against the wall, one knee pulled up with a small notebook resting on it. 

He had earphones in. He was writing something and his head was tilted down and he hadn’t heard Teetee come around the landing.

Teetee stopped.

Por, in the stairwell, in a soft oversized knit that looked like it had belonged to someone larger and been inherited with gratitude, writing in a notebook. The earphone wire trailing down. 

He looked so..soft and calm.

And Teetee couldn’t help but wonder if he had been disrupting Por’s life.

Teetee stood there for approximately two seconds. Unable to speak, move or even breathe.

“Por,” he said. Softly, so as not to startle him. It startled him anyway.

Por’s head came up fast, eyes wide, earphones pulling out with the movement. Surprised and unprepared and something else, something that flickered through and was gone before Teetee could register it.

Then Por blinked. Looked at Teetee on the landing below him. And did something he had never done before, in all their months of doorways and hallways and Sunday evenings.

He bowed. A quick, almost involuntary thing, and then he gathered his notebook and was on his feet and up the remaining stairs and through the third floor door before Teetee had fully processed what had happened.

The stairwell door swung shut.

Teetee stood on the landing.

The pen was still there. On the step where Por had been sitting. He’d left it behind.

Teetee picked it up. Held it. It was an ordinary pen. Black, slightly worn at the clip.

He stood there for a long time.

After that, something in him went quiet. Not the peaceful kind.

He went to university because he was supposed to. He sat in his usual seat and opened his notes and looked at the board and the words landed without sticking, like rain on glass. 

Around him people talked and laughed and the days moved the way days do.

He had always been the one filling silences. Had always been, as Wave put it, aggressively likeable—the person who remembered your coffee order and asked how your sister’s recital went and laughed at things because they were genuinely funny and made a room feel warmer just by being in it.

But warmth required energy. And somewhere in the last eleven days, something had quietly drawn his down.

He sat in a seminar and watched his professor talk about something he’d found interesting two weeks ago and felt it all at a remove, like watching through fogged glass.

His friend Kong, sitting beside him, nudged his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Teetee said. And then, because Kong was looking at him with genuine concern. “Just tired.”

Kong nodded. Let it go.

Teetee looked back at the board. He wasn’t just tired.

He was tired of not knowing. Tired of his own thoughts, of building interpretations out of silences and small shifts of expression, tired of the way his brain had turned Por into a question he couldn’t stop trying to answer. 

Tired of eleven days of waiting for something he didn’t even know he was waiting for. Tired of sitting with a feeling this size and not having anywhere to put it.

Ever since two days ago, Teetee had been avoiding Por. He memorized when Por goes to the laundry room, he memorized what time he goes home every Friday, he memorized the time Por would leave to sit down at the stairs. And he avoided every single scenario of meeting him.

Because he was afraid. That this time Por wouldn’t just bow and leave, that maybe he would speak—say something Teetee didn’t want to hear.

The professor said something. People wrote things down. Teetee looked at his empty page and decided, quietly, that he was probably an idiot. 

That he had somehow managed to fall completely and helplessly for someone across a wall and a doorway and he hadn’t even done anything about it except bring him food and sit on his couch.

.

.

Saturday came.

Wave arrived in the afternoon with North on video call propped against the kitchen fruit bowl, and the apartment had the usual shape of a weekend—familiar and warm, the two of them taking up space in the way they always did, filling corners.

Teetee had made Portuguese egg tarts. Small, golden, the custard just set. Two dozen, because the recipe was stubborn about quantity and also because he had needed to do something with his hands at seven in the morning when sleep had given up on him.

He’d put six in a box. White box, small. Tied with a piece of twine because he had twine and it gave his hands something to do.

It sat on the counter.

Wave looked at it. Looked at Teetee. “I can take it.”

“I know.”

“It’s not a big deal. I’ll just—”

“I’ll do it,” Teetee said.

Wave stopped.

“I’ll do it myself this time,” Teetee said. He was looking at the box. His voice was steady in the careful way that meant he was holding it steady deliberately. “I think I need to.”

North, from the fruit bowl, didn’t say anything. His expression on the small screen said enough.

Wave nodded once. “Okay.”

Teetee stood in front of 3B for longer than he usually did.

He’d been here hundreds of times by now. Had stood on this exact patch of hallway carpet in slippers, in his worn out hoodie, in flour-dusted clothes straight from the kitchen. 

He knew the sound his knuckles made on this specific door. He knew the particular rhythm of footsteps that meant Por was coming.

He raised his hand. Knocked. The footsteps came. The door opened.

Por stood there, and looked at Teetee, and Teetee looked back at him—at the familiar face—and felt the specific ache of someone standing in front of the thing they’ve been trying not to think about.

Teetee glanced down at the box. “Portuges egg tarts. I made too many.” The old line. The reliable line.

He looked up. Expecting Por to look down at the egg tart with his usual expression, but Por’s eyes were on him the entire time.

And something happened in his expression, and Teetee didn’t know what to do with that so he just held the box out and waited.

Por took the box. He held it in both hands and looked at Teetee for a moment that stretched past the usual length. 

Then he stepped back from the door.

“Come in,” he said. “I want to say something to you.”

The words landed cleanly and Teetee heard each one and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

I want to say something to you.

The walk from the doorway to inside the apartment was approximately four steps and Teetee’s mind ran the full length of every possible sentence those words could precede in the time it took him to take them.

I want to say something to you—I think you should stop coming over.

I want to say something to you—I’ve been too polite about this for too long.

I want to say something to you—I know, and I need you to stop.

He stood, he’d stopped somewhere near the entrance. 

He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. 

There was something in his throat that wasn’t words and he was fairly certain that if he opened his mouth something would come out that he couldn’t take back—some embarrassing and complete confession, or worse, tears, and he was not going to cry in Por’s apartment, he was not going to do that.

He held the back of it quietly together and waited.

Por had set the egg tarts down on the low table and was moving toward the piano bench with the same unhurried certainty.

Teetee’s cheeks started to sore from forcing a smile, his eyes started to sting and he was aware of this. 

He stared at a fixed point just past Por’s shoulder and breathed the way North had taught him once—in for four, out for four—and held on.

Por sat down on the bench.

He looked at the keys for a moment. His hands settled into position—and Teetee recognized this, the way Por looked at the piano before he played, like a conversation he was returning to.

Then Por played.

It started simply. A single line of melody. Teetee knew enough about music to recognize that it wasn’t performed nor presented. It was offered. 

The difference was audible. The way each note landed with intention and also with something undefended underneath it.

“Wise men say, only fools rush in. But I can’t help falling in love with you.”

Teetee stood beside the piano and forgot to breathe.

He forgot about the frightened thing sitting in his chest. Forgot about I want to say something to you and every terrible sentence it might have been the beginning of. Forgot about eleven days and a stairwell and the way a door had closed.

The song ended the way the first one had—complete. Not cut short. Finished all the way through, every note given its full weight, the last chord fading into the quiet of the apartment until the silence that replaced it felt full rather than empty.

Por’s hands stayed on the keys.

Teetee stood for a moment. Then, without quite deciding to, he moved—around the bench, to the space Por had left beside him—and sat down.

Neither of them spoke.

And this time—this time—the silence didn’t feel like a door closed against him.

It felt like one that had just, very quietly, been opened from the inside.

“I know I’m not good with words.” Por’s voice was low. 

“I try. I want to respond to your questions, to say the things back that you’re saying to me. But I find myself— unable. The words don’t come out the way I need them to. They never do. With anyone.” He paused. “And I hated that about myself for a long time. I didn’t understand why I was the way I was.”

He turned his head. Por’s face was open. Completely, quietly open.

“And then you kept showing up at my door,” Por said. “With your cookies and your mochi and your wildly lopsided castella cake—”

They both chuckled. 

“—and you talked, and you waited, and you came back. Every time.” Something moved through his expression. 

“And somewhere in all of that, you opened a window I didn’t know existed. You showed me that I could still say what I needed to say.” His eyes moved briefly to the piano keys. 

“Just— not always with words.”

Teetee looked at him. Didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

“It took me a long time to find the right songs,” Por continued. “What I wanted to give you— it had to be precise. I went through maybe fifty albums trying to find the exact ones.” 

He reached to the side of the piano and picked up a notebook—small, worn at the corners. He held it out.

Teetee took it. Opened it.

Page after page of song titles, written in Por’s careful handwriting. Some with small notes beside them. A word or two.

Teetee’s hands tightened slightly around the notebook.

“These are all the songs I wanted you to have,” Por said simply. “Everything I didn’t know how to say out loud.” He took a breath. Let it out slow. 

“Thank you for choosing to stay, even when I got quiet. Thank you for not making me feel broken for it.” His voice was steady, but only just. “And thank you for showing me that I’m just as normal as anyone else.”

He paused.

“Thank you, Teetee.”

And then Por tilted his head and smiled. 

His smile was absolutely incandescent, a radiant beam that seemed to light up the entire room. And just for a moment, he had completely bewitched Teetee.

Teetee had thought, across all these months, that he had catalogued Por fairly thoroughly. But he had not accounted for this.

The smile squared him somewhere below the ribs and stayed there.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again.

And then, without any warning or intention or dignity whatsoever, his eyes filled up and the tears came rolling down his face.

Por’s smile dropped. “Tee—” He turned on the bench, fully, eyes wide and searching. “What’s wrong? What happened, what did I—”

“Nothing,” Teetee managed. Which was not convincing given the current situation.

“You’re crying—”

“I know, I’m aware—”

“Did I say something wrong?” Por’s voice had gone tight. The same way he’d gone quiet that night at the piano, like something had been said that he was trying urgently to decode. 

His hands hovered, uncertain—and then, carefully, like a question, they came up and cupped Teetee’s face. Both hands. Warm and gentle and slightly hesitant. 

His thumbs moved, brushing the tears away with quiet, careful attention.

“Why are you crying,” he said softly. Not a question. A gentle attempt to understand what he’d done wrong.

And that made Teetee cry even harder.

“I’m not—” Teetee laughed, wet and a little broken. “I’m not sad, Por.”

Por looked at him. Still working it out.

“I thought—” Teetee’s voice caught. He steadied it. “When you said you wanted to tell me something, I thought— I was so sure you were going to ask me to leave you alone. That I’d made you uncomfortable. That I’d finally pushed too far with the desserts or the Sundays or the—” 

He exhaled. 

“I was trying not to cry before you even started playing. I was holding on so hard.”

“…”

“And then you played that song,” Teetee said. “And you gave me this—” He held up the notebook, and his voice did the thing where it stopped cooperating. He pressed on anyway. 

“Por. You went through fifty albums.”

“Closer to sixty,” Por said quietly.

Teetee laughed again. The tears kept coming anyway and he let them, because he was tired of holding things so carefully. “I just— I’m relieved. I’m so relieved, I don’t know what to do with it.” 

He looked at Por—at this person he’d been learning piece by piece across months of doorways and silences and small precise gifts, who had just handed him a notebook full of sixty albums’ worth of things he’d wanted to say. 

“You didn’t want me to leave.” It came out as a whisper.

“No,” Por said. Simply and completely. “I never wanted you to leave.”

His hands were still holding Teetee’s face. He didn’t seem to have noticed he hadn’t moved them. 

Or maybe he had noticed, and he’d decided to stay anyway.

“Por,” Teetee said.

“Mm.”

“I’ve been bringing you desserts for months so I could hear your voice.”

“I know.”

“I stayed on your floor until midnight watching you sleep.”

“I know that too.”

“I’m extremely, embarrassingly in love with you.”

Por looked at him. The smile came back—smaller this time, quieter, something that lived in his eyes as much as his mouth.

“I know,” he said. “I was working up to telling you the same thing.”

Teetee stared at him.

“With the notebook,” Por added, patient as ever, as if this were obvious.

“Por.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the most words you’ve said to me consecutively since I moved in.”

Something warm moved through Por’s expression. “You make it easier,” he said. 

Teetee looked at him for a long moment. At the hands still holding his face. At the piano keys behind them, still carrying the ghost of can’t help falling in love with you. 

At the notebook in his lap, sixty albums of things that had been waiting to be given.

“Por. Can I be your—” he started.

“Yes,” Por said.

“I haven’t asked yet.”

“I know what you’re going to ask.” The almost-smile again. “And the answer is yes.”

It was hesitant. Teetee leaned in slowly, giving Por every opportunity to change his mind, telegraphing each inch the way you move around something you want very much not to startle and their distance closed when Por leaned in.

The kiss was soft. Warm. 

Por’s hands stayed where they were, gentle against Teetee’s face, and Teetee felt him exhale through it, felt the last held tension go out of him, and understood that Por had been carrying something too. 

Had been working up to this in his own way, at his own pace, the way he did everything.

They pulled back. Por’s forehead came to rest against Teetee’s.

The apartment was quiet around them, warm and dim, the piano behind them and the notebook between them and outside the city doing its indifferent evening thing.

“I’m your boyfriend,” Teetee said softly, trying out the word in the space between them.

Por was quiet for a moment. 

“And I'm yours,” he said.

Teetee pulled back just far enough to look at him. “Boyfriends.”

Por bit back a smile. And then, like it cost him nothing at all. “My boyfriend.”

Teetee’s face did something complicated and wonderful and completely involuntary.

Por watched it happen with the quiet attention he gave to things he found worth watching. “Go ahead,” he said mildly.

“Go ahead and what—”

“You want to scream,” Por said. “I can tell.”

“I am not going to—”

“You can go back to your apartment first.”

Teetee pressed his lips together very hard. His ears were fully red. His eyes were still a little bright.

“I’m staying,” he said, with dignity.

Por looked at him.

“For a little while longer,” Teetee added.

Por reached over and opened the egg tart box. Held it out to Teetee first, which was new, which was enormous, which Teetee accepted with hands that were only slightly unsteady.

They sat together on the piano bench, shoulders touching, and ate egg tarts in the quiet, and inside 3B something that had been becoming itself for months finally, simply, was.

He did scream. Later.

In his own apartment, face in the bunny carpet, while Wave stood over him eating the last of the egg tarts and North yelled through the phone speaker demanding a word-for-word account.

He screamed for quite a long time.

It felt completely correct.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​