Sasha was slowly — or perhaps in the scheme of things actually quite rapidly — losing it. His house plant, Herbert, was dying, and he felt deeply upset and ashamed. It needed more sunlight, and it couldn’t substitute it with vitamin D supplements like he did.

He woke up early, before his neighbours were usually awake, and took it outside to his small balcony.

The air smelled different out here. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. It probably wasn’t good for him to stay shut up in the same small room all the time with all the doors and windows shut. Well, it definitely wasn’t good for him for several reasons, but he’d heard some things about carbon dioxide build up and it being bad for mental function. Herbert definitely wouldn’t have been enough to balance that out.

Sasha hadn’t wanted to go out onto the balcony, but now that he was there he found himself feeling better than he had in weeks. More human. He almost wanted to go out and take a walk around the neighbourhood. He wouldn’t do it because that seemed scary, but it had been a while since he’d wanted anything at all.

He’d actually thought he’d been getting sick for a while, which didn’t make much sense because he’d hardly interacted with another human for weeks, but he’d been lethargic and headachy and bluh. Then someone across the hall had started playing music too loud and he’d completely fallen apart in less than a minute and he’d realised he wasn’t sick at all. His anxiety had just been quietly cooking up some sensory overload and the combination of the two was kicking him hard.

He’d thought hiding himself away even more was the solution, but now that he was out here he wasn’t so sure.

And then he heard the glass door slide open next door and a young man stepped out onto the balcony next to Sasha’s. His short hair, bleached and dyed ash blond, was mussed from sleep and he was wearing boxers. Only boxers. He had a slender, athletic build. Maintaining eye contact had never been harder.

Sasha was wearing pyjamas. He always wore pyjamas. These ones had kitty faces on them.

Sasha had always sort of assumed he would recognise his neighbours if he saw them, but this person was a complete stranger to him. That was the reality. He assumed this was either Cooper or Abra, but he had no idea which one.

The guy smiled at him and Sasha found himself smiling back, then dipping his head because he knew his smile looked weird but then he also looked weird when he squirmed in on himself and tried to hide it, too, so there was no hope for him.

It was over. It was all over.

“Hey,” the guy said, and Sasha immediately knew this was Cooper. He recognised his voice.

“Hi,” Sasha said. Well, sort of said. He wasn’t sure he’d actually made enough noise for Cooper to hear him.

“So you’re our neighbour, huh?”

Sasha nodded.

“You’ve very quiet.”

Sasha nodded again.

Cooper strummed his fingers against the railing. “Did you know that tortoiseshell cats and calico cats — like the ones on your top — are nearly always female?”

“I didn’t know that,” Sasha said, but the words came out so murmured and muddled that he wasn’t sure they’d been understandable.

“It happens when cats have both orange and non-orange genes, but those genes are on the X chromosome so male cats only have one. That’s the reason ginger cats are more often male, too. They only need one ginger gene to be ginger, but female cats need two or else they’ll be calico or tortoiseshell instead.”

“Thank you,” Sasha said and then immediately regretted it because that probably wasn’t the right thing to say even if he did feel grateful. Both for the knowledge and for Cooper just… talking to him like he was an intelligent human being. Though that might not last long if he kept acting like this.

“You’re welcome?”

“I have a plant,” Sasha said, because… okay, he really didn’t know why he said the things he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cooper nod. “What kind of plant is it?”

“House plant.”

Cooper nodded again as though that had been any sort of an answer to his question.

“But in the house is too dark. He is dying.”

“He?”

“It,” Sasha corrected.

“Oh,” Cooper said. “You know, some plants actually do have sexes. Like kiwis. You need a male and a female one to get fruit.”

“I think this one probably does not,” Sasha said. “But I named it Herbert.”

“That’s cute,” Cooper said, and when Sasha dared a look at him, he was smiling.

“I have to go inside now,” Sasha said before his face had time to turn fully red. “Bye.”

“Oh, um, bye?” Sasha heard Cooper say as Sasha shut the glass door behind himself.

Sasha buried himself under his blankets and settled in to experience many emotions. The most familiar, and least welcome, were embarrassment and shame. He didn’t like when people assumed he was stupid, but at times like these he did himself no favours. What was Cooper supposed to think when he spoke in little more than incoherent murmurs?

There was grief in the mix, too. That hadn’t gone in any of the ways Sasha had expected, but it had happened and it did mean things would be different now. In what ways, he wasn’t yet sure, but Sasha wasn’t a fan of change and moving here was about as much of it as he could deal with for at least a year or two.

But there was also a squirmy feeling in his stomach because Cooper had talked to him like a person and smiled at him and called him cute. Maybe he hadn’t meant cute like that, though. Probably. Sometimes people said it in a mocking way and Sasha wasn’t good at reading tone so he really didn’t know.

Sasha didn’t know if he was excited to see Cooper again or if he wanted to double down on his hiding away so that they would never encounter one another again. Cooper seemed interesting and kind and Sasha liked him, but Sasha didn’t like feeling emotions. Even good ones were sometimes just too much. 

Especially right now. All he wanted was to switch his brain off and play some TFT, but now he was committed to at least three days of running everything that had happened through his head over and over and drowning in his emotions. It wasn’t good. He hated it. The more he wanted to distract himself, the harder it became to focus on anything that would help him do that.

Yet, as he lay there curled up under his blankets, he found himself realising he hadn’t noticed what colour Cooper’s eyes were. 

He wanted to know.

#

Abra and Ellie weren’t awake yet, so Cooper sat down on his futon mattress on the floor and watched them sleep. They weren’t awake three minutes later, either, so he prodded Abra’s arm until he was.

“I talked to the guy next door,” Cooper whispered.

Abra blinked at him in sleepy confusion. “Brian?”

“No, not Brian.” Brian was their neighbour on the other side. He was an alcoholic and he believed literally everything he read on the internet, but he was otherwise all right. “The guy to our right.” Cooper thought for a moment. “Or would it be left? I guess it depends which way you’re facing.”

Abra looked no less confused. “There’s a guy on the other side?”

Oh. Right. He’d had the conversation about this with Ellie, not Abra, but if he’d woken her she would have been annoyed like most reasonable people. Abra never got annoyed or frustrated. He was the most zen person Cooper had ever met.

“The other day I thought I heard someone next door, and I went outside just now and there was a guy on the balcony. I talked to him. He’s cute.”

Abra smiled as he corralled his long, wavy dark brown hair away from his face. “Cute, huh?”

“Not like that. Well, okay, maybe like that as well, but I just meant, you know… cute. He seems very shy.”

“What’s his name?”

Cooper stared at Abra for a long moment. “Ah. I did not ask his name.”

“Ah.”

“Well, maybe I would have remembered to, but he stopped the conversation very suddenly and went back inside so I didn’t get a chance.”

“Huh. Why’d he do that?”

“I don’t know,” Cooper admitted. “I hope I didn’t offend him or something. I don’t remember what I said.”

Abra yawned. “Maybe he had breakfast cooking or something.”

“Maybe,” Cooper said, but he was starting to think it was something he’d done. 

Cooper didn’t have a hard time making friends, but there was a reason few of them became close or lasting friendships. Well, okay, many reasons. People often thought he was fun, at least at first, but he could be annoying, impatient, unreliable, distractible, impulsive...

Abra’s eyes had drifted shut again and he looked like he was already halfway back to sleep. It would be another hour before it was time for him to wake up, leaving Cooper to sit alone with his thoughts.

“Don’t forget jogging,” Abra murmured.

“Oh, right!” Cooper said a little too loudly. “Right, right, right.”

Jogging. The entire reason he was awake before Abra and Ellie. Cooper didn’t have many close friends, but the ones he did have were the best in the world.