Sasha had been putting off taking the garbage out for days, but it had finally reached a point where he couldn’t cram anything more into the bin. He would have to either become a hoarder or take it out. Becoming a hoarder was tempting… at least until he thought about the smell. Besides, with the size of his apartment that would have been a short lived venture. There was barely enough room to move around as it was.
Unfortunately, leaving it for so long and cramming it so full meant that the bag was unwieldy and hard to lift. Just getting the bag out of the bin was a struggle. This should have been a learning experience in being a responsible adult at the very least, but Sasha knew he would do the exact same thing again. If not next time, then the time after. He wasn’t bad at recognising his mistakes, but he was terrible at correcting them.
He’d selected this time, late in the afternoon when he knew for sure everyone in the apartment next door was out, to do this. It had been a few days since his conversation with Cooper, and Sasha still hadn’t decided what he wanted to do about it. He’d considered going out on the balcony again a few times, but he hadn’t been brave enough. What if it went badly? He lived here now. He’d have to live with whatever happened.
Sasha carefully lifted the bag of garbage down the stairs, mindful not to drag it on the ground and tear out the bottom, and then he did exactly that anyway because the bag was big and heavy and he was weak and uncoordinated.
Garbage cascaded out and tumbled down the stairs, tearing the hole in the bag bigger as it went. By the time Sasha managed to get it to stop, the bag was mostly empty.
Sasha stared in horror at the mess. He’d had half a watermelon he hadn’t finished, and the remains of it had all but liquified in the bottom of his garbage. It was now a sludge spread across several of the stairs. There were egg shells, cracked into tiny pieces and scattered everywhere. There were plastic containers that had bounced their way to the bottom of the stairs.
Sasha could feel his breathing quickening. He had no idea how he was going to clean this up.
#
Cooper pushed open the door to the apartment building, sweaty and pleasantly exhausted from his afternoon jog. He found exercise helped with his focus and increased his frustration threshold.
Sometimes they’d get a week of heavy rain or extreme heat and he wouldn’t be able to go out and things would get bad. For some reason, he could never properly keep it in his mind how important this was for him, and when he didn’t get enough exercise his overall motivation levels would drop and it would be hard to get started again.
Ellie was pretty good at getting him back on track, though. She knew that if she could get him to do a bit of exercise, it would re-engage his ability to self motivate. Usually she made up challenges where whoever lost the game they were playing would have to do a certain number of push ups. One time she just asked him to show her how many push ups he could do and then kept egging him on to do more.
She was a good friend. A better one than he felt like he deserved sometimes.
There was an empty shampoo bottle on the floor, which was odd because that was not where empty shampoo bottles belonged but not too odd because a few weeks ago there had been blood on the wall (which was not where blood belonged).
And then Cooper rounded the corner and saw that there were many things on the floor. And on the stairs. Mostly on the stairs.
In the middle of it all stood the guy from next door, clutching a torn, mostly empty garbage bag and looking on the verge of tears. He glanced at Cooper and then quickly looked away as though he hoped to avoid embarrassment by pretending Cooper wasn’t there.
“Okay.” Cooper clicked his tongue as he took in the mess. Finally he nodded and made his way up the stairs, around the garbage. He clapped the guy on the shoulder on the way past in a way he hoped was taken as reassuring and not borderline assault. “I’ll be right back.”
Cooper jogged his way back to his apartment and began getting supplies together. They would for sure need a new garbage bag. And the dustpan and brush. And a bucket of soapy water and a couple of cloths, why not. He bundled all of it up in his arms and hurried back to the guy, who still looked as hopelessly lost as he had when Cooper had left.
“Here,” Cooper said as he set the items down on a clean part of the stairs. “I’ll help you clean up.”
The guy nodded. He probably couldn’t really speak just then. He had been quiet and shy even when he hadn’t been upset, so Cooper could imagine that he was struggling just then. He wouldn’t even look at Cooper. Though, actually, he hadn’t really looked at him last time they’d spoken either so maybe that was just one of his things.
Cooper started by collecting up all of the empty bottles and containers and other large items. The guy caught on quickly and started helping. There was only one dustpan and brush, so the guy couldn’t really copy him when he moved on to cleaning up the smaller pieces. Instead, the guy followed behind him and wiped everything clean with a damp cloth.
He was very careful. Unnecessarily so, considering the cleanliness of this building before the garbage accident had been questionable at best, but Cooper could respect it. In living quarters as tight as these, one person’s poor hygiene could soon become everyone’s problem.
Cooper was by no means a tidy person by nature, but with three people in an apartment that was barely big enough for one, they had to keep things reasonably in order. Every night before they started playing games, they’d take a look around and clean up anything that was out of place or dirty. The place was so small that it never took more than a few minutes, but Cooper suspected if he were on his own he still wouldn’t have done it. At least not nearly as consistently.
“I don’t know your name,” Cooper said. It was a statement, not a question, because he wasn’t sure the guy could really talk just then and he respected that. “My name is Cooper.”
“Sasha,” the guy murmured without looking up from the step he was scrubbing. It hadn’t even gotten garbage juices on it. He was just cleaning it because it was dirty.
“That’s a nice name,” Cooper said. “I might talk a bit, because that’s what I do, but you don’t have to respond if you don’t want to. I get it. Talking isn’t what you do, especially not right now.”
Sasha was silent, and he didn’t look up, but he did nod.
“I hope it’s not too annoying to you that I’m so chatty and just generally extra,” Cooper said. “Sometimes people like it, but sometimes they don’t and then I just feel bad because I can’t just not. Which maybe sounds ridiculous to someone as quiet as you because it’s like… default mode for you to be quiet.”
Sasha nodded.
“My teachers hated me, you know,” Cooper said. “Well, okay, I don’t know if they did. They were all right, mostly. But they hated having to deal with me. School is like… sit down, shut up, and focus on your work, and I can’t do any of those things for very long. I just can’t. But when you can’t do things everyone else can, it seems like you’re just not trying, right?”
Sasha nodded again.
“Yeah, you get it. Did your teachers like you ‘cause you’re so quiet, or does it wrap around and start being a problem again at the other extreme too? I guess it probably would.”
Sasha looked up, opened his mouth uncertainly, then dropped his gaze back down and shrugged.
“Fuck, that was a question. Sorry. I don’t have a very good brain to mouth filter. Or a very good brain, period. I’m going to stop talking now.”
It took all of Cooper’s concentration to finish what he was doing in carefully maintained silence, then he went and picked up the rest of the containers and boxes that had bounced further down the stairs while Sasha continued wiping everything down.
“Oh, hey,” Cooper said, holding up the box from a microwavable spaghetti meal, “I like these. I haven’t had them in a long time ‘cause we’re too poor, so we have to just make our own spaghetti. Or, well, Abra makes it for us, and actually he’s pretty good at it so I don’t know why I’m complaining.” Cooper put the things he’d collected in the garbage bag and grabbed a cloth of his own to help Sasha with the wiping. “He has this thing with all these little jars of spices and he sprinkles in little bits of this and that like a food wizard and it’s always really nice annnd I’m talking again.” Cooper sighed. “I actually was trying.”
Cooper started singing to himself instead. It was the best way he knew to keep himself from talking, though it wasn’t much use when what he actually needed was to be quiet. It was much easier to keep his mouth occupied with singing than it was to stay focussed on not using it at all.
He was a mediocre singer, but he didn’t really care. He found that not being good at things often made people like you more because it made them feel better about also not being good at them or about being better at them than you. That was a good thing, because Cooper couldn’t really think of much he actually was good at.
“Okay, done,” Cooper said as he tied off the garbage bag. “I’ll just run this down to the bin.”
Cooper jogged downstairs with the bag of garbage and threw it away. He had expected Sasha to have disappeared back into his apartment by the time he got back, but instead he had carried to dustpan and brush and the bucket of water upstairs and set them in front of the door to Cooper’s apartment.
“Oh, thanks for bringing them back up,” Cooper told him.
Sasha patted his hands against the sides of his thighs a few times, nodded, and then turned and went inside his apartment.
Cooper grinned. Sasha was so fucking cute.
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