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On any other morning, volunteering to get up and make the coffee would have been an act of generosity. On this morning, I was the generous one for letting Justin do it. We both wanted to have a snoop around, check if our new housemate was up and see how he was settling in. 

Justin had barely stepped out of the room when he backtracked and silently beckoned to me. I got up and followed him to the living room.

Flynn was asleep on the sofa. The sofa, which had been turned around to face away from the coffee table. I was confused until I noticed that the light on the display cabinet was switched on—and then I was still confused, but in a slightly different way. Justin and I exchanged baffled looks and made our way silently to the kitchen.

“What the fuck,” Justin grumbled as he went to start the coffee maker. I was the only person in the world who would have guessed he wasn’t angry.

“I hope the room’s okay,” I said. “Do you think finding out about Tammy spooked him? Some people believe in ghosts.”

“Yeah, that would make sense.” He made a face, reconsidered. “Well, it would make the part where he’s not in his room make sense, anyway. If that’s the problem, you can take the shop shift today and I’ll stay home and help him swap into the study.”

I nodded. “It’s strange, though, right? He seemed fine last night. He used her towels and everything.”

“I’m beginning to think that Flynn is a lot better at seeming fine than he is at being fine.”

“I’m not sure how fine it makes him seem when we wake up to find him basking in the glow of uranium glass.”

Justin grunted an acknowledgement, a frown fixed firmly on his face as he contemplated the situation we’d found ourselves in. He’d always been a fixer, whether it be of old furniture or whatever life happened to put in front of him. He existed to set the world to rights.

And maybe I existed to smile at him fondly as he scowled his way through a problem he couldn’t hope to puzzle out just yet.

I was also the one who, when we heard Flynn start to stir, went out and said, “Good morning. Would you like a coffee?”

Flynn paused mid-stretch, one hand buried in his hopelessly ruffled hair. “Oh, uh, yeah, thanks. And good morning!”

“I hope the room was okay…?”

Flynn nodded as he yawned, then stopped, looked around, and seemed to realise all at once why I was asking. “Yeah, uh. Sorry, just—nightmare. Or not really a nightmare, really, but I woke up and got confused about where I was, so…” He waved a hand in the direction of the uranium glass. “Wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get confused again.”

Justin leant against the doorway by my side. “Yeah. Nothing confusing about this.”

“Well, y’know. Makes it hard to forget where I am, right?”

And as crazy as it had felt to blindly step into the scene he’d created, it did make a kind of sense. What nightmare had he woken up in? Had it been the ex-boyfriend? Whatever had ended his stint at his old house? Something from a childhood that, from his brief description, had sounded more than a little hectic?

I was starting to understand Ethan’s description of Flynn. He’d stumbled his way into a bizarre situation that had seemed irrational on the surface, but beneath that was a complex mind that had found a creative way to solve a problem. The dark had scared him, so he’d given himself a nightlight.

I gave Justin a pat on the shoulder. “Why don’t you help him move the sofa back while I get that coffee?”

Back in the kitchen, I listened as I gathered mugs. Flynn apologised. Justin told him it was okay. Unfortunately, Justin wasn’t very good at tone. In his head, he’d be worrying about what was haunting Flynn and how to chase those ghosts away. That made it into his voice in a way that made him sound annoyed.

And so Flynn apologised again, and Justin told him it was okay again, but now Justin was frustrated that he couldn’t express himself and that bled through.

He was a lot better when he had physical expression in his arsenal. He’d wrap Tammy in his arms, rock her back and forth, stroke a hand over her hair, and it didn’t matter if his voice came out gruff. She knew he wasn’t mad about having to clean up her vomit again.

But unfortunately that was not an appropriate way to soothe the frazzled nerves of your new housemate, so Flynn still looked worried by the time I brought the coffee out. 

Justin took his and left the room. He really did make it look dramatic, like he was storming out in a huff. I didn’t blame Flynn for looking skeptical when I told him, “He’s not mad.” I felt like one of those owners insisting that their blatantly aggressive dog was friendly. But he was!

And to prove it, he returned just a couple of minutes later with a gaudy lamp in hand. It was bright red and had a fringe hung with glass crystals. He offered it to Flynn. “There’s a dimmer switch on it. Should do the job.”

Flynn’s eyes widened. “Oh, thanks! Is this an antique?”

Justin snorted.

“No,” I answered. “Sometimes you buy a lot at an auction, and that lot includes some very nice vintage furniture and one hideous modern lamp. We were planning to make it the charity store’s problem the next time we did a drop off.”

“Well, maybe if you don’t want it, I can just keep it and it can be the first piece of furniture I actually own for myself?”

I wouldn’t have classified a table lamp as ‘furniture,’ but I wasn’t about to ruin this for him. “You’re very welcome to it. I hope it helps. If it doesn’t, feel free to wake us up.”

Flynn let out an awkward laugh, like he wasn’t quite sure if I’d been joking. “Nah, I wouldn’t want to bother you. I can figure it out for myself.”

“By rearranging the furniture,” Justin said, deadpan.

A little too deadpan, I guess, because Flynn grimaced. “Yeah, sorry. Messing with your stuff on my first night here probably isn’t very cool. I do get that.”

“It’s fine, Flynn,” I insisted. “I’m glad you found a way to get some sleep. We’re glad.”

Justin nodded his agreement. I hoped it was convincing, but I worried he came off as the grumpy husband who stood behind his much kinder wife and obediently went along with what she said out of duty. Which wasn’t at all how things actually were.

“Anyway, why don’t we have some breakfast?” I suggested.

It turned out Flynn had his own food in the form of meal replacement shakes. That wasn’t really food in my mind, but with a body like that, he probably needed the protein. I did manage to convince him to throw in a few extra bits and bobs after showing him how to use our smoothie blender. Some frozen fruit, a banana, a spoonful of honey, some yogurt. Hopefully I wasn’t messing up his macros. He seemed happy with the result.

He didn’t stay with us to drink it while we had breakfast, though. That was the one downside of an adult housemate compared to a child you had custody of. You couldn’t do things like mandate shared family mealtimes. If they were more interested in taking their new lamp back to their room, jingling the glass crystals together as they walked away, that was their prerogative.

I didn’t see him again before Justin left to open the shop and I shut myself in the study to get stuck into some paperwork. I forced my way through a couple of hours of distracted work before I finally rewarded myself with a bit of snooping. 

Flynn wasn’t in his room, but his shoes were still by the door where he’d left them last night, so I assumed he hadn’t gone out. I set them in a sunny spot to dry and continued my search.

I finally found him in the laundry, bent over a sink full of bubbly water and clothes, a half empty bottle of fruity body wash that could only have been scavenged from Tammy’s old things sitting open on top of the washing machine. I watched as Flynn sloshed the clothing around in the sink.

“Are you… hand washing those?” I inquired.

“Huh?” Flynn asked, his head jerking round. “Oh, yeah.”

I reached into the sink, dug up a random article of clothing—a T-shirt—and checked the tag. “This can go in the machine. I’d think most of these can?”

“Yeah,” Flynn said, dragging the word out slightly. “But what if someone else wanted to use it? Also, I don’t know how, and I might break it if I mess with it. And I don’t have, like… laundry washing stuff…”

“Laundry detergent?” I asked, offering him the bottle from the shelf.

“That’s not mine.”

“The laundry detergent is for the household, I do laundry for me and Justin on Sunday mornings, and I’ll show you how to use this machine—if you’ll let me.”

“Yeah? That’d be great, actually. My last place it was just, y’know. Too many people. You never knew when the machine would be free, and you never knew where your clothes would end up if someone else decided they needed to use it. So I figured, machines haven’t been around forever, right? There are other ways to clean clothes.”

I wasn’t sure sloshing clothes around in a sink with a few squirts of vanilla raspberry body wash quite aligned with traditional ways of doing things, but I respected the effort. I always dreaded when it came time to clean a few of the more delicate articles of clothing I owned that could only be washed by hand. He may have been a little behind on his life skills, but he wasn’t lazy about it in the way that young men often were—unwilling to adapt to a world in which their mothers wouldn’t tidy up after them.

Even after draining the sink and squeezing as much water out of Flynn’s clothes as possible, we still sloshed a lot of water onto the floor getting them into the machine. Fortunately, Justin didn’t like to throw anything away that might still have some use in it, so we had a whole stack of old towels to dry up with.

There was something so invigorating about the way that Flynn moved; dropping to the ground, sweeping his arm out to sop up the water. He had a body made for motion and the spirit to drive it. His brain seemed to be missing that little animal part that whispers in your ear and tells you not to waste energy on unnecessary movement.

Flynn watched closely as I adjusted the dials on the washing machine and put the liquid in the receptacle, a furrow between his brows. “I might need you to show me again next time.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“I know it’s not that complicated, but…”

“We’re happy to help with anything you need help with.” I pressed the start button on the machine and it played its happy little tune. “Just come to me about this one. Justin hasn’t touched a washing machine in years.”

“He doesn’t like doing laundry?”

“We came to the agreement that if I was going to fuss over it so much, I may as well leave him out of it. Your laundry doesn’t really need sorting or special settings, but sometimes his does, or sometimes he borrows something of mine that isn’t so forgiving.” I shrugged. “We’re very domestic sometimes.”

“If there’s cleaning or whatever—like, housework. I’m a hard worker, but I don’t want to use the wrong kind of spray on the wrong kind of thing and damage something. I know it’s kinda shit if you have to hold my hand through everything, but I was thinking if I can help a bit with carrying stuff as well, maybe it won’t be too annoying?”

“I hadn’t even thought about any of that. We’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”

“Just want to make sure I’m not being more trouble than I’m worth.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re worth a whole lot of trouble.”

“That’s good, because I’m told that’s what I can be,” Flynn said, flashing me one of his signature lopsided grins. “Thanks for helping.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

An hour later, I took another break from my paperwork to get a glass of water from the kitchen. I was just taking my first sip when a very worried looking Flynn slipped into the kitchen.

“So, uh, the washing machine’s still going,” he said. “How much longer do you think that’ll be?”

“The cycle takes at least a couple of hours, I’d say. It’s not very fast.”

“Ah, shit,” Flynn said, looking down at himself. He was wearing boxers and a shirt that looked even more well-worn than his usual clothing, presumably what he’d slept in. “I have work, and I put everything in there. I could maybe get away with the shirt, but I think showing up in my boxers might get me in a bit of trouble.”

“You’re a little bigger than me and Justin, but I’m sure I can find something. What are you? A large?”

He shrugged. “Sounds about right?”

I set my glass of water aside and headed down the hall to search through our clothes for something suitable. I returned with a pair of shorts with an elastic waistband and a shirt I knew was a little loose on Justin. “Are these okay? They’re clothes Justin wears while he’s doing his carpentry, but I made sure there weren’t any holes or marks. He’s forever getting woodstain on things.”

Flynn paused with the shorts halfway on. “Oh, uh. I don’t want him to be mad if he finds out I touched his stuff without asking.”

“You didn’t. I gave you permission. That counts for both of us.”

I could tell from the tightening of his expression that he wasn’t all that mollified, but he did finish putting the shorts on. They fit well enough. The shirt was a little tight around the shoulders, but with a body like his, the effect was flattering. 

“Thanks,” Flynn said, moving his arms back and forth to test his range. “You’re a life saver.”

“I am curious what your plan was if the laundry had finished. We don’t have a dryer. Your clothes would have still been wet.”

“Didn’t actually think about it at all,” Flynn admitted. “Anyway, gotta jet. Bus’ll be here in—” He grabbed his phone and checked the time. “Ooh, ten minutes. Thanks, bye!”

I would have guessed the bus stop was at least a ten minute walk away, and he didn’t have his things together or his shoes on yet, so I was fully expecting him to come trudging sadly back half an hour later and was ready to offer him a ride to work. He didn’t, so he must have made it. I was a little disappointed not to have the excuse to abandon my paperwork and spend some more time with our fascinating new housemate.