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One of the neighbors is setting off fireworks down on the parking lot.
That seems dangerous, Stefan thinks absently, gazing down from his balcony. Good thing he thought to park his car somewhere safe earlier yesterday.
“Hey!” someone is shouting from the balcony above his, on the fourth floor. “Hey! Watch out for my car, assholes!”
One of the people with the fireworks holds both middle fingers up, and Stefan snorts. That’s one way to start the new year.
“Are you laughing at me?” the man above him asks.
Stefan looks up, leaning one elbow on the railing to bend backwards.
“It’s a better way to start the year than arguing with people,” he tells the guy, who is also leaning over his railing. Although they have never really spoken, he recognizes him from having seen him around the building by the wispy hair framing his angular, pale face.
“Well, they shouldn’t be irresponsible,” he grumbles. “Though I suppose if they blow my car up, that’s my New Year’s resolution done.”
“How so? Your resolution is to wreck your car?”
A firework flashes by, what feels like centimeters from his head, and Stefan swears, almost falling off his balcony when his elbow slips.
“Never mind, I get you,” he tells his upstairs neighbor, but the man doesn’t answer, and when Stefan cautiously looks up after shooting a wary glance at the pyromaniacs downstairs, he doesn’t see his head anymore either. Did that firework hit him or something? “Hey, are you alright?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” the man replies from right next to him, and then there’s a steadying hand on his shoulder when he almost falls over the railing again. “I probably shouldn’t ask if you want some champagne.”
Stefan blinks at him, aware of how incredibly dumb he must look, and the man just grins, his tongue touching his front teeth. He is holding a half-full bottle of champagne, or some sparkly wine anyway, and his eyes are bright with amusement.
“I’ve had, like, one beer,” Stefan says faintly once his heart feels like it’s beating a normal rhythm again. More fireworks whizz by. “You startled me. What are you doing here?”
He shrugs. “Seems more fun than yelling at our neighbors.”
“Fair.”
Grinning, he holds a hand out. He’s wearing fingerless gloves, and his nails are covered in chipped nail polish, which makes Stefan smile.
“I’m Dragos.”
“Stefan,” he replies, shaking, the proffered hand. “Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year! So, champagne?”
He eyes the bottle. “Sounds good. I’ll go get some glasses.”
He grabs something to put the drink in from the kitchen, and they toast to resolutions on the balcony.
“Mine isn’t to wreck my car,” Dragos tells him. “I just want to use it less.”
Stefan hums. “That’s a good one.”
“What about you?” A burst of blue light casts strange shadows on Dragos’s face. Stefan has no idea what color his eyes are—they seem nearly purple in this light.
“Me?” he grimaces. “I want to quit smoking.”
A sympathetic, yet wry nod.
“Good luck. I’ve been there. Hey, tell you what. Let’s keep an eye on each other.” He gestures with his mostly-empty glass, somehow still managing to launch some drops onto his massive scarf, that is draped across his shoulders like some sort of toga.
“What do you mean?” Stefan asks, amused.
“Exactly that! You know, motivate each other and all that.”
“So, if I see you going for your car…”
Another expansive gesture. “Go on and yell at me. ‘Hey, Bălan, stop ruining the environment!’”
“I can do that.” It does sounds like a smart idea, in a way, although possibly only because his sparkly wine seems to be gone already and he’s been drinking from a coffee mug. “Can you do, ‘Hey, Borisov, stop ruining your lungs’?”
“I’ll do my best,” Dragos says solemnly. He raises his empty glass with one hand and the equally empty bottle with the other. “To the new year!”
“To the new year,” he repeats, and mirrors Dragos’s wide grin easily. Overhead, bright sparks ignite the sky in color.
Everything smells like smoke for three days after January starts, which isn’t all that conductive to Stefan’s resolution. While he did manage to start smoking a lot less over the past year, stopping altogether proves difficult, and he isn’t proud to say that he lapses more than once.
The first time Dragos catches him at it, the man has just parked his dreaded car, and old thing Stefan isn’t sure is supposed to have that rusty red color, and walks past him on the way to the mailboxes.
“Hey Borisov, stop ruining your lungs,” he says, raising one thin, arched eyebrow. His eyes are deep brown, Stefan can see now, in the watery sunlight.
“Stop ruining the environment and I’ll think about it.”
“It’s cold,” Dragos replies, sounding petulant but blushing ever so faintly. It’s very obvious on his pale skin.
“Not for much longer if you keep contributing to global warming like that.” Stefan pushes his cigarette out on the ashtray attached to the trash bin, smiling down at his own feet when Dragos laughs.
“That’s fair. Still, what’s your excuse?”
“Reorganizations at my job, my parents nagging me about settling down, I’m addicted and have no self-control? Take your pick.” He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat, hunching his shoulder. Even sheltered from the wind, it is cold on the corner of the parking lot.
“All very good excuses.”
“No, they’re not,” Stefan grumbles. He wants another cigarette, but starts chewing on the inside of his cheek instead, hoping it will remedy the craving. It doesn’t. His cheek starts bleeding.
Dragos shoots him a smile that looks simultaneously mocking and sympathetic. Stefan pulls a pained face back, then follows him when he walks into their building, hovering as he checks for mail. Number 44.
“Anyway, where did you take your car?”
That garners him the guiltiest smile he has ever seen on anyone over the age of six, so he laughs and gestures for Dragos to share.
“I’d say don’t laugh, but I see it’s too late for that.” Dragos rocks back on the heels of his worn-out boots. “I forgot to buy candles.”
Stefan blinks. “The supermarket is less than ten minutes away by bike.”
“Yeah, funny story… I technically do have a bike, but my brother borrowed it last summer and I think it has shifted its loyalties.”
“Borrow mine next time. I always walk to the bus stop, anyway,” Stefan tells him, not really thinking about it. It’s easy to get along with Dragos, because even if he seems a little eccentric, what with the leather pants he’s currently wearing and the strange symbols embroidered on his scarf, he’s got an approachable air about him and talks without difficulty—something that Stefan knows he doesn’t excel at, himself. Most of the time, anyway.
“What, no, really?”
“Yeah, come on, man, I have to live in this world you’re filling with fumes too.”
Dragos laughs at that—a full-bodied, mirthful thing that makes Stefan feel as though he’s accomplished something significant. Although there’s a hoarse quality to the laughter as there is to Dragos’s voice, it also sounds warm, and it’s still there when Dragos speaks again, coloring his voice with amusement despite the grave tone he’s trying to affect.
“You’re right, I am the sole cause of the climate’s decline.”
“It’s terrible,” Stefan agrees.
“I’d gladly borrow your bike.”
So Stefan shows him where to find the old thing and promises to dig up the key so, whenever Dragos will need it, he can come by and borrow it.
He realizes later that he was so occupied with that, that he didn’t even think about smoking any more cigarettes that day.
Huh. Nice.
He manages to keep it up for five whole days that time, long enough for Dragos to want to borrow his bike all of nine times.
“I keep forgetting things!” he laments. And then, “I have too much coffee, do you want a cup?”
It’s halfway through the month, when the reorganizations are getting awfully close to Stefan’s department and his mother sees fit to remind him that she’d like to be a grandmother once again, that Stefan gets close to saying to hell with resolutions and smoking his way through a whole pack like he hasn’t done in years. He might be a little rude to Dragos when he comes asking for the bike key again. A little.
The man stares at him from the balcony, sharp eyes unreadable. Stefan sighs.
“Sorry.”
“Okay!” Dragos exclaims, suddenly shouldering his way into Stefan’s apartment. “Tell me you’re free this afternoon, because you need a break.”
“I—no—I am, but what are you talking about?”
They’ve crossed the tiny hall into the living room, where Dragos whirls around theatrically, hair flying everywhere, and spreads his arms.
“What motivation do I have to bike places if you start smoking again?”
Despite himself, Stefan is amused by that reasoning. He admittedly doesn’t know Dragos that well—yet—but has the feeling this sort of overly dramatic but well-meaning behavior is typical for him. It’s new to Stefan, but he thinks he appreciates it.
“The environment?” he suggests. “The high cost of gasoline?”
“The immense feeling of guilt I’d carry around everywhere? Yeah, got it.” Dragos tugs at his earlobe. “But really, it’s good to distract yourself. Find other uses for your mouth. Time. Fuck, shit, I swear I meant to say time. Either.”
“Freudian,” Stefan mutters, and he doesn’t think he imagines that Dragos actually does look at his mouth after that.
“Very funny.”
“What do you suggest I do with either, then?”
In response, Dragos sticks his tongue out at him.
“How mature.”
“Hey, I’m turning thirty this year. I need to enjoy my youth while it lasts. Anyway—”
“You know I’m 35, don’t you?”
“I do now. You look great for a senior citizen, Stefan.”
He narrows his eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment. What did you want to say?”
“Right! Well, I don’t know what you generally do in your free time, but I was planning to go into town. There’s a new exposition at the local museum. You’re welcome to come along.”
“I don’t know anything about art.”
Dragos grins. “Neither do I, but it’s free and my brother’s work is in it.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on, what were your plans? Sit here consumed with lust for the rest of the afternoon?”
That’s fair, although Stefan definitely wouldn’t have used the word lust. The way Dragos says it, with a slight lisp and a quirk of his eyebrows, makes it almost endearing, though.
“Alright then.” He spreads his hands helplessly. “Let’s go.”
“Great! One problem: there’s only one bike.”
They look at each other from across the living room, and then both dive for the key to the bike in question on the coffee table. Well—Dragos actually fucking dives. Stefan just makes a grab, which is more successful, so he can jump back and hold the key out of Dragos’s reach, trying to make the most of the approximately two centimeters he has on the man.
“Aw, come on,” Dragos says, and the door handle digs into Stefan’s spine when he takes a step back to avoid his grabby hands. “I wanna drive.”
“No you’re not—you’re not. No one is.”
He’s standing on his tiptoes now, dangling the key away from Dragos while Dragos, in turn, is not quite succeeding in supporting himself against the door enough to prevent several stretches of his body from touching him.
“Stop it,” he says, and then Dragos looks down at him instead of up at the key, almost butting him in the nose with his sharp chin, and Stefan rather forgets whether he had a particular continuation of that sentence in mind, because the glimmer in the rust-brown eyes is… Distracting.
At least until Dragos pushes himself forward and yanks the key from his hand. He stays too close, filling Stefan’s nostrils with cinnamon.
“Fine, spoilsport,” His voice has dropped into a low tone that makes it more husky than its usual hoarse. “We’ll take the car.”
He still manages to talk Stefan into letting him drive, but Stefan doesn’t mind that.
The exposition turns out to be a photography one, and it’s surprisingly amusing with Dragos there, because the man may not know much about photography—albeit more than Stefan does—but he does seem to know a lot about people, and everything reminds him of some weird anecdote he has to share. He’s got a lot of strange friends—and a very vivid imagination.
It’s turned evening before Stefan realizes, and he hasn’t wanted to smoke again.
“Oh,” Dragos says suddenly, pulling an old, cracked smartphone out of an inner pocket of his coat, “is that the time? Stefan, how about dinner?”
Stefan scrubs the back of his head, gaze sliding over to one of the photographs. Dragos makes a small, inquiring noise.
“I mean, dinner sounds great, I’m definitely hungry, but I can’t really… After December, I don’t think I should be spending money on—”
“Oh, no, I feel you.” He gives an easy grin that immediately relieves some of Stefan’s anxiety.
It’s not just that he spent that much money in December; with the uncertainty of his job right now, he isn’t willing to spend much in general.
“So what then?”
“It’s hard to cook for one person, you know. I have more than enough ingredients for two.” Dragos catches Stefan’s gaze, still smiling, his eyes almost red in this ambient light. One capricious lock of hair seems to be stuck on his eyebrow. Stefan wants to flick it away, but decides against it, unsure if it would be appreciated after they’ve known each other such a short time.
“You sure?” he just asks, smiling when Dragos shakes his hair free as he nods.
“You can return the favor someday.”
“I like cooking, you know,” Stefan tells Dragos later, over slightly mushy rice.
“Yeah?” That seems to amuse him. “You’re full of surprises.”
“You’ve known me for less than three weeks,” he counters, gesturing with his fork.
“Feels longer.”
Stefan can’t argue with that.
Later still, he stares at the ceiling of his bedroom, wishing Dragos’s direct neighbors would stop puttering around so he can get to sleep, and reflects that he’d like to do something like today with Dragos again. That sounds like he wants to date the guy, but, well, fair’s fair, he wouldn’t be opposed to giving that a try either.
He’s certain, at least, that Dragos likes men after he leered very overtly at a photograph of an attractive man this afternoon. Stefan thinks it was his way of checking how he’d take it, so he responded by doing the same thing and shrugging when Dragos laughed.
It somehow wasn’t the strangest exchange of the day.
A few days and zero cigarettes later, Stefan meets Dragos’s photographer brother, who looks so much like Dragos that he has to do a double take.
“Behold,” Dragos, gesturing expansively as he’s wont to do, “this is the reason I quit smoking.”
“That’s a long name.”
A blink, thin lips parting as if he wants to say something but has lost the thread of the conversation. Stefan grins. It is, he has found out, not easy to get Dragos to be quiet, or still, and he finds it satisfying when he manages, even if—he realizes with a start—that definitely counted as a dad joke.
“I can see why you get along,” says the younger brother. “I’m Luca.”
“Stefan.” He probably doesn’t imagine the look of approval Luca shoots Dragos, and he guesses that’s a good thing.
They’ve run into each other by the stairs after Stefan got home from work. Dragos is seeing Luca out, so he waits until he’s done with that, and then, as has very quickly become commonplace over the past days, they agree to have dinner together.
It is much easier to cook for two people than for just yourself. Besides, Dragos is enthusiastic about Stefan’s skills in the kitchen, and it’s always nice to be appreciated.
“Has it got anything to do with your job?” Dragos asks, while he stands in the doorway to the tiny kitchen and tries to get all the strands of his hair into a small ponytail.
“What, me being a good cook?” Stefan laughs. “I wouldn’t think so. We just build the kitchens, we don’t get to test them.”
“Sad. I bet you’ve made some sexy stuff.”
“Sexy—” His spoon clangs against the side of the pan when he laughs. “Sexy kitchens?”
Seemingly having given up on his ponytail, Dragos steps into the kitchen and sidles up to peer into the pans. Stefan watches him with one eye, angling himself slightly towards him.
“Well, you know.” Dragos nudges him gently, not looking at him. “If you’re building them.”
The tone of his voice holds the middle between serious and joking, as if he wants to be able to play it off as a joke, but there’s a certain wobble to it, as well. A catch that sounds like nervousness.
“I’m the last person I’d describe as sexy,” Stefan says, trying to sound earnest and not like he’s making fun of Dragos.
“Your eyes, Borisov. You’ve got…” He trails off, and Stefan turns the heat low so he can focus on him. “Sorry, I’m not very good at… Uh, well, what I’m trying to say is that I think you’re—you’re attractive, and you’re a really nice guy, and please stop me, Stefan.”
“No, go on.”
Dragos’s eyes are wide, and he’s touching his tongue to his front teeth, looking far younger than 29.
“Okay, I just wanted to know if you’d like to—go on a date, with me? And see where it goes?” He bites his lip. “I think we’d be good friends, but I’m curious if we could be good romantically too.”
“So am I, really.” Stefan grins. “Yeah, that sounds great, Dra. I’d love to.”
“Dra?”
He opens and closes his mouth. Smiles helplessly.
“I like it.” Dragos touches the back of Stefan’s hand, his fingers cold in the warm kitchen, despite the blush high on his sharp cheekbones. “Thanks.”
“For the nickname, or…”
“The other thing, Borisov.” An arched eyebrow that makes Stefan grin.
“My pleasure. I hope.” Now, it’s his turn to blush. Dragos snorts when he turns back to the pans and turns the heat back up, still leaning into his side.
“I hope so too.” His breath is hot on Stefan’s jaw when his nose nudges against his cheek, and he smells like cinnamon again, which is quickly becoming familiar. Stefan smiles.
“Don’t think this gets you out of helping me make dinner.”
Grumbling ostentatiously, Dragos makes his way to the counter and busies himself cutting vegetables, tucking his hair behind his ears every once in a while. He’s still smiling, though, so Stefan doesn’t think he really minds.
“Hey, Stefan?” He says after a while, standing in the middle of the kitchen.
“Hm?”
“Is this a date?”
“No, that’s a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.”
Dragos looks down at the jar in his hands, then up at Stefan with a supremely unimpressed look.
“I’m sorry,” Stefan snorts. “You make it too easy. It can be a date if you want it to be.”
“Great.” He bites his lip. “Good.”
Because it’s been deemed a date, Dragos jokingly insists that Stefan walks him home later that evening, after they’ve had dinner and watched some talent show while Stefan’s head kept drooping onto Dragos’s shoulder—and Jesus, he’s not that old yet, is he?
He agrees, because he finds himself unwilling to let the guy go yet, and Dragos stops in front of his own door and shuffles his feet like a teenager being dropped off, so he comes in for coffee and an attempt at a card game. He really is tired, though, and they both have work tomorrow, so they decide to call it a night quickly.
“See you soon,” Dragos tells him when they’re at the door this time, smiling softly in the low light of his hall, and Stefan thinks, this could be something. He’s excited to find out.
Besides, it’s an excellent distraction from wanting to smoke.
Glancing down the balcony, Dragos steps into his space and kisses his cheek, which, stupidly, makes him blush more furiously than anything else he’s done. With a laugh, Dragos runs his fingers over the redness.
“Shut up,” Stefan mumbles, and Dragos flicks his jaw in return.
“Goodnight, Stefan.”
“Goodnight, Dra.”
January seems to have flashed by when they manage to find time for a second official date on its last day. Stefan has smoked three more cigarettes—all in the span of one hour, when he thought he’d actually lost his job, but it turned out for the better. Of course, when he wanted to properly kiss Dragos for the first time after that, full of relief, the man had complained of nicotine and refused.
They’ve actually gone out this time, to a local band’s concert, and although Stefan has to admit it isn’t entirely his kind of music and Dragos looks dubious from time to time as well, it’s fun all the same. He doesn’t know what kind of music Dragos does like, but he reckons there’ll be time to find out, during the rest of the year. Beyond that, possibly. Long-term plans have never been his strongest suit, so he’ll see what life brings.
Right now, life has brought him back to his own hall, pressed against the door while Dragos does kiss him, laughing into Stefan’s mouth when he complains that his back is getting cold.
“I’m sorry for your old bones,” he teases.
Stefan would love to refute that—because they’re not old—but then he trips over his own rug when they make their way to the living room and hits his shoulder on the table and Dragos has to use his terrible car to drive him to the first aid post, so he thinks the point would be moot.
“Well, that was embarrassing,” he says faintly when he’s back home, with instructions to take it easy for a few days, and Dragos just laughs sleepily.
“I’m sure you’ll survive.” He presses cold fingers against Stefan’s shoulder, then warm lips. “Hm, I think it’ll be fine.”
February dawns with Dragos tucked securely against Stefan’s side.
It does hurt a bit, but he isn’t complaining.