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Joly wasn’t sure what to make of his next-door neighbor. On the one hand, he knew an awful lot about him. For one thing, Bossuet had terrible luck, and had since he was a child. Some of it was chalked up to clumsiness, and most of that clumsiness chalked up to Bossuet being extremely nearsighted — “This explains why I was bad at sports,” Bossuet told Joly — but getting glasses and, in later years, contacts, did not alleviate all of the bad luck, some of which still manifested as clumsiness — “This did not explain how I still managed to hit myself in the face with my own golf club,” Bossuet continued. “And we were playing mini-golf.” He also learned that Bossuet was a law student, a good-natured fellow always down for a drink or a meal out with friends, and a man with an irrepressible sense of humor, often at himself and his circumstances
On the other hand, he had found all this out in the course of fifteen minutes after Joly had just moved in and Bossuet had come over to introduce himself, because when Bossuet got on a roll, he just tended to keep talking.
They were on good terms, though, always smiling at each other and stopping to chat in the halls. And, sure, Joly found his next-door neighbor attractive, even his bald head, which wasn’t normally something Joly was into. But for the most part, they existed as all next-door neighbors do, on quick small talk in the halls and promptly forgetting about each other for the most part when they were securely in their rooms.
Until one day, when Bossuet knocked on Joly’s door and asked if Joly would mind looking after Bossuet’s cat.
“I didn’t know you have a cat,” Joly said.
Bossuet nodded. “Oh, sure. Mittens. I adopted him about a month ago now? But I was planning on going out of town next weekend, back to my parents’, since it’s my dad’s birthday, and I was hoping you might look after him. You don’t have to bring him into your apartment or anything, just get him fresh food and water twice a day.”
Joly hesitated. He wasn’t fond of animals, for a variety of reasons, including having to dissect a cat at one point which, though fascinating, had put him off from the live versions a bit. “I don’t know…” he hedged.
Bossuet gave him his most charming grin. “Look, I get why you’re hesitant. It’s a big responsibility. Would it help if I told you that it couldn’t possibly compare to my worst pet-sitting experience of all time?” Joly shrugged, intrigued, and Bossuet’s grin widened. “So you know Combeferre, right, who used to live here? Well, he had these weird fish things that he brought home from his lab. I don’t remember their name, it started with an ‘a’, I think—”
“Axolotls,” Joly suggested. “They’re used for a lot of scientific reasons. They’re not actually fish, though, they’re amphibians.”
“Well that explains why they looked so weird,” Bossuet said, nodding sagely. “Anyway, he asks me to look after them, and I’m like, sure, not a problem. So I bring their tank into my apartment because he’s gonna be gone for like a week and I don’t trust myself in other people’s places where I don’t know where all their breakables are. Anyway, I bring their tank in, everything seems fine, no big deal. Now, I know you’re not supposed to, but sometimes I feed the stray cats that hang around our building. And sure, sometimes a raccoon wanders in, but you know, it’s whatever. And they’re always the sweetest kitties and I just can’t help myself and it’s just dry food, you know? Except on major holidays and bank holidays and when I don’t have work or school and want to give them a little bit of wet food.”
Joly stared at Bossuet, trying to figure out the connection between the axolotls and the stray cats while simultaneously trying to process Bossuet’s story. “Um, right,” he said, not that Bossuet needed the encouragement.
Bossuet nodded again. “So anyway, to make a long story short, a cat gets into my apartment. And my first thought is, the cat’s gonna go for the weird fish things, because that’s cats do, right?”
Though Joly wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical or not, he shrugged and said, “Right.”
“Wrong. This cat wants nothing to do with those things. But at the time, I didn’t quite know that. So I grab the broom, figuring I’d need it to keep cat away from the fishtank, right? Only, well, I was a bit enthusiastic, shall we say, with wielding the broom? And I used to have this sort of chandelier thing-y, sort of like what you’d see in a bar, over a pool table? And like, this shouldn’t have been an issue, because we have vaulted ceilings, but, uh, I kind of hit the chandelier with the broom. And I kind of knocked it off the ceiling.”
Joly, who could see now where this story was headed, covered his mouth with his hands. “Oh, no,” he said. “And it crashed into the tank and broke it?”
Bossuet looked guilty. “Well, not quite. It was a rather sturdy tank, apparently. The chandelier crashed into it, alright, wires still attached, and the light still on. And apparently, when you put something electric into water with the electricity still going through it, well, it fries whatever happens to be living in that water.” Joly let out a gasp, though he was also trying desperately not to laugh, and Bossuet nodded. “Yeah. So that’s a conversation I had never planned on having with Combeferre. I believe he has a turtle now? And they’re very happy together.”
Joly couldn’t help himself — he practically doubled over laughing, and Bossuet joined in, beaming at him. “So you see,” Bossuet said as a conclusion, “looking after my cat can’t possibly be that bad.”
“I suppose not,” Joly agreed reluctantly, still laughing.
Bossuet grinned. “You’re the best, Jolllly. Hang on, I’ll grab my cat and bring him over so that you can meet him!”
“That’s really not necessary!” Joly called at Bossuet’s retreating back, though it didn’t seem to do any good. He froze when he saw Bossuet coming out of his apartment, large, gray animal clutched in his arms. “Bossuet,” Joly said, as calmly as he could, ready to slam the door because there was no way that Joly was letting that thing in here, not with the number of diseases it could be carrying, “that’s not a cat. That’s a raccoon.”
Bossuet looked down at the masked creature in his arms, surprised. “Well, damn,” he said, almost conversationally. “Where’d my cat go?”
He dropped the raccoon and Joly made a terrified squawking noise, moving to slam his door — except that Bossuet’s foot happened to be in the way. “Ow,” Bossuet said, still conversational, as the raccoon skittered back into Bossuet’s open apartment.
Joly took one look at Bossuet’s face, which had drained of all color, and his foot, still pinched at an odd angle between the door and the doorjamb, and realized he probably didn’t know his own strength, and that this was probably not a good thing. “Right,” he said briskly, in his emergency room tone. “We’re going to the hospital.”
Several hours, two x-rays, and a rather hilarious story to tell to the nurses later, Bossuet had his foot neatly encased in a splint (when asked if he needed to be provided with crutches, Bossuet assured them that he had several pairs lying around his apartment for this very reason), and Joly wheeled him out to his car in the hospital-provided wheelchair. Bossuet grinned at him. “So I guess we don’t need to worry about you looking after my cat.”
Joly just shook his head as he slid into the driver’s seat. “No, apparently not.”
Bossuet smirked at him. “Well, in that case, perhaps I can infringe on your neighborly sense of helpfulness for one more thing.”
“Anything,” Joly said instantly, still feeling guilty over slamming Bossuet’s foot in his door.
Bossuet’s grin widened. “Go out with me. On a date.”
Joly looked over at him and almost drove off the road. “Please tell me you didn’t plan all of this as some elaborate ruse to get me to agree to a date,” he said, his voice higher-pitched than normal.
“With my luck? Hell no. I don’t plan these things for that very reason. And I wasn’t even planning on asking you out when I woke up this morning.” Bossuet glanced over at Joly and quickly elaborated, “I mean, I like you, I have liked you since I met you, and I’ve wanted to ask you out, but I just wasn’t planning on it, you know?”
Blushing slightly, Joly said, “Well, I will go out with you, on a date. Though since we may want to wait until after your foot has healed a little, maybe we can stay in first? Watch a movie or something?”
Bossuet grinned at him. “That sounds absolutely perfect. You can make the popcorn, though. I tend to burn it.”
“Color me absolutely shocked,” Joly muttered. He glanced over at Bossuet and asked, curious, “What made you decide to change your mind and ask me out today?”
Bossuet laughed. “Honestly? After the day we’ve had, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try my luck.”