Chapter Text
James Flint is going to kill his neighbor.
One of these days it’s just going to happen. He’ll finally snap. Flint will feel zero remorse and finally, finally be able to get to sleep peacefully. Something he hasn’t done consistently in the past two months.
Flint has never met his neighbor, but he’s crafted a mental image to work with when contemplating homicide. He knows his neighbor is a man with the last name of Silver, but the rest is up to Flint’s imagination. He pictures him as some kind of gym rat who blasts EDM and techno at inappropriate hours (confirmed), drinks energy drinks and protein shakes religiously, overly muscular, and generally just an obnoxious shit (confirmed because Flint says so). His first name is probably Brent or fucking Chad.
Chad Silver. Sounds like an absolute dick.
Flint’s colleagues have varying opinions regarding his dislike of his neighbor. Gates thinks he’s a touch dramatic about the whole thing. Eleanor usually thinks he’s in the right and supports his murderous plans, which is all the validation he needs. Besides, he’s not actually going to kill his neighbor. Flint is trying to live a less confrontational life after all.
So, with that goal in mind, Flint only thinks about killing his neighbor on nights like these when he’s in bed at 11pm and the acrid smell of burning popcorn comes wafting through the vents. Tonight he’s thinking about kicking Silver right off the roof of their building. Tossing him into the sea would be good, too. Of course he’d have to find a boat...
It’s a bit soothing to think through these situations. It feels more productive than counting sheep at least. Thomas would always suggest that when Flint was restless in the night. He’d run his fingers along Flint’s sides, place kisses on his neck, and tell him to start counting sheep. That suggestion usually led to other activities, but they would eventually end in sleep.
Flint’s chest aches at the memory.
-
It’s nearing midnight when the loud beat starts thumping against the wall. Flint knocks at the wall, but it makes no difference. He puts one of the pillows over his head and wills sleep to pull him under.
-
When he gets to work the next morning Flint drops his things off at his office and makes his way to the lounge. He finds Eleanor talking to another teacher while sipping from a paper cup of coffee. Flint steps past them to fill his own mug.
There’s a newspaper sitting on the table in the middle of the room. He looks at the headline and frowns, skimming the rest of the article. It isn’t long before Eleanor is alongside him sitting partially on the table.
“Morning, Ms. Guthrie,” Flint says, opening the paper.
He can feel her assessing gaze. “Have a rough night?” Flint huffs. “Was it Chad?” she asks just as Hal Gates walks into the lounge.
“Not this again,” Gates sighs loudly. He assumes Flint and Eleanor have started discussing maiming tactics. It’s not an unfair assumption, but Flint is annoyed he’s being reprimanded for something he hasn’t had the chance to do. Eleanor gives him a small, conspiratorial grin as Gates walks by to prepare a cup of tea.
When he’s finished he gives Flint a pointed look. “Have you even tried talking to your landlord? Maybe she can speak to your neighbor about the noise.”
Flint lets out a bark of a laugh. “Of course I’ve tried that.” Gates seems unimpressed. “My neighbor seems to have won her over somehow. She insists he’s not a problem and that there have been no other complaints.”
Flint had given it a month before talking to Rose, one half of the mother-daughter duo that manages the flat complex. When he listed the problems she seemed aghast.
“Mr Silver? Can’t be. He’s such a lovely boy. He joined Lucy and me for dinner just the other week.”
Flint insisted. “There must have been some complaints. He was playing very loud music at one in the morning. On a Tuesday.”
Rose grasped his arm, her grip much tighter than Flint had been expecting. “He’s a good boy,” she said sternly. Though small in stature and climbing in years, Flint has always found her to be intimidating.
“Alright,” Flint had said and Rose let go of his arm.
She smiled revealing a smudge of lipstick on her teeth. “Glad that’s resolved. Don’t forget, rent is due next Friday.”
When she left, Flint was left feeling confused by the entire exchange. Even now Flint feels a little shaken by Rose’s protectiveness.
Gates comes to join them, leaning against the table on Flint’s other side. “Well, then have you tried talking to your neighbor?” Flint opens his mouth to respond, but quickly closes it. To that, Gates raises his eyebrows.
“Smug is not a good look for you, Mr Gates.”
Gates continues to look smug and Eleanor rolls her eyes at the two of them, but smiles nonetheless. Then the first bell of the morning rings signaling everyone should be getting to their classes—teachers included.
Eleanor, as the principle, always does a morning round of the school. This morning there’s a commotion at the other end of the hall she decides to investigate. She waves the two of them off as they head in the opposite direction to their shared office.
“I think we’ve learned something this morning,” Gates says when they stop outside of his classroom.
“Oh?”
Gates levels him with a look. “Talk to your goddamn neighbor, Flint.”
Flint is about to rebuttal, but Gates is already turning towards his classroom, wrangling in unruly teenagers.
-
Flint doesn’t talk to his neighbor.
He fully intended to if the opportunity arose, but Sunday morning comes about and there hasn’t been any kind of disruption from his next door neighbor. Thank fuck.
In the past three years, Flint has come to appreciate the quiet of living on his own.
He’s even managed to cultivate the perfect routine for himself, which includes blissfully uneventful Sundays. Sundays filled with weekly shopping, grading assignments, catching up on news, and tending to miscellaneous things around his flat.
Today is almost one of those blissfully uneventful Sundays.
Flint’s shopping goes by quickly and easily. The bus ride home feels faster than usual and it doesn’t take long before Flint finds himself outside the main entrance of his flat complex, attempting to extract his keys from his back pocket. He manages, but only after admitting defeat and putting one of the bags on the ground. The lift is notoriously slow, so he opts for taking the stairs up to the third floor.
From the end of the hall he notices a woman standing outside of his flat and frowns. When he gets closer, though, he finds she’s actually standing outside of his neighbor’s flat. She’s also holding what appears to be a small animal crate.
Flint sighs. Knowing his luck, she’s bringing a small yapping dog as a new companion for his neighbor.
He starts to walk behind the woman and notices that she has a phone to her ear. “What do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’ I have to go to a meeting, John. I can’t just leave her here,” she says slowly as though she’s talking to a child. “Yes, alright,” she says, noticing Flint for the first time. He raises his eyebrows in lieu of a greeting. She smiles sweetly at him before saying, “Fine, okay. Talk to you later,” in a tone that's annoyed, but clearly fond.
Flint is just crossing the threshold with his groceries when the woman calls out. “Excuse me?”
He takes a deep breath and resists the urge to pretend he didn’t hear her. Flint puts his bag on the floor and turns to face her.
Not since meeting Miranda for the first time has Flint been so taken by a woman as he is now. She has strong features that are further pronounced by the way she holds herself—tall and stoic. Her eyes, however, are warm and gentle. She wears her hair intricately braided and pulled back into a tight ponytail.
Flint has obviously just met this woman, but she commands a regal presence that he can’t help but be in awe over.
“You must be John’s neighbor,” she says, smiling brightly.
The mention of his neighbor breaks the spell and Flint finds himself frowning. Although his neighbor seems to be doing something right to be worthy of a moment of this woman’s time. “John Silver?” His reaction seems to amuse her and she nods. “Then yes, I’m his neighbor. James Flint,” he adds, offering her his hand.
She places the crate on the ground before taking his hand in a firm handshake, something Flint has always appreciated, and smiles. “Madi Scott." As they shake hands Madi seems to look him over carefully. Flint might consider it calculative, intimidating even, if it weren't for the fact that her eyes still seemed gentle. Then it seems whatever she was working on finally comes together.
“I actually have a favor to ask of you," she begins, slowly. "John had told me—promised me, in fact—that he’d be here, but he is not. I have a meeting to run to and I don’t exactly want to leave her outside his door. Would you mind...?” Madi trails off looking, almost guiltily, down to the crate at her feet.
Doing anything for his neighbor is one of the last things that Flint would ever want to do, especially when it involves something in a crate of all things. “I don’t think-”
“It won’t be for very long,” Madi says, bending down to pick up the crate.
“Ms Scott-”
“Please, call me Madi.” Flint attempts to interject, but Madi carries on. “Normally I’d hate to impose like this, but I really do have to run.”
Before he realizes what’s happening, Madi is already pushing the crate into Flint’s arms. He scrambles to take hold of the cage, unable to get a comfortable grip on it, but he manages. Madi smiles at him then, and places a warm hand on his arm. She squeezes it briefly before saying, “I truly appreciate this, James.”
Then she’s turning and heading back down the hall.
“Do you know when he should be getting back?” Flint calls after her.
“Soon!” is all Madi manages to call over her shoulder before disappearing down the stairs.
Flint feels as though he’s just been through a whirlwind. He lifts the crate up to eye level and peers inside. One wide, green eye blinks back at him. The empty spot to the left where her other eye should have been looks as if someone had wiped it away with their thumb.
“Fuck,” Flint says to the cat. It opens its mouth, tiny teeth poking out, and meows at him.
So much for quiet Sundays.
-
Twenty minutes later the cat crate is on the counter, still containing the cat.
He’s not sure what to count this as, but he adds it as another strike against his neighbor. His neighbor that now has a complete name. John Silver.
Fuck John Silver, he thinks.
He's just finished putting the groceries away and starting to plan dinner when Flint hears knocking at the door. “Coming!” he calls, grabbing at the crate. The cat lets out a low yowl at the sudden shift in positions. “Sorry,” Flint says to the cat like a fucking idiot.
When he opens the door Flint realizes he was not at all prepared for what awaited on the other side. Silver, at least he assumes this is Silver, full on beams in Flint’s direction. “Hello there!”
For some reason he finds himself even more annoyed having come face to face with his neighbor. The past two months Flint has created an image of his neighbor to hate and what he’s met with does not match up. John Silver looks like a man Flint wants to hate, but for entirely different reasons.
It makes sense that Rose defended this man so sternly, with his bright, wide smile and brighter blue eyes that crinkle at the corners. That, paired with the dark mass of curls framing his face makes John Silver a man that was meant to charm. He doesn’t look like an honest man, far from it, but he is an attractive man.
He curses himself for agreeing to take the damn cat. Flint could have lived his entire life in blissful ignorance until he was finally ready to confront (or murder) the man.
The cat lets out another long meow and James is suddenly aware that too much time has passed without him saying anything. He lets himself meet Silver’s eyes, and is surprised to find the same wide-eyed expression to still be present. “John Silver,” he introduces. “I’m here to see a man about a cat.”
Flint hates the man.
“You just missed your girlfriend,” Flint says stupidly, pushing the cat towards Silver. He’s not sure where that came from. He generally avoids making assumptions about people, and it’s not like he actually gives a shit about this Silver’s personal life.
Silver holds the cat crate up to eye level and sticks his finger in the door. Flint hears a small, pitiful meow, and a faint smile tugs at Silver’s mouth. He doesn’t look up when he says, “My ex.”
“Er, what?”
“I just missed my ex-girlfriend. Madi and I are no longer together.” Now Silver looks at Flint clearly amused.
“Oh, right,” Flint says, feeling awkward and hating himself for it. “Well, you have your cat. I should be getting back to it,” he says, gesturing back to his mostly unpacked groceries. The ones Silver definitely can’t see.
“Sure,” Silver says easily. “I’ll let you go.” Flint nods and is about to turn in before Silver says, “Nice to finally meet you, James.”
“No,” Flint says sharply.
Silver’s smile fades. “Not nice to finally meet you? Or that’s not your name? You told Madi-”
“No to both. While it is James, you do not get to call me that. And please, make an effort to refrain from playing your music so loud in the evening.”
Flint doesn’t wait for a response and slams the door closed behind him.
That, at least, is satisfying.
-
Later that evening Flint is finishing cooking dinner when there's another knock at the door. Seeing how he's never had any unannounced visitors before the interaction with his neighbor this afternoon, he knows it's going to be John before he gets to the door. A quick look through the peephole confirms this.
Flint sighs deeply and opens the door to find Silver looking slightly on edge. “Oh, hi,” he says, as if he hadn't intended for Flint to answer.
“What do you want?” Flint asks.
Silver winces and lets out a nervous huff of laughter. “You know the cat,” he begins. Flint's face is unmoving. Of course he knows the fucking cat. He nods slowly. “Well, I seem to have lost her.”
“What?” Flint demands. How in the fuck- “How in the fuck do you lose a cat?”
Silver shrugs, annoyance flashing in his eyes. “Fairly easily it seems.” Flint waits for him to continue and raises an eyebrow when he doesn't. Silver rolls his eyes. This time he isn't sure if the annoyance is toward Flint or the cat. "Well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind coming over to help me look for her."
"Don't you have friends that can help you do this?"
Silver glares. "Yes, I have friends, but they're obviously less convenient than the man who is literally right next door to me." He notices the way Silver clenches his jaw, chin sticking out slightly, as if daring Flint to challenge him on this.
Flint holds his gaze, but wavers, turning back to look at the oven. "It shouldn't take too long to find her," Silver adds softer this time. "Two heads, and all that business." Flint might say Silver was pleading with him. Maybe if he knew the man better.
He considers the oven once more, the chicken still needs time to cook. Besides, how long can it take to find a cat in one of these flats? Flint sighs. "Alright, fine. Lead the way."
-
It takes entirely too long to find the goddamn cat.
They spend a half hour searching the living room and the bedroom of Silver’s sparse flat. Flint feels like an idiot checking under the couch and its respective pillows, in the closet, and under the bed. He feels more ridiculous when he finds himself looking shortly after Silver has looked.
"No luck?" Silver asks after emerging from his bedroom a third time.
Flint huffs and shakes his head no. "The cat's bound to turn up. They can't just disappear."
Silver raises his eyebrows in a challenge. "Maybe I've got a magic cat."
"Maybe you're an idiot."
"Yeah, thanks. That’s helpful," Silver says as they both move further into the flat. Flint can hear the eye roll even if he can't see it. He's following behind Silver who is scrutinizing the floor as if the cat has materialized into the floorboards.
When they enter the small dining room there are still a couple of boxes in the middle of being unpacked, it seems. Silver goes to those first. He kneels down awkwardly, and begins rifling through the box. Flint, for whatever reason, finds that he can’t look away from him.
Flint has his hand on the door of a pantry, but he stops. The sight of Silver pushing his hair out of his face is disarmingly attractive. His t-shirt is probably too tight and while his physique doesn’t match the overly athletic one Flint had conjured up, Silver is still lean and muscular. Which is far more in the realm of Flint’s interests.
"Go ahead and look if you want," Silver says with a smirk.
Flint’s ears burn having been caught, but then he notices Silver is pointing behind Flint at the pantry. "Right."
Silver gives him a questioning look, but smiles slyly. Flint resists the urge to punch something. Instead he opens the pantry to find that it is small and sparse, filled mostly with ramen and other instant meal options. It looks like the contents of a university student’s pantry. Silver’s not that young, is he? "For Christ's sake."
"Did you find her?"
"No, but the contents of your pantry is appalling. Are you still in university?"
Silver stands, looking far too cocky for a man that doesn’t even have a can of vegetables in his pantry. "Those days have come and gone. I just enjoy the ease and simplicity of instant noodles.”
Flint sighs, but follows Silver into the kitchen. "How did you even lose the cat? Have you been looking for her since you returned to your flat?"
Silver grimaces. "Not all of that time, no. At first she stayed in her crate, so I let her be while I was doing things. Then I forgot I had a cat and she got a bit underfoot. I tripped and she darted off," he finishes looking far more embarrassed than need be as he gazes at the ground. Some hair falls into his face again, and Flint resolutely does not take note of how nice Silver’s hand looks when tucking it back into place.
Flint is about to say something about the cat, or quite possibly the hair, but Silver’s nose wrinkles in displeasure. "Do you smell that?"
Flint sniffs at the air as Silver moves hurriedly toward the oven and opens it, visibly relieved that he didn't accidentally cook his cat.
"How would she have even- Oh fuck." That would be the pesto stuffed chicken breasts Flint was cooking.
-
His chicken is in fact charred to a crisp—another strike against John Silver. Flint takes it out of the oven and puts the whole mess in the sink so it can cool off before going into the trash. He sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose.
At this point all Flint wants to do is go to bed. Salvage the rest of his Sunday before anything else can happen, but in a moment of weakness, he promised he'd come back to Silver’s after he took care of the remains of his burnt dinner.
"Let me buy you dinner," Silver said, that wide, possibly fake smile spread across his face. "For all you've done today."
"I'd rather you didn't."
"Come on, it's the least I could do."
"No, " he said simply, valiantly.
"What? Is that too chummy for you?" Silver had laughed. A vein at Flint's temple pulsed.
"No," Flint insisted.
Frankly, he wasn't sure how much more of Silver he could take in one day, but it seemed rude to just say that, even for Flint. “It's just that we didn't even find your damned cat."
Silver shrugged. "She can't just disappear,” he said echoing Flint’s earlier comment.
Then he looked at Flint expectantly, to which Flint could only sigh. "Will that shut you up?”
"Oh, most definitely. Can't talk with a mouth full of food." The grin grew wider.
And that is how Flint finds himself sitting on the couch in his neighbor’s flat eating curry. It's also how he discovers John Silver is a liar.
While their dinner is awkward at first, with Flint sitting stiffly on his end of the couch and Silver tucked away in his own corner, Silver seems incapable of shutting the fuck up. Instead, he spends most of their dinner talking animatedly between, and during, most of his bites.
Flint isn’t sure if it’s normal, or just the nerves of meeting someone new, but Silver fills any and all silence with the sound of his own voice. It’s a nice enough voice, at least. Flint supposes that’s one mark in Silver’s favor.
However, for all his chatting, Silver doesn’t say anything pertinent about his life, just a few stories about his friends and some more interesting tales from the bar he works at.
Silver's in the middle of an animated retelling of a bar fight that occurred a few weeks back when Flint hears something. “Shhh.”
Silver looks scandalized. “Shhh? You can't just-”
Flint rolls his eyes. “I think I heard your cat.”
Silver snaps his mouth closed, curry still held in mid-air, but he listens intently. They both hear a muffled meow coming from somewhere. They hear it again and Silver squints at him.
“But where is it coming from?”
Flint puts his bowl on the coffee table and goes to the ground, but there still isn't any cat. Silver rises from the couch and checks a nearby closet. No cat.
“Come on you little demon,” Silver says to the ceiling. “Where are you?”
There's a long mew and then the worst scratching noise Flint has ever heard. It's coming from somewhere in his vicinity, he can tell that much. Flint leans towards the end of the couch and finds nothing. There's another scratching noise and he notices the fabric of the couch moves. He taps it and there's another faint meow.
“I think...she's in the couch?” Flint says, unbelieving.
By this time Silver has moved behind Flint. He nudges Flint with his hip. “Tap it again.”
Flint obliges and taps his fingers along the side of the couch. He can feel where the cat is leaning against the fabric, pulling it taut. There’s another meow and then a few seconds later the cat is slowly clawing her way out from under the couch.
Silver laughs, a low, pleasing sound. “I can't believe it.”
The cat trills, tail quivering, before she paws over to where Flint is sitting on the floor and rubs her face against his knee. Gently, he reaches out to pet her head. The cat is primarily grey with a patch of white that rings her eye and trails across the bridge of her nose. There’s another splotch of white above where her right eye would be.
“I can't fucking believe it,” Silver repeats, and Flint turns so he can properly look up at Silver who is smiling brightly at him once again. Flint can’t help but smile back at him.
The cat lets out a huffy meow, wanting the attention back, and knocks her small head against Flint's chest. He pats her again, not exactly sure what to do. “Uh... hello, you.”
She blinks her one eye at Flint slowly and yawns in his face before rubbing her head against his beard. “Does she have a name?”
Flint notices Silver is no longer behind him. Instead he's sitting back down on the couch and has returned to his curry. He looks minutely more calm now that the cat has been found. Silver takes a bite before answering. “Her name’s Walrus.”
“You named your cat Walrus?” he asks incredulously. Flint looks down at the cat in his lap. “You named this small creature Walrus?”
Silver shrugs as if that’s answer enough. The cat—Flint isn’t sure he can actually call her Walrus—out from his lap and makes her way to the couch. She jumps easily onto the cushions and makes her way over to Silver. He watches her with a fond expression as she attempts to pull the bowl down to her level.
Silver bats her away with his fork. “Not for cats.”
However, Walrus is not discouraged and tries again. When Silver doesn’t give in she settles on rubbing her head against the hand holding the bowl. It’s a sweet scene that does strange things to the soft parts of Flint’s heart. He’s not sure what to make of that.
Now that the cat’s been found and food has been had, Flint finally makes his excuses to leave. Silver tells him to leave his bowl on the table and thanks him again for the help.
When Flint gets up to leave the cat hops off and follows him to the door. Silver gets up in an effort to corral the cat away from the door.
“Good night, neighbor,” Silver says with a grin and mock salute.
Flint offers a curt nod as he slips through the door. On the other side he can still hear Silver talking to the cat. “Now what to do with you, Walrus?”
Flint shakes his head and goes home.