Work Text:
The pounding on Sam’s door woke him at an ungodly hour, and startled him so much he fell out of bed.
He lay sprawled on the floor for a minute, trying to catch his breath, but finally, as the banging continued unabated, he scrambled to his feet and dashed for the door.
When he jerked it open, his neighbor was staring up at him, his amber eyes wide with panic.
“Oh thank God you’re home,” he blurted. “I’m Gabriel, we haven’t met, but I have an emergency and oh God, I need your help.”
Sam stiffened and spun to grab his phone. “Is your house on fire? Have you been attacked? Are you bleeding? Have you called 911?”
Gabriel followed him inside the living room and lunged for the phone before Sam could dial emergency services himself.
“It’s nothing like that!” he said.
Sam stared at him. “Then what is it?”
Gabriel ran his hands through his chestnut hair, making it stand on end. “My parents are coming over,” he said.
“Are you fucking serious?” Sam demanded. “That’s your emergency?”
“You don’t understand!” Gabriel pleaded. “My parents… they don’t like that I’m going to college out of state in the first place. They’re looking for any reason to drag me home. If they see my apartment the way it looks right now, with nothing but ketchup in the fridge and that ring around the toilet that the previous tenant left and that won’t go away no matter how much I scrub it, well… I’m screwed.” He stared at Sam, his eyes beseeching. “Please, can I just borrow some cleaning supplies? I’ll pay you back.”
Sam sighed. Unbelievable. He’d been trying to find a way to introduce himself to the very cute young man standing in front of him for the past month, but this is not how he’d envisioned it going down.
“Just… hang on,” he said, and disappeared into his bathroom. When he came back out, his arms full of cleaning products, Gabriel very nearly wept.
“I could kiss you,” he said, and then brought himself up short. “I mean… sorry, not that you’re….” He trailed off and grimaced.
Sam grinned at him. “Rain check on the kissing,” he suggested. “We have an apartment to clean.”
Gabriel’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard. “I… yeah. Okay.” He led the way across the courtyard to his apartment and held the door for Sam, who glanced around and nodded.
“Not as bad as I expected,” he said, handing Gabriel a bottle of Windex. “You start with the glass. Got any old newspapers?”
“Yeah, actually, a whole stack of them,” Gabriel said. “The previous tenant didn’t cancel their subscription when they left, apparently. Why?”
“They’re the best thing for cleaning glass,” Sam told him. “Get cracking, I’ll handle the bathroom.”
They worked in comfortable silence for over an hour, maneuvering around each other with surprising ease, until finally Sam straightened from cleaning off the little coffee table and put his hands on his hips.
“It’s not perfect,” he said, “but I think it’ll pass inspection.”
Gabriel collapsed onto the sofa and whimpered, curling into a ball. “Oh God, if I never smell bleach again it’ll be too soon.”
Sam snorted a laugh. “Drama queen. At least your apartment is as close to spotless as we can make it. You can pretend you’re a fully functioning grown up now and your parents will buy it.”
Gabriel rolled his head and gazed up at him. “Sam. I put whipped cream on Triscuits last night. I don’t know how to adult. I don’t know how to pretend to adult!”
Sam bit his lip to keep from laughing more. Instead he held out his hand and pulled Gabriel upright. “Come on,” he said. “Get your shoes on and grab your wallet.”
“Where are we going?” Gabriel asked as he obeyed.
“Shopping,” Sam said.
He made quick work of the grocery store as Gabriel trailed behind him, a stunned look on his face as Sam piled food into the cart.
“This?” Sam said, holding up a packet of lunchmeat. “Get a block of cheese and some good French bread, make the sandwiches ahead of time and add lettuce and tomato right before you eat them, and you’ll have a week’s worth of sandwiches for under ten bucks.”
Gabriel blinked and Sam added the meat to the groceries in the basket.
“Ramen is good too,” Sam told him on the soup aisle. “Buy some frozen veggies and some ground beef, add them to the noodle mix, it bulks it up without costing much and it’s another thing you can eat for several days at a time.”
“How do you know all this?” Gabriel demanded.
Sam shrugged, a smile playing on his lips. “My brother and I had to learn how to stretch our food early on. We got creative.” He added several boxes of macaroni and cheese to the cart. “Do you like tuna?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Good. Add a can of it to a box of macaroni along with some frozen peas.”
“Will you marry me?” Gabriel burst out.
Sam began to laugh. “Ask me again next year,” he said.
“Why, what happens next year?” Gabriel asked.
Sam winked. “Well, by then we’ll have been dating for awhile. Odds are good I’ll have an answer for you.”
Gabriel swallowed hard again and a smile bloomed slow and sweet across his face as Sam grinned back at him under the harsh fluorescent lights of the grocery store.
There were worse ways to be woken up, Sam decided.