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It’s nearly nine at night by the time Kit gets back to the apartment. He didn’t mean to stay out so late, but all of his professors dropped their syllabuses earlier that day and the library on campus finally opened up for the semester. It was easy to lose track of time as he settled in to the familiar rhythm of reading textbooks and making notes and speculating on his schedule for the next few months. There will be more room for laboratory time and independent projects this year, and Kit wants to make sure he’s ahead of the game with his time management.
Of course, thinking about the future means he’s been ignoring the present and when he finally flipped his phone over to check the time he found a dozen texts from Mark checking in on him, asking what he’s been up to, wondering if he’ll be home for dinner.
Kit paused for a moment then, forcibly reminded that he doesn’t live alone anymore and there’s someone who has a right to ask him when he’ll be home. He’s used to Mark bombarding him with texts all day when they’re not together — and Kit usually feels fine about largely ignoring him until he actually has something to say in response — but there’s something different about ignoring his boyfriend now that they live together. Prickles of guilt crept under his skin as he packed up his books and headed for his car.
All of the lights in the apartment are on when Kit walks in the door. The tv is blaring with some action movie, explosions and snappy dialogue assaulting his ears. Mark is sprawled on the couch, the remote control on his chest, eyes closed and mouth slightly open.
Kit drops his bag by his shoes and heads into the kitchen. He pours himself a glass of water and surveys the mess of dishes in the sink and the open bags of chips and seaweed snacks on the counter. He wanders over to the dining room table where Mark has left several dinner dishes out, though at least they’re covered.
Kit glances at the couch again.
He drinks half of the water and leaves the glass on the table before walking over to Mark and carefully picking up the remote control. He mutes the tv, then stands for a minute looking down at his sleeping boyfriend.
“You left a mess in the kitchen,” he murmurs chidingly.
Mark is breathing deeply, too far gone in sleep to notice Kit hovering over him. He looks like a little kid who collapsed in the middle of playing, limbs splayed haphazardly, hair tousled on his forehead. Kit gazes at him with annoyed fondness.
“You sleep,” he says. “I’m going to shower first.”
The bedroom is still only half unpacked. Mark hasn’t emptied all of his wardrobe boxes, though it looks like he was in the middle of making progress earlier. There’s a pile of shirts on the floor next to the open closet, and the ironing board is set up. The iron is still plugged in; Kit’s heart thumps with anxiety, but he thankfully finds the thing switched off. He unplugs it with a sigh.
He notices a towel draped across the end of the bed and grabs it to return it to the bathroom. It’s still damp and now the blankets are too.
Kit frowns.
He hangs up Mark’s towel where it belongs and tries not to catalog the minor chaos he finds in the bathroom: the toothpaste missing its cap, Mark’s razor resting on the edge of the sink, the bath mat askew on the floor. Kit knew going into this living arrangement that Mark isn’t as habitually neat as he is, though he also thought Mark knew how much this sort of mess bothers him.
Shaking his head, Kit turns the shower on. He strips off his clothes and tosses them in the hamper by the door, trying and failing not to notice one of Mark’s balled up socks next to the hamper instead of in it. Gritting his teeth slightly, Kit steps under the hot water.
The shower is one of Kit's favorite things about their apartment. First of all, it's huge. And he loves the crispness of the white tiles, seamless save for the built-in niches for shampoo bottles and soap. The adjustable showerhead has more settings than Kit has had time to experiment with, but he's looking forward to standing under the rainhead for awhile, hopefully letting the water sluice away the irritated feelings he's gathered just from walking through the apartment.
It's probably not fair for him to expect Mark to immediately change all of his bad habits, but Kit can't help how perturbed he feels to come home to such disorder. He's used to his living space being a certain way. Physical mess makes his mind feel messy, and Kit learned a long time ago that that sort of mess is difficult for him to overcome. Keeping his surroundings neat helps him manage his not infrequent internal chaos a bit better. He's going to have to find some way to explain this to Mark without sounding like a total headcase.
On the bright side, Mark has — so far — accepted all of Kit's hang-ups without shaming him or even hinting that he thinks Kit needs to chill.
That doesn't make it easier for Kit as he contemplates how best to go about bringing this up. They've been living together for less than a week. Kit doesn't want to seem like he's picking a fight so soon. Mark has already had to reassure him that this was a good idea in the first place, and that was after Kit reassured himself that he made the right decision. He's tired of fighting the same battle in his brain over and over again.
Kit reaches for the shampoo and finds it open. He takes a deep breath. It's not a big deal, it's really not. But this is his shampoo, and Mark's is right next to it.
Kit breathes slowly through his nose and reminds himself that he loves his idiot boyfriend and an open shampoo bottle is not the end of the world. At least, not until Kit accidentally knocks it off the shelf and then slips on the resulting spill and cracks his head open on all the white tiles...
Kit breathes a little harder and scrubs the shampoo through his hair a bit more vigorously than he normally would.
Despite his efforts, by the time Kit turns the water off, his carefully controlled exasperation has brewed into a hostile storm cloud. He wraps himself in a towel and starts putting the bathroom back in order. He slams the lid of the hamper shut over Mark's misplaced sock. He covers the toothpaste and stashes it and Mark's razor in the medicine cabinet where they’re supposed to go. He cleans out the sink, watching with narrowed eyes as a glob of toothpaste and little bits of hair go down the drain.
When he emerges from the bathroom, Mark is just coming into the bedroom, stretching and yawning.
"Kit!" Mark blinks sleepily and breaks into a goofy smile. "When did you get home? Why didn't you wake me up?" He eyes Kit's towel, his bare chest. "I would have showered with you." He grins.
"You left the iron plugged in," Kit says instead of answering him. He folds his arms and stands on the opposite side of the bed from Mark, ignoring the way his wet hair is dripping down his back.
Mark glances at the ironing board. He snaps his fingers. "Oh! Yeah, that's because I—"
"And I know you already showered. Your towel was on the bed." He's glaring, he knows. He can feel the storm cloud of his bad mood like a physical weight, heavy on his shoulders, impossible to shrug off.
Mark's smile shifts into a wary quirk of his mouth, a slightly raised eyebrow. "Yu called me while I was getting dressed and I guess I forgot to come back and hang it up," he says, shrugging.
The casual dismissal sets Kit off.
He knows leaving a towel out is not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. But all of the small things he's noticed in the past twenty minutes have compounded into one big thing for Kit and he can feel his ability to rationalize slipping rapidly away from him.
Mark should know, no, Mark does know that Kit expects him to pick up after himself. And he knows that Kit needs his living space to be neat. Because Mark saw what Kit's apartment was like, and Kit knows he took pains to neaten up his own whenever Kit came over. Just a few days ago, Kit told Mark he wasn't the easiest person to live with, and Mark leapt to reassure him that he'd do whatever it took to make things work between them.
So why is Kit coming home to such an avalanche of problems? Living with his boyfriend is supposed to be a good thing, not a constant source of aggravation.
"I guess you forgot to put your razor away too," Kit snaps. "Or to rinse out the sink when you were done shaving." Mark opens his mouth, but Kit doesn't give him a chance to speak. "You didn't cover the toothpaste either. You used my shampoo and left it open. You didn't finish unpacking your stuff. And the kitchen is a wreck and you have all the lights on for no reason and how the hell can you even sleep when you have the tv on so loud?"
Mark stares at Kit, seemingly flabbergasted by the sudden tirade.
For his part, Kit can feel himself burning up — with anger, of course, but there's an undercurrent of shame to it that he can't shake. It's just so typical of him to let things build to a head and then unleash it all at once on the unsuspecting object of his frustration. Kit knows it's not fair to Mark to yell at him instead of having an actual conversation, but the storm cloud is a towering thing of thunder and lightning now. Kit feels lost in the tempest of it all. He needs to rage before he can calm down again.
Mark blinks and then takes a step backward. "I'm sorry," he says in a small voice.
Kit immediately feels like an awful bully. He lets his arms fall to his sides. "Don't be sorry," he says, failing to keep the frustration out of his voice, though the worst of it is already washing past him. "Just..." He sighs.
“I’ll go clean the kitchen,” Mark says suddenly. He flees the bedroom but not before Kit notices the redness in his cheeks and the way his shoulders have hunched.
Kit lets out another sigh. He sinks onto the edge of the bed. His anger is ebbing, replaced by more prickles of guilt under his skin. He rubs his arms briskly, trying to lose the feeling. He did what he did, and now he needs to live with it. He’ll just take his time getting dressed and then go find Mark and explain the situation a little more calmly…
He finds some clean pajamas and dresses as slowly as possible, drying his hair until it’s more manageable and he’s starting to feel more human. When he returns to the bathroom to hang up his towel, he notices the bath mat still askew in the floor. Something cold gnaws at his stomach as he hangs that up too.
He returns to the bedroom, considering what he can say to Mark, and nearly runs into the ironing board. Grimacing, he folds it up and sticks it and the iron back in the closet. He bends to gather the pile of shirts on the floor and suddenly realizes that they’re his shirts. He opens the closet door a little wider and looks: at least half of his button downs are hanging neatly, ironed to perfection. The other half are currently in Kit’s hands. With a frown, Kit glances at the open wardrobe box nearby. It’s full of Mark’s clothes, still wrinkled from the move.
“Mark…?” Kit calls softly as he opens the bedroom door. But Mark probably can’t hear him over the running water and clattering of dishes in the sink. So Kit goes over to the dining room table and lifts the cover off some of the dishes. There’s a full dinner there, somewhat inexpertly prepared, but with two empty plates and table settings.
That cold thing in Kit’s stomach starts creeping up his throat. He glances over at Mark in the kitchen, his back to Kit because he’s up to his elbows in suds in the sink, and he thinks about those text messages he got earlier asking him when he’d be home and if he’d eaten yet.
Kit looks around the rest of the apartment and contemplates the last week. It's been an exhausting flurry of moving and unpacking and endless decisions about what should go where and who gets to choose. Mark defaulted to Kit's preferences whenever he made them known, and he never uttered a word of complaint when Kit changed his mind and made them reorganize everything all over again. He's been tolerant and good-humored throughout the whole process. Kit has been too wrapped up in his own desires to just finish it all to think about how supportive Mark has really been recently.
And today Kit took the first opportunity for a little escape and ran with it. He didn't need to stay at the library so long. He could have answered Mark's texts and come home for dinner at least. He could have actually come home earlier than that and done his work here. Mark made a point of setting up a desk for Kit in the bedroom so that he can close the door if he really needs to focus.
Kit chews his lip as he watches Mark silently cleaning the kitchen. He's not sure what he can do to make up for his horrible attitude, but he knows he needs to try.
"Mark," he calls again, a little louder this time.
Mark's spine stiffens, but he doesn't turn away from the sink. He's actually making a bit of mess with his efforts, Kit sees. He overfilled the sink; water and suds slop over the counter and onto the floor each time he dunks another dish. Kit's mouth twitches into an almost-smile.
"I'm almost done." Mark speaks toward the frying pan in his hands in a flustered tone. "Do you need something?"
Kit nods even though Mark can't see him. He steps up behind Mark and winds his arms around his waist, pulling him close and pressing his cheek to Mark's shoulder.
Mark drops the frying pan into the sink and more water goes sloshing over the counter. Kit hears him inhale sharply.
"I need to apologize," Kit says tightening his hold on his boyfriend. "I'm sorry for yelling at you. You don't deserve that."
Mark is gripping the edge of the counter, tensed as though he might run away at any second. Kit's heart lodges in his throat; this is his fault.
"I'm sorry, Mark," he repeats. "I see how you've been trying. And I've been a jerk instead of thanking you for it."
"You're right though," Mark says in that small voice he used in the bedroom. "I did all those things." He turns in Kit's arms and stares down at him, looking troubled. "I guess I'm not a very good roommate."
Kit takes a deep breath before raising a hand to push a stray piece of hair back from Mark's forehead. He brushes his temple then trails his fingers down the side of his face.
"Neither am I," he says, feeling the ironic lilt of his mouth. He glances back toward the table before giving Mark a meaningful look. "Thank you for making dinner. I'm sorry I stayed out so late." He settles his hands on Mark's shoulders and rises on his toes to press a swift kiss to his cheek. "I'll be better about texting you back next time."
Mark flushes. Then suddenly he holds his hand up, little finger extended. "Promise?"
Kit laughs. "If you promise to hang up your towel..." He shakes his head. "Never mind. We can talk about that later." He hooks his finger around Mark's. "I promise."
They reheat the dinner dishes and eat together. Kit babbles about his expectations for the semester while Mark puts the best pieces of meat on his plate and won't stop playing footsie with him under the table. Afterward, they do the dishes together, Kit washing and Mark drying. When they're done, it's so late that they should go to bed, but Kit offers to watch the rest of Mark's movie with him instead. Mark brightens, recounting the plot so far while he makes popcorn and brings it over to the couch so they can cuddle under a blanket together.
Kit leans against Mark's shoulder while he explains the motives of the man with the gun on the screen. He's absorbing exactly none of what Mark is telling him, choosing to focus instead on the warmth of Mark's arm around his shoulders and the pleasant vibration of his voice as he speaks. Mark points at the screen, murmuring excitedly as the man on the screen knocks out another man with a gun in an entirely improbable way — and Kit smiles to himself.
If they can keep moving forward like this, then living with his boyfriend will prove to be the best decision he's ever made.