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The texture of rough wooden grain against his knuckles almost snaps Ravi back to reality, out of the absurd situation that he is currently facing, but it doesn’t. The soft rustling behind the door plunges him further into it.
“Mr Key, I know you’re in there,” Ravi sighs, folding his arms over each other. In the tiny glass of the spyhole, something deep and brown darts around. An eye, not unlike his own. He mutters, “I can see you.”
What sounds like several locks unlatch and the door whips open, leaving an exposed Graham Key in the doorway, clad in plaid pyjama pants and a polo top. What a creative combination. He’s jittery, missing the unquestioning arrogance he carried the first time they met. Something close to sympathy flickers within Ravi for a moment before Graham opens his mouth to speak. “Ravi.”
He doesn’t remember ever agreeing to be on a first-name basis with this guy, but he’s a trained negotiator, he’ll bite. He nods his head downwards, looking up at him through furrowed brows. God, this guy is tall. “Graham. Care to tell me why I’ve been receiving even more complaints about your behaviour in the laundry room?”
“I’m telling you, man, they’re –”
“Shirkers, I know, Graham. But you have to understand my point of view here. You’re a disturbance to the residents in this apartment building. Even the ones who aren’t ‘shirkers’, as you phrase it, have to deal with your incessant arguing.”
Graham runs his fingers over each other, eyes unfalteringly wide. “Well, I apologise to those people, but what they must realise is that the offence itself is the disturbance! Things get trapped or over-washed and suddenly we’re –”
“Belly-up in the abyss, yes, I know, Graham.” This guy and his damn catchphrases. He’s worse than Brad Torrance. “Please. Tell me something new. At least try.”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Graham insists, not blinking once. Those round, brown eyes dash around the blank corridor behind Ravi, though, and his head follows in pursuit of them, making the curls which are usually tight to the back of his neck bounce. He taps his fingers on his jaw, nails cut impressively short. Ravi can hear the soft thud of skin against sharp skin.
“Can I come in?” Ravi asks, assessing the situation. He assumes Graham will feel less exposed if they’re not having this conversation in the middle of the hallway. He knows Graham’s next door neighbour is a terribly grumpy old man who loves to eavesdrop.
The apartment is small and sparsely furnished, but covered with decor and memorabilia, Wall art and other hanging things, most notably, the previous landlord’s rules on which he’ll have to revisit if this interaction doesn’t go how he’s hoping, but also a surprising amount of lamps. Maybe that could be his in. He got off on the wrong foot with Graham, that much was evident, but can he really be blamed for that? It seemed like almost everyone did.
Graham has a neat little green couch in the centre of the lounge facing a modest TV. Throw pillows are few and far between, but there is a blanket with some video game-esque pattern on it and discarded clothes on the floor beside the couch. Entering the room again (though he never truly left it), Graham makes sure to kick the pair of grey boxers on the top of the pile underneath the couch, never to be seen again. They sit. Graham fiddles with the corner of the blanket.
“Listen, Graham, I get that you’re trying to do the right thing. I get that, I really do. I just feel like you don’t want to accept that that is exactly what I’m trying to do, only in a different way.”
“I’m making your life easier, man.” There go those huge eyes again, blank and soulless, staring bullets straight into Ravi’s. Ravi is unable to look away. They’re creepy. Less like a doe, more like a wendigo. A weeping angel. If he looks away, something might happen. “I’m probably saving you like thousands of dollars in washer repairs.”
“You’re also potentially costing me thousands of dollars in rent when you inevitably drive your fellow tenants out of the damn building!” He has to take a moment to recollect himself. He will not let this be the situation that earns him a rep as an incompetent, hot-headed landlord. Especially since that blabbermouth old man next door’s definitely listening in. “I understand wanting justice, okay? I work with cops all the time.”
Graham’s face lights up. Not with happiness, only inspiration. “You do? Do you know Sergeant Grant?”
“Yeah, her husband’s my Captain. What, has she arrested you before?”
“No. In fact, she supports me wholeheartedly.” Ravi’s face is clearly showing how unimpressed he is as Graham clarifies quickly, “Well, she’s never said that specifically, but she’s also never arrested me.”
Recognition lights up Ravi’s face. Ah. That explains it. He points a finger at Graham as if it needs any clarification, and simply declares, “Cart Cop!”
“That’s me.” There is some apprehension in Graham’s voice as he examines Ravi’s reaction. “Though I’ve retired from that. Got a little too violent.”
“Uh-huh. My team was on that call. So you got jumped by some old guy and now you’re, what, Laundry Lieutenant?”
Graham mumbles under his breath, “I should totally use that.” The words he intends for Ravi to actually hear, though, are, “That old guy was a criminal! I’m helping the community.”
Ravi doesn’t mean to bury his head in his hands, but his fingers end up soothing his temples anyway, his elbows planted firmly on his legs. “Just promise me this, Graham. You will stop harassing your neighbours, and I will stop harassing you. If I get another call telling me you’re causing a commotion in the laundry room, I won’t be so understanding.”
Ravi checks Graham’s face for any sign of agreement, but none shows. No matter. Slightly defeated but glad to be thinking of LA traffic rather than whatever he’s meant to say next to convince the guy he’s being a dick, Ravi hoists himself up from the couch and makes a swift beeline for the door, noting the two additional latches seemingly from the hardware store installed above the original lock. He doesn’t need to fiddle with any of them, though, as the door swings free of the entrance to the apartment with ease, and then he is there, bare, in the empty hallway. He really ought to decorate some more in the lobbies and hallways of the building when he finds the time. If he ever makes his down payment back on his own apartment with rent from these ones, that is. Might boost morale. God knows they need it.
The pale yellow walls stretch out either side of him. A brown, wooden door identical to Graham’s is down the hall to the right, and the corner of an industrial elevator peaks into his peripheral vision to the left. The hallways could really do with a fresh coat of paint, too. He’s got his hands full, that’s for sure. With all the double shifts he’s been picking up, though, he’s not sure when he could –
He’s about to step into the hallway when he hears Graham speak. Again.
“You haven’t been that understanding, though.” Graham calls out. At first, Ravi thinks this is another inside thought he has let slip. But no, the bastard is looking straight at him, honed in on his eyes, determined. What is this, a challenge? Ravi hasn’t argued with anyone like this since he told his mom he was moving to LA to become a firefighter of all things. Graham continues as Ravi is paralysed in the door, “I’ve tried explaining my side of things, but you haven’t listened. I don’t blame you, I just don’t think it’s fair to say you’ve been understanding when, quite frankly, you haven’t.”
He says it with such self-importance. And yet, somehow, Ravi is compelled to respond, “Okay. Tell me what to do to be better.” As he walks straight back to his seat, leaving the door ajar.
That’s what his mind jumps to immediately in any conflict, especially regarding his professional life. Tell me what to do to be better. Improvement, always, constantly. Though he must admit that something about this whole situation gives an air of whatever the furthest one can get from professionalism is. It could possibly come down to Graham’s brash attitude, though the more likely explanation is that it comes down to those satellite dish eyes and the way his sculpted fingers tense around his other forearm in a soothing motion. Curse you, libido.
“Listen to me, for one,” Graham says, getting up to close the door himself and moving to the open kitchen, forcing Ravi to turn and awkwardly prop his legs up on the couch so his boots didn’t touch the fabric. He had come straight from work, after all. Night shift. He continued, “Then we have to come to some sort of agreement. I mean, fine, I understand I’m being disruptive. It’s rare that I’m not. But, Ravi, I live here. I use those washing machines, and so do my neighbours. The ones I like and the ones I don’t. Without my efforts, we all become festering pots of anger ready to boil over at any minor inconvenience, and if that happens you’ll have much more to worry about than just my innocent face.”
Ravi thinks innocent isn’t exactly the word he’d use, but then again, he can’t think of any better one. “You really think all that would happen over laundry?”
Graham’s eyes roll in his skull and he turns back to working the coffee machine. Ravi can almost hear the robotic clanking his mind fills in whenever Graham makes any move. He’s almost mechanical. Deliberate, yet clumsy. “Let me guess. You live in some cushy apartment, maybe a proper house, with a girlfriend and a rescue dog, and you saw this building for sale. You figured: How hard could it be? You work with the community all the time, and you’re not like those landlords, you’re a real man of the people!”
Ravi shuffles in his own body, watches steam fill the kitchen and the cupboards open in a rabid search for milk and sugar. “You’re right,” he admits, “minus the dog. And the girlfriend.” The way Ravi looks to Graham with a mischievous hope is probably more telling than the way Graham’s head nearly whips around in reaction to that final word. “How could you tell?”
“I’m good at reading people’s motives. I know what makes them tick. Not much else, though.” Graham shrugs, bringing two cups of coffee over haphazardly in one hand with a bottle of creamer and as many sugar packets as he can physically carry clutched in the other. His way of inviting him to stay a while longer. “I think my milk’s gone bad. Better safe than sorry.” Then, with a realisation, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask if you liked coffee or if you wanted to stay for one. I do apologise. My hands just start working themselves when I’m nervous. Shit. Then my mouth does, I guess.”
He’s still holding everything other than the mugs, his hands hovering just slightly above the table, when Ravi reaches over and snatches one packet of sugar from the pile he’s cradling. The rest instantly drop over the glass coffee table. There is a laugh, then one from Graham, surprisingly clear and sweet, as if he is also just now learning he is capable of such a thing, and that is it. The ice has been broken. Thankfully the glass hasn’t, Ravi thinks as he puts his mug down with a little too much fervour.
Ravi smiles. A pleasantry he can afford in this newfound comfort, it seems. And he has just been handed a new bargaining chip. “There’s no reason to be nervous.” He leans into the remark, placative. “Though I guess I’m not being entirely fair when I say that. I’m nervous too.”
“You? Of what?”
“This.” Ravi leans back, watching with a strange delight as Graham dumps creamer in his coffee as a substitute for milk. “This gig, I mean. Until very recently I was a renter, so I know what bad landlords can be like. I really don’t wanna fuck anything up, y’know, I’m still finding my sea legs for this stuff.”
“And I’m the source of most of your complaints.”
“Yes.” Ravi clasps his hands in front of him. He isn’t sure what Graham sees when he looks at him, which unnerves him slightly. The playing ground is almost even. The only advantages he does still hold are typical landlord measures he swears he will not take, and pity. “Can you see why I want to nip your laundry escapades in the bud, Graham?”
“I can see that, yes.” He considers for a moment, runs the knuckle of his thumb over his lower lip. “Tell you what. I’ll chill out. For one week. Then we’ll see where we’re at.”
Ravi nods, a smile overpowering the terrible aftertaste of the coffee. “Alright. Good. I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.”
He’s up with a series of polite nods and straight-lipped smiles. He’s almost certain he showed teeth in one of them. There goes whatever professionalism he has left.
“Ravi?” Graham’s voice takes on something genuine in the space it must travel between his mouth and Ravi’s ears near the doorway. “Thank you.”
“Oh, now you’re thanking me?” Ravi wouldn’t be the slightest bit comfortable betting on anything Graham does unless it was his tendency to overuse the word ‘shirker’. This only goes to prove his point. The guy’s mind clearly works in mysterious ways. Bargaining with him is a clumsy dance.
“Only on behalf of the rest of the building.”
“For what, finally getting you to step in line?”
Graham’s head whips back in disbelief, rolling on its joint like one of those creepy collectors’ dolls. A grin emerges, and Ravi really notes for the first time those sickly, crooked fangs “Nah, that’s impossible, even for you. For being a good landlord.”
Ravi’s smile speaks back for him. “Well, thanks, Graham. You’re a pretty good tenant too. You know, when you’re not terrorising old ladies over spin cycles.” The ease of the laugh is combatted immediately by a bashful glance to the floor from Ravi. “I’d say ‘see you around’, but those circumstances would be unfavourable.”
“You know you’re allowed to see me for reasons that aren’t strictly business-related, right?”
Is he? The thought never occurred to Ravi, but he’s right, he can. He wouldn’t, of course. He has no reason to. This does nothing except plant the concept of a Graham Key who knows how to flirt in Ravi’s mind. Now that would be catastrophic. He’s probably just taking things at face value again, Ravi assures himself, jumping to logical conclusions while he watches Ravi squirm in confusion.
“For more milk-less coffee? No thank you, Graham, I’ll have to pass on that one for now.”
Graham leans back on his couch, seemingly satisfied with the conversation. He crosses one ankle over the other and lets his arms spread out over the top of the couch either side of him. He stares at a blank TV, seeming oddly at peace. “Suit yourself.”
Still. There has to be something there, even if it isn’t romantic. Despite all this, unsurprisingly, Ravi finds himself reverting to his defensive, prickly self. He’s just hoping it translates the right way. “Now don’t go causing trouble just to see me, lieutenant.”
“In your dreams,” Graham calls after him, not bothering to look behind him but not bothering to hide his smirk either.
The hallway is just as empty as the first time Ravi stepped into it, this time maybe with the soft addition of a suggestion of potential. It is darker, also, and the sun has set over the mile-high LA skyline. Ravi is convinced the sun sets in the heart of a city three times faster than it does anywhere else in the world purely due to sheer elevation. Here, however, near the top floor, out of the tiny window at the end of the corridor, he can almost see a faint glow of orange hum over a satellite dish before it dips below the concrete horizon and shrouds him in a fiery evening red.
ᯓ★
Graham doesn’t give it a full week before he starts causing trouble again. In fact, he hardly gives it four full days.
It’s almost becoming routine for Ravi to visit the complex after his shift ends. Someone always has a jammed door, or a crack in their wall, or some nondescript rodent stuck in a vent. Once, he even managed to bring Bobby back with him from the firehouse to help fix a radiator. That’s what you get for mentioning needing help around Bobby Nash, he supposes.
All this to say he has been tired beyond belief recently. Twenty-four hour shifts, Dolores’ landline needing fixing, and now this.
Ravi can’t believe he was almost starting to relax at the thought of a Graham-free day. He has a slightly easier time believing his discomfort at the radio silence he has been receiving both from and about the guy. He should’ve known better when he started getting laundry-related calls without any mention of Graham in them.
The scene that awaits him as he makes a beeline for the laundry room is nothing short of a calamity. A tumultuous crowd jeers at a frightened and oddly damp Graham, whose voice reverberates from within an open washing machine, out of which the slicked down, dark curls on the back of his neck poke out. Ravi has to force his way through the crowd to gain a clearer view of this sight, flinching at the wet sensation by his feet as he realises the floor is lightly flooded. His civilian shoes aren’t meant for these conditions.
“What the hell is going on here?” He can’t help but yell. A few faces in the crowd look to others for clarification. He hasn’t had a chance to meet everyone in the building yet, even despite his frequent visits. They whisper to each other, and Ravi notes that several are laundry-less. Just interested in the commotion, it seems.
He overhears a girl, maybe college age, say to her friend, “That’s really the landlord? He’s so young. He’s kinda cute.”
Trying to focus on the matter at hand, he redirects his attention from the floor and crowd to the beefy man shouting at Graham. Donnie Kemp from apartment 3C. A quiet individual within the complex, though clearly not anywhere outside of that. It seems to have caught up with him now. “Donnie! What is this?”
“Ask the guy with his head in the washer, man!” He almost lunges at Graham, but a wary hand on his shoulder coaxes him back. His girlfriend is sitting on the dryer beside him, clearly done with the situation. Ravi turns to her instead and gives her an expectant look. She seems in a state more suitable to give him the rundown.
“This creep stole my panties, man, it’s so not cool.” She rolls her eyes.
His eyes drift to the spray of water casting rainbows across the room, as well as the steadily growing puddle on the floor around them. “And how did my laundry room become flooded?”
This time Donnie responds, “He started digging in our load and fucked something up in the system, now it’s leaking all over the place. Dumbass is in there tryna fix it without any tools.”
The girlfriend now, “Without my panties.”
Ravi takes a moment to recollect himself as he turns to Graham, still busy at work with his head in the washer. “Graham,” He tries, though no response comes. He kicks Graham’s shin. “Graham!”
Graham emerges, revealing a bruise blossoming over his cheekbone. Ravi has to fight the urge to punch Donnie straight back for that, even without any evidence he was the one who caused it, but he must stay unbiased. Graham gives a polite, “Ah, Ravi. I was wondering when you’d show up.”
“Did you do all this?”
“Well, no. I didn’t steal that woman’s clothes – or anyone’s clothes, in fact. I was just putting them into their rightful places.”
Ravi’s head is in his hands before he can stop himself. He turns back to the pair. This is becoming comical. “Have you checked lost and found?”
“Of course we have!”
“Can you check again?”
Donnie nearly lunges again, but his girlfriend (Erin, Ravi learns through an exchange of too-loud murmurs) jumps off the dryer, grimacing at getting wet, and heads for the lost and found bin for a second look. Graham, meanwhile, has begun speaking again. “This load has been sitting here for three hours. I know because I asked, not because I’m a creep. That’s well over the allowed limit. I simply took it upon myself to follow the rules and clear it up for the use of another tenant. In this case, myself.”
Ravi’s hand plants flat on the dead centre of Donnie’s chest. That nearly throws him off course. “Graham, didn’t you say you’d stop causing trouble for a week?”
“I tried, but I ran out of clothes! The mess was getting to me!”
Donnie bites, “Yeah, we can tell! We should wash you next!”
He gets a light shove from Ravi for that. “You mean to tell me you haven’t washed your clothes since we last spoke? That wasn’t the agreement.”
“A while before that, too. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from enacting justice if I came down here, and look, I was right.”
Donnie breaks free of the hold. More accurately, he lets himself go, as Ravi poses absolutely no threat to his strength. He goes straight for Graham, knocking him into the pool of water on the ground as he kicks and struggles, getting a few good hits in. Ravi and a few others attempt to pull him off of Graham, but it’s Graham who gets the final push in. He stands to his full six feet in true shaky baby doe fashion and slams Donnie into the dryer with the momentum he has gained.
Pumped up on adrenaline, Graham says through a laugh, “It’s rare I’m the one who gets to call the cops!”
Ravi attempts to sputter out, “No one’s calling any cops!”, but Donnie’s on Graham again, this time careening towards another wall of washers. Instead, all Ravi can say is, “If you break another one of my washers so help me God both of you will be paying for damages individually!” He hears the same girl from before mumble, nevermind.
Somewhere in between Graham being lifted into the air and Donnie slipping in soap and plummeting to the ground, Ravi is sucked into the mess and some way, somehow, gets a right hook in. It isn’t until he takes his attention off Donnie, who is finally getting back up from being crumpled against a now dented washer, that he looks at his fist, bloody and raw. He follows the direction he swung in to be met with a dazed and confused Graham, blood steadily trickling from his nose. Ravi isn’t sure if his nose was always so crooked, but he doesn’t have the time to consider this, as Donnie is making his way back over to Graham, whose eyes are fixed unwaveringly on Ravi’s stunned face.
Footsteps clatter down the hallway. Erin has returned. “I got ‘em! Donnie, baby, I found them. What – Donnie! Leave the guy alone, oh my God!”
Donnie is able to snap out of it and hurls Graham across the room, but not without leering at the crowd. He walks up to Ravi and stares down at him, unsure of what to say. Ravi speaks for him, grabbing him lightly by his collar. He sees Graham approaching in his peripheral vision. “Next time, have a real long look before you start making baseless claims and beating people up. As for the rest of you,” He grits his teeth, turning towards the already dissipating crowd, “I am not here to govern you! You are adults! I try to be fair, but if you are putting the life quality of other tenants at risk I will not hesitate to act in accordance. I may control the workings of this building but you need to learn to control yourselves. Get going.”
They don’t need to be told twice before they start filing out of the room like sheep through a funnel gate, taking the towels Graham is tossing them from a storage cabinet he most definitely should not have access to. Yet another thing to add to Ravi’s to do list regarding the building: check locks. Graham knows better than to join them and leans against a dryer with a bright yellow towel slung over his shoulder, occasionally dabbing at his wet and bruised face.
“Hey, look, you found your sea legs,” Graham says through a grin, licking the blood that has dripped from his nose to his upper lip.
“Yeah, and all it took was beating the shit out of you. Hey, come here. Lean your head forward.” He dissolves into apologies as the final few people exit the room, complaining and grunting. “I’m sorry, I really am.”
Graham pushes himself off of the dryer with surprising enthusiasm. “Nah, don’t sweat it. I’ve never gotten a shiner before. It’ll make people think twice before they decide to argue with me.”
“I think you can blame Donnie for the shiner. Jury’s still out on whether I broke your nose or not.”
He folds his arms, voice comedically nasal as he follows Ravi’s instructions to pinch his nose. “Hm. That’s less cool. I’m just gonna tell people you gave me it.”
Ravi’s laugh is only slight as he hovers around Graham’s “Wait, never? In all your years of attempted social justice, you’ve never been in a fight?”
“Oh, I have. Many. It’s just that, until now, I hadn’t really met my match.”
An image of Donnie slumped in the corner flashes in Ravi’s mind, and his arm pulses with a dull pain where Graham hit him out of instinctive retaliation. “Yeah, I guess you do pack a punch.”
“So do you.” Graham points to his nose with a smile. “Must be all that fire fighting.”
Ravi feels surprisingly at ease considering the circumstances. A laugh escapes him freely and he rolls his eyes with abandon. “Here, let me patch you up. That fire fighting also comes with medical training.”
Graham throws one hand up in mock surrender, the other clutched over the tip of his nose. Meanwhile, the washer beside them continues to spew water, casting light illusions from the fluorescent overhead lights onto the rippling water they stand in. Very few parts of them are dry, though Graham did get the most of it. His long legs reach the slowly rising water, and he kicks a little at Ravi playfully. This is going to be an absolute fucking mess to deal with tomorrow, legally and financially. Right now though, all they need is a first aid kit, a screwdriver, and a hell of a lot of buckets and mops.
ᯓ★
By the time Ravi has phoned Hen for medical advice, put some sort of makeshift splint on Graham’s nose to hopefully let it heal in the right direction (that is, if it really is broken, they didn’t want to brave the ED waiting times after all that), YouTube-ed a tutorial for fixing washing machine leaks, and the two of them have finally finished mopping up the mess in the laundry room and putting up out of order signs, Ravi is practically falling asleep. Graham takes it upon himself to haul Ravi up to his apartment, not taking anything but thank you for an answer.
Now they sit in a warm, hazy silence on the couch under various blankets and throws, staring at a quiet nature documentary on TV, waiting for the takeout Ravi ordered for them upon seeing Graham’s barren wasteland of a fridge to arrive. The apartment complex has finally slipped into its late-hour silence, as Graham describes it. She’s unaffected by the happenings inside, he rambled to Ravi from the couch in his search for food, pinching his nose, she’ll keep running on the same clock, just wait.
“What’s all this catchphrase shit then?” Ravi asks, his voice easily overpowering the low volume of the documentary. Graham gives a murmur of confusion, gaze fixated on the birds on screen with a cat-like interest which compliments his wide eyes. “You know. Shirkers, belly up in the abyss? What’s all that about?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, it’s just that you say them all the time. I figured it might be some kind of branding thing left over from your Cart Cop days. You aren’t filming your laundry escapades, are you? That’d be even more paperwork.”
There is some shuffling beneath the blankets. Graham’s expression is one Ravi can’t put into words, as if he is acquainting himself with his train of thought mid-journey. Finally, he explains in a slow manner that, “No, I’m not. Retired from social media – for a while at least. And those things… I don’t know, I never realised how often I say them. I struggle with words. Ironic for someone who talks so incessantly, I know, but it’s true. Once I land on the right way to say something or explain myself I tend to latch on to it.”
“Hm.” The answer makes sense, but it isn’t exactly satisfactory. He supposes if Graham did have a better grip on conversation or social cues, he’d get in far fewer arguments and make far fewer enemies than he currently does. When Ravi looks past all of the trouble he causes, Graham isn’t half-bad. As a person, at least. He might even be alright to hang around – after all, why would Ravi have accepted crashing on his couch if he thought otherwise? And he certainly doesn’t lack in looks. Ravi has, since before he can remember, separated attraction and a desire to pursue something more than physical. It has been an equally long time since those two things merged, much less in such a way as this. The words climb out of his throat before he can analyse his situation further. “You know… you’re kind of a shirker.”
Graham sits upright, clearly being hit with a headache as he does so judging by his torso’s waver. “I beg your finest pardon?”
“Yeah, dude! You’ve been shirking me all week.” Oh boy. Here it goes. He’s too far gone now.
“How?”
Flirting is part of his personality, an impulse that kicks in whenever he’s personally victimised by slender arms or stupid doe eyes, but he’d be lying if he said some of it wasn’t entirely intentional. Just as intentional as withholding his personal number from Graham and Graham early so that there wouldn’t be the added factor of trying not to text him or come up with an excuse to see him throughout his work day. “You’re so dense. If you’re not into me, you can just tell me.”
“Into you? Wait, are you –? But you’ve been such a dick!” He gapes.
“I was flirting!”
Graham hits Ravi’s arm, bewildered. Ravi barely budges. “You call this flirting?” He points to his nose again. Well, Ravi supposes it’s only fair he uses that as his bargaining chip after his own behaviour over their previous interactions.
Still, he can’t help but reflexively hit Graham back, smiling. “You have your unconventional methods, I have mine.”
Graham flinches and manages to dodge, exclaiming, “Hey, I’m fragile!” And throwing a pillow in Ravi’s general direction.
The doorbell rings, the food is here. Graham’s nose is still broken, the washer downstairs also is. Ravi remains absolutely smitten with the mess hurling pillows at him, and the apartment complex’s internal clock resumes inconsequentially.