Work Text:
Josh has been in his new apartment building for a grand total of five minutes when he trips over a cat, just barely catching himself before he takes a pretty spectacular tumble.
(Josh has never taken a tumble that was not spectacular.)
Jack perks up at the sight of the truly enormous cat—seriously, what the hell is that thing? Also, where did it come from? He swears the hallway was completely empty a second ago—and then starts growling.
The cat hisses in response, and Josh’s stomach drops. Please, please let there be no mauling today. Please, please let nothing happen to make Landlady Emma (who isn’t technically his landlady because Josh owns this apartment, but he talked to her before coming here anyway, just to get the…lay of the land) realize that Josh may have been exaggerating slightly when he said, “Oh, yeah, Jack gets along great with everyone. He’s a friend to all living things.”
But Jack is usually okay around other animals, and Josh’s fear that this time is different starts to disappear when Jack settles down a bit. Maybe the cat’s earned his grudging respect or something, Josh doesn’t know, it’s not like he has a key to the inner workings of his dog’s mind, but the point is that at least Jack’s not growling anymore, just glaring. The cat glares back. Josh holds his breath, afraid that if he relaxes he’ll jinx this peace Jack and the enormous cat have found.
Josh needs air, though, just like every other human being, so he ends up breathing anyway. Nothing happens, other than Josh getting oxygen into his lungs and Jack and the cat continuing to stare each other down, until, in a very short amount of time, since everything seems to be happening in a very short amount of time, the cat is suddenly swept up in someone’s arms. Josh doesn’t jump, because he has more control over his body than that, but he does do a double take, because what the hell, when did that happen?
Josh looks at the man who now has the cat cradled in his arms, and stares. The guy is closer to twenty than thirty, brown skin, probably Native, black hair cut short, positively heroic features, well-built in general, very pretty, and he’s just…staring back, face mostly blank except for his eyes, which betray something like suspicion. He adjusts the cat in his arms. The cat purrs.
The guy makes absolutely no attempt to introduce himself, just ducks back into what must be his apartment, which is almost right across from Josh’s.
Josh wonders if he’s seeing things, and figures that, if the person he just saw actually does exist and isn’t a ghost or something, he was just caught off guard by Josh’s presence, even though he probably knew he had a new neighbor, since Josh had his bed, TV, dresser, dog cage, and pretty much everything he couldn’t carry or didn’t feel like carrying, which wasn’t much, moved in already by an acquaintance who lost a bet and was very eager to pay Josh back in something that wasn’t money.
(Josh just has his two suitcases, one full-sized, one carry-on, his backpack, and his laptop case/messenger bag. He travels light.)
He figures he’ll maybe start buying some more stuff now that he’s here. The building isn’t exactly the Hilton, and the apartment sure as hell ain’t a Presidential suite, but it’s the kind of place where he can settle down.
Even if it wasn’t, he’d still be here, considering that he really does own it now, won the apartment in probably the most fruitful poker game he’s ever played. God love drunk real estate moguls who agree to completely ridiculous bets (like demanding an apartment instead of actual money, even though, technically, this thing was paid for in cash, so), and also conning your way into the previously mentioned drunk real estate mogul’s wildly illegal Blackjack-raffle-Texas Hold ‘Em-possibly-Russian-roulette tournament.
(Win big or lose everything.)
He finally steps into his brand new apartment (well, it’s not brand new, it’s clearly been lived in, but whatever, he knows what he means), ushering Jack in impatiently. Josh kind of assumed that the furniture would just be kind of stuffed in there, but it’s quite possible that he won a bet against some kind of amateur interior decorator, because it looks good, or at least as good as it can considering Josh’s furniture, which is…eclectic, mostly because he got most of his pieces from the side of the road.
Jack heads into his cage for about a second, emerging with a full-sized teddy bear, because Jack can’t be content with dog toys, oh no, he has to go with people toys. He turns his nose up at everything that squeaks.
Josh looks around the apartment for an extended amount of time, taking in the way it looks like a place where a grown adult who may or may not nearly be forty might live, as long as he’s a bachelor. It’s surprisingly well-lit, with a kitchen island and everything, and it takes a while for Josh to realize he’s spacing out completely and that there’s really no reason to just take a long look at everything when he can actually walk around.
He pokes his nose into the kitchen, which is…a kitchen, alright, though it does come furnished even though Josh is pretty sure that he didn’t have any kitchen stuff before, and the bathroom, which has…a surprising amount of space for a bathroom in a relatively small apartment. It even has an actual bathtub. Weird.
There’s a little hallway leading down to his room, and he checks out the bookshelf that was already there (who lived here before him, exactly?) and his bed, which was not already there. It’s comforting to see it, with the same old sheets as always, the quilt faded from being washed so often, and a little threadbare, but he’s not giving that quilt up. He smooths it out with a hand and remembers his mother tucking it around his shoulders when he was sick, back when he used to get sick. There’s a pang in his stomach. (It’s actually his heart, but he doesn’t like acknowledging that he has one of those, so he moves it a little lower down.) He swallows hard and walks out of the room. He should unpack. It’s winter, and night is already falling.
If he listens closely, he can hear someone watching TV in the apartment next to him, and he thinks of all the motels and hotels he’s lived in, the way the TV was on at all hours somewhere, and feels a little comforted. His life is changing, but not that much. It’s not like he wants to get to know his neighbors or anything, not anymore, but he’s always lived surrounded by people, even if they’re behind a wall. He doesn’t think he’d be able to handle not having that surrounding noise.
He pulls himself out of those thoughts, because the worst thing in the world is thinking about feelings or, worse, the past. Josh is all about the future, living one day at a time, living in the moment.
He grabs his stuff and lugs it over to his room, pausing at the room right across from his room, which is about the size of a walk-in closet. He wonders how the hell it even fit there. He swears the apartment is not that big, where is all this space coming from? Josh shrugs to himself. Sometimes it’s better to not question these things.
He kneels on the floor and opens his suitcase. Now he just has to get organized. He snorts at the thought immediately. His mom always used to call him “concentrated chaos”, and he’s lived up to that for his whole life. Well, maybe the new life will change that.
Josh pulls a rubber chicken out of his bag.
Maybe not.
He throws it aside, and, ha, there are his actual clothes. He pulls out some boxer briefs, and then some more, and then some…shit, he has to start actually washing his underwear instead of just buying new packages of it when he runs out.
More underwear.
This one has a Superman pattern on it. Why? Josh has never been a comics fan.
He shakes his head and pulls out some Wonder Woman panties and—woah, that’s awkward. He’s pretty sure a girl must’ve left those with him at some point. Why didn’t he just get rid of them? Josh wrinkles his nose and throws the panties to the side, feeling like a creep. Is he a creep? No, he’s too charming for that.
Finally, Josh finds some jeans that he sets aside, because thank God he doesn’t only have underwear in there.
Some undershirts. More undershirts. Actual shirts.
Josh folds those before setting them aside, because he has to look sharp, okay? Josh knows he’s hot, and he goes to great lengths to keep himself that way, because he needs company and pulling chicks (and the occasional dude) is how he gets most of it, which may sound really sad, but is actually a great way to live, really, unfettered by anyone. Company is overrated, and all people do is hurt you and leave you and eat all your eggs and steal the bread you just bought when they leave in the morning. Not that Josh is speaking from experience. But. It’s better to not get attached to bread-stealers. Or anyone.
Josh feels something hard wrapped in one of his undershirts, and sighs in relief when he pulls out Ethel, Maria, and his ammo. He opens the boxes that hold his guns and strokes them lovingly. “You’ll never leave me, will you?” he coos, before realizing he sounds kind of like Gollum and clearing his throat self-consciously even though not even Jack is with him. He locks up the guns again and puts them under his bed, sticking the ammo in his underwear drawer, which is nearly overflowing by the time he’s done putting all his unmentionables in there. The actual clothes drawer is more reasonable. Josh has such good taste.
He goes back to his suitcase, pulling out some books (mostly mass market paperbacks and pulp fiction, because that’s what Josh started off reading as a kid and he never got into anything else) that he’s read so many times that he’s practically got them memorized, which is always a self-esteem boost, since he can pretend he always reads that well when he sits back to enjoy those. Not that Josh has any problems with self-esteem. Josh is amazing. He won an apartment gambling. Not even the money for the apartment. Just an apartment. That’s how amazing he is. Things that shouldn’t happen to anyone in any damn universe just totally happen. Josh is pretty sure that, if he tested, which he won’t, he’d be immortal. Josh could probably blow himself up and not die and win an apartment from it somehow.
Josh grabs more than a few hairbrushes and a…is that a hair curler? Maybe it’s another accidental gift from some girl that he saw for more than a day.
Oooh, something useful—his electric razor to carefully cultivate his casual stubble.
MREs, because sometimes he runs out of food and they don’t actually taste that bad if you eat them really fast and the last place where Josh lived was right next to an Army Surplus Store. Josh has never even considered joining the military, but he was pretty strapped for money at the time. Technically, he’s still a little strapped for money. He’d been having a kind of bad run before half-fleecing that mogul (it wasn’t really fleecing, because everyone was cheating, but also it was totally fleecing because Josh does not have morals) as a total last ditch effort to not die in a gutter.
Win big or lose everything.
He’s genuinely not sure what he offered to give up if he lost, since he didn’t actually have anything to lose other than, well…
He thinks he remembers some kind of, like…Most Dangerous Game situation? He probably dreamed that. God, he hopes he did.
But anyway, he was desperate and maybe also slightly drunk (though, in his case, mostly on despair), whatever, the details aren’t important, they never are, unless the details are what helps you see the big picture, which they are, so actually details are really important. No one cares.
(He’d actually thought it had been a really good dream, the whole thing, though a weird one, until a few days later Emma Cullen called him demanding to know what the hell had happened that she’d only just found out that he’d paid for an apartment in cash. He’d winged it, told her he’d saved up for a long time, done the buying through a third party and, hey, it turned out you could buy a unit within a mostly rent-controlled building, who knew?
She did, as the landlady, but whatever. She also informed him that he was going to be living with all the other owners, who, for some reason, are all on the fourth floor, which seems weirdly convenient, like someone just decided to stick all the people who owned units on the same floor and shrug, but Josh guesses it makes sense, even if it is a coincidence.)
Josh sits back on his heels and looks around again. No one cares, he repeats to himself, and just then he gets a text.
He never gets texts. When it’s work, he gets calls on his latest burner phone. Josh feels a swell of something approaching hope, though he doesn’t know what he’s expecting.
Verizon informs him that he’s used up half of his data for the month.
Yep.
Josh shouldn’t expect anything.
And he should also stop watching Netflix on his phone. He has a computer, there’s really no excuse.
Josh flops down onto the floor and stares up at his ceiling, flaking paint and all. He should unpack the second suitcase. He doesn’t. He’s just tired. From everything. From the past few years he’s had, because Josh is lucky but not that lucky. He hasn’t exactly had a charmed life, right up until now, he guesses, and he’s exhausted.
Exhausted and alone and stuck, he’s stuck, again, because there’s no way to leave this place, he can’t afford it, even if there turns out to be some kind of terrible catch.
Josh has never had a home. He doesn’t know what to expect. It might just be boring.
Maybe Josh could use boring. He’s had enough excitement in his life.
He falls asleep right there on the floor, but Josh has had a lot of experiences in his life that have ‘blessed’ him with very good hearing and very light sleep, and he wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, possibly, he’s not sure, he fell asleep on the floor and it’s dark now, but also it’s winter in Colorado, but anyway, it’s probably late and he’s slightly discombobulated and he definitely heard something out in the hallway. He can’t be sure what it was, but he’s getting the feeling that there’s a fight going on, or some kind of struggle, at least.
Great.
Josh thinks of grabbing Ethel or Maria, but decides against it. He wouldn’t load it or anything, he’s not stupid enough to shoot in a relatively cramped building unless he absolutely has to, which will probably be never, but he doesn’t want anyone seeing him with a gun and figuring he’s, well, a gunman. They live in America, after all, so that would be a perfectly fair assumption, and it’s Denver in 2017, not the Wild West.
Instead of getting either of his guns, he just opens up his other suitcase and looks for something that can defend him against whatever’s going on out there, because there’s totally something going on out there, Josh has been trained by life to know that those muffled sounds can’t be anything good. Nothing that should be happening in an apartment complex hallway, in any case.
Josh tosses several packs of cards, a pocket knife, another pocket knife, a third pocket knife, bear spray, a baseball glove (no bat, though, damn, that would’ve been helpful, even if Josh has never played baseball in his life, which begs the question of what the glove’s doing there), several tiny empty bottles of vodka, several full tiny bottles of vodka, and—aha! A golf club!
Much like baseball, Josh has never played a par, or whatever it’s called, of golf in his life, but this seems like a fair weapon against mysterious sounds.
He stands up, cocks his head to listen to whether there’s still sounds, and notes that there’s growling and some banging around and also some pressured speech, though he can’t make out any words. He grabs the golf club, and then stuffs the smaller pocket knife into his pants for good measure.
He creeps out of his room, down the tiny dark hallway, into the less tiny dark living room, and then there’s a crash right outside his door and he charges forward and flings it open, standing in the middle of the hallway in a rather heroic position, if he does say so himself, with the golf club held aloft and all. Though it’s also a golf club, which reduces the sex appeal by, like, at least fifty percent.
Josh finds himself staring down at two men who are tangled together on the floor where they must have fallen, and notes their glassy, confused, alarmed stares, and their mussed hair, and their red faces, and the fact that their hands are not in friendly places but not in unfriendly places either, and then he puts all the pieces together and feels like the biggest idiot in the galaxy because he is Joshua Fucking Faraday and he should know what getting it on sounds like.
To be fair, fucking can sound a lot like fighting, and he just, for some reason, didn’t assume that his quiet new life with a bunch of people who actually bought units in an apartment building would involve people who may or may not be his neighbors either making out like teenagers or getting ready to bang like very grown adults right there in the hallway.
“You’re gonna catch flies,” one of the guys, a relatively handsome white dude with what Josh can only describe as a scraggly beard and a black hat just barely managing to stay on his head, says from under the other dude, a slim Asian man with a more well-kept goatee and black hair that was probably in a bun at some point and a face Josh can only describe as angular. “I mean, you’re going to catch flies because your mouth is open. Gaping.”
“I got it the first time,” Josh says in response to the nearly incomprehensible words, which are confounded by a very strong Southern accent and the guy slurring his words because he’s completely wasted.
Dumbass One, who Josh is calling Mr. Beard, and Dumbass Two, who Josh is calling Mr. Face, clamber to their feet. They make a brave attempt at looking sober, but it doesn’t work, what with Mr. Face (who, despite his name, is mostly expressionless in a vaguely intimidating way) leaning against the wall in a way that would be cool and possibly threatening if he didn’t look like he was struggling to stay conscious, and Mr. Beard (who's taking a chance on standing in the middle of the hallway with nothing to lean on) looking like he’s concentrating very hard on both seeming dignified and staying upright. Josh, who is a goddamn pro at being sober-drunk, is more than a little unimpressed. “Who the fuck are you?” he asks, point blank.
Mr. Beard lifts his head, squints at Josh, and says, with great drama, “I think the question here is…WHO ARE YOUUUU?”
The last words are practically bellowed, and Josh is slightly taken aback. He blinks at Mr. Beard until Mr. Face says, with clipped, slightly accented words, at least doing a fine job of sounding sober, “Probably the new neighbor.”
Mr. Beard squints at Josh. “Hm,” he says, his hat finally losing its battle with gravity and falling to the floor. “That may be.”
Josh throws his hands up in exasperation and says, “Seriously, what the fuck?!”
And that’s when the door opens. And another door opens. And a third door. And a fourth, and, oh, look, apparently everyone’s joined the party, and everyone looks ridiculous, mostly because the merry band includes:
The hot guy from earlier, who looks more than a little grouchy, holding the enormous cat, also from earlier.
A white man who might be the physical embodiment of that enormous cat, who makes Josh wish he’d seen him before he dubbed what’s-his-drunk-face Mr. Beard, because that’s a real beard. Okay, actually, he looks less like the giant cat and more like a bear, but he’s at the very least enormous. Towering. Looming. Looking displeased. Also, old, but not so old that Josh could take him unarmed, and Josh is six foot three and pure muscle.
Another older dude, this one black, sporting a bitchin’ mustache and holding himself kind of like a guy who can totally kill you but won’t just because he’s nice but surprise he will, even though he's wearing a ridiculous smoking robe. He also looks displeased.
The last person is Emma, who Josh has actually met. She’s still hot. She rolls her eyes and closes the door. Bye, Emma, Josh thinks sadly.
“What is going on here?!” the older black man says with a look on his face like he’s just super, totally done with everything.
“We met the new guy,” Mr. Face offers, starting to slowly slide down the wall.
“I’m sure you made a wonderful impression,” the man, who Josh will call Mr. Done, says. He turns his glare to Josh. “I didn’t imagine we’d meet like this.”
“It’s actually not that surprising,” Mr. Face says, looking somewhat bored. “Statistically.”
“Shut up, Billy, you’re drunk,” Mr. Done snaps.
“True,” Mr. Face, who Josh now knows is Billy, muses, ass finally meeting the floor, as has been its goal for the last five minutes. “True.”
“Well, I, personally,” Mr. Beard starts, gesticulating grandly, “am very sorry about this situation, esteemed neighbor, it’s merely that my paramour and I were having amorous…” He pauses, squinting as though he’s trying to find another stupid big word. “Amorousness…” he murmurs to finish the sentence, a frown on his face.
“I’m sorry about him,” the enormous man, who Josh will call Mr. Bear, says, actually sounding sorry. “He’s even more long-winded when he’s under the influence.” He narrows his eyes at Mr. Beard and Billy. “How did you two get home?”
“We took an Uber,” Mr. Beard says. “A lovely invention, the car. And the Uber. Though they are one and the same.” He looks off into the distance. “What a sad thought…”
Mr. Done and Mr. Bear both give the guy a strange look in response to that, but seem to shrug it off and focus on Josh again.
Speaking of people who are focusing on Josh, the hot guy from earlier, who he will call Mr. Cat because obviously, is staring at him just like he was earlier today. Unflinching. Blank. Maybe a little curious. Creepy.
Josh looks back at him, hoping the fear on his face doesn’t show, and Mr. Cat ducks his head down to half-bury his face in his namesake’s long fur.
There is a possibility that he’s more afraid of Josh than Josh is of him.
“Well, I’m sure we haven’t made much of an impression on you in terms of hospitality,” Mr. Bear, who has a really weird, high, sort of sweet voice that doesn’t really fit with the fact that he looks like a mountain man, “but we can certainly explain.”
“Mhm,” Mr. Beard says. “It’s date night.”
Josh gives him his best flat look. “Does date night usually end with…” He waves a hand out at the hallway, somewhat ineffectually trying to encompass everything that he saw earlier. “This?”
“Yes,” everyone says in unison.
“God help them, but when they’ve imbibed…those two just can’t keep their hands to themselves,” Mr. Bear says, giving a disapproving sigh. “Though they’re not usually quite this bad. What in Heaven’s name were you two drinking? And honestly, how hard is it to get into your apartment? Really, think of the children,” he tells Billy and Mr. Beard, pointing in the general direction of Mr. Cat.
Even though it seemed like he wasn’t paying attention, Mr. Cat perks up, looking somewhat offended. “I’m twenty-six.”
Mr. Bear pauses to consider this, and then says, again: “…Think of the children.”
Mr. Cat appears to let it go, and looks back at Josh. “Get used to it,” he says ominously.
“It’s only on Fridays,” Mr. Bear says in a way that’s probably supposed to be comforting.
Josh feels like he’s been flung into the deep end of something, and now he’s just staring, and everyone’s staring at each other, and then—
A banging comes from behind the one door that didn’t open, the one right next to Josh’s apartment. Josh jumps, holding the golf club aloft again, but no one comes out. Instead, someone yells from behind the door in accented English, but a different accent than Billy’s, this one’s some kind of Spanish. “Callensé, cabrónes! Some people are trying to watch One Death to Die Young Next Generation! It’s a retrospective, have some respect! Billy and Goody, get a room, Rojito, go to sleep, Jack and Sam, you too, there is nothing you can do to stop the crazy, don’t try!”
Everyone seems to be only slightly caught off guard before they take in the disembodied voice’s words and nod, murmuring among themselves. “Vasquez is right,” Mr. Done says. “This’ll just go on forever if we keep it up.”
Josh is still caught off guard. “What? Who…what? What? Is happening? What is happening?”
“You shut up and go to sleep too, new guy, or whatever you do, I don’t know you! You can figure it all out in the morning!”
“I…” Josh starts, and then, quite suddenly, he’s alone in the hallway. Everyone’s apparently just gone back to their rooms. “Why?” Josh whispers to himself. “Why do these things happen to me?”
“Get used to it!” Vasquez the Disembodied Voice yells helpfully from his apartment. Maybe that's a motto around here.
Josh jumps again. “Christ!”
“I go by Vasquez!”
“Don’t listen to me talk to myself!”
“Go to your damn apartment, then!”
“Fine!” Josh half-shrieks, officially stressed out of his mind, and he disappears back into his apartment, slamming the door behind him.
He leans against it once it’s closed, breathing hard, feeling like he just ran a marathon. Oh, God, there is a catch.
He’s surrounded by freaks.
+
Josh does somehow manage to sleep through the rest of the night in spite of the, uh, vigorous lovemaking coming from right next door, and when he wakes up he’s minimally refreshed, but only minimally, because he remembers the events of last night, and here’s a question: what the hell is he going to do?
Last night was a weird experience, in a life of weird experiences. Sure, there are some that top it easily, but of experiences that Josh has had in the hallway of a building, it was probably the weirdest, especially considering the people involved. God, are those his neighbors? Is he going to build a life around these people?
Well, if Josh thinks about it, he’s had worse neighbors. Probably. He doesn’t know these ones that well yet, but they’re probably better than the meth heads. And the assorted drug dealers. And the clowns. God, the clowns.
And he doesn’t really know these guys yet. He doesn’t ever have to know these guys, actually. He and his mother lived in an apartment building with neighbors for most of his childhood, and he never even learned the names of his neighbors. Just because he had a run-in doesn’t mean they’ll have to be friends or something. Josh can still be a loner. He’s always been great at being alone while surrounded by other people, which isn’t nearly as sad as it sounds. Now that he knows that Fridays are apparently grown-men-practically-banging-in-the-hallway nights, he’s probably good.
Josh massages his temples.
Stop thinking.
He rolls out of bed and gets ready for the day, which will probably mostly be staying inside as he makes a game plan for work next week and keeps being exhausted and bored with everything. He’s got a full schedule.
Also he has to walk Jack.
Pulling on a shirt, Josh drags himself over to the kitchen, looks blankly at all the nothing in there, groans when he realizes he has to go grocery shopping, and then drags himself back to his room, grabs some random MRE that’s on the floor, and goes back to the living room and flops onto his couch to eat it.
He spots his remote on the living room table (he and his TV are old school), and does some contorting to get the remote into his hands. He turns on the TV, flipping through channels. Sports he doesn’t care about because he doesn’t bet on them. Terrible sitcoms. Two people screaming at each other while a TV judge tries to bring order to the court. PBS having another pledge drive. Do they even have shows anymore? Jesus. The fucking news. Josh doesn’t even try to watch that anymore. A soap opera in English. A soap opera in Spanish.
This is why Netflix exists, Josh thinks, but he doesn’t have the energy to grab his computer, so he decides on CSI: Guam instead.
As Josh is watching Detective Murghle do some wildly illegal things to get info out of a C.I. (and do they not realize that C.I.s actually want to give info?), his musings are interrupted by yipping and growling, and he comes back to Earth from the U.S. island territory of Guam to meet his dog’s reproachful eyes.
Jack’s tail is pointedly not wagging, and Josh says, “Fuck, I know, I know, you have to do your business like everyone else, you have to go on walks for your muscles or whatever or so you don’t eat me in my sleep, I have to go to a therapist or something ‘cause I’m talking to my dog like he’s people, I know.”
Josh hoists himself off of the couch and stupidly opens the door before leashing Jack.
Jack, who’s allergic to not being a dick, immediately shoots out of the apartment and…straight into the apartment across from theirs.
Oh, shit.
How did Jack even get in there? The door wasn't even open. Josh, never one to be outdone when it comes to being stupid, immediately barges into the apartment, hoping against hope that whoever it is (and he’s ninety percent sure it’s Mr. Cat, owner of the piercing, suspicious stare that Josh is sure will haunt his dreams, and the oversized feline) that lives here is out at work or something.
“Jack!” he hisses. “Jack!”
“Jack’s not here,” someone says, walking into the living room. It is, in fact, Mr. Cat, dressed in dark gray sweatpants, a black undershirt, and a suede vest. Of course.
Josh pauses and looks around. The place is very neat—painfully neat, actually, with a shining mahogany coffee table directly in front of a very old but clearly lovingly kept black couch that is covered in duct tape, an armchair, tilted just right, that matches the couch except it’s not covered in duct tape, an unplugged TV front and center, various framed works of art and what might be certificates hung on one of the far walls, and a sweet set-up for the cat that includes a scratching post and a little bed. The cat itself is sitting on top of the scratching post, looking almost regal except for how its fur is all puffed out, which actually makes it look ridiculous.
Josh looks around and assumes that its fur is puffed out because, on the couch, well…
“There’s Jack,” Josh says, pointing at his dog, who is having a stare down with the cat again. Is this going to be a thing? Ugh, Josh hopes it’s not going to be a thing.
Mr. Cat gives Josh a confused look and says, “No. It’s a dog.”
Josh furrows his brow. “The two ain’t mutually exclusive. The dog’s name is Jack.”
Mr. Cat is still giving Josh a look, but now it’s mildly unimpressed. “You named your…Jack Russell Terrier…Jack?”
Josh scowls. “I don’t gotta explain my choices to you, buddy.” Even if it mostly boils down to I was drunk and it actually seemed funny at the time.
Drunk Josh has low standards for humor, okay?
“Red Harvest,” Mr. Cat says suddenly, and Josh frowns.
“Um. Good book, one of my favorites. Your point?”
Mr. Cat looks confused again. “My name,” he says slowly, like Josh is an idiot. “It’s Red Harvest.”
“Seriously?” Josh asks, and then he feels kinda bad, but seriously?
“Person who named me must’ve liked th…” Red Harvest clears his throat. “That book.”
“It is a good book,” Josh says. “And, I mean, it’s a cool name, I was just surprised. I’m, uh, I’m Joshua Faraday.” It feels weird to introduce himself like this after all of last night’s commotion, like things should be more dramatic and less quietly awkward, because standing in the middle of a well-kept apartment with a kid who substitutes microexpressions for actual facial expressions and whose name is the title of a Hammett novel seems anticlimactic, though Josh isn’t sure what the climax would be. “Call me Josh,” he says, trying for a charming smile.
Red Harvest nods once. “Sure.” Then he says, “Jack is…he’s the…he’s the big guy. You saw him. Last night.”
Josh tries desperately to figure out where that came from, and when he does, he breathes out an oh. “That’s why you said he wasn’t here.”
“Yeah. ‘Cause he’s not.”
“Fair. Uh, hey, since we’re here, having this nice conversation and all, could I ask you for the names of everyone else I met? Other than Billy and Vasquez, even if, hell, I got a few questions about him too.”
“Yes,” Red Harvest says, and then he says nothing else, looking pensive.
Josh stands there awkwardly. He hates awkwardness. Fuck this. “I’m asking you.”
“I know.” Red Harvest is quiet for another moment, and then: “Jack Horne is Jack. Sam Chisolm’s the…the other old one. Emma. Goodnight. Billy Rocks. Va…” Red Harvest takes a huffy breath. “Vasquez…we don’t know his first name.”
Josh sifts through the names, trying to put them to faces, and he’s got it, finally—Mr. Bear is Jack, which is going to be confusing, Mr. Done is Sam, Emma is Emma, Mr. Beard is…Goodnight? What the hell kind of name is Goodnight?, Billy is Billy, and Vasquez the Disembodied Voice is…Vasquez. “Thanks, buddy,” Josh says, still feeling awkward. “Uh, I’ll just head out to walk Jack. The dog. Sorry about him getting into your apartment like that, I’ll make sure he keeps to himself next time.”
“Okay,” Red Harvest says, and then, “He seems like a nice dog. Purple likes him.”
Josh is weirdly touched, seeing the abrupt words for the attempt at connection that they are, even though Red Harvest is stiff and uncomfortable in his body language and speech. Josh isn’t big on connection, though, so he just says, “Purple?”
“You named your Jack Russell Terrier Jack,” Red Harvest says in a flat voice.
“Touché, kid.”
“Twenty-five.”
“You were twenty-six last night.”
“Sure.”
Josh wonders if he’s supposed to be following this conversation, and decides to actually leave before it can get any worse. He whistles at Jack, who perks up and goes to him, leaving Purple the enormous cat behind. “Bye, Red Harvest. It was, uh…nice talking to you. I figure I’ll see you again sometime.”
“We live across from each other.”
“Exactly,” Josh calls as he closes the door behind him and then heaves out a heavy breath. Well, that wasn’t so bad. Okay, it was kind of bad, but Red Harvest seems like a nice guy, if a little off.
Josh leashes his dog and immediately walks into someone, because, God, of course he does.
“My apologies, neighbor,” a familiar, though more intelligible, voice says.
“Goodnight,” Josh says, grinning, because that’s a good default expression. “You remember me?”
Goodnight clears his throat awkwardly. Billy, who is standing next to him, gives Josh a cold, flat look, and Josh will take Red Harvest’s curious blankness over that any day. “You know my name, then,” Goodnight says.
“Yeah, I was just talking to Red Harvest, he gave me the lowdown on…well, on everyone’s names. Nothing else.”
“Red talked to you? So soon? Well, that’s lovely. Anyhow, Mr…”
“I’m Joshua Faraday, call me Josh. Or Faraday. Either, or.”
“We were hoping to get you in an environment a little less…high-stress than last night, I suppose, so Billy and I were just wondering if you’d like to come to something of a dinner party at our place in a day or two? With everyone on the floor? As a get to know you kind of shindig, you know.” Goodnight says, chuckling.
Billy’s expression lapses into confusion. What? he mouths to himself.
Josh, finding this amusing, says, “Oh, absolutely. I’d love to.”
“Wonderful!” Goodnight says, clapping Josh on the shoulder.
Billy still looks like he’s wondering what just happened. Josh is now sure that he was not consulted about this dinner party.
Jack growls and he’s practically vibrating and shit, “Well, I have to get the dog outside, nature calls, y’know?” Josh says, chuckling awkwardly.
Everything is awkward, he thinks, slightly panicked, as he practically sprints down the stairs. He can’t live like this. That’s why he’s letting the dinner party happen, but, God, is it going to be just as awkward the whole time? He doesn’t know if he can take this, but his neighbors are clearly trying for something, and Josh is starting a new life and all, so he figures that going to one dinner party can’t hurt.
It’s not like he cares.