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He meets her when the soda can hits his foot.
He bends down and picks up the cool can, rounding the corner to see someone standing outside the door across the hall from his own. He’s still soaking wet and the paper bag of groceries next to her has torn, scattering soda cans and fruit across the floor. The apartment wasn’t occupied a few hours ago, so he’s sure the resident has just moved in. He picks up another can and several oranges before he gets to the crouched down figure.
She turns around and his heart stops.
It isn’t just the fact that her cheeks are flushed and her hair is plastered to her skull. Or the fact that she’s moved and instead of getting water or something her grocery bag is full of oranges and soda. It has less to do with the flashlight keychain dangling from hers or the wet coat that falls around her slender frame. He can’t really identify what it is, just that her eyes meet his and he kind of forgets how to breathe.
He tells her she dropped something and she stares for a moment before stepping forward to take them from his arms because it’s more than something, it’s a lot of things. He wants to carry them for her but he doubts she wants some stranger in her apartment so he just settles them in her arms and spends a bit too long fishing for his keys to make sure she gets inside safe.
Her mailbox tells him her name is M. Mori.
When they introduce each other he discovers the M stands for Mako.
The building they live in has no elevator and they seem to arrive at the same time every night. They talk on the stairs. She’s in the city as a model which he can totally appreciate since she’s gorgeous, even with her heels in her hair and her cropped hair and eyeliner smudged beneath her lashes. No, not even. She’s especially beautiful like that. She wants to be a student but she tells him her english isn’t there yet and she doesn’t have the savings for the course to take.
It takes him a week to come up with the courage to offer to teach her.
They meet in the hallway.
She doesn’t invite him in to her apartment and he doesn’t want to put her in the position to tell him she’s not comfortable going in to his. They’re the last two apartments in the hall—and the only two occupied ones. They sit with their backs to the wall that’s between their two apartments and he practices her english.
She starts to bring food. At first it’s just chips or something but slowly it shifts to food she’s made herself. There’s rice packed around pickles and wrapped in seaweed and chicken over noodles. He doesn’t think he’s eaten so well in months. They eat and talk, he usually brings the paper or something because he quickly learns Mako does not like talking about herself.
Raleigh understands, he doesn’t like talking about himself either.
Their power goes out during a storm that sends water through the leaks in his roof. he knows the chances of her being in trouble are slim but he still heads over to her apartment and raps on the door. Her face is blank when she opens the door—which he now knows means she’s upset. Her apartment is sparse and he can see the water hitting the floor.
Together they set out pots and pans to catch the drips. She’s got a lantern instead of just a flashlight and they set it on the floor between them. He asks about the scrolls on her walk and she explains that they were gifts. He asks what they say and she sounds out the characters for him. He listens, of course, but he also watches. She’s confident when she reads her native tongue. It’s nothing short of spellbinding to watch. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear and he laces his fingers together to hold himself steady.
The next time they meet she knows.
he doesn’t know how she knows but she does, he knows the moment she jerks back when he leans too close. He looks down and he wants to run but her small hand goes on his wrist and she apologizes. She says she was reading the paper like he told her to and she saw his picture and his name. He says they should focus in what they’re there to do and she nods. She tries to focus but it isn’t the same and his heart aches. Not that he blames her, he doesn’t want to be near himself either, but it isn’t possible to crawl out of your own skin. Not that he hasn’t tried.
he can’t get in to his apartment fast enough and he can’t hear the goodbye on her lips. Its too final.
He avoid the hallway for two days, trying to pick times when she won’t be home. she can’t wait out in the hallway forever. She thwarts him by leaving her door open and essentially cornering him. Everything in him recoils because he likes her and she must hate him. She more or less has to shout an apology at him before he hears it over the roaring in his ears. He can’t fathom why she’s apologizing. It isn’t her fault. But he can’t just leave her upset in the hallway or with her door open, they live in a bad neighborhood after all.
he invites her in, instead.
shes the first person whose been in his apartment since he moved in. Her eyes go over the drafting table against the window and his tools laid out On the table nearby. She looks over the old fashioned models scattered around and stops before one, peering at the details. He doesn’t think it’s possible to be more embarrassed, he really needs to design a floor that can swallow someone whole. He mumbles something about needing to clean up instead. She stays crouched like that and he finally bends down, meeting her eye through the small arch in the building.
She smiles and waves.
It’s the first time anyone’s done that in his apartment.
she signs up for the TOEFL exam and they essentially are joined at the hip as she drills everything she’ll need to know and he tries to get her to relax. She’ll do fine if she doesn’t psyche herself out. At one in the morning she freaks out about trains and delays so he says he’ll get her there on his bike. She agrees instantly and three hours before the start they’re cruising along deserted roads towards the testing center.
Her warm weight against his back is pretty much the only reason he doesn’t flee back to his apartment as the buildings get nicer and taller. Great glass monsters that rise out of the ground to challenge the heavens. He looks at them with a critical eye, he can’t not after all. The landscape is familiar and gets more so until he pulls the bike over outside the test center and takes her across the street so she’ll eat something.
For the first time he steps in to the building that he designed.
Its the newest one, not his tallest but tall enough to be impressive. He works remotely, he looks at his buildings in pieces now, only at the whole thing when its necessary. Mako’s fingers are tight on his the entire time. It’s awful but he stays there until its not quite so bad. He manages to smile when she goes in for her test and then goes back in to the building.
He goes up to the roof and imagines her smiling at him across it. He wanders to the edge and leans over it. His most famous design winks back at him across the harbor. Its in every post card, the largest thing in the skyline. He hates the building more than any other, hates the fact that it endures, that it was completed despite what happened. He forces himself to look at it for a long time until she texts him that she’s out.
She doesn’t think she did well, but Mako never thinks that.
They ride back to their building. Raleigh offers to make them dinner but packs most of it up when Mako falls asleep on his couch. She barely stills when he puts a blanket over her. For the first time in a while he actually sleeps through the night, lulled by the steady sound of her breathing. He actually wakes up instead of jerking awake in a panic, something that never happens on days when he has to go in to the city. He looks over at the couch, expecting Mako to be gone. But she isn’t.
She also turns out to have a cold.
It isn’t that he doesn’t let her leave, he just tells her that it might rain or the power might go out and she’s sick so she should probably stay here. She is pretty miserable when she’s sick so she camps out on his couch and he makes her soup. They watch old movies because he doesn’t have cable and even though she curls up on the other end of the couch she always winds up closer to him. He doesn’t care if he gets sick.
By the time he does she’s better. she doesn’t have a couch so she stays in his apartment. He has homemade miso soup for the first time and they make their way through more movies. they like the old monster movies the best. he means to go to his bed and offers it to her instead but in reality they wake up tangled together on the couch, head tucked against his chest.
when she goes to her apartment it’s to get stuff. he uses his sore arm as an excuse to move their slumber parties to the bed. They tangle together underneath his comforter and listen to the rain ding into the pots and pans. After the first night he wakes up screaming and reaching, she sleeps curled on that side, holding his arm to her so when he wakes up reaching for someone he’s holding on to her.
Its impossible not to fall in love with her.
He thinks he fell the first moment he saw her, with his arms full of her groceries. He keeps it quiet though. Mako has a beautiful life ahead of her, a bright future that doesn’t include a broken man whose practically afraid to go in to the city. She fills out applications for school and he mentally tries to prepare for the day when she leaves the crappy apartment and him behind.
Except she doesn’t.
Her scholarship doesn’t include the boarding expenses and she wants to save money. Against his better judgement he suggests she let her apartment go and just move the last few things in to his. Which definitely wasn’t how he was expecting the conversation to go. She smiles and says yes but she wants him to have dinner with her first. By the time he’s loping a tie around his neck he thinks he should have asked where first.
She wears a cocktail dress and he can’t take his eyes off her. Which is lucky because the place has a spectacular view of the harbor. The waiter calls him Mr. Becket and he nearly chokes on the champagne they have together. No-one calls him that, even his clients call him Raleigh. Mako hooks her ankle under his and he focuses on that instead.
When they get outside he has to look at it.
He can’t not look at it. Damn thing is lit up like a beacon, which is what it was intended to do, Yancy was never one for subtly. Not where their buildings were concerned. Mako leans against him. She doesn’t tell him the building is beautiful or make him explain the story of what happened. She knows it already, the whole world does. Construction accidents happen, it’s part of the risk. Or that’s what they told him when he demanded they stop building. Instead she threads her fingers through his and leans her head against his shoulder. She grounds him, keeping him focused on the present instead of getting lost in the past.
He asks if she likes it here.
She shrugs, takes his hand and says they should go home.
its funny because it isn’t until he gets inside he realizes that he has a home. He only ever thought of the apartment as a hide away, somewhere to forget. There’s an email about a new project and their shoes are piled by the door. he catches Mako’s wrist before she moves last him and kisses her carefully. When they pull apart she smiles breathlessly at him.
"I think we should move."