Chapter 1- Feuding Neighbours
Ryan got home after midnight with the smell of the kitchen still clinging to his clothes and the last of a long shift sitting heavy in his shoulders. The restaurant had been packed, the kind of night where every ticket came in stacked and the private dining room had been prepped for a tasting menu that never happened. A last-minute cancellation left a small wooden box of black truffles already opened and portioned for the service. They would not hold their quality until the next service. Too good to bin, too expensive to waste. As head chef he took them home.
Now he stood at his own stove in the quiet of his apartment, sleeves rolled, still in the black chef’s shirt he’d worn all night. The pan was already hot. He cracked three eggs into the butter, let them set at the edges, then shaved the truffles over the top in thin, careful curls. The smell rose fast, earthy and rich, the kind of scent that filled a small apartment and kept going. He slid the eggs onto toast, scraped the last of the truffle into the pan so nothing wasted, and ate standing up because sitting felt like admitting the day was over.
The first knock came while he still had a mouthful.
Not a polite knock. Three hard hits, the kind that said the person on the other side had already decided he was in the right.
Ryan swallowed, set the plate down, and opened the door.
Patrick stood in the hallway in a soft grey sweater that looked like it cost more than Ryan’s weekly produce order, hair still perfect even at this hour, expression already locked into righteous irritation.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Patrick said. “That smell is in my apartment. It’s in the hallway. It’s probably in the stairwell by now. Are you doing this on purpose?”
Ryan leaned against the doorframe. “I’m cooking dinner.”
“In the middle of the night!”
“I just got off. Some of us work.”
Patrick’s eyes flicked past him toward the stove, then back. “You could have made something that didn’t announce itself to the entire floor. That is aggressive. That is a deliberate invasion.”
“It’s eggs and truffle.”
“I know what it is. It smells like you’re trying to remind the building that you can afford ingredients the rest of us only see in magazines.”
Ryan almost laughed. “You sell seven-figure paintings of blue squares to men who already own three houses. Don’t lecture me about expensive ingredients.”
“It is when it comes through my door at this hour. I was trying to sleep.”
“Then close your door properly.”
Patrick pointed a finger at him. “Do not tell me how to manage my own apartment. You have been doing this for months. Late night cooking, the smell drifts, and somehow it always finds its way into my place. I am not imagining it.”
Ryan crossed his arms. “You have no moral high ground here. None. Remember the times your cooking filled the hallway with smoke?”
Patrick’s mouth opened, then closed. “That happened once.”
“Three times.”
“It was one incident that got exaggerated.”
Ryan held up a finger. “First time. You decided to make some kind of dramatic seafood thing with a pan that was too hot and the smoke detector in the hall went off for twelve minutes while you stood there waving a tea towel like that was going to fix it.”
“The oil was defective.”
“Second time. You tried to caramelize something that was not meant to be caramelized and the whole corridor smelled like burnt sugar and regret for an hour. Mrs. Chen from 7A came out in her robe and asked if the building was on fire.”
Patrick’s jaw tightened. “That was an aesthetic choice that got away from me.”
“Third time. The toast incident. You left four slices under the grill, went to answer an email, and came back to black rectangles and a hallway that smelled like a campfire had been built inside the walls. I had to open my windows in January.”
“That was one time and you know it.”
“Three,” Ryan said. “I counted. Because every single time you act like the universe owes you an apology for the consequences of your own stove.”
Patrick took a step closer. There was something deeply irritating about the fact that Ryan looked better when he was tired. The rolled sleeves, the residual kitchen heat still on his skin, the way exhaustion somehow failed to make him look worse. Patrick decided this was probably another reason to dislike him.
“You cannot keep filling the building with that smell,” Patrick said.
“I live here too.”
“You’re doing this deliberately.”
“I am cooking eggs, Patrick. I don’t have a villain’s lair.”
“You know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Yes. I’m making dinner. It’s a complicated process. There are eggs involved.”
“You could have some consideration for your neighbours.”
“I am considering you. I’m considering that you’re awake at one in the morning arguing with me instead of sleeping.”
Patrick stared at him. “You are impossible.”
“And you are standing in my doorway at nearly one in the morning complaining about the smell of food. You cannot legally tell another tenant they are not allowed to cook. There is no clause in the lease about truffle after midnight. Go to bed.”
“This is not over.”
“It never is.”
Patrick turned on his heel and walked the short distance to flat 7B. The door shut harder than necessary. Ryan closed his own door, went back to the plate, and finished the eggs while they were still warm. The truffle was excellent. The whole exchange had been exactly as pointless as every other exchange they had been having for the past year.
He washed the pan, left the plate in the sink, and checked his phone out of habit. The list of available networks came up the way it always did. Most of them were the usual building names, a couple of guest networks, the one from the floor below that never got a password change. And there, newly updated, sat Patrick’s network.
YourFoodSucks.
Ryan stared at it for a long moment. Then he laughed once, short and quiet, and opened the settings on his own router. He changed the name to freeblowjobsat7b purely because he knew it would infuriate Patrick, saved it, and left the phone on the counter.
In 7B, Patrick had already kicked off his shoes and was pacing the length of the living room. He refreshed the network list out of pure spite.
The new name appeared almost immediately.
freeblowjobsat7b
Patrick stopped walking.
He read it again.
Then he closed the laptop with more force than the hinge deserved, walked straight back out into the hallway, and hit Ryan’s door with the side of his fist.
Three hard knocks. Then three more.
From inside came the sound of movement, then Ryan’s voice, muffled and clearly amused.
“Go away.”
“Change it back.”
“No.”
“That is not funny. That is completely inappropriate.”
Ryan’s laugh came through the door, low and unbothered. “You started it.”
“I made a comment about your cooking. You turned me into a hooker.”
“It’s just a network name. No one cares.”
“I care. Change it.”
“Still no.”
“This is dangerous. Some weirdo might come to my apartment demanding… that.”
“Don’t worry about that. Everyone knows not to put their dick in crazy.”
Patrick turned a deep shade of pink, and hit the door again. “Open this door.”
“I’m in bed.”
“You are not. I can hear you standing right there laughing at me.”
Another short laugh. “Yeah. I am. And I’m not opening it. Go complain to the building manager if you want. See how that conversation goes when you wake him up at this hour.”
Patrick stood in the hallway with his hand still raised, listening to the quiet on the other side. He dropped his hand, turned, and went back to his own apartment.
He locked the door and walked to the laptop again. The network name was still there, bright and ridiculous on the list. freeblowjobsat7b. He cursed under his breath, opened his own router settings, and stared at the blank field for a solid minute trying to invent something clever enough to hit back. Nothing came. Every option felt weaker. He closed the laptop, muttered a string of insults aimed at Ryan’s entire existence, and went to bed still muttering.
The next day Patrick stood in the museum’s private viewing room with a pair of white gloves on and a seven-figure abstract already lit to perfection. The client had stepped out to take a call about a yacht. Theo leaned against the opposite wall, scrolling through his phone and looking entirely too comfortable for someone who was supposed to be helping.
“So then Grumpington McHotass opens the door looking like he just came off a twelve-hour shift and has the nerve to act like I’m the unreasonable one,” Patrick said, still facing the painting. “Eggs and truffle at nearly one in the morning. The entire hallway smelled like a Michelin kitchen decided to move in next door. And when I told him to stop invading my apartment he brought up the toast incident. Again.”
Theo did not look up. “You did nearly set the building on fire with toast.”
“It was four slices and a moment of distraction.”
“And the seafood thing. And the caramelised whatever that made Mrs. Chen think we were under attack.”
Patrick turned. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always. But you cannot cook, Patrick. That is not a secret. That is a documented public safety issue.”
“I can cook.”
“You cannot. And if we’re being honest, you’re only this angry because nobody showed up for the free blowjobs.”
Patrick stared at him. “That is not funny.”
“It is a little funny. freeblowjobsat7b. I would have left it too.”
“He did it on purpose. Everything he does is on purpose. The late-night cooking, the Wi-Fi, the constant implication that I am somehow the problem for noticing.”
Theo finally put the phone away. “You are the problem. You live next door to a chef who brings home leftover truffle and you act like it’s a personal attack. Most people would just close the door and be grateful the building smells expensive.”
“I am not most people.”
“No argument there.”
Two colleagues from acquisitions wandered in looking for the client’s file. Patrick saw the opportunity and took it.
“Monday,” he announced. “Museum’s closed. Dinner at mine. I’m cooking.”
Theo blinked. “You’re what.”
“Cooking. Properly. I have decided the neighbour is not the only person in this building capable of feeding people.”
One of the colleagues, a woman named Sasha who specialised in postwar American work, raised her eyebrows. “You’re inviting us to a meal you are preparing yourself?”
“Yes. And I am messaging two more people right now.” Patrick already had his phone out. “Eli and Jordan. They can bring wine. I will handle the rest.”
Theo stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Patrick. You do not have to prove anything to Grumpington McHotass.”
“I am not proving anything to him. I am proving it to myself. And to you, since you keep insisting I am a danger in a kitchen.”
“You are a danger in a kitchen. That is not an opinion. That is lived experience.”
“Monday. Eight o’clock. Do not be late.”
By the time the client returned, the invitations were sent and Patrick had already started a mental list of equipment he did not own yet. He spent the rest of the afternoon selling a particularly severe piece of geometric minimalism to a man who kept checking his watch, and by the time he got home the determination had settled into something sharper.
He ordered takeout anyway. There was no point starting the experiment early. Instead he opened Netflix, found the new thriller everyone had been talking about, turned the volume up because the building’s walls were thin and he refused to use headphones, and settled onto the sofa in the softest trousers he owned.
The movie was good. Tense, stylish, the kind of thing that made you lean forward without noticing. Dialogue and soundtrack poured through the wall into the neighbouring apartment without a single pause.
Ryan came home to the sound of it already filling his living room. He recognised the film immediately. It was the one he had been waiting to watch on his next night off. The volume was high enough that he could follow entire scenes without effort. He dropped his bag, walked the short distance to 7B, and knocked hard.
Patrick took his time. The film kept playing. Standing in the hallway, Ryan heard the killer’s identity land clearly through the door, complete with the swelling music and the dramatic reaction shot.
Patrick finally opened the door. Ryan’s face was murderous.
“Turn it down.”
Patrick blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The television. Turn it down. I can hear every word through the wall.”
“I am watching a film in my own apartment.”
“You are blasting the sound like you are trying to share it with the entire floor. I just heard the entire reveal standing out here.”
Patrick felt a small, mean flicker of satisfaction. “I didn’t realise you had dibs on the entire streaming catalogue.”
“I don’t. I just prefer not to have the ending ruined by someone who treats the volume button like a personal weapon.”
“You did that on purpose,” Ryan said.
“I was watching television.”
“You heard me come home. You left it loud on purpose.”
“I did not. The volume has been the same since I started.”
“Then soundproof your place if you have a problem with thin walls. Or get headphones. Or develop the basic consideration required to live next to other human beings.”
Patrick leaned against the doorframe. “You cooked truffle eggs at one in the morning and then renamed your network to something that sounds like a classified ad. You do not get to lecture me about consideration.”
“That was different.”
“How.”
“Because I was hungry and you started it.”
“I complained about a smell. You escalated to turning me into a public service via Wi-Fi.”
Ryan took a step closer. The hallway light caught the line of his shoulders. Patrick noticed, hated that he noticed, and decided the irritation was simply leftover from the night before.
“Turn it down,” Ryan said again, quieter.
“Or what.”
“Or I will stand out here and narrate every remaining plot point at full volume until you do.”
“I am allowed to watch television.”
“And I am allowed to ask you not to do it at a volume that turns my living room into a secondary screening.”
They stood there for a moment, the film still playing loudly behind Patrick, the hallway quiet except for the low hum of the building and the soundtrack leaking through.
“You could just close your door and ignore it,” Patrick said.
“You could just turn it down.”
“Where’s the fun in that.”
Ryan’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something closer to the expression he wore when he was deciding whether an argument was worth continuing.
“Enjoy the rest of it,” he said, and turned away.
Patrick watched him go the short distance to his own door, waited until it shut, then closed his own with more force than necessary. He went back to the sofa and kept the volume exactly where it had been. The ending felt slightly less satisfying. He blamed Ryan entirely.
The next morning Patrick stepped onto his balcony with a lilac clay mask drying on his face and a fluffy leopard-print faux fur bathrobe wrapped around him like a particularly aggressive cloud. The air was cool. The city was still mostly quiet. He set the incense stick in its holder, lit it, and closed his eyes for the first attempt at meditation he had made in weeks.
Laughter made him open them again.
Ryan was on the neighbouring balcony in a sleeveless grey vest and a pair of short black shorts that left very little to the imagination. The outline of him was frankly unnecessary. Patrick’s first coherent thought was that some people had no sense of public decency. His second was that the clay mask was starting to crack around his mouth and he probably looked like a rejected spa advertisement.
“Morning,” Ryan said, still smiling.
Patrick did not return the greeting. “Do you ever wear actual clothes.”
“These are clothes.”
“Those are a cry for attention.”
Ryan leaned on the railing. “Says the man in a leopard bathrobe and a face full of purple mud. You look like a discarded soft toy that got lost on the way to a wellness retreat.”
“It is a clay mask. It is skincare.”
“It is a commitment. I’ll give you that.”
Patrick adjusted the robe. The faux fur shed a little onto the railing. “At least I am not standing out here half naked before nine in the morning.”
“I’m about to exercise. This is practical.”
“That is not practical. That is a public service announcement.”
Ryan’s smile widened. He reached back, pulled the vest over his head in one motion, and dropped it on the chair behind him. The morning light did nothing to make the situation less ridiculous. Patrick looked away first, which felt like a small personal failure.
“Showing off now?” Patrick asked the skyline.
“Why are you looking.”
“I am not looking. I am existing in the same general direction as your balcony. There is a difference.”
“Sure.”
Ryan dropped into a set of push-ups without further comment. Patrick turned back to his incense, which was beginning to send a thin ribbon of smoke across the gap between them. The scent was sandalwood and something floral. He had chosen it specifically because it was strong.
Ryan paused mid-rep. “What is that.”
“Incense.”
“It smells like a temple exploded.”
“It is calming.”
“It is invading my balcony.”
Patrick smiled under the cracking mask. “You live here too. Or so I was told last night.”
Ryan sat back on his heels. “You cannot just light whatever you want and let it drift.”
“I can. There is no clause in the lease about morning incense. I checked.”
“You did not check.”
“I considered checking. Same thing.”
Ryan stood, picked up the vest, and wiped his face with it. “You are doing this because of the television.”
“I am doing this because I felt like meditating.”
“With a leopard bathrobe and a face mask that makes you look like you lost a fight with a paint sample.”
“At least I am not the one doing half-naked calisthenics for an audience of one.”
“There is no audience. You turned away.”
“I am still within earshot. That counts.”
They looked at each other across the short distance. The incense smoke continued its slow journey toward Ryan’s side. Somewhere below, a car horn sounded and was ignored.
“Turn it off,” Ryan said.
“No.”
“Patrick.”
“Ryan.”
Ryan shook his head once, the same short laugh from the night before, and went back inside without another word. Patrick stayed on the balcony until the incense burned down and the mask had fully set. He rinsed it off in the bathroom sink, looked at himself in the mirror, and decided that Monday’s dinner was going to be perfect if it killed him.
He opened his laptop and began ordering equipment.
Chapter 2 – Her Grace
Patrick stood in the middle of his kitchen with his phone propped against a bag of imported sea salt and the camera angled just wide enough to show the chaos of delivery boxes and specialty packaging. Her Grace sat on the counter beside him like a small, judgemental supervisor, tail flicking against a newly purchased copper saucepan.
Theo’s face filled the screen, already looking concerned.
“Walk me through this again,” Theo said. “Because from where I’m sitting it looks like you robbed a culinary boutique and then decided the evidence should live in your kitchen.”
“I am preparing for Monday,” Patrick replied. He lifted a vacuum-sealed package of something pale and expensive. “Ryan cooks. Our friends cook. Following instructions cannot be that difficult. People do it every day. There are entire channels dedicated to it.”
“Those people usually start with eggs and toast, not a full tasting menu for six.”
“It is not a tasting menu. It is an impressive dinner. There is a difference.”
Her Grace leaned forward and sniffed the package. Patrick gently redirected her with one finger.
Theo squinted at the background. “How much did you spend?”
Patrick hesitated just long enough to make it worse. “Roughly a thousand.”
“Patrick.”
“Imported ingredients. Specialty cookware. Proper serving vessels that actually match. A flambé torch because presentation matters. A culinary siphon for textures. Obscure garnishes that most people cannot pronounce. Extremely good oils and salts. The kind that come with little stories on the label.”
Theo put his face in his hands. “You spent a thousand dollars to prove a point to a man who already thinks you are ridiculous.”
“I am not proving a point to him. I am proving a point to myself. And to you, since you keep treating my kitchen like a hazard zone.”
“It is a hazard zone. You once set off the smoke alarm with toast.”
“That was months ago.”
“It was still toast.”
Patrick moved the phone so Theo could see the dining area. Above the table hung a new sculptural pendant light, all asymmetrical glass and thin metal arms that looked more like modern art than lighting.
“And that?” Theo asked.
“It completes the room. The old fixture was an insult to the ceiling.”
“No ceiling fixture should cost whatever that cost.”
“It was an investment in atmosphere.”
“It looks like it could fall on someone.”
“It is perfectly secure. I checked the mounting myself.”
Theo did not look convinced. “You are going to cook an impressive dinner under a light that costs more than most people’s monthly rent, using a thousand dollars of ingredients you do not know how to handle, while inviting people who have already seen you fail at toast.”
“I am going to succeed.”
“Your confidence is not reassuring. It is the opposite of reassuring.”
Her Grace stood, stretched with deliberate drama, and hopped down from the counter. She padded across the floor toward the open balcony door, paused to glance back at Patrick as if confirming he was still occupied, and slipped outside.
Patrick barely noticed. He was already rearranging a row of tiny bottles of infused oils.
“Monday,” he said. “Eight o’clock. I have everything under control.”
Theo made a sound that was not agreement. “I am bringing extra wine. And possibly a fire extinguisher.”
“Unnecessary.”
“We will see.”
Ryan had finally done the laundry.
After several long shifts the pile had turned into a quiet personal crisis. Some of the clothes were already washed and currently tumbling in the dryer. The rest of the dirty stuff was still in the machine. The clothes that were dry and ready to wear had been folded and shoved into the cupboard by the entrance, the one he used for everything that was not a chef’s jacket. Clean shirts, soft grey tees, joggers that actually fit, the shorts he liked. Small win. He left it all there and went to shower.
Hot water. Decent pressure. He stayed under longer than he needed to, letting the shift steam off him, only getting out when the mirror was useless.
Towel around his waist. Hand through wet hair. He stepped into the hallway and the smell hit him like a personal insult.
The cupboard door was open.
Her Grace sat inside it like she had paid rent. Freshly cleaned clothes were everywhere. She had already peed and shat with impressive commitment, then scratched and dug until shirts and shorts were kicked over the mess, layered, buried, the whole cupboard turned into a warm, stinking, chaotic disaster zone. Not one shirt. Not two. The entire contents looked like they had been through a very personal war.
Ryan stopped.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
The cat blinked, slow and regal, then went back to licking one paw as if she had just finished a spa treatment.
“Out. Now. That was clean. That was the only clean I had that wasn’t covered in kitchen grease.”
She shifted, settled deeper onto a grey T-shirt, and started on the other paw.
Ryan lunged.
Her Grace launched like a furry missile. She hit the floor, skidded, corrected, and shot for the living room. Ryan went after her with one hand locked on the towel and the other grabbing air. She hit the sofa, bounced, used the back cushions as a launch pad, and landed on the coffee table hard enough to send the remote and a stack of menus flying. The remote vanished under the sofa. Menus everywhere.
“Come here, you demonic little—”
Under the dining table. Ryan dropped to his knees. The towel tried to abandon ship. He yanked it back and crawled. She shot out the other side, clipped a chair, and sent it crashing. He scrambled up, towel now doing the bare minimum, and chased her into the kitchen.
Counter. She made it. He reached. She knocked an empty glass sideways. It rolled, teetered, and exploded on the floor in a bright spray of shards.
“Are you actually serious right now?”
She glanced at the glass, then at him, then took the clear path back to the living room like she had planned the whole route.
Ryan followed, feet careful around the glass, inventing new combinations of words that mostly involved Patrick, the cat, and several things that were not legal in most states. She reached the armchair. He thought he had her. She went vertical, used his shoulder as a springboard, and launched for the bookcase.
Books rained down. A framed photo of the restaurant team hit the floor face-first. She scrambled higher, kicked a half-dead plant off the top shelf, and watched the pot explode on the rug in a burst of soil and leaves.
Ryan stood in the middle of it all, towel barely hanging on, wet hair dripping down his neck, chest still warm from the shower, staring at the wreckage like it had personally betrayed him.
“I tried with you,” he told the cat, who was now perched at the top looking bored. “I spoke nicely. I bought the expensive treats. I let you walk through here like you owned the place. And this is the thanks. You wait until the laundry is finally done and then you take a dump in the one cupboard that was going right.”
Her Grace yawned so wide he could see every tooth.
He grabbed a T-shirt off the floor, shook the worst of the evidence off it, and approached the bookcase like a man who had already lost the moral high ground.
“Down. Now. We pretend this never happened and I don’t deliver you back to your owner in a carrier labelled ‘return to sender’.”
She did not come down.
He climbed onto the armchair, reached up, and got a hand around her middle. She twisted hard, claws catching the edge of the towel. The towel lost. Ryan yelped, lost his balance, and they both went down in a messy tangle of limbs, fur, and pure rage.
They hit the rug hard. He still had her. She fought, yowled, tried to bite his forearm. He held on, sitting up naked in the middle of the destroyed living room, wet skin, dirt on his knees, one furious cat clamped against his chest.
“Got you, you absolute nightmare.”
She stopped long enough to give him a look of pure aristocratic disgust.
Ryan looked from the squirming cat to the open cupboard of ruined clothes, then at the trail of destruction she had left. He still had a couple of things kept in the bedroom that were fine. He could have sorted the mess later. He did not give a single shit. He was too angry to play housekeeper.
He yanked the towel back around his waist as best he could, tightened his grip on the cat, and stood.
“Right. You and me. Next door. Your human is going to explain why his little Satan in a fur coat just turned my clean laundry into a biohazard, and he is going to do it while I am still in this towel because I am done being reasonable today.”
Ryan shifted Her Grace under one arm like a particularly hostile package, and walked the short distance to 7B without giving himself time to think. The ruined cupboard stayed exactly where it was. He had the culprit. Everything else could wait.
He hit the door with the side of his fist.
Patrick opened it looking pleased with himself, still in the soft clothes he wore for domestic experiments, a tea towel over one shoulder and the faint smell of expensive ingredients behind him.
“What,” Patrick started, then saw the cat and the towel and the expression on Ryan’s face. “Oh.”
Ryan held Her Grace out like evidence in a trial. “Your cat. My clean laundry. She got into the cupboard, took a full tour, and left both urine and shit distributed through every shirt and pair of shorts I had that was actually wearable. You are paying for the dry cleaning. Or the replacement. I have not decided which yet.”
Patrick looked at the cat. The cat looked back with pure aristocratic indifference. Then Patrick’s mouth twitched.
“Do not,” Ryan said.
Patrick laughed.
It started small and got worse. He leaned against the doorframe, one hand covering his mouth, shoulders shaking.
“It is not funny.”
“It is a little funny.”
“There is nothing funny about coming out of the shower to find your only clean clothes turned into a biohazard by a cat that does not even live here.”
Patrick tried to straighten up and failed. “She cannot possibly have targeted the laundry on purpose. She is a cat. Cats do not have agendas.”
“Then walk me through the innocent sequence of events that ended with both urine and feces carefully worked through an entire cupboard of clean clothes. Was it an accident that she also scratched everything into a pile afterward so the mess was properly distributed?”
“She was exploring.”
“She was committing a felony.”
Her Grace twisted hard in Ryan’s grip. She yowled, kicked, and launched herself free in one smooth, furious motion, using the momentum to shoot past both of them into the apartment in a blur of fur and offended dignity.
The force of her escape yanked the towel.
It dropped.
Ryan stood there in the open doorway, completely bare. Wet hair still clung to the back of his neck in dark strands. Water beaded across the lean lines of his shoulders and the solid plane of his chest, tracing down over the defined cut of his stomach to the narrow set of his hips. His thighs were strong from years of long shifts on his feet, skin still damp and warm from the shower, the whole of him unselfconsciously on display in the middle of the hallway.
Patrick reacted immediately.
His eyes went down and stayed there. A strangled sound escaped him. He grabbed the doorframe like it was the only solid thing left in the building, looked away so hard he nearly overbalanced, looked straight back again, and turned a spectacular shade of red from the neck up.
“Jesus Christ,” he managed, voice pitching higher than usual. “Put that away. Right now. There are people—”
Ryan made no move for the towel. He watched Patrick short-circuit in real time and felt a slow, mean flicker of interest. The man was completely useless. One dropped towel and he looked like someone had unplugged his brain.
“You seem distracted,” Ryan said.
“I am not distracted. I am trying not to get an eyeful of my neighbour’s entire—” Patrick waved a hand vaguely, still staring, still failing to stop staring. “Everything. Cover yourself.”
“You are the one who keeps looking.”
“Because it is right there. In my doorway. At noon. With no warning.”
Ryan shifted his weight just enough to make the view worse. Patrick made another helpless noise and pressed his free hand over his eyes, then immediately lowered it again as if the universe required him to confirm the situation had not improved.
“I was naked for one second,” Ryan said.
“It was a full ten. At least. I counted while my soul left my body.”
“You did not count. You panicked and started making sounds that were not words.”
“Ten seconds is a conservative estimate. It felt like a geological era.”
“Dramatic.”
“Accurate.”
Ryan still did not pick up the towel. He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, completely at ease in his own skin, and watched the colour climb higher on Patrick’s face.
“You know,” he said, voice almost conversational, “if you keep reacting like this every time I lose a towel, I am going to start thinking you enjoy the show.”
Patrick’s head snapped up. “I do not. I am horrified. I am actively distressed. This is a crisis.”
“You are bright red and still looking.”
“I am looking because I cannot seem to stop and that is your fault for standing there like a particularly smug art installation.”
“Art installation. That is new. Usually you just call me a nuisance.”
“You are a nuisance. A naked nuisance. Who needs to put clothes on before someone else comes out and sees—”
The door across the hall opened.
A guy from somewhere further down the corridor stepped out with a laundry bag, took one look at naked Ryan and bright-red Patrick, and his expression shifted from mild curiosity to hopeful interest.
He glanced at Patrick, then at the open doorway of 7B, and asked, perfectly polite, “Hey. Are you free now for a blowjob? The Wi-Fi said freeblowjobsat7b. Figured I’d check.”
Patrick made a sound that was not human.
Ryan turned his head toward the guy with perfect calm, still completely bare, and said in the most polite, deadpan voice he owned, “Timing’s a bit off, mate. He’s fully booked with the staring. Very thorough service. Aggressive eye contact. Five stars, would recommend if you’re into the flustered type.”
The guy blinked, decided this was above his pay grade, and retreated back into his apartment with impressive speed.
Patrick looked like he might actually combust.
“You did not just say that.”
“I did.”
“He asked me for a blowjob. In the hallway. Because of your stupid network name.”
“Technically it is still my network name. And he seemed optimistic.”
“I am going to kill you. Slowly. With the flambé torch. And then I am going to rename your Wi-Fi to something that accurately reflects your personality, which is ‘professional menace who ruins lives’.”
Ryan finally bent, scooped up the towel, and wrapped it around his waist with deliberate care, still watching Patrick’s face. The malfunction was spectacular. Bright red, furious, flustered beyond any normal reaction to a simple wardrobe failure. Useful. Extremely useful.
“Dry cleaning,” Ryan said. “Or replacement. I will send you the bill. And keep your cat on your own side of the balcony or the next time I find her in my place I am taking her straight to the shelter and telling them her name is Satan.”
He turned and walked back to his own door before Patrick could form a coherent sentence.
Inside, Ryan set the towel aside and finally looked at what he had left. The cupboard was still a contaminated disaster. The laundry basket held the worst of it under a temporary layer of newspaper and cardboard. He did not care enough to sort or scrub anything properly right now. He dug through the small backpack he had brought home the last time he crashed at a friend’s place after a late service and found one wearable shirt and one pair of jeans. Easy. Good enough.
He pulled them on, checked the time, and swore under his breath. Noon. He was already late.
He opened the window to clear the lingering smell of cat and ruined laundry. Fresh air helped for about thirty seconds.
Then the smoke arrived.
At first it was only a thin drift, the kind of mild annoyance he had come to expect from the apartment next door. Ryan scowled at it, waved a hand through the air, and assumed Patrick had once again managed to burn something expensive while trying to prove a point.
The smoke kept coming.
More of it slipped through the open window, thicker this time, carrying the sharp, unmistakable scent of something that had gone past caramelised and straight into ruined. Ryan’s irritation climbed with every second. He had already spent the morning dealing with a cat that treated his cupboard like a litter box. He was late for work. He was wearing the only clothes that had not been claimed by Her Grace. And now the same neighbour who had spent the previous night complaining about truffle was filling Ryan’s apartment with the smell of his own incompetence.
Another wave of smoke drifted in, stronger.
Ryan cursed under his breath, low and vicious, staring at the open window like it had personally betrayed him. The smell was impossible to ignore. It was the same ongoing invasion, just inverted. First Patrick had complained about Ryan’s cooking. Now Patrick’s cooking was the problem, and it was coming straight into the only clean air Ryan had left.
He snapped.
He turned on his heel and walked straight back toward Patrick’s door, already furious and entirely done with the entire building.
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