The next day, Malik knocked again.
'Forgot my lunch pail. Must've left it here.' He hadn't. He walked through the apartment, looked around, rubbed the back of his neck. 'Guess I didn't. Sorry to bother you.'
'No bother,' Tom said. 'You want a beer?'
Malik stayed an hour that time. They talked about the building going up—seven stories, mixed-use, retail on the bottom, condos on top. Malik explained the foundation like he was teaching a class, drawing diagrams in the air with his calloused hands. Tom listened, asked questions, watched the way Malik's mouth moved when he talked about concrete and rebar.
Day three: Malik knocked, holding two coffees. 'Figured you could use one.' He handed one to Tom. Black, no sugar. The way Tom always ordered it, from the cart across the street. The way Malik must have noticed.
Day seven: Malik showed up with a bag of tools. 'You got a loose cabinet hinge? I saw you wiggling that door yesterday.' Tom hadn't realized anyone was watching him. Malik fixed the hinge in five minutes, then fixed the kitchen faucet that Tom had been meaning to call a plumber about for months.
Day fourteen: Malik didn't knock. He just showed up at six, after the site shut down, still in his dusty work clothes. 'Tough day,' he said. 'Needed a friendly face.' They drank beer on Tom's tiny balcony and watched the sun go down, and Malik talked about his kids—the oldest, a girl in high school who was too smart for her own good; the middle, a boy who wanted to be a mechanic; the youngest, a wild thing who still believed in magic. He talked about his wife with affection but without passion. 'She's a good woman,' he said, and the way he said it sounded like an ending.
Day twenty-one: Malik knocked, and Tom opened the door, and Malik was standing there with his shirt untucked and sawdust in his hair and something in his eyes that Tom had never seen before.
'Pipe burst,' Malik said. 'Shower's down. I'm covered in sweat and sheetrock dust.' He rubbed the back of his neck—that tell, the one Tom had learned to read. 'You mind if I use your shower?'
'Yeah,' Tom said, and the word came out rough, like he'd been holding it too long. 'Yeah, of course. Towels are in the closet—the blue ones.'
Malek nodded, already moving past him, and Tom caught the full force of his scent this time—sweat and dust and something deeper, something musky and male that made his stomach tighten. The bathroom door clicked shut, and Tom stood in the middle of his living room, listening to the water start, listening to the sound of a man he'd been dreaming about for three weeks washing himself in his shower.
He didn't know what to do with his hands. He picked up a textbook, set it down. He walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, closed it. The water kept running—a steady, intimate sound that filled the small apartment—and Tom's imagination went places he couldn't stop. Water sliding over Malek's broad shoulders. Down his chest. Over that thick belly he'd watched through a sweaty t-shirt for three weeks. Between his legs.
Tom pressed his palms against the counter and forced himself to breathe.
The water stopped.
The silence that followed was worse. Tom could hear the shower curtain slide back, could hear Malek moving around in the bathroom—the creak of the cabinet, the rustle of fabric, the muffled sound of him drying off. Every sound was amplified, every second stretched into something unbearable.
Tom was still standing in the kitchen when the bathroom door opened.
He looked up.
Malek stood in the doorway with nothing but a white towel wrapped around his waist. It sat low on his hips, precarious, the fabric damp at the edge where it pressed against his skin. His chest was bare—broad and thick and covered in a dense mat of dark hair, shot through with silver, that spread across his pectorals and ran down his stomach in a dark line that disappeared beneath the towel. His shoulders were wide, his arms heavy with muscle and age, and there was a softness to his belly that made him look solid, real, human in a way that made Tom's chest ache.
Water still glistened on his skin, beading in the hair on his chest, catching the light from the window. His salt-and-pepper hair was damp, pushed back from his forehead, and his dark eyes found Tom's across the room.
Tom's heart slammed against his ribs. His mouth went dry. He felt his own body respond—a heat that spread from his chest down to his gut, lower, a pulse that had nothing to do with his heartbeat. He was grateful for the counter between them, for something to hold onto.
'Sorry,' Malek said, and his voice was lower than usual, rougher. 'Didn't mean to—I couldn't find the towel rack.' He rubbed the back of his neck, that tell, but his eyes didn't leave Tom's. 'Hope you don't mind me borrowing one.'
'No,' Tom managed. 'No, it's—it's fine.' He should look away. He knew he should look away. But his eyes kept tracing the line of Malek's jaw, the dark hair curling at his throat, the way his chest rose and fell with each breath. 'Take your time.'
Malek didn't move. He stood there in the doorway, half-naked in a stranger's apartment, and looked at Tom with an expression Tom couldn't read. Something soft. Something searching. The silence stretched between them, thick and warm, and Tom felt like he was standing on the edge of something he didn't have words for.
'Are you okay?' The words came out before Tom could stop them, quiet and raw. 'At home, I mean. You've been coming here every day for three weeks, and you—' He stopped, swallowed. 'Is everything okay at home?'
Malek's expression shifted. The softness didn't leave, but something else moved behind his eyes—surprise, maybe, or gratitude. He looked down at his hands, those calloused, scarred hands that had built things and held children and fixed Tom's faucet like it was nothing, and let out a long breath.
'My wife and I,' he said slowly, 'we've been sleeping in separate rooms for six months.' He looked up, met Tom's eyes. 'She's a good woman. A good mother. But we're not—' He stopped, rubbed his chest absently, the hair there dark against his palm. 'We're not what we used to be.'
Tom didn't know what to say. He stood there, his heart still pounding, and waited.
'I don't know why I'm telling you this.' Malek's mouth quirked into something that wasn't quite a smile. 'You're a kid. You don't need to hear about my problems.'
'I'm not a kid,' Tom said, and the words came out steadier than he felt.
Malek looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, slow, and something in his eyes shifted—a warmth that hadn't been there before, or maybe it had always been there and Tom was only just learning to see it. 'No,' he said, soft. 'No, I guess you're not.'
He walked past Tom into the living room, his bare feet quiet on the floor, and Tom turned to watch him. The towel rode low on his hips, revealing the curve of his lower back, the dark hair that crept up his spine. Tom's hands clenched at his sides.
Malek stopped at the window—Tom's window, the one he stood at every morning with his coffee—and looked out at the construction site, at the building he was helping to raise. The afternoon light fell across his shoulders, catching the water still damp on his skin, and for a moment he looked like something out of a painting Tom had never known he wanted to see.
'I used to love building things,' Malek said, his voice far away. 'When I was your age, I couldn't wait to get to work. Every day was a new thing to create. Something that would last.' He was quiet for a beat. 'I don't feel that anymore.'
Tom moved closer. He didn't realize he was moving until he was standing beside Malek at the window, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin. Close enough to smell the soap Tom had bought at the grocery store, now clinging to Malek's body like it belonged there.
'Maybe you just need something new to build,' Tom said quietly.
Malek turned his head, and his dark eyes found Tom's. They stood there, inches apart, the late afternoon light painting them both in gold. Tom could see the individual strands of silver in Malek's chest hair, the faint scar above his eyebrow, the way his pupils were dark and wide and focused entirely on Tom's face.
For a moment, Tom thought Malek was going to kiss him. The air between them went tight and electric, and Tom's lips parted, and his heart was so loud he was sure Malek could hear it.
Then Malek looked away. He cleared his throat, stepped back, and the moment broke like a wave against the shore.
'I should get dressed,' he said. 'Get back to work before they send someone looking for me.'
He walked back to the bathroom, and Tom stood at the window, his hands shaking, his whole body humming with something he couldn't name. He heard the rustle of fabric, the click of the bathroom door opening, and then Malek emerged, fully dressed in his dusty work clothes, his damp hair the only evidence that anything had happened.
'Thanks, Tom.' Malek's voice was steady again, back to the warm, paternal tone he always used. But his eyes lingered on Tom's face for a beat too long. 'I mean it. For the shower. For—' He stopped, rubbed the back of his neck. 'For listening.'
'Anytime,' Tom said, and the word felt too small for everything he meant by it.
Malek nodded. He walked to the door, and his hand was on the knob when he paused. He didn't turn around. 'Tom.'
'Yeah?'
A long silence. Malek's hand stayed on the knob, his shoulders broad and solid under his dusty shirt. 'Tomorrow's Saturday. I don't work Saturdays.' He turned his head just enough to catch Tom's eye. 'But I might come by anyway. If that's alright.'
Tom's throat was tight. 'It's alright.'
Malek nodded once, and then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, and Tom was alone in his apartment with the sound of his own heartbeat and the lingering smell of soap on the air and the ghost of a man's bare chest seared into his memory.
He stood at the window and watched Malek walk back across the construction site, his body solid and sure under the late afternoon sun. Malek didn't look up. But just before he disappeared around the corner of the building, his hand came up—a small wave, almost hidden—and Tom felt his chest crack open with something he didn't dare name.
The bathroom was still damp when Tom finally went in. The towel was hanging on the rack now, folded once, a small kindness. Tom picked it up and pressed it to his face, just for a second, breathing in the smell of Malek's skin mixed with his own cheap soap, and felt his knees go weak.
He hung the towel back up.
He went to bed early that night, but he didn't sleep. He lay in the dark, feeling the ghost of Malek's presence in every room, and waited for morning.
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