How to welcome a new roommate.
The coffee shop on Rue de la Tour smelled like burnt sugar and fresh cardamom, a combination that hit Charles square in the sinuses the moment he pushed through the glass door. He blinked against the transition from the grey November afternoon to the amber warmth of the interior, his messenger bag sliding off one shoulder. Mason was already behind him, jangling his keys with that nervous tic he had whenever they were about to meet someone new.
“Table by the window,” Mason murmured, nudging Charles’s elbow. “He said he’d be wearing a red hoodie.”
Charles scanned the room. Students huddled over laptops. A woman in a trench coat stirred her cappuccino with surgical precision. And then—
The man near the far wall wasn’t sitting so much as occupying space, his frame folding into a wooden chair that looked undersized beneath him. Red hoodie. Blond hair cropped close at the sides, longer on top, falling in a careless sweep across his forehead. He had one arm draped over the back of the adjacent chair, and even through the thick cotton of his sleeve, the topography of his shoulder and biceps registered as something geological. Ridges. Mass. The kind of architecture that came from years of deliberate construction.
Charles’s feet slowed without his permission.
“That’s him,” he said, and his voice came out thinner than he’d intended.
Mason shot him a look—one eyebrow arched, a smirk threatening the corner of his mouth—but said nothing. They’d been friends long enough that entire conversations could pass between them in the space of a glance. Yes, he’s enormous. Yes, that’s the guy from the profile. Stop staring.
But Charles couldn’t quite manage to stop. The profile photos had suggested someone fit, sure. Athletic. Maybe a guy who hit the gym on weekends. The photos had lied by omission. This man wasn’t fit—he was sculpted, the kind of body that registered as a presence before it registered as a person. Charles felt a brief, irrational spike of irritation at the unfairness of it, and then the man looked up.
His eyes found them across the room. Blue. No—paler than blue. The colour of winter sky just after the sun drops below the horizon, when the light hasn’t quite decided whether to be grey or gold. And they locked onto Charles with an intensity that made something in his chest perform a small, involuntary somersault.
Jack smiled.
It was the sort of smile that rearranged a face entirely. His jaw, which at rest looked capable of cracking walnuts, softened into something almost boyish. He raised one hand—large, Charles noted, a hand that could probably palm a basketball without effort—and waved them over.
“Here we go,” Mason said under his breath.
They navigated the narrow aisle between tables, past a pair of baristas who were very pointedly not looking at Jack while very obviously having spent the last ten minutes doing exactly that. Jack stood as they approached, unfolding upward in stages—legs, torso, shoulders—until he towered a full head taller than Charles. His hand extended.
“You must be Charles and Mason.” His voice was deeper than expected, with a rasp at the edges, like he’d spent the morning talking over gym music. “Jack. Thanks for agreeing to meet. I know the whole stranger-from-the-internet thing can be weird.”
Charles took his hand. The grip was warm and dry and enveloping, his own fingers disappearing into Jack’s palm. “Weird is our baseline,” Charles said, and was rewarded with a low chuckle. “Charles. This is Mason.”
Mason shook next, his expression shifting into its professional setting—the one he used for work meetings and first dates. “Good to meet you, Jack. You found the place okay?”
“Google Maps did the heavy lifting.” Jack gestured at the empty chairs. “Please. Sit. Can I grab you guys something? I’ve been nursing this Americano for fifteen minutes and the barista’s starting to look at me funny.”
Charles slid into the chair across from Jack, his messenger bag dropping to the floor with a soft thump. Up close, the details of Jack’s face sharpened into focus. There was a small scar bisecting his left eyebrow. The faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, deliberately maintained rather than simply neglected. His ears were slightly prominent, a detail that humanised the otherwise almost aggressively symmetrical features. And his eyes—those winter-sky eyes—kept tracking back to Charles with a frequency that might have been coincidence or might have been something else entirely.
Stop it, Charles told himself. He’s probably just being polite. Eye contact. Good communication skills. Nothing more.
“I’ll grab a latte,” Mason said, already half-rising. “Charles?”
“Tea. Earl Grey, if they have it.”
“They have it,” Jack said. “I checked. Habit from reading menus obsessively. You never know when you’ll need to recommend a beverage in a crisis.” Another smile, this one smaller, almost private.
Mason departed for the counter, leaving Charles alone with Jack and the sudden awareness that his social skills, usually reliable, had decided to take an early lunch.
“So,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair. The wood creaked. “You’re the biology guy, right? The profile mentioned immunology.”
Charles blinked. “You read the profiles? We sent you our profiles?”
“You sent me your profiles.” Jack’s smile tilted crooked. “Which was either incredibly thorough or deeply suspicious. I’m still deciding. But yeah—neutrophils, adaptive immunity, the whole cellular arms race. Sounds intense.”
“It’s…” Charles paused, recalibrating. Most people’s eyes glazed over the moment he mentioned his research. Bastien had learned to nod along sympathetically, but the interest rarely went deeper than that. “It’s basically studying how your immune cells decide what to kill and what to leave alone. Friend-or-foe recognition at a molecular level.”
“Like bouncers. But for your bloodstream.”
Charles laughed—a genuine one, surprised out of him. “Yes. Exactly like bouncers. Very tiny, very judgmental bouncers.”
“I’m a physiotherapist,” Jack said. “So I spend my days arguing with people’s connective tissue. Different kind of body work, but maybe not that different. We’re both trying to convince biological systems to cooperate.”
The way he said it—casual, confident, without the reflexive defensiveness Charles had come to expect from guys who looked like Jack—made something loosen in Charles’s chest. He found himself leaning forward, elbows on the table, the posture of someone genuinely engaged rather than politely performing.
“Where’s your practice?”
“Cabinet on Rue de Rivoli. I share the space with two other physios. Mostly sports injuries, some post-surgical rehab. A lot of weekend warriors who forget they’re not twenty anymore.” Jack’s gaze flicked down to Charles’s arms, then back up. “You swim, right? The shoulder development gives it away.”
Charles felt heat climb his neck. “Cycling too. But mostly swimming. It’s meditative.”
“Repetitive motion, rhythmic breathing, reduced sensory input. Yeah. I get that. I do triathlons when I’m not being smart about my life choices.”
Of course he did. Of course the mountain of muscle also did endurance sports, because apparently Jack was assembled in a laboratory specifically to make other humans feel inadequate. But the way he said it—self-deprecating, with that edge of irony—made it hard to resent him for it.
Mason returned with drinks, setting the Earl Grey in front of Charles and sliding into the remaining chair. “What’d I miss?”
“Jack does triathlons,” Charles said.
“Of course he does.” Mason’s delivery was bone-dry. “Let me guess—you also bake artisanal bread and volunteer with shelter dogs.”
“Sourdough is overrated,” Jack said without missing a beat. “And I’m more of a cat person.”
Mason snorted into his latte. Charles felt the tension he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying dissipate by another few degrees. This was going well. This was going really well, actually—the conversation flowing with an ease that felt less like a job interview and more like catching up with someone they’d already known for years.
They talked for another forty minutes. Jack asked about the apartment—the layout, the neighbourhood, the unwritten rules about fridge space and bathroom schedules. Mason outlined his work schedule at the pharmaceutical company, the erratic hours that sometimes had him coming home at midnight smelling of lab chemicals. Charles explained the dynamic with Bastien, who was over often enough that he might as well be a fourth roommate, and watched Jack’s expression carefully for any flicker of discomfort at the mention of a same-sex relationship.
Nothing. Not a blink, not a pause. Jack just nodded and said, “Cool. So I should probably learn his coffee order too.”
The relief that washed through Charles was disproportionate and probably unfair. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t project—wouldn’t assume that every conventionally masculine stranger was harbouring secret prejudices—but years of navigating spaces where his relationship with Bastien became something to manage rather than simply mention had wired certain reflexes deep into his nervous system.
“You’re really okay with that?” The question slipped out before Charles could catch it. “Living with a gay couple, I mean. Well—Bastien’s not technically living there, but he’s around a lot, and we’re not exactly subtle about—” He gestured vaguely.
Jack’s expression did something complicated. The easy smile didn’t disappear, but it shifted, deepened into something more serious. “Charles, I’m going to save us both some awkwardness and tell you I’m bi. Which I don’t usually lead with in roommate interviews because it’s nobody’s business, but you seem like you’ve been worrying about this, and I don’t want you to.”
Charles’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“Oh,” he managed.
“Yeah.” Jack’s smile returned, softer now. “So the answer is very much yes. I’m okay with it.”
Mason was watching this exchange with the expression of someone enjoying a particularly compelling tennis match. “Well,” he said. “That simplifies things.”
“Does it?” Jack’s gaze lingered on Charles for a beat longer than necessary. “Good. I’d hate to complicate things.”
There it was again. That extra second of eye contact, the slight weight behind words that should have been casual. Charles’s hindbrain—the part that operated on instinct and pheromones and the primitive calculus of attraction—was sending up flares. His forebrain, better acquainted with reality, was telling it to shut up.
He’s being friendly. This is what friendly looks like on someone who happens to be gorgeous. Don’t be that guy.
But the damage was done. Charles was aware now, in the way you become aware of a pebble in your shoe—small, persistent, impossible to ignore. The way Jack’s throat moved when he swallowed. The play of tendons in his forearms when he gestured. The heat radiating off him, even from across the table, a reminder of the metabolic furnace required to maintain that much muscle mass.
“So,” Mason said, breaking the moment with the casual brutality of someone who’d known Charles too long to let him spiral, “what’s your stance on board games? Because we have Opinions, and those Opinions have created casualties.”
The conversation pivoted. Jack, it turned out, had Opinions too—about worker placement mechanics, about the optimal strategy in Terraforming Mars, about the unforgivable sin of people who took too long on their turns. Mason’s initial reserve cracked open into genuine enthusiasm, and Charles found himself interjecting, arguing, laughing, the earlier tension transmuted into something warm and effervescent.
By the time they reached the bottom of their cups, the afternoon light outside had shifted from grey to pewter, and Jack had to leave for an evening client.
“So,” Mason said, setting his empty latte mug on the saucer. “I think we’re on the same page here.”
“I think we are,” Charles agreed. He looked at Jack. “The room’s yours if you want it. We can do the paperwork whenever—the landlord’s pretty chill, it’s mostly just a sublet agreement and a copy of your ID.”
Jack’s face broke into that smile again, the one that transformed him from intimidating to boyish. “Seriously? That’s it?”
“We’re not complicated people.”
“That is categorically untrue,” Mason said, “but we’re not complicated about this. You’re sane, you’re employed, you don’t appear to be running a meth lab out of a storage unit. You’re already in the top five percent of applicants.”
Jack laughed—a full sound that drew glances from the neighbouring tables. “I’ll take those odds.” He stood, and Charles and Mason followed suit. “When can I move in? I’m currently in a sublet that ends next weekend, so the timing would be—”
“Perfect,” Charles said. “Next weekend works.”
“Great.” Jack hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then he stepped forward and pulled Charles into a hug.
It wasn’t a bro-hug—not one of those back-slapping, shoulder-bumping performances of masculine affection. It was a real embrace, both arms wrapping around Charles’s shoulders, pulling him in against Jack’s chest. Charles’s face ended up pressed somewhere near Jack’s collarbone, and for one disorienting moment, his senses filled with data.
The scent of him first—clean laundry, something cedar-based, and beneath that a note that was simply skin, warm and alive. The heat radiating through the red hoodie, which was softer than it looked. The solidity of the chest beneath, muscle that didn’t yield so much as accept pressure. Charles’s hands, operating on autopilot, came up to rest on Jack’s sides, and even through the fabric he could feel the topography of latissimus and oblique, the architecture of a body that had been built with patience and discipline.
The hug lasted maybe three seconds. Long enough for Charles’s pulse to spike. Long enough for him to notice that Jack’s arms tightened fractionally before releasing him.
“Thanks,” Jack said, pulling back. His voice had gone slightly lower. “Really. This means a lot.”
Charles’s throat had stopped working. He nodded instead.
Jack turned to hug Mason—briefer, more casual, the appropriate duration for a new acquaintance rather than whatever that had been with Charles. Then he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and headed for the door, pausing once to wave over his shoulder before stepping out into the grey afternoon.
Charles watched him go. Watched the sidewalk swallow him. Watched the space where he’d been.
Mason cleared his throat.
“Don’t,” Charles said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking,” Mason said, gathering their empty cups to bus the table, “that Bastien is going to have opinions about this development.”
Charles’s stomach performed an acrobatic manoeuvre that was not entirely pleasant. “There’s no development. He’s our new roommate. He’s friendly. He hugged us both.”
“He hugged you like you were made of glass and he was trying not to break you.”
“That’s just how big guys hug.” Even as he said it, Charles knew it sounded weak.
Mason’s expression said he knew it too. But he was a good friend, which meant he dropped it and started talking about logistics—who needed to call the landlord, what the security deposit should be, whether they needed to repaint the spare room before Jack moved in. Charles nodded along, contributed opinions, made appropriate sounds of agreement, and all the while a small part of his brain was still processing the ghost of Jack’s arms around him.
The walk back to the apartment took fifteen minutes through streets slicked with the first hints of evening drizzle. Mason peeled off at the boulangerie to grab a baguette for dinner. Charles continued alone, his hands shoved in his coat pockets, his thoughts circling like water around a drain.
Jack was bi. Jack was attractive. Jack was moving into their apartment. These were facts, neutral and indisputable. The fourth fact—the one Charles was trying very hard not to examine—was that Charles was in a relationship. Two and a half years with Bastien, who was flawed and occasionally infuriating and still, despite everything, the person Charles had chosen.
The apartment building rose up ahead of him, a Haussmann-era facade with wrought-iron balconies and a lift that worked approximately sixty percent of the time. Charles took the stairs to the third floor—swimmer’s habit, unnecessary exertion, a way to quiet the buzz under his skin—and let himself in.
The living room was dim, lit only by the blue glow of the television. Bastien was sprawled on the couch, one arm draped over the backrest, his blond hair fanned out against a cushion. He didn’t look up when Charles entered, but his lips curved into a lazy smile.
“How was the interview with the beautiful jock boy?”
Charles froze halfway through unbuttoning his coat. “Excuse me?”
Bastien turned his head, brown eyes glinting with amusement. “You showed me his profile, remember? The photos. The whole ‘I’m a physiotherapist who also looks like I could bench press a Fiat’ thing. Hard to forget.” He said it without jealousy, without edge—just the casual observation of someone who’d been with Charles long enough to comment on attractive strangers without it becoming a thing.
“It went well,” Charles said, resuming his struggle with the coat buttons. “He’s moving in next weekend.”
“So he’s not a serial killer.”
“Seems unlikely. He shares our taste in board games and he knew what neutrophils were.”
Bastien snorted. “Low bar.”
“The lowest.” Charles draped his coat over the armchair and crossed to the couch. Bastien shifted to make room, and Charles fitted himself into the space against his boyfriend’s side, head resting on a shoulder that was familiar in its boniness. Bastien’s arm came around him automatically, fingers tracing idle patterns through the fabric of Charles’s shirt.
For a moment, they sat in the television’s flickering light. Some drama Charles didn’t recognise—people in expensive clothes having intense conversations in rooms with suspiciously good lighting.
“He’s really not a homophobe?” Bastien asked. The question was casual, but Charles could hear the thread of something tighter beneath it.
“He’s bi, actually. Told us himself.”
Bastien’s fingers paused their tracing. “Huh. Okay. Didn’t see that coming.”
“Neither did I.”
“So he’s not just gorgeous, he’s also…” Bastien trailed off, searching for the right word.
“Available in ways that don’t concern us?” Charles suggested.
Bastien laughed, a short exhale against Charles’s hair. “I was going to say ‘complicated,’ but sure. That works too.” He resumed the pattern, a slow drag of fingertips along Charles’s ribs. “I’m not worried, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re not going to run off with some muscle-bound physio just because he’s pretty and can talk about science.”
“I’m glad you have such faith in me.”
“I have faith in your laziness. Finding a new relationship is work, and you hate paperwork.” Bastien’s tone was teasing, but there was something underneath it—a possessiveness that would have been more reassuring if it didn’t feel so theoretical. Bastien claimed him in private, in this apartment, in the dark. Never where anyone else could see.
Charles pushed the thought aside. He’d made peace with Bastien’s closet years ago. Mostly.
“He hugged me,” Charles said. The words emerged before he’d decided to speak them. “After we told him he got the room. It was—a real hug. Both arms.”
Bastien’s hand stilled again. “Okay.”
“I’m just saying. He’s a hugger.”
“You’re allowed to be hugged, Charles. That’s not cheating.”
“I know.” Charles tipped his head back to look at Bastien’s face—the sharp jaw, the fall of hair across his forehead, the slight furrow between his brows. “I’m not confessing to anything. I’m just—processing. He’s a lot.”
“He’s a lot of muscle.”
“That too.” Charles closed his eyes. The cedar scent still lingered in his memory, phantom traces from the brief press of Jack’s chest. “He smelled really good.”
Bastien’s laugh was more genuine this time. “You’re such a slut for a good cologne.”
“It wasn’t cologne. I think it was just him.”
A pause. The television murmured something about betrayal and office politics. Bastien’s fingers resumed their path, now tracing down the line of Charles’s bicep.
“You know what I think?” Bastien said.
“What?”
“I think you’re overthinking this because you’re attracted to him, and you feel guilty about being attracted to him, even though attraction isn’t a crime and you haven’t done anything wrong and you’re probably not going to do anything wrong because you’re pathologically loyal to a fault.”
Charles opened his eyes. “That’s… surprisingly insightful.”
“I have my moments.” Bastien’s smile curved against the top of Charles’s head. “Also, I’m not an idiot. I know what you’re like. You’re going to spend the next three days dissecting every micro-interaction you had with this guy, wondering if he was flirting or just being nice, worrying about whether you accidentally led him on, constructing elaborate scenarios in which everything goes wrong. And then he’s going to move in, and he’s going to be normal, and you’re going to be normal, and eventually it’s going to be fine.”
“You make me sound exhausting.”
“You’re the least exhausting person I know,” Bastien said, and the affection in his voice was real, tangible, a warmth that settled into Charles’s sternum. “You’re just also an overthinker.”
Charles turned his face back toward the television. The expensive people were now having a tense dinner. Someone had thrown wine. He wasn’t really watching—his thoughts were still circling, snagging on details, replaying the interview like footage he could analyse frame by frame.
The way Jack had said I’m bi—not defensive, not performative, just a piece of information offered in the spirit of transparency. The way he’d looked at Charles when he’d said it, those winter-sky eyes holding steady. The hug, the heat, the brief tightening of arms before the release.
Bastien was probably right. Jack would move in, and everyone would adjust, and eventually the strangeness would wear off. Charles had been attracted to people before—strangers on the metro, actors in films, the occasional grad student at departmental mixers—and it had never meant anything. Attraction was just a biological response, neurons firing, chemicals sloshing around in the brain.
He knew the mechanisms. He’d written papers about them.
Knowing the mechanisms didn’t make them easier to ignore.
Bastien shifted beneath him, repositioning his arm to avoid the pins and needles. “Hey. You’re still thinking about it.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just—be present. I’m here. You’re here. The show is terrible and we’re going to watch it anyway.” Bastien’s fingers found Charles’s chin, tilted his head up, and kissed him.
The kiss was familiar. Warm. Bastien’s lips were slightly chapped from the cold, and he tasted faintly of the herbal tea he’d been drinking. Charles kissed back automatically, his body responding to muscle memory, and it was good—it was always good—but somewhere in the back of his mind, another scent lingered.
Cedar. Clean skin. Heat.
Charles pulled back first. “I should make dinner.”
“I already ordered Thai. It’ll be here in twenty.”
“You’re a saint.”
“I know. Now stop thinking about the jock and help me figure out which of these characters is sleeping with the other one’s husband. I lost track of the plot ten minutes ago.”
Charles laughed, the sound surprising him, and settled back against Bastien’s shoulder. The tension in his chest loosened by another degree. This was his life. This was his relationship. Jack was going to be a roommate—someone to split utilities with, to argue about whose turn it was to buy toilet paper, to maybe play board games with on the occasional weeknight. He wasn’t going to be anything more than that.
The bell rang at 7:45. Thai food. Bastien went to get it, and Charles set the table, and they ate cross-legged on the couch while the television drama reached its melodramatic climax. By the time they’d finished the pad kee mao and started on the spring rolls, Charles had almost convinced himself that the afternoon had been entirely unremarkable.
Almost.
That night, after Bastien had fallen asleep—breath evening out, arm going slack across Charles’s waist—Charles lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling. The radiator clicked in its familiar rhythm. Traffic murmured on the street below. And behind his closed eyelids, if he concentrated, he could still feel the ghost of Jack’s arms around him, the press of that massive chest, the brief eternity of a three-second hug that had felt like standing too close to an open flame.
Something to look forward to, he thought, and the thought was equal parts anticipation and dread.
Next weekend. Jack would arrive next weekend.
Charles closed his eyes and tried, with limited success, to sleep.
