Art on the walls; pieces, small and varied, the kind of collection that happened over years rather than an afternoon in a gallery.
And the windows. Floor to ceiling along the far wall, the city laid out beyond them in the early dark, lights beginning to multiply across the skyline, the whole thing enormous and glittering and immediately the most beautiful thing in the room.
Adriel stood in the middle of it and felt the full weight of where he was.
This was Landen's. All of it; the books with their cracked spines, the art chosen by his eye, the space shaped by years of his living in it. And Landen had saidcome overlike it was simple, like bringing someone here was something he did all the time, and Adriel was standing in the middle of it in his green sweater with his slightly stupid hair and his hands that wouldn't stop shaking and he had absolutely no framework for this.
He thought, briefly and unhelpfully, of his own apartment. The slightly temperamental radiator. Jenna's sketches tacked to the walls with blu-tack. The rickety sofa that had never quite recovered from the time they'd moved it to reach the router.
"Do you want a tour?" Landen asked from somewhere behind him.
"Yes," Adriel said. "Please."
The study first. The door opened onto a room that smelled of paper and old ink, bookshelves floor to ceiling on three walls, a reading chair in the corner worn and soft-looking. Manuscripts stacked on the desk in piles that looked chaotic but probably weren't. More art.
Adriel stood in the doorway and looked at it and felt something almost unbearably intimate about being shown this.
The kitchen came next. Clean and functional, a good knife block, a well used stovetop. Something on the hob that smelled extraordinary; garlic and wine and something underneath that Adriel's stomach responded to before his brain had fully caught up.
"You cook?" Adriel said.
Landen looked faintly amused. "Did you think I survive on take out?"
"I didn't think about it," Adriel said, which was a lie, and Landen looked at him in a way that suggested he knew it. Adriel looked at the stovetop and said, "It smells incredible."
"Fifteen minutes," Landen said. "Come on."
The rest of the apartment was the same; large, full of the evidence of a life lived. A bedroom door he didn't open. A bathroom Adriel clocked in passing, white tile and a large mirror and a bathtub the size of Adriel’s entire bathroom.
And everywhere, the windows.
They ran along the outer wall of the living space in a long, unbroken sweep, the city beyond them darkening as he watched, the whole thing spread out at distance like something from a different world.
Adriel stopped in front of them.
"How long have you lived here?" he asked.
"Seven years," Landen said, from the kitchen. "I looked at it and didn't make an offer and then thought about it for three days and called the agent back."
Adriel nodded. He could understand that. The kind of thing you didn't realize you wanted until the possibility of not having it made your chest tight.
They ate at the kitchen table, the city beyond the windows going dark as the evening settled in around them.
The table was small. A candle burned in a simple glass holder near the window, its flame small and steady against the growing dark.
The food was good. Better than good. Adriel had taken his first bite and made a sound he hadn't meant to make, and Landen had looked at him with that faint amusement that was becoming familiar.
Adriel had flushed, "Sorry, it's just… really good," and Landen had said, "Don't apologize for enjoying food," like it was the simplest thing in the world.
The conversation was easy.
That surprised him. Or maybe it didn't, anymore. Maybe he was starting to learn that this was just how it was with Landen, that the ease wasn't a fluke, that it kept happening because it was real.
They talked about books and about the manuscript Adriel had been reading. They talked about a novel Landen had acquired last year, the one that had won the prize, the one Adriel had read twice and still thought about at odd moments. They talked about the difference between a story that ended sadly and a story that ended badly, and Adriel found himself saying things he hadn't known he thought, shaping arguments he hadn't known he had, and Landen listened.
That was the thing. He listened. Not the way people listened when they were waiting for their turn to speak, but the way they did when they actually wanted to know what you thought.
Adriel felt himself loosen. Degree by degree. The tightness he'd carried through the door slowly releasing its grip. His shoulders dropped from where they'd been hovering near his ears. His hand stopped finding things to fidget with. He laughed at something Landen said, a dry comment about an author they both found difficult, and looked up, and caught Landen watching him whit that particular expression. The one with nothing careful in it.
