thank you for prompting me! 16: brand new neighbours au, carcar, around 800 words:
Carlos has parallel parked across both their driveways.
Oscar doesn’t drive a car on weekends, on principle, but that’s not the point.
The point is that Carlos’s car, matte black, some kind of Range Rover thing with a sunroof that seems to exist solely to display the curve of his ridiculous hairy forearm while he’s taking a call...is positioned like a road safety diagram made by someone who wants you to fail the test.
Oscar stands on his porch with a mug of tea that’s gone cold, staring at it. Then he stares at Carlos, who is still on the phone. Who has clearly seen him. Who waves at him anyway, like they’re friends.
They’re not friends. Carlos moved in four days ago and Oscar’s only knowledge of him so far includes:
he owns seven gym bags
he gets packages addressed to “Big Chili”
he FaceTimes someone named "Mamá" from his patio shirtless every morning at 8:12 a.m.
Carlos hangs up. He walks over to the fence.
“Hola,” Carlos says, bracing both arms on the fence like it’s a bar he owns.
Oscar squints. “You can’t just park like that.”
Carlos looks over his shoulder at the crime scene. “Yes, but I did.”
“That’s not—” Oscar lifts the mug for something to do. “You’re blocking both driveways.”
Carlos smiles at him like Oscar’s the one being weird. “You were not using it.”
“That’s not the point.”
Carlos tilts his head, unreadable. “So what is the point, then?”
Oscar opens his mouth. Closes it. Rethinks his entire life and his capacity for interpersonal confrontation. “That it’s my driveway.”
Carlos nods, once. “I will move it.”
“Good,” Oscar says, then adds, because he’s weak, “Thank you.”
Carlos’s smile turns triumphant in a way that Oscar immediately regrets. “Would you like to come to dinner tonight?”
Oscar chokes on nothing. “What?”
“You have made very intense eye contact with me for three mornings in a row,” Carlos explains. “I feel like this is building to something.”
“I was watching you FaceTime your mum,” Oscar says, defensively.
“Yes. Mamá would love you.”
Oscar feels like his soul has been knocked sideways.
Carlos is already walking backwards toward his car. “Seven-thirty. I will cook.”
Oscar says, “I never said yes.”
Carlos points at him. “You did not say no.”
At 7:27, Oscar stands at the front door wearing a shirt he put on and took off three separate times.
He knocks.
Carlos opens the door with a tea towel thrown over his shoulder and a glass of wine in one hand. He looks infuriatingly domestic, like a man in some home commercial.
“You are early,” Carlos says, smiling. “I like that in a man.”
Oscar steps inside and resists the urge to walk back out. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Carlos hands him the wine. “Yet.”
The dinner is, unfortunately, incredible. Something lemony and Spanish and elaborate enough that Oscar feels weird eating it in socks.
Carlos talks too much. Laughs at his own jokes. Drops his fork and says, “Whoopsie,” like a cursed child.
Oscar says, “I should hate you.”
Carlos leans back in his chair, smug. “But you don’t.”
Oscar scowls. “You parked over my driveway.”
Carlos shrugs. “But you still came.”
Oscar lifts his wineglass. “Maybe I just wanted the free food.”
Carlos’s mouth curves up. “Then I will make you dinner again.”
Oscar’s face does something horrifying. “I’m not saying I want...this is not—”
Carlos reaches across the table and presses one knuckle to Oscar’s clavicle. “Your bones. I could see them through your shirt when you stood on the porch.”
Oscar forgets how to swallow.
Carlos smiles like he’s proud of himself. “You should eat more. Good thing you have a new neighbor who is an excellent cook.”
Oscar stares at him. “You are the weirdest man I’ve ever met.”
Carlos raises his glass. “Thank you. Salud.”
Oscar doesn’t toast him. He drinks.
—
Oscar wakes up the next morning to a FaceTime call from a number he doesn’t recognize. He answers it on instinct and is immediately greeted by a woman with suspiciously familiar cheekbones.
“Hola, Oscar,” she says, warmly. “You are even more handsome than Carlos said.”
Oscar blinks. “Are you—his mum?”
Carlos appears in the background, shirtless, with wet hair. “Mamá! No scaring him!”
“You gave her my number?” Oscar demands.
Carlos shrugs. “She said I never introduce her to my boyfriends. I am being proactive.”
“I’m not your boyfriend.”
Mamá raises a brow. “Yet,” she says.
Oscar hangs up.
From across the fence, Carlos yells, “See you at dinner!”
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I need to see content of Horace taking care of Halt in subtle ways when they were both in Skandia, and also in Clonmel specifically after that first meeting with Ferris. I just love their relationship and I wanna see more things of Horace taking care of his surrogate uncle/father/strange-forest-creature-man.
stormborns
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
janainaart
theartofmadeline
