omg pls I wanna know more about the blind Theo fic 👀
You Might Not Like Him is the title I'm testing out
The blaring ringing of an alarm that’s distinctly not his has Theo blinking himself awake. He stretches an arm out, easily finding his phone on the nightstand, and presses both volume buttons. There is a two-second delay, same as always, and then: “6:30 AM,” says a mechanical voice as he drops it back onto the table.
Beyond the obnoxiously thin wall, the alarm suddenly shuts off. It’s got to be Liam’s, despite being earlier than it normally would be. He’s not going to dwell on the fact that it could possibly be weird that he knows his neighbor's schedule. It’s not. He scrubs a hand over the lower half of his face, gentling the touch as he nears his eyes, skipping over the raised, still-sensitive skin between his left eye and nose entirely. Their walls are thin, not built for some whose hearing is better than most, and Liam’s alarms are loud as shit. Most everything about the idiot next door is loud, despite the fact that he lives alone.
Beside him, Chi huffs and shifts, chasing a surprised Oof! out of him as she drops her head onto his abdomen.
“Fine, fine. I’m up,” he grunts in return, shoving the weight of her skull and neck off his bladder.
He doesn’t rush going through his morning routine. Far from it. There’s enough time to get everything done and done right without cutting corners or going fast enough to make a mistake. Liam’s never quick in the mornings. Or he has yet to be in the couple of months since Theo had moved in next door. Even mostly sightless, he knows the guy’s least favorite time of day is morning, especially early ones, which this clearly is. If the thought of his neighbor’s sleepy voice makes him smile a little, well, that’s between Theo and his mirror.
Chi’s excited whine, distant like she’s perched in the doorway between the bedroom and hall, pulls him around, his smile widening. The thought that maybe she understands what he’s doing crosses his mind, after all she seems smart enough for it most days. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. Regardless, she eggs him on through getting dressed with little pleading sounds every time he dares to stop moving even for a second. He only gets a little frustrated at it when he’s holding a shirt in either hand, feeling the bottom buttons of the work shirt he swapped out ages ago — square for blue, triangle for black, hexagon for red, and circle for white — and the one he’d sewn into the t-shirt himself.
“Gimme a minute!” he hisses at her when she whines again, head turning towards her even though with how dim the apartment is he can’t see even her vague outline.
He’s not usually short with her, even when she’s excited like this, but his gut is twisting around in ways that make him debate running to the bathroom. There’s no reason to put this much thought into it. Grab a shirt and go. All he’s doing is taking Chi out. The only thing that’s off about this is that he’s doing it now rather than later, when the sun’s actually risen and he has any shot at seeing the fuzzy shapes of people or cars, as he normally does. He’s almost kicking himself over it, left hand falling away from the button down to rub uneasily over the thick scar down his chest. There’s a reason he’s doing, just not one that will stand up to any real scrutiny.
Maybe he could conceive of conceding that it’s a little strange to know Liam’s schedule. Maybe. But, at the same time, it had been one of the most regular, regimented things in his chaos-ridden life for two months. Eight straight weeks of the standard iPhone alarm tone going off at 8:15am every single morning, followed by another at 8:30am. Every day. But, this last week, it had been anything but, changing daily in unpredictable ways. That alone wouldn’t have bothered him. Work was work, and he hasn’t quite figured out all that being a docent entails, or which institution he works at. If he could see, maybe he would have figured it out by now, since most places had logos that were at least semi-identifiable.
His face twists as he rubs at his chest again, fingertips kneading the stiff scar tissue.










