adjacent ➵ tronnor

acquaintances

It's September — or, to be more specific, it's Connor's birthday. He's not entirely sure how he feels about it overall, because there seems to be an equal amount of pro's and con's: although he's just getting closer to his inevitable end, he'll get to see his friends and receive gifts, but then there's also the fact that he's currently in a different city to his family and won't be able to celebrate with them.

Rather than having his family come over like he normally would, he's decided he's simply going to invite some friends over for a small get-together, where they'll drink and talk and generally just have fun — assuming all goes as planned, that is. But there's a small problem regarding his housing: Connor lives in an apartment that, despite being nice, has stupidly thin walls that he shares with the apartment adjacent to him.

In that apartment lives Troye, a twenty year old who seems nice enough. He's had several chats with him before, but that was only merely small talk that he's positive could go the exact same way with any other person in the world. He often sees him around the city for reasons unknown to Connor (for work, he can only assume), and besides that, he'll see him in the halls and in the lift.

(It's also relevant to mention that Troye is so attractive he could well be a model if he wanted to. Connor's not one to obtain crushes on people after only a few conversations with them, but that doesn't mean he's not going to ever-so-subtly stare at him anytime they see each other — Troye is quite the sight with his unruly curls, pasty skin, ocean-coloured eyes and impeccable fashion sense.

It's certainly not relevant that his accent makes Connor's knees weak and his smile is so nice he's not sure if he's more jealous or just straight-up attracted to him, and it definitely doesn't matter that his nails are always painted in a range of different colours which leaves Connor oddly curious of what colour he'll go for next. It's entirely irrelevant that he's perhaps a bit too observant of the boy.)

As he'd like to think of himself as a decent person, he'd feel guilty for inviting his rowdy friends around to cause a racket and disturb Troye without any granted permission or warning, so he's designed a plan in his head: he's just going to talk to him about it the moment he gets back from doing whatever it is that he does. There's little doubt in his mind that there'd be a problem, but ensuring it's OK first feels right.

So when he hears Troye's lock turning and his door opening, he walks outside, and right before Troye goes to shut the door again, Connor stops him by speaking, "Hey, can I talk to you for a second?"

Troye shoots him an inquisitive glance followed by a small, warm smile. "Sure, what about?" he asks.

"Well, it's my birthday today—"

"Happy birthday!" Troye cuts him off.

"Thanks," he smiles before continuing. "Anyway. . . I was planning on inviting some friends round, and they can get pretty loud sometimes, and I didn't want to, like, annoy or disturb you, so. . ." he trails off.

"That's fine, honestly. Have fun with your friends. And hey, if it gets too loud, I'll go buy some noise-cancelling headphones, eh?"

Troye's lame attempt at a joke makes him (fondly) roll his eyes at him, and giggle a little. "Thanks," he says, "have a good day."

The two part ways, each heading back into their own apartments, and Connor texts his friends and asks if they want to come over. They all respond similarly — all yeses and smiley faces — and that's that. The evening's set, and all he can do now is prepare and wait.