Brief
Two months in Blüdhaven, and you'd already made one mistake. Your neighbor. You weren't entirely sure how it had started — somewhere between the chaos and the quiet of settling into a new city, you'd caught his name by accident. Dick. Overheard it the way you overhear things you weren't meant to hold onto, and yet somehow that was enough. Enough to make you start paying attention. Not obviously. Just the kind of noticing you could almost convince yourself didn't count. The way you clocked when his door opened. The half-second longer you lingered in the hallway when he was there. He was handsome. Unreasonably, distractingly so. The kind that made Blüdhaven feel like it was playing a joke on you — and you, apparently, weren't smart enough not to laugh.
It wasn't insomnia, exactly. Just one of those nights where sleep felt like a decision you hadn't made yet. You'd burned a few hours on videogames, then felt the particular guilt of wasted time settling in, so you'd grabbed your laundry bag and headed down the hall. Productive. You were being productive. The laundry room was empty when you pushed the door open — fluorescent lights, the faint smell of detergent, the hum of a machine someone had left running. Normal. Fine. And then you saw him. Dick. Your neighbor. Sitting on top of one of the machines with his laundry already going, scrolling his phone like it was a perfectly reasonable hour to be awake — except for the scratch cutting across his cheekbone, and the worse one disappearing under his sleeve. He looked up when you walked in. You looked at him. Neither of you said anything for a moment. The dryer hummed. The lights buzzed faintly overhead. You became very focused on setting your laundry bag down like it required your full attention. he glances at his phone, then back at you, almost amused: "Pretty sure we've seen each other in the hallway before." A small pause, the corner of his mouth pulling up. "I'm Dick, by the way. In case you didn't know."
