Chapter Text
The first time you meet him, you are stumbling off the elevator of your new apartment building, arms full of a teetering laundry basket stacked on top of an overstuffed carboard box. You’ve got your Walkman in your pocket, headphones over your ears, and you can barely see around the load you carry. Instead, you find yourself hoping that the last few trips back and forth from the moving trailer parked out front have been enough to cement the path to your unit in your mind.
Ears full of Depeche Mode, guided only by faith, you blindly turn the corner down the hall, and you only barely have the chance to catch the end of shout – masculine, urgent, and coming from several yards ahead – before a surprisingly sturdy weight collides with your legs and looses a high-pitched yelp of surprise.
“Whoa!” You stagger backward, startled and off-balance, and you quickly scrub the side of your head against your shoulder to shove the speaker off your ear.
“Nat!”
There’s that voice again. A man, stern but concerned. Shifting your boxes as much as you can to one side, you glance down at the ground in search of whatever – or whoever – collided with you.
At your feet, a little girl totters clumsily, her long, dark curls wild around her ruddy cheeks as she grins up at you. She can’t be more than two or three, and she’s dressed in a pair of denim overalls that are definitely a size too big for her – cuffed at the ankles, gaping at the waist.
“Hey, kiddo,” you say, offering her a friendly smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there! Are you okay?”
The girl giggles and nods, steadying herself on her feet. Thankfully, your run-in seems to have left her no worse for the wear – just a little breathless, like she had been running when she crashed into you.
You look around then, hoping to spot an adult somewhere in the vicinity that the girl might belong to, but instead, all you see is an open apartment door about halfway down the hall.
“Natalie Grace!” The cry comes from inside the apartment, the sound growing more frantic as it is accompanied by the thud of heavy feet. A man – dark-haired, middle-aged, broad-shouldered – runs out into the hallway, color high on his cheeks, a black leather jacket draped hurriedly over one of his thick arms. He spots the little girl immediately, and you watch as the fear in his dark eyes dissolves like snow under the sun. Relief tinged with frustration takes its place, and he starts taking long, loping strides toward you and girl. “What did I say about – ”
You can see the moment he notices you, the moment his gaze shifts from the toddler to the woman standing behind her. The flush dusting his cheekbones floods his neck, and you have to bite back a grin at the sight. If he wasn’t so rugged-looking, you’d be forced to call him cute.
“Oh. Heh.” The man laughs lightly, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Sorry about that, she’s quicker than she looks. C’mere, kid.”
The little girl obeys, jogging happily over to him with an impish grin still drawing dimples out on her cheeks. The man looks her over quickly, seemingly determining that she is fine, before scooping her into his arms and setting her on his hip.
“You okay?” he asks, the question directed at you.
Losing the fight with the grin tugging at the corners of your lips, you nod. “Yeah, I’m good, no problem. I should’ve been paying attention to where I was going.”
His eyes take in the oversized box, the overstuffed basket, the way your arms stretch around them both, the way you’ve been forced to pop out a hip to balance the load.
“Looks like you’ve got your hands full there – can I take something for you?” he offers.
Your shoulders throb. It’s a tempting offer, but you shake your head all the same. “Oh, no, that’s okay. I’ve got it handled.”
Thankfully, he doesn’t press the issue. “Okay, if you’re sure,” he replies easily. “You wouldn’t happen to be moving into 702, would you?”
Impressed, you quirk a brow at him and nod. “How’d you guess?”
“Oh, I knew the old tenant, heard it was going back on the market.” Shifting his grip on the girl – his daughter, presumably – he gestures with a thumb over his shoulder. “As I’m sure you saw, we’re in 706. So just down the hall from you.”
“Well, nice to meet you, neighbor,” you reply. You fumble for a minute or two trying to free one of your hands to shake his, but instead, you end up nearly losing your grip on the box entirely. Huffing a curse under your breath, you try not to notice the way he presses his lips together like he’s trying to hold back laughter. You offer him your name and a quick little bow in lieu of a handshake.
“Clint Flood. Nice to meet you,” he says, returning your bow with one of his own, the move making the toddler in his arms giggle. “And this little escape artist is my daughter Natalie.”
The girl grins bashfully, tucking her face into her dad’s neck and giving you a little wave. “Hi!” she chirps. You smile back at her with ease; the kid is adorable.
“You, uh. You live alone?” Clint asks, and just as easily as the pair had disarmed you with their sweet, dark eyes and their earnest smiles, your walls slam back up, and you find yourself taking an unconscious step back.
“Um – well…”
The moment your discomfort registers to him, he seems to recognize what he has said, how it might be interpreted. His prominent brows rise empathetically, and his eyes widen with regret as he holds up his free hand – peaceful, nonthreatening.
“Oh, look, I didn’t mean it like that, promise. I’m sorry, I just mean…” He pauses, glances around, keeps his daughter gathered close to his chest. “Young lady like you, living on your own. There’s a lot worse places to be, but this place isn’t the best, either, you know? Just – if you are by yourself, you just gotta be careful. That’s all.”
You nod and give him a closed-lipped smile, wordlessly accepting the apology. He seems earnest, and you appreciate the immediate recognition of why such a question might be off-putting to a stranger – a woman – he has never met. Debating for a moment how much you want to reveal, you settle on something simple – a version of reality that addresses his question without leaving the door open too wide for more.
“I just got out of a…not-so-great relationship,” you confess, and Clint’s mouth turns down almost imperceptibly.
“Sorry to hear that.” His voice is gruff but genuine.
Shrugging, you brush off his words like you have the sympathies of so many others who have offered them to you over the last few weeks. “Don’t be. He was – ” You glance at Natalie, wide-eyed and innocent and so content in her father’s arms. “He wasn’t a very good person. So I packed my stuff and moved out. It’s just me and my cat now.”
You infuse your words with every ounce of optimism you have left, smiling through the tightness in your chest, through the anxiety burning a hole through your stomach lining, and the man seems to understand. His face softens, the thin scar that twists across his cheek and over the bridge of his nose going lax, and there’s something like recognition, like kinship in his gaze as he replies, “That’s real cool. Everybody loves an underdog.”
His words hit you like a punch to the gut, and suddenly, horrifyingly, you feel the telltale prick of tears stinging the backs of your eyes. This man – this stranger – has made you feel more seen, more understood in the last few minutes than anyone has in weeks, and he has done so effortlessly. Naturally. As if this is just who he is.
Kind. Observant. Nonjudgmental. A quiet, steady presence.
If you’re not careful, you feel like you could get attached. And quickly.
“I should, uh.” You take another step back, retreating from the softness of his dark eyes on instinct alone. “I should go drop off this stuff and get back at it. I’ve got a U-Haul parked out front with the hazards on. Don’t wanna get towed.”
Clint blinks rapidly, as though he is also coming back to himself. “Yeah, of course, we won’t keep you. We’ve gotta get out of here anyway – it’s pizza night,” he says, directing his last words toward the toddler in his arms. He bounces her on his hip, eyes wide with enthusiasm, and she smiles so big in return, you swear you can see each and every one of her tiny, white baby teeth.
You can’t help but match their smiles, their sweet, simple joy infectious. “Well, I hope you both enjoy your pizza.” Ducking your chin a little, making eye contact with her directly, you say, “It was nice to meet you, Natalie. I’ll see you around, okay?”
Turning from the pair, you start to make your way down the hall in the direction of your unit. However, you only make it a handful of steps before Clint’s voice calls out for you.
“You know what? Here, wait – ” Glancing over your shoulder at him, you watch as the man sits his daughter down to free up his hands and instead starts digging through the pockets of his leather jacket. Your brow furrows when he produces a small, spiral-bound notebook and a stubby yellow pencil, and he quickly scribbles something down before following you down the hall.
“If there’s ever anything you need, if you run into any issues or anything, you can give me a call,” he says, slipping the tiny scrap of notebook paper under your thumb where it wraps around the corner of the box you’re still – somehow – holding. “Probably won’t ever need it – hopefully you don’t. But just in case, if it’s an emergency, might be nice to have somebody nearby, you know?”
You have to admit, it would be nice to feel like you weren’t completely alone here. When you left your shared apartment with your ex, you had chosen a place far from your old neighborhood very much on purpose. You hadn’t even taken the time to get to know your new home before you submitted your application; you just knew you needed a fresh start, and the further away from the bastard that fresh start could take you, the better. Truthfully, you would have preferred to cross state lines, to flee to someplace like Portland or Seattle, but you could barely afford the moving process as it was.
The other side of the Bay would have to do.
You have no friends, no family in Oakland. You are set to start a new job on Monday – just a part-time gig at a coffee shop until you could find something more stable. You don’t even know your landlord’s first name. Perhaps this – this moment of connection, this offer of community – is what you need.
Even if the idea of having to ask for help from a man makes you want to break out in hives. That man, at least, seems genuine, and that’s more than you can say for most people you’ve met lately.
So you accept the slip of paper, accept the offer with a little dip of your chin. “Thanks, Clint,” you say softly.
“Don’t mention it,” he replies, and then he is retreating back down the hallway, offering his daughter his hand to hold, and disappearing down the elevator.
When you finally get to your apartment unit, you barely make it three feet through the door before you’re dropping the box with a groan. The laundry basket, overfilled from the beginning, slips off of the pile and spills across your kitchen floor, but you hardly notice. Your arms ache, the joints in your hands and shoulders stiff and swollen, and you can feel the beginnings of a headache creeping up behind your eyes. Toby, however, pays no heed to your discomfort. He is there to greet you the same way he has after every other trip to and from the moving trailer – with an indignant scream and an insistent press against your legs.
You sink to the floor beside him, enjoying the cool of the linoleum beneath you as you rest your head against the nearest wall. You run your palm over Toby’s scruffy fur and scratch behind his ears the way he favors. When you close your eyes and tell yourself you’ll get back at it soon enough, that you just need a minute, it’s Clint Flood you see staring back you from the darkness.
You won’t call him, you decide. You won’t need to. But…it’s nice to know that you could.