Chapter Text
Oliver stepped out of his car and took a few steps to stretch his legs after his ride home. He looked at the building complex where he lived and his eye, automatically, went to the large "For Sale" board that had been set at the window of the flat across his. Instinctively, his fist tightened and he had to force them to relax.
Not wanting to dwell on the events that had taken place in front of his door but two weeks prior, he grabbed his bag from his car, locked it and walked straight to his flat.
Or at least he tried to because he didn't resist stopping for a moment when he reached his floor. He vividly recalled own the surprise he had felt on that night two weeks ago. He had been coming back from work, just as he was doing right now, when he had come face to face with the man lying across the doorway of his single mother neighbor. In retrospective, Oliver wondered why he had not asked the intruder what he was doing or called the cops to deal with what obviously was a fishy situation. Instead, like the coward he was, he had just thought to himself that it wasn't his problem and had ignored the stranger. He had wondered later on if that was maybe the father of her kid, and then he had almost forgotten about it before he heard screams for help from the other flat. She was lucky that the police and the firemen Oliver had called had arrived before any serious harm could come to her, but this had probably been the longest minutes of their lives: she trapped with a crazy man and he stood on the other side of the locked door, helpless, his mind too numb to think of anything else he might do besides a couple of calls. He would never forget the feeling of utter helplessness. Just the thought of her dying - and it would be his fault for not reacting fast enough - still made him shudder in dread.
But she was safe. Scrapped, probably traumatized forever, but safe. He had later learned that the man was indeed the father of her child, aka her blood-thirsty ex that had not been able to stand the idea that she might live a normal life without him. All was well that ended well except for the memories... the ones she carried in particular. That's why she couldn't leave fast enough and had moved back to her parents under a week.
"I'll be fine," she had told Oliver before she left. He could only hope that she would be, as they would probably never see each other again. She had also hugged him and told him thank you.
But now wasn't the time to dwell on such things, he told himself as he realized that it had been five minutes since he had been standing there, reminiscing. Now was the time to get home, kick off his god-awful shoes (he honestly needed to go and buy some new ones this weekend) and maybe do something he enjoyed. Baking sounded nice but he felt lazy, so cookies it would be.
Oliver was a man that approached his thirties, yet he had never saluted anyone as he entered his flat since he had moved out from his parent's place. Why would he? He had always lived alone, and he was fine doing just so. What a bother it must be to share a living space, he told himself, and maybe even come back to a home where things might not be where he had left them. If he needed company, he would meet up with friends, but on most days he had more than his dose of company from having spent a day with his colleagues. Heavens, just thinking about Remy and his bottomless energy reserves while being on his time off gave Oliver a headache.
And here he was again, thinking about things that were unpleasant. He chastised himself under his breath. Talking to himself was what he considered his quirkiest habit. Wasn't it weird that he could think, yet chose to talk when he was alone? Never mind that an outside observer would find his habit of making sure that the five bird statuettes on the shelf in his entrance were perfectly aligned every time he came home far quirkier but he never really stopped to think about that. Nor did he stop to think about how he had spent two solid hours measuring his entire hallway to make sure that his five framed paintings were at the same distance from one another or how he tended to have five of everything. Well, maybe not exactly that, but at least in decoration. But he wasn't causing any harm to anyone. He simply liked arranging his space however he saw fit, and wasn't precision the most audacious of all aesthetics?
But anyway, cookies.
Maybe Oliver was a man that lacked a little bit in fantasy: so what? He had his own creative streak, and that was his cooking. Baking, in particular, was his favorite and the whole apartment complex knew it since he enjoyed sharing the extras he made (when he was stressed) with everyone. That made him more popular than what he might feel comfortable with, especially when single women found out that the sweet, clean looking man from the building B didn't have enough feminine presence in his life. Turning out dinner and coffee dates made him awkward every single time. Maybe telling them the truth about his attractions would be kinder, but that was a can of worms he wasn't willing to open... yet. Or ever, if he could get away with it. Instead, he measured his flour and his sugar with zeal, mixed his dough carefully and set his timer on nine minutes. Perfect. Now all that was left to do was to wait, and then he would be able to put his treats to cool, and he had just enough time to read a news article on his phone.
Or, at least, he tried, because halfway through he heard a noise that caught his attention. It did so because it was unexpected: the sound of something, a table or anything that would be quite heavy, being dragged on the floor, and it came from another room. This cuts his reading short as he raised his head. His logic told him that this must be the people from the flat above him doing god-knew-what, yet he had a doubt that it was not that. For one, the walls were soundproof enough that this dragging would have to be uncannily loud to be from beyond one. He had no other explanation than this one, so he became curious enough that he set his phone to investigate.
It's a good thing, he thought to himself, that it's not the night right now, or that would have been creepy. Not that he was scared of the dark... or, at least, of the dark in itself. He did, however, think that it gave a scarier edge to mysterious that might happen, and if there was one thing he wasn't a great fan of it was mystery. He thanked his lucky star that light poured freely through the windows of his living room, that he might see that a cabinet had indeed been moved away from the wall and out of alignment with the rest of the furniture. He had like a sixth sense when it came to detecting unparallel lines and a strong natural urge to fix it.
There was just one small unexpected problem. The cabinet was full of his things, all folded and tidied up neatly on the shelves inside, making it heavy. Heavier than what he could easily move on his own, at least. He noticed right away when he leaned against it and tried to give it a small push (it was easy to assume, given that it had moved on its own accord, that it would be an easy task) only to find that it remained unbudging.
"That's not right," he said to the empty room.
He arched his back and tried again while sticking his butt unnecessarily high in the air. When he failed, he huffed and took a step back, re-evaluating the situation. One might assume at this point that he was a small, fragile man, or even on the more plum side, but he wasn't. Well, maybe he wasn't as tall as he would have liked to be (but again, society tended to put unneeded pressure on men that were shorter than six feet) but he always took care to burn of the calories from sampling his baking by going to the gym twice a week. It was a small price to pay for never having to struggle to open a jar of pickles again, but it would have been nice if such benefits extended to being able to push his cabinets back into their assigned spot. After all, he was the owner. His most cherished privilege was the freedom of deciding for the disposition of his interior.
"You aren't supposed to move," he told the naughty cabinet. Not that it cared about being talked to. It was most likely completely innocent.
Oliver had to turn around to press up against it with his back, his slippers sliding against his perfectly varnished wooden floor as he desperately tried to make any progress. He did, maybe, if imperceptible nanometers could be perceived as that. He would have to empty the offending furniture to put it back in place. What a bother. It begged the question as to how it had moved in the first place when it was so heavy, yet he didn't find the will in him to act surprised. Those sort of occurrences were just part of the things that happened every day, after all, it was just a more extreme example of it.
Yes, really.
But before he could go back to figuring out his problem some more, his timer called to him with a sharp beeping. He hurried back to the kitchen, going around the other way (his flat was built in such a way that the three main rooms, the kitchen, the living room, and the television room, had enough door that it allowed one to be able to go in circles). Oh, it smelled absolutely lovely. He didn't bother waiting to try one to chalk them up to a success, yet those wouldn't be the type of treats he would be sharing with just anyone, for the simple reason that they were peanut butter and chili flavored. It was uncanny but, having spent a lot of time experimenting with dough and trying the result, he had discovered that this was what he liked best.
Putting on his favorite high-temperature gloves, he pulled the tray out of the oven and placed it on the table to cool down. It was still too early in the evening for dinner, let alone dessert (not that he had never eaten dessert before dinner, he wasn't that stuck up) so they would have to wait.
"Well," he said as he another long look at the tasty looking treats, "maybe I'll take one. To try."
He wasn't really fooling himself: he would be having more than one before he would even start to cook his dinner. For now, though, he remembered that he had not finished his news article. It was a witty piece too, the type he liked reading because it was obviously written by someone quite smart and not to up their own ass about it. He liked it.
That didn't stop him from noticing the large clawed hand perking from the edge of the kitchen table and crawling towards the tray of hot cookies.
Oliver stopped his reading to watch it, mouth hanging agape. The hand, if that was the appropriate way of calling an appendage that was twice as big as his own, black, and clawed, gently tapped around, looking for something interesting. It found the edge with a soft clang when its claws met it and delicately felt around for a cookie. It jolted when it touched one, picked it up carefully and slowly, as if trying to be discreet (never mind the sound of the treat gently scraping against the wood of the table), it dragged it over to the alley of the kitchen opposite to Oliver and disappeared.
"Ah, fuck," muttered Oliver to himself. "Not again."