Chapter Text
i.
Keith pushes back the sleeve of his jacket to check the time. 12:07. He copies it down in the column next to his name on the sign in sheet. Underneath his entry from yesterday, which he marked at 12:03. And his entry from the day before, marked at 12:11.
“How is he today?” he asks Darlene. She works the front desk, Monday through Thursdays, seven in the morning ‘til seven at night. Lunch at eleven. Back before noon. It’s a Tuesday, today, so she’ll have been to the Subway across the street for a sandwich. He looks for the telltale cup and finds it next to her computer keyboard, condensation dripping down the plastic, leaving circles on a hot pink post-it that serves as a coaster.
“Better after seeing you,” Darlene responds, not unkind. This is also part of the routine.
The halls are empty, walls scrubbed white-clean. Big windows on the North side, letting weak afternoon sunshine dapple over clean tile. It’s January, going on February. It’s been a year, over a year now. Keith’s boots knock in a familiar pattern as he makes his way to Shiro’s room.
The door is left open, wide enough for Keith to see that Shiro isn’t in his bed. He raps twice against the doorframe before stepping inside. Down the hall, one of the other residents is arguing with the cleaning staff. Keith should know their names, but he doesn’t remember off hand.
Shiro is at the desk. At first he doesn’t see Keith, too caught up in the notes he’s making. He wasn’t a lefty before, he says, and it still shows in the awkward way that he curls his wrist to hold the pen. According to him, his handwriting has always been practically illegible though; more than once Shiro’s made the joke that at least now he has an excuse for it. Keith watches him pause, black ballpoint pen hovering over the page like the expression about the other shoe and dropping.
He smiles when he sees Keith come in. “Keith!” And then, “Give me just a minute,” softer under his breath. He finishes the thought he was writing and sets the ballpoint pen down, diagonal over the lined page.
“Hey Shiro.” Keith returns the smile. Feels some small bit of tension leave his shoulders at seeing Shiro looking so bright. “How’re you feeling?”
“Good!” Shiro smiles, getting up to embrace Keith, the way he always does. “I feel really good.” He squeezes Keith under his one arm, releasing him just fast enough that Keith only catches the briefest hint of the facility’s lemongrass fragranced body wash.
“I’m glad, Shiro,” Keith says, really meaning it. Seeing Shiro glum and not being able to do anything about it— it’s one of the most frustrating things in the world. But today’s a good day. Keith can tell. He shrugs off his jacket, folds it over his arm. “What were you writing?”
Shiro sets his jaw. The way he does when he is asked a question he rather get out of answering. He looks at Keith, right in the face. “The next great American novel.” he replies, dry. At Keith’s expression, Shiro huffs out the smallest laugh. “Wow. Guess I should contact my publisher.”
He gives Keith that goofy smile that he has— the one usually reserved for breaking the mood into something more manageable, the one that almost always follows a terrible attempt at humor, the one that Keith loves. It’s boyish and lighthearted and a little crooked. Shiro wields it like a finishing blow, most days, and today is no exception to the rule. The two of them laugh, soft; joy sweet enough to keep close.
Keith leans back, half sitting on the end of Shiro’s bed. Even after all this time, it’s still the kind that resembles a hospital bed: too narrow for Shiro’s broad frame, wheels locked into place underneath, and the kind of footboard made of white plastic, sculpted to have large holes at the top of either side. A pole for hanging IVs at one side of the headboard, stationed there like an ill omen waiting in the wings. A sick bed, made for wheeling a patient around. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Shiro.” Keith says, honest.
Shiro softens. “Just.” He walks over to the desk, flipping through the used pages of the notebook for a moment before he closes it, pen still inside. The cover of it is blue; different than the one in which he was writing last week. He taps against his temple. “Trying to sort through all this.”
“Is it helping?”
“What do you think?” Shiro says. Once again dry, but not angry. Just tired.
Keith nods. Someone else might offer a kind word here, or try to sympathize, but that’s not what Shiro needs, he thinks. He doesn’t say anything.
“Tell me about the shop,” Shiro says, instead of continuing down that route. He clears his throat. “Did any characters come in this morning?” He settles in opposite Keith, half sitting against the edge of his desk. A rectangle of sunlight from the room’s sole window is on the floor between them, like a golden colored rug.
“Mm.” Keith crosses his legs— ankle resting over his knee— and leans back as if he’s trying to touch the ceiling with his nose. It’s been a quiet morning. Maybe things will pick up this afternoon, but Keith’s not holding his breath. Some days, a lot of days, he only has a few customers wander in the whole day long. “No, not really.” At Shiro’s expectant face, he offers, “Mr. Bartlett came in with another radio.”
Shiro tilts his head. “Keith. No one has that many radios. He’s scamming you.”
Keith scowls. He’s been in this business long enough to spot a con. Mr. Bartlett’s radios are broke as hell, but usually fixable, if Keith keeps at it long enough. Keith isn’t giving him much for them, but the old man probably needs the money. And Keith even managed to sell one of them last week after spending some time refurbishing it. “It’s fine,” he mutters, trying to ease his shoulders down from his ears and take the surly-ness out of his voice.
Shiro makes a dubious sounding noise of assent. Keith looks up from the linoleum tiled floor just in time to see a slow smile cross his face. Different than the one from before.
“What?” he asks.
“It’s just.” Shiro lifts his hand, rubbing it across his mouth like he can hide the smile. “Soon you’ll have so many radios, you’ll have to change the name of the shop to Radio Shack.”
“...” Keith furrows his brows and stares at Shiro for a solid minute, watching in unimpressed dismay as the smile gets wider and wider. “Radio Shack,” he finally repeats.
Shiro bites his lip and nods, clearing holding back a laugh.
“Fuck, how old are you,” Keith finally caves— and Shiro is laughing, broad shoulders shaking as he huffs for breath. The sound is loud and carrying and soon Keith is snorting along with him, shaking his head. “Shiro—”
“Not that old!!” Shiro defends the indefensible joke with a wave of his hand. “That was funny, Keith, you have to admit— you set yourself up for it.”
“How?!” Keith sputters. He can’t help but grin when Shiro starts chuckling again instead of attempting to explain. It’s good to see him so lighthearted. That isn’t always the case when Keith visits.
He stays lighthearted for the rest of Keith’s lunch break.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Keith tells him, cheek smooshed against Shiro’s collarbones a second time. He resists the urge to wrap Shiro in a full embrace and hold him. Inhale against his skin. Could he breathe deep enough to smell beyond the tart lemongrass? Would Shiro let him?
“If you want,” Shiro says lightly, withdrawing from Keith’s arms. “I know you’re busy, Keith. Don’t feel obligated.” He’s repeated it so often that it just sounds like a standard part of their routine.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Keith repeats, firmer this time. Like he always does.
His boots knock down the opposite side of the hall this time. The sunshine isn’t so warm that he can feel it on his cheeks as he passes each of the windows. He turns up the collar on his jacket in anticipation of the cold.
At the front desk, Darlene is on a phone call, but she shoots him a smile when she slides the cup with the pens closer to him. Keith pushes up the sleeve on his jacket to look at his watch. 1:14. His entry from check-out yesterday says 1:26. The line above that says 1:05.
He lifts his hand in goodbye and slips out the door. Crosses the asphalt to where he leaves his bike— parked towards the side of the building, out of the way. It roars to life underneath him as he turns the key and walks it out of the spot.
ii.
He passes by the storefront on his way home, slowing his bike to dip into the alley that divides TK Pawn from the insurance broker next door. The lid is off the dumpster again, so Keith stops and fixes it before parking his motorcycle on the cement square that butts up against the shop’s back door. The other side of the building is next to an eternally overflowing used car lot. (Jerry’s Auto Sales WE FINANCE no credit check , reads the garish yellow sign out front. An eternal message— it’s said the same since Keith moved in.) Keith pulls off his black riding gloves to shove them in his pockets, and unlocks the back door to his shop.
Toni lifts her head from the dog bed in the corner. When she sees that it’s only Keith, she goes back to snoozing, though not before wagging her tail. She knows his hours and it’s not dinner or closing time just yet.
He hangs his jacket up next to the door in the backroom, stepping over the hose of a vacuum cleaner he’s not yet found a spot for on the shop’s floor. He winds his way through a menagerie of mismatched kitchen table chairs before he can pass through the door that leads to the actual sale’s floor. From there it’s only slightly more organized— furniture and vintage electronics, a variety of instruments against the far wall, glass cases with jewelry and watches and even a small selection of knives.
The door to the shop is glass. The lettering on it is chipped in some places, but still legible:
TK Pawn
Antiques, Collectables, Uncommon Goods
Keith turns over the bolt in the door, unlocking the store for business now that he’s back from lunch. He flips the CLOSED sign to OPEN, peers out into the street. The owner of the combination laundromat-barber shop across the street is sitting outside on a folding chair— Keith lifts his hand in greeting, but the man either doesn’t see him or doesn’t care.
He returns to the project he was working on prior to going to see Shiro: repairing one of the legs on the wooden chairs scattered in the back room. Keith’s been doing this kind of restoration work since he inherited the shop at eighteen. It was not without its learning curves, but this is an easy project. It should have been done already, but Mr. Bartlett likes to talk and it took the better part of an hour to buy the radio off him.
The chair has a broken foot— that’s all that’s wrong with it. Soon enough the sharp smell of epoxy mingles with dust from the sander. Keith opens the back door and the chill creeps in to greet him. While he’s up, he decides on what stain will suit the antique wood best, what will match the new foot with the rest of the chair: walnut, a rich, dark walnut. He finds a clean foam brush in one of the cups on his workbench.
The afternoon bleeds into evening like that: Keith finishes the chair and chooses a place for it on the sales floor. It’ll dry overnight. Maybe over two nights. He’ll decide in the morning, but it’s good to be prepared. While he’s rearranging, the bell on the door chimes and a woman comes in. Not young or old, with heels that thunk over the shop’s threadbare blue carpet. She heads straight for the jewelry cases, spends a lot of time looking at the rings. Keith can imagine that maybe she’s looking for something she lost.
“Let me know if you want to see anything,” Keith calls over to her when she bends closer to the glass.
She must not find what she’s looking for. The bell on the door chimes again, and the shop is quiet.
*
At eight, almost exactly on the hour, Toni finds him sorting through a stack of invoices near the register. Her paws and muzzle are speckled gray now, but she’s energetic in letting Keith know that it’s time for dinner. She boofs the back of his legs and generally gets under foot as Keith pulls down the gate, bolts the front door. The dog leads him to the back of the shop, watches with great anticipation as Keith sets the alarm for the night and locks up.
His apartment is above the shop. Salt, leftover from the last time it snowed, crunches under Keith’s boots as he climbs the wooden stairs. He slips his boots off at the door.
“Alright, alright,” Keith huffs through a smile, flicking on the lights to the kitchen. Toni trots over the tiles, impatient as she heads for the cabinet that houses her kibble. He follows, giving her a stern look. “I heard you the first time, okay? Siddown. I’m getting it.”
His own dinner is reheated leftovers, paired with a beer. Nothing fancy, but satisfying. He eats with gusto, scrapes the fork over the plate when he’s done. Washes the plate afterwards— he’ll use the same one tomorrow, same fork too— sets it near the sink to dry.
He finds his ashtray next to the mail on the kitchen counter, takes a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket in his jacket. The window at the front of his apartment— it overlooks the street below— has a sofa close enough to lean on and still see out. He cracks the window, shakes out a cigarette while watching the traffic. He exhales the first drag, close enough to fog up the glass. It’s getting colder.
There are nights, often, that he takes a walk after supper. But tonight, the draw of the blanket over the back of his couch is too warm and too great; as soon as the dishes are done, he settles into the corner of the sofa under the throw and finds the page where he left off in his book. The shop downstairs serves as his library. He reads plenty of romance novels that way— pink and red spines, sometimes cracked with age— but this isn’t one of those. It came from a young guy, in his early twenties, maybe, who carried in three large cardboard boxes, all full of Westerns. From his grandfather, the guy said, though he wasn’t a talker.
Toni and the gritty words of Louis L’Amour keep him company until he starts nodding off. Flips the book to check how many pages he has left. It’s no doorstop of a novel, but he has enough left that it makes sense to leave it for tomorrow.
iii.
The old radio from Mr. Bartlett is more broken than Keith had originally thought. He spends the morning at the front desk of the shop, the pieces of the disemboweled radio laid out in rows over a workrag. He’ll clean the thing first, and see where he can go from there.