Summary:
To have someone to love is one of life's greatest gifts, his grandma used to say. However, what grandma didn't know, and Otis didn't have the heart to tell her, was that getting there in this day and age required going through a painful phase called dating. Something he's not very good at, to put it lightly.
However, when someone moves into an apartment a few doors down from his, Otis begins to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Because, based on the impressive number of young men going in and out of that place, inhabited by an impressive man displaying equally impressive sleeve tattoos on both arms, that must be someone who knows an awful lot about dating.
Otis wants a bit of advice. Just a bit.
Chapter One -- The Ugly Duckling
One of the stories he'd enjoyed the most as a kid -- and grandma always obliged him by reading it to him on the days when he felt sick and missed school -- was that of the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan. The ardent question on his mind had always been if such things happened in real life. Could an ugly duckling turn into a beautiful swan? Grandma never really answered that question. She just caressed his hair and kissed his forehead, to check if his fever had finally gone down, her kind smile never leaving her face.
Well, as an adult, he knew the answer to that one. Things rarely changed, and, if they did, they took a significant amount of work. Otis stared into the mirror and painstakingly arranged the long bangs of his hair so they fell over his left eye, to obscure the fact that it was smaller than the right one. Plastic surgery could do a lot of things today, wondrous things, but fixing that kind of defect wasn't on the list, or at least his research had led nowhere on that particular topic. Not that he had the money necessary for such complex procedures anyway, but it felt good to dream that fixing his face was a possibility.
He sighed as he finally managed to make his straight hair settle into some kind of draping over his smaller eye. The color of his hair didn't help the overall effect of his face on people, either. It always looked like a hair-dyeing appointment at the salon was long overdue. Otis had never set foot in one of those, but that didn't make it less worrisome that the roots of his mane always remained dark, while the rest of it was an unnatural -- that was what people called it -- dirty ash blond. After reading dozens of magazines abounding in beauty advice, he had ended up more dumbfounded than before. Maybe all that advice didn't apply to men.
And his strange light blue irises were surrounded by such dark limbal rings that whenever he stared too long at someone -- or just looked at them with no particular interest -- people just averted their eyes as if he intended to curse them or something. That staring habit of his had gotten him into plenty of trouble in school, and teachers had warned him that people would start calling him weird if he didn't cut it out. Apparently, he didn't need to blink as much as normal people. He tried to remember that himself and blink intentionally, as often as possible.
He shrugged and pulled his shoulders back, but good posture didn't fix the fact that he had almost no meat on his bones. Any clothes he wore ended up looking like they were hanging on a hanger. People complained about body fat percentage and whatnot, but was there such a thing as a meat percentage? He would have to look that up online, but later. Now, he needed to bring out the last of his grandma's things from the old place that had been in storage since forever.
***
The delivery man was already waiting outside and gave him a short, annoyed look while mumbling something under his breath. He handed Otis the tablet to sign for receiving the items, threw another look around, this time a disgusted one, and got back into his vehicle, leaving him on the sidewalk with a white credenza, a large mirror, and a handbag full of personal items. Otis considered his predicament for a little bit, but then, as always, came up with a solution. He wrapped the rope he had come equipped with through the spaces in the ornate frame of the mirror, the one his grandma had loved so much, and created a harness. Stepping into it carefully, he finally hiked the mirror up on his back, and then grabbed the handbag. That left him with only one hand for the credenza. He could just drag it along. As long as he got everything into the elevator, he would be fine.
Getting back into the building seemed like a real adventure, though. On more than one occasion, he feared that he might turn the beautiful mirror into many useless pieces, and while breaking pots and plates was a sign of good luck in some cultures, it appeared that breaking a mirror was in the exactly opposite category for most people.
He noticed that there was someone already waiting in front of the elevator. A man, at least six foot three tall, and his body obviously possessing an optimal meat percentage. And the meat was well shaped and, as far as one could tell from a distance, covered with tattoos. On both arms. He wore a tight white t-shirt and regular cut jeans that hung on his hips just right. Otis looked at him from behind and then noticed the earbuds. The man was probably listening to music or podcasts. He was probably bettering himself right now by listening to self-improvement advice. His hair was cut short and close to the head, and Otis admired the shape of the back of his head, too. He shivered just imagining how it would feel to move his hand over that short dark hair. Would it be like petting a shorthair cat?
The elevator arrived at the ground floor and the doors opened. The man stepped inside, absorbed in his self-improvement book, and turned, allowing Otis an unimpeded view of his front, too. The tight white t-shirt stretched over a chiseled chest -- words like chiseled made Otis's tongue feel funny, slightly ticklish -- and his abdomen looked flat, not skinny. What was that expression? Washboard abs? Otis didn't like it much. He didn't see himself rubbing soapy laundry over that man's abdomen. Or anyone else's, for that matter.
The man's was frowning in thought, but he had a very admirable face. His jawline was square, as it should be, and he had a straight nose and thick, dark eyebrows. Everything on that face was intense, strong, remarkable.
Otis continued to watch as the man reached for the control panel without looking at what he was doing. That had to be a very interesting podcast or book. Just as the doors began to close, the man looked up and saw Otis standing there. His brows unfurrowed into an expression of surprise, and now they were visible his eyes were revealed to be almost as dark as the hair on his head. He quickly shot one arm forward and stopped the doors from closing. Then, he touched one of his earbuds. "Hello there. Are you coming?" he asked in a deep rough voice.
That was another thing Otis found ticklish -- voices like that. They were mesmerizing voices, indeed.
The man waved his free hand. "Hello?" he called out loudly.
Otis shook his head. The man was talking to him, obviously. "Yes, thank you," he shouted back, just as loudly.
One of the dark thick eyebrows quirked in question. "Just moving in?"
Otis began his march while dragging the credenza after him, as the man half-stepped outside to hold the door and make room for him to get inside. "No. I just had some beautiful things I needed to bring in."
"Let me help you," the stranger offered, and when he moved, Otis caught a glimpse of his neck.
He touched his self-consciously. In that respect, he was something of a crane, and a crane was a far shot from a beautiful swan, while this man... well, this man had the strong neck of a beautiful mammal, like a horse or something similar.
The man quickly moved the credenza inside first and took the handbag from Otis, placing it on top. He then stopped and threw Otis an odd look. It had to be because of the mirror and the way it hung on his back, but, at this point, he couldn't help it. He slipped inside, brushing unwittingly against the stranger. Now that he was in, it appeared that there wasn't any room left, but the stranger didn't seem to care and pushed Otis gently but firmly against the credenza until the doors closed behind him.
"What floor?"
