Adam had a new neighbor. It was stressful. He liked where he lived now in California. The apartment he had rented before when he'd first arrived had been far too big for a single person with intense yet limited interests. At the time, Beth was supposed to move out with him so they had looked into larger places. For personal space, she had said, cause healthy couples needed that. Then Beth had decided not to go with him at all to California, almost ruining everything.

After making one of the hardest decisions of his life, Adam had opted to move out West all by himself. Everything was already set up. The only major difference was that he was going it alone. His first place had been nice enough, but it had too much space. Its location was also been more tailored to Beth's needs than his own, the apartment more centralized in the city.

Adam's personal need for space only extended to the square foot expanse of his old childhood room and the usual needs of the kitchen and bathroom. He saw no need for having excessive space for concepts of aesthetics and the feng shui. Adam liked the rules of feng shui when Beth had introduced him to it, but he didn't believe in it or the flow of qi. That was not how energy and science worked. Adam had tried to explain that to Beth multiple times before she insisted that he drop it and not talk about it anymore because 'he just wasn't getting it'.

It had been a little too far from his work at the planetarium which was nestled in the heart of a national redwood forest so its observations wouldn't be marred by the city's ambient light. Adam hadn't driven in New York, and felt no need to do so in California. Public transportation was nothing like it had been in the boroughs though so Adam had been forced to contact a taxi service.

After over-explaining the situation several times, Adam had been assigned a competent driver to take him back and forth to work. It had been expensive but well worth it. Adam got to practice social interaction on his driver, an older gentleman who was originally from Ireland and went by the name of Spanky. Adam was pretty sure that wasn't the driver's real name, but Spanky was always on time and didn't give Adam another name to call him by so Adam let it go. He didn't want to upset a competent form transportation by asking questions about his name either. Even after he found a place to live closer to where he worked, Adam knew he would still have need for a driver. Uber was more convenient but Adam didn't feel up to getting to know a new driver every time he had to go out or wanting to rely on an unknown.

After waiting out the lease, Adam found lodgings in the woods themselves and within thirty minutes walking distance to the planetarium. The little cabin was ideal for him, being much smaller in size. It was a part of a row of six cabins, which had at one point in time been a themed camping motel of some sort, the office and first cabin combined into one. It had gone under for whatever reason and the new owners decided it was more worth their time to rent out the spaces to semi-permanent residents instead of campers.

It wasn't perfect. Adam still had to call Spanky to drive him to the grocery store on the weekend, but it was far more ideal that the apartment smack dab in the middle of town, surrounded by constant noise he was unfamiliar with and too many people in a hurry. Best of all, Adam got to pick which cabin he wanted since they were all empty. He had chosen the one of the end, cabin number six which meant he just had a quiet wall of redwoods on one side of him and an empty cabin on the other.

More accurately, it used to be empty. Adam had followed his usual routine of walking to walk, but upon his return that evening, he was surprised to see a black motorcycle covered in road dirt and long travel, parked in front of cabin five. A man was sitting out on the tiny porch, smoking a cigarette as he polished off a can of beer.

Adam was so surprised by the man's sudden existence that he walked quickly past him without saying a word. He could feel the man's eyes upon his back, following him from the trail that ran outside all the cabins to his front door, but he offered no word of greeting either.

Once inside, Adam made himself go through all his routines to stay calm, but he still kept the man in the back burner of his mind, running scenarios. He knew it would be in his best interests to be on friendly terms with his new neighbor, especially if the stranger started to do things he didn't like, such as play his music too loud at odd hours. At the very least, Adam knew it was polite greet your neighbors and make small, meaningless conversation with them.

Small talk was the bane of Adam's existence, but lately, he had been doing very well with it. He'd had a little over a year to practice on his co-workers, and he even got invited out fairly often now. Adam didn't always go, mostly because he was invited to places and events he didn't care about, but he went often enough to experience new things and make it seem like he was part of the team.

After eating dinner and watching yet another riveting episode of the Actor's Studio, Adam became comfortable with the idea of having someone living near him. He decided that he would at the very least say 'good morning' or 'hello' to the strange man.

OoOoO

Good morning didn't happen the next day. The man wasn't outside when Adam made his way up the trail that led to the planetarium. It was a shady walk into the woods, one that Adam greatly enjoyed. He was worried that the man next door might disrupt it. The bike was still outside, but the man was nowhere to be seen, nor was he anywhere on the trail. Adam hoped that this would be an everyday thing. He liked how quiet the redwood forest was.

That evening, the man was back out on his porch, smoking and drinking again. This time he had an ashtray with him instead of putting the butts into an empty beer can. Adam would have remembered it. It was shaped like a laughing skull, the smoke from what was left pouring out of its open mouth. It didn't look like it would fit into the rules of feng shui.

'Hello' didn't happen that night or the next or even the next one after that. The man was never up in the mornings, but he was always out on his porch, smoking and drinking. He seemed content to just watch Adam speed walk past him and say anything either.

OoOoO

"Hello." Adam made himself say, the man's eyes upon him again. Today was the day. He couldn't keep putting it off. It been over a week and the man obviously wasn't going anywhere. Adam even made himself slow down his walk to a meander as he passed cabin five. Giving a greeting would be useless if he didn't give the man proper time to respond. "How are you?"

"Living the dream." The man said with an accent Adam couldn't place. His voice was rough yet rich with inflection. It made something in Adam feel all warm and melty though he didn't know why. All he knew in that moment was that he enjoyed how the man talked and he had only said three words so far. "Just people watching.

Blinking, Adam looked around them, wondering if more people had suddenly moved in while he was at work. A quick glance at the other cabins confirmed that they were just as empty as they had been this morning. The man's answer made no sense considering the two of them lived in the middle of nowhere. The new owners didn't live in the office, only coming by to pick up the rent check, do basic upkeep, and see if they needed to do any maintenance. The man's answer also wasn't an accurate response to what Adam had asked.

"O-oh." Adam stammered, giving up on this interaction. It was either a joke or a metaphor, Adam failing to make sense of it in either case. He felt the man's eyes on him again as he let himself into his cabin.

After dinner and a lot more thinking, Adam decided to keep talking to the man again, but mostly only because he had failed introduce himself or get his new neighbor's name in return. The window of time for doing so and it not being awkward was closing. It would have to be tomorrow or not at all.

It also didn't hurt that the man was very attractive with a haunting voice and silvery hair longer than Adam's own. His tanned skin was covered in scars and tattoos, Adam wanting a closer look at him. There were very few people with tattoos in his limited social circle. He wanted to study the way the ink held into the skin, wanting to run his fingers over the designs to see if they felt any different from the rest.

Adam fell asleep to that warm melty feeling he was beginning to feel again.

OoOoO

Watching the woods, Nigel didn't even have to check the time when he saw his neighbor emerge from them, walking up the trail that connected all of the cabins to the great outdoors. He'd only been here a few weeks but Nigel had a feeling that he could set his watch to his guy. The man left his house every morning at 8:30am sharp and came walking out of the woods like some kind of weird woodland nymph infatuated with sweaters at 5:30pm. He had rushed past Nigel the first night with barely a glance in his direction, looking almost scared about Nigel being there. He had kept this kind of behavior up for over a week. If he decided to stop like he had the other day, it would be the second day in a row that he'd greeted Nigel or really said anything to him. The interaction had been obviously forced, the guy looking nervous as hell, his eyes barely meeting Nigel's own.

Not that Nigel cared. He wasn't looking to make friends. He had actually been quite relieved that the one person near him wasn't a nosy social butterfly like a lot of Americans seemed to be. His neighbor worked Monday thru Friday so he was gone most of the day, but even when he was here, he was ridiculously quiet, quiet enough that Nigel would be able to hear a mouse fart at any given time. The cabins' walls were thin so every once in a while Nigel would hear the guy's program but it was only on for about an hour, starting at 6:00 on the dot. Other than that, Nigel almost never saw him. He knew the guy couldn't drive. A taxi service come on the weekends to pick the guy up, and soon returning with what looked like a week's worth of groceries. Nigel figured his neighbor was a weird recluse which was just fine by him. It was no skin off his ass if the guy didn't want to talk to him because he was crazy antisocial.

Moving to the states hadn't been Nigel's idea of good time. It had been Darko's who had insisted that Nigel pack in his shit and call it quits. The shitshow that had been Charlie fucking Countryman had screwed too many things up for Nigel to stay. The tape had been destroyed, but Nigel had almost been killed in the process. His devil's luck that he managed to survive a gunshot to the head. The bullet should have blasted out the back of his skull and shredded his brain. All it did was leave a clean hole from front to back though, somehow missing anything too essential. The doctor's called it a modern miracle. Darko called it 'just his fucking luck'. The lawyer called it police misconduct considering Nigel had been unarmed at the time, and had gone for blood in the legal sense. Nigel had left Romania a very, very rich man.

Charlie and Gabi had proven to be too much a wild card liability though. Nigel knew what had to happen to them, but couldn't bring himself to do it. When that happens, he knew it was time to check out of the game. Darko knew it to, had seen the signs long before him. Before he left, Nigel made Darko promise to make it quick for his sweet Gabriella and as long and painful as possible for that greasy little cunt, Charlie who wanted so desperately to die for love. Well they all got what they wanted in some way or another in the end. Nigel was out of Gabi's life forever, Gabi was with Charlie or at least some parts of him, and Charlie got his wish fulfilled by Darko and his dogs. Darko had left him know when the deed was done, the only detail he shared was that he had given Charlie's heart to Gabi before she died.

Free and unfettered, Nigel had bought a bike as soon as he landed in New York. He had driven the damn thing from one end of this country to the other, not realizing just how fucking big America was. He liked it though, the roads seeming endless and every day he got to see something knew. Staying in California was just where he happened to end up. There hadn't been a plan of any sort set into motion. A bartender in Arizona almost a month back in his travels had told Nigel that he needed to see the redwood forest up in northern California, claiming there was nothing like it on Earth.

Upon arriving, Nigel found himself agreeing, taken aback by the size and height of the trees here. What had made him want to stay was how quiet it was. The redwood forest were unique in the sense that they pretty much silent with no birds singing in the background, their rare songs few and far between. The ecosystem here didn't support such things, even the undergrowth too thin to lure any other animals in. Hell, the bugs didn't even seem to like it much here.

Once he decided that, it was a simple matter to find someplace to live where. An ad in craigslist, one simple phone call, and paying in cash had been all Nigel needed to land this little piece of heaven. The cabin were small but a hell of a lot cleaner than anywhere else Nigel usually ended up living. It wasn't like he had a lot of stuff, making the trip with basically the clothes on his back. He had come over to the states knowing that they sold everything he would need here, and he had wanted to take nothing with him from his old life. Nigel didn't want to think about Gabi or Charlie or anything else, so he sure as shit didn't want bring anything along to remind him.

He'd buried their wedding rings in Tennessee in a place called Ruby Falls by Rock City. Ruby Falls turned out to be a waterfall hidden deep in a cave, the whole thing made into a tourist attraction. Interesting enough to look at and take the tour, but just further proof in Nigel's mind that Americans were fucking weird. Leaving the rings there in the dark but kept company by the sound of falling water had seemed appropriate though somehow. Nigel tried not to overthink it.

So here he was and here he would stay for a while, Nigel content to just smoke and drink his life away until the oddest thing happened his first night there. A man had come walking out of the woods, toward his cabin or more accurately, cabin six. He obviously hadn't expected Nigel to be there because he startled badly, reminding Nigel of the few deer he had seen here. When he had come back to himself, the poor guy had all but flat out ran to his front door. Nigel had snickered into his beer after he got over the shock of it. His neighbor was someone worth watching for entertainment value alone. It was an unexpected bonus that the man was stunningly beautiful as well, with some of the bluest eyes Nigel had ever seen before.

Nigel would never say that he was gay, but in the days of his hazardous youth, he had fucked anything that moved when he was a foot soldier in the gangs he worked for. Once he started going up in rank and it became known that Nigel was fucking hard to kill, he'd had to be more careful about it. Appearances and reputations were everything in his old line of work. Here and now in the middle of nowhere though, it didn't matter. He was only looking anyway. It didn't seem like the guy would take too kindly to him being sociable so Nigel entertained himself by making sure his ass was out on his porch every night by 5:30pm just so he could stare his neighbor down and see what kind of reaction he could get from him.

It was a brand new week though, and apparently his neighbor had found a brave enough man in himself to try talking to him. As nice as the woods were, Nigel was starting to go a little stir crazy. He could always drive into town and find a bar, but he didn't want to socialize just yet with 'normal' people. He made day trips for things he needed, like a television and a stereo charging dock for his Ishit, but that wasn't the same as trying to connect with another human being you lived close to. Nigel decided it was in his best interests to not scare the man by overwhelming him with conversation so he kept his answers short and sweet for now.

"Hello. How are you?" said Nigel's strange neighbor, wearing neatly pressed khakis and a blue sweater that looked one size too big for him, but it beautifully brought out the color of his eyes. The eyes that were flitting about instead of making contact with his own.

"Still people watching." Nigel joked and watched at it sail over the guy's head as blue eyes came to a sudden rest to stare at his shoulder, giving Nigel a blank stare in answer. Nigel glanced down at his own shoulder just to make sure there wasn't cigarette ash there.

"There are no people." The guy said, actually turning around as if to check. Nigel couldn't decide if he was some kind of comedic genius, had to marry rich, or was just being an asshole.

"It's been a slow day." Nigel shrugged. The man moved to leave again, but came to a stop. Something was obviously bugging him.

"How are you people watching if there is no people? I used to live in New York and I would people watch all the time." The man said, seeming genuinely concerned about Nigel's answer. So not a comedic genius then, Nigel reasoned out for himself.

"You don't consider yourself people?" Nigel smiled, winking at the guy. He watched as flirtation took the same route as his jokes, entirely missing their obtuse mark.

"No, I do not. I am not a plural. I am a person. I am singular." The man informed him but not in a harsh way. It sounded like he was reciting something from a cue card or book with all the enthusiasm he had in his voice about it.

"I guess I have been doing it wrong this whole time then." Nigel said, biting back a grin. The man stared at him for a moment before smiling shyly back. It seemed like he was trying to confirm as if it were the right thing to do, his responses stilted like he had to think about them first.

"I would recommend going to a place in town." His neighbor suggested but left it at that. Nigel waited for more, like some sort of recommendation but it never came.

"What kind of place?" Nigel prompted at last when it became obvious that they were missing a line in the conversation.

"I don't know. A place with people." The man said. "There is a bowling rink in town."

Nigel didn't know what the hell a bowling rink was much less bowling itself, but the conversation was one of the longest he'd had in a while. It was also possibly one of the weirdest. "Do you like...bowling?" he asked.

"No. It's too noisy and I don't like wearing shoes other people's feet have been in." which did little to nothing to help clarify what bowling was other than some kind of weird American foot fetish.

"Sounds kinky, but I don't get off on that sort of thing." Nigel said to receive another blank look.

"I don't know what bowling has to do with sexual pleasure." His neighbor looked terribly confused. So not a foot fetish, Nigel decided.

"Neither do I. I don't even know what bowling is." Nigel confessed. "But before we discuss matters of bowling and sexual pleasure, I would like to know your name."

"O-oh. I'm Adam. Adam Raki." His neighbor introduced himself, looking uncomfortably about it as he clenched and unclenched his hands. Nigel decided then and there that this would not their last conversation. This Adam was far too fascinating to ignore now that they were talking. "And you are?"

"I'm Nigel. It's a pleasure to finally put a name to the face, gorgeous."

tbc