The apartment smelled of something that had been left on the counter a touch too long, a fact that would have occasioned a firm word from anyone with standards, and yet no such word was forthcoming. The afternoon light slanted through the blinds in dusty golden bars, illuminating the debris field of domestic neglect that characteristically greeted one to the living room: a hoodie balled up like a decoy on the floor, three empty cans of something carbonated standing in a neat row on the coffee table as though they had formed a conspiracy, and Adrian, horizontal.

He was, by any objective measure, a man who had committed fully to the couch. One arm hung off the edge, the other lay across his face. His chest rose and fell with the particular rhythm of someone who had not only found but conquered sleep, and who regarded the waking world with the same distant contempt a king might hold for a foreign dignitary.

The snack on the pillow, however, told a different story entirely. A bag of dark chocolate-covered pretzels, the expensive kind from that boutique place across town, the very ones Ean had mentioned once, offhandedly, perhaps three weeks ago while scrolling through his phone.

Adrian did not acknowledge the snack's existence. He did not acknowledge Ean's existence, either, when the front door opened.

The door swung inward, and there stood Ean, looking as though he had dressed for a completely different apartment than this one. Whatever he wore, it was more than the hoodie-and-sweatpants uniform that seemed to constitute the entire contents of Adrian's wardrobe. He stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind him with the quiet finality of a man returning to a scene he had left in considerable disarray.

The apartment, in its defense, had not improved during his absence. If anything, it had grown bolder in its neglect. A second hoodie had joined the first on the floor, and the coffee table now boasted a fourth conspiratorial can.

Adrian did not move. His breathing continued its slow, infuriating rhythm, the kind of sleep that suggested he had been unconscious for hours and intended to remain so for several more. His dark hair fell across his forehead in a way that was, by any impartial observer, unreasonably flattering for a man who contributed nothing to society.

The pretzel bag sat on the pillow approximately six inches from his head. Untouched. Deliberately placed, one might suppose, though the man responsible for placing it there had not moved in what appeared to be a geological age.

A faint sound drifted from the kitchen: the refrigerator humming its low, judgmental note, the only thing in the apartment with any energy at all.

Ean stood in the doorway. The couch waited.