Dream House

[finch]

I didn’t tell him what I’d been up to. If Jian had noticed the phone calls and the disappearing act for an hour or two every few days, he didn’t say anything. I hoped my boyfriend didn’t suspect something sinister.

“I want to show you something,” I finally told Jian over the phone. I knew Jian was between classes and wouldn’t have time to argue. “I’ll meet you on campus at noon, after your classes, alright?” Jian agreed, and I could hear the curiosity in his voice.

Having freed up my entire afternoon for this process, I had nothing better to do but walk up to campus and wait for him. I ended up pacing outside of the classroom for a good fifteen minutes before Jian came out the double-doors.

“I could see you from my classroom, you know,” Jian remarked. “You’re making me nervous just watching you. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I answered, a little too quickly.

“Somehow I don’t believe you.”

I shook my head. “I just… want to show you something. Can I show you something?”

“Of course.”

“This way, then, it’s a bit of a walk,” I said, starting off across the lawn. “So how are your classes going?” Jian was in his second semester and acclimating pretty well to modern American life. I never got tired of seeing him walk around in jeans and t-shirts, his long hair pulled back in a careless ponytail. He described his Modern English Literature classmates and their hangups in some detail as he followed me to a building about ten minutes walk from campus.

It didn’t look too different from any other building near the UC Berkeley campus: at street level, it had a barber shop that had been there for years and a trendy crepe restaurant that would probably last six or eight months. It stood three stories tall, and you could guess from the street that the upper levels held student apartment rentals.

“You said you wanted to get an apartment near campus, someplace you could bring friends,” I told him. “I think you’ll like this one.”

“You’ve been apartment-hunting?” I saw the old Jian again for a minute, his eyebrow cocked like he couldn’t believe I thought he would live in student housing.

“Hear me out. Or rather, hear her out.” I gestured to the middle-aged woman in a well-tailored brown business suit.

“Nice to meet you. Mr. Blaser said you’ve got the final say in the place,” she said, holding her hand out.

“And you are?” Jian asked.

“Mrs. Blaser’s real estate agent.”

“My mom recommended her,” I explained. Jian still looked unimpressed, but he seemed resigned.

“To start with, you’ll note the two business spaces downstairs,” she began, completely ignoring Jian’s attitude with the finesse of a woman who deals with the obnoxious every day. “One established business with a regular rent income. The second has higher turnover but that allows you to charge higher rent.”

She lead us upstairs, pointing out the occupied apartments on the second floor and the additional income they provided as well, then opened the door to the third floor.

“This apartment is currently unoccupied. Mr. Blaser suggested you might be moving in?”

“Robin… It looks…” I could see what he was looking at. The hardwood floors needed serious cleaning to return them from black to brown, the walls needed to be painted, the layout left something to be desired, the kitchen was ridiculous.

“It looks like the sort of apartment you could bring people to, and pretend you’re a college student in,” I told him, anticipating the argument. “We could spiff it up some, no problem. It doesn’t need a lot of work. It has… charm.”

“Charm.”

“It does! I’ve watched enough HGTV to know what charm looks like.”

The realtor chose that moment to interrupt. “And of course there’s the final requirement Mr. Blaser had.”

“And what was that?” Jian asked.

I smiled.

“The basement. Come along.” The took of smartly down the stairs, and Jian and I both followed. In the back alley, she led us to a door with a Fallout Shelter sign above it, though Jian didn’t seem to notice it.

If she’d thought my request was strange, the realtor hadn’t argued. I suppose that was normal when you dealt with clients like my mom. If I wanted to see places with bank vaults and other impregnable structures, she would do her best to fulfill my request.

“The shelter was designed to be earthquake resistant as well as able to withstand nuclear detonation,” she explained, going into detail as to the thickness of the concrete and the various reinforcements as understanding dawned on Jian’s face.

“Can you give us a minute?” I asked her, and she left for the sunlight of the alley.

Jian just looked at me for a minute, and I was afraid I had completely miscalculated.

“You found me a lair. A space worthy of a dragon’s lair. In Berkeley.”

I nodded.

“You never stop surprising me, Robin.”

He pulled me close, leaning in to give me a soft kiss on the side of my jaw, and followed with a whisper. “I can’t wait to break this new apartment in.”

Mirrored from Jack-a-dreams.

Comments

[novel_machinist]

Yes. More of this now please.

[finch]

I'll see what I can do. ;)

[whitemage]

How did you make it cute? You are so magic. :c

[finch]

They do it themselves.

[whitemage]

The Duo of Diabolical Fluff strikes again, then?

[finch]

Apparently.

[mechanical_nocturne]

HGTV + fallout shelter = win. XD

The dynamic between these two is always really cute to read. ^^ Robin always tries so hard, but at least the payoff is awesome.

[finch]

XD Robin kind of deserves some happy by this point.