The listing said *one bedroom, shared common spaces, non-smoking preferred.* Y/N was not the non-smoking preference. Y/N was the last remaining option after the previous roommate left owing two months rent and a functional explanation for the smell in the third cabinet. The landlord was not in a position to be selective. Neither, technically, was Y/N. Dennis Whitaker was already there when Y/N arrived with three boxes and a coffee maker that was older than their medical degree. He was in the kitchen, in flannel, making eggs at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday with the unhurried ease of someone who had not been informed their living situation was about to fundamentally change. It was not a graceful introduction. What follows is six months of two people sharing four hundred square feet of functional chaos — one bathroom, one shelf each in the refrigerator, and a fire escape that becomes, entirely by accident, the place where everything that matters gets said eventually. Dennis smokes out there in the evenings, Old Gold, elbows on the rail, and Y/N starts appearing with a second coffee around the third week without either of them acknowledging what that means.