Another neighbor AU (Patreon)

because i CANNOT BE STOPPED!!

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i.

The first time it happened, Y/N thought it was a fluke.

It had to be, right? Nobody sets their alarm for two in the morning unless they have a very weird, specific, niche job and she’s almost entirely certain that her neighbor doesn’t have one like that. Actually, she is entirely certain, because she’d seen him once working at the bakery on Willow Avenue and she knew their hours were from 7 AM to 9 PM every day apart from Sundays. He wasn’t the baker either so there was no reason for him to get there thirty minutes before his shift, no less five hours.

The walls between their flats were likely made of the thinnest, cheapest material they could find with little to no insulation that could even potentially soundproof them. Whatever he was doing, Y/N typically could tell (in the least creepy way possible). She heard his shower kick on if she were peeing, she heard his music if it was up even halfway, and -- thanks to the wonderfully thought out design of the flat, which set their bedrooms sharing the same wall -- she could hear his alarm.

She’s thankful that they have somewhat of the same schedule because she thinks if his alarm rang at 5 AM on Saturdays she didn’t have work, she would be inconsolably upset each morning it stirred her. The only one she had a bit of a grumble with was the Wednesday morning 8 AM alarm that chirped through both of their flats. Otherwise, she’d not mind getting a little bit of her own jolt awake even if it were an hour before she technically needed to get up.

But then, three weeks after he had moved in, every night at 2 AM his alarm would start to ring. Like she’d said before she thought it was a fluke the first time, but after the second, third, fourth, fifth fucking time the damn alarm woke her up, she figured he was doing it on purpose. What could he be waking up at 2 in the morning for, she couldn’t say, but she was at her wit’s end.

Y/N is not an aggressor in any sort of situation, especially when she doesn’t know the person well. Plus, she could typically fall asleep pretty quickly afterward, so it was a minor inconvenience if anything. And from what she knew of her neighbor, he was sweet enough... .she doesn’t think he’d be doing anything bothersome on purpose. When he’d moved in a month or two ago, he came over to introduce himself with a plate of muffins and an all too alluring smile, “Hi, I’m your new neighbor Harry. I just wanted to come ‘round and meet you, in case I need like -- a cup of sugar or something one day.”

He was cute and seemed kind, so Y/N had him share a muffin with her and poked and prodded into his life a bit. Asked where he lived before, why he chose this complex if he was in school, had any roommates, animals, etcetera -- just small talk stuff. Y/N had decided that if there were ever a bug needing killing he would probably be the door she went to knock on (considering that her only other options were a 24-year-old guy with a permanent scowl on his face and always gave her a vibe that he didn’t want to speak, and an 83-year-old woman whose bedtime was 8 PM sharp and she needed a walker to get around).

They didn’t go out of their way to hang out with one another but they were friendly in the hallway, and Harry had come by to ask for sugar before (flour as well, and once he came around to ask if she had yeast but she had to turn him away empty-handed). He was the kind of person where if the fire alarms rang, he would be the one she’s shivering, standing outside in the cold beside and at least have someone to talk to. It was good... .he was a good neighbor -- usually.

The night Y/N snaps, however, she might have just had the longest day of her life. She’d started her period while she was in her lecture, found out she had a presentation due, went to two different coffee shops for a vanilla latte, and somehow both were out of vanilla syrup. She skipped lunch to work on her presentation when she finally decided she wanted to eat at dinner, the burger place she was craving was closed, and to top it all off, she had a headache the size of Manhattan throbbing at her temple. And for some godforsaken reason, she could not relax enough to fall asleep, even though she knew she was exhausted. Her brain would not shut off, so she’d been lying in bed for about three hours, scrolling through her phone, praying for her eyes to grow heavy.

And they did... .they finally did -- but just as soon as her eyes began to flutter shut, his alarm rang from next door and suddenly she was wide awake again.

She blames it on a semi-delirious rage zipping through her; that’s why she threw her blankets off herself, stuffed her feet into a pair of house slippers shaped like bunnies, and all but stomped her way next door. Y/N barely gives herself a chance to think before her knuckles are knocking against the wood, and she isn’t necessarily sure what she’s going to say, even by the time he opened the door about a minute later. In front of her, Harry stood, with eyes puffy from sleep, and his hair tousled every which way. He was in a lavender robe that was half heartedly tied, and he had his fingers clenched around his phone. “Good Morning,” he greeted her, his voice just above a rasp, “Is everything okay?”

“I,” her mouth opens and she pauses for a moment, trying to gather the words, “Your alarm --” she finally begins, “Every night at 2 AM it rings, but our rooms are like... .are like right next to each other, and it wakes me up, and usually I don’t mind it but I just cannot sleep tonight and I was right there but the alarm went off again.” She knuckles at her eyes momentarily, “I just -- if you need to wake up, I know there’s no way we can compromise it really. Don’t even know why I came over all heated, I’m just exhausted.”

Harry is looking at her, with wide, doe-like eyes full of remorse, “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize that you could hear it so loudly.” He grimaces when it restarts -- she thinks he must have pushed snooze before -- and he quickly shuts it back off, “I’m super sorry. Do you want to come in for tea?” Her brows furrow some, but he continues briskly, “Only because you said you weren’t getting any sleep! I... .my mum used to make me this chamomile and valerian root tea to help me back in high school. It really works, and it could be my apology for waking you,” he looks unsure, reaching up to rub at the corner of his eye, “If you feel more comfortable, I could just bring it to your room.”

And, well, Y/N could use all the help she could get at this point. Exhaustion wore her thin but her body continued to chug, she was willing to try anything to get to sleep (she knew she was in trouble when an orgasm didn’t knock her out).

So she took him up on his offer, and now she was sitting on a barstool at his kitchen counter. He explains the process to her, his voice is soothing as he describes how he harvests his own leaves, dries them, and shuts them off in an air-sealed container. Y/N’s brain is just barely keeping up but she nods and hums to acknowledge that she’s listening. He’s shy, yet somehow unreserved, which feels like an oxymoron. She can’t seem to figure him out exactly, but he was sweet, and cute, so Y/N didn’t mind sitting here with him after she’d been hellbent on scolding him for his alarm nothing but ten minutes ago.

He’s diligent and swift in how he prepares their mugs; he tells her he’s letting the boiling water cool for five minutes before he pours it over the bag. After steeping, he places a plate over the mugs and says he’s going to let it sit, and in the meantime, he would warm up one of the danishes he had for them to split, “Filling your belly helps with sleeping,” he explained to her as he plucked it from the bakery box it was sitting in on the counter, “More blood flow is focused toward your stomach and intestines, which decreases the oxygen supply in your brain, and it makes you sleepy. Which typically people don’t find as a good thing, but I figure we can use this to our advantage. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get back to sleep.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Y/N began, her nails scratching lightly over her knee, “Why do you have an alarm for 2 AM every night?”

Harry withdrew the danish from the microwave, using a butter knife to slice through the center of it before setting it beside her carefully. He takes the plate off the top of the mugs, steeps the bags a few more times then removes them, tossing them into the waste bin, “I’m sorry about that,” he sets her mug in front of her, before walking around and taking a seat on the stool beside her, “My sister works weird hours and she’s saving up for a car right now, so she walks home. . .it’s like a five to six-minute walk, but she still gets nervous, so I set my alarm to talk with her on her way.” He pushes some of the hair from his face, patting it down, “She doesn’t work tonight though, and I didn’t realize I still had the alarm set. I am sorry that it wakes you, I really didn’t know you could hear it -- I try to muffle it under my pillow.”

And just like that, Y/N feels like the cruelest, worst person on this planet. She groans, covering her eyes with her palms and shaking her head, “Oh god -- oh god, I’m such a prick,” she peeks out at him through her fingers when she spreads them out, “I’m so sorry, don’t worry about it you -- hell, you can tape your phone right on the wall and let it ring if that’s what it takes. I’m awful.” He was doing it so his sister didn’t have to walk home alone. He was doing it because she was scared, and Y/N had the nerve to be grumpy about it, and angry enough that she had set in her mind she was gonna come over here and complain.

He shakes his head, “No, no, you’re not a prick! You didn’t know -- honestly, if I’d known that you would be able to hear it so clearly I would have come around to tell you. I reckon I could probably sleep on the couch until 2 AM and then afterward move to my bed?”

“You are not going to sleep on your couch so that I don’t wake up, that’s just not happening,” she discards his idea without a second thought, “We’ll figure something out -- I’ll survive a little jolt awake.”

Eventually, they move to his couch as they nurse the tea between their palms. They just talk as they drink...she wonders if Harry is a lonely guy. She never sees people come over, and if he ever had someone over she would have definitely heard it. Even at the bakery, when she was there he wasn’t really speaking with his coworker. But he has so much to say about things, and his voice is low, syrupy, and incredibly calming. She thinks he could probably read stories to lull people to sleep for a living and make a killing -- the kind of voice someone would want to work for Audible.

His voice is so calming and so pleasantly peaceful, that Y/N slowly but surely feels her eyelids grow heavy. The tea is sitting warm in her belly, spreading throughout her veins, making every limb, every tissue, every cell just sink and slump. If she closed her eyes right here, she would just fall asleep, she knows it, but she doesn’t want to stop him from talking. The more she speaks to him, the more she wants to know about him, because he’s just. . .he’s very interesting. She had thought him to be odd before this, but he had so many insightful words about shit that Y/N would have never thought up herself.

“Y/N?” His voice is a tender caress, “Babe, do you wanna go back to your flat? Think you’re falling asleep.”

“No, no, finish your story,” she encourages, but her eyes are closed, she only realizes it then and pries them open, rubbing at them with a giggle, “M’sorry, I think the tea is working. Tell me about your boat tattoo.”

Harry chuckles fondly, patting her thigh before he stood and held his hand out for her, “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your flat.”

“But your tattoo—“ she takes his hand, and he carefully pulls her up.

“We can chat about it some other time, yeah? Are you free tomorrow around 3?”

“AM or PM?” She teases.

. . .

Harry likes Y/N.

He thinks she’s cute — she smells like apple turnovers, and entertains his rambles for more than ten minutes like most of his friends. And Harry doesn’t have an umpteenth amount of friends to begin with, but the ones he has, he is incredibly close with and even they cut him off at some point. She just lets him go though. . . she’d done it the first time they’d met and he brought muffins over, and then he thought she was just being polite. Then she came around to grump at him for the alarm, but instead somehow ended up sitting with him for an hour drinking tea, and asking him the stories behind all of his tattoos (that she mentions noticing when they met).

And she is sweet...so sweet, actually, and Harry wants to spend more time with her. A lot more time with her, actually. He’s always been intrigued by her, even though they didn’t speak much to one another prior to tonight. Harry just had never had an excuse to talk with her, and while he wishes the circumstances were a bit different, he is still glad for them.

It’s the small things that Harry finds joy in.

He hopes to speak with her more.