i.
Y/N is fairly sure her neighbor hates her.
Now, listen! Hear her out, because this isn't just some quick made assumption conjured up when she'd met him after he had a bad day or anything. Unless he's had multiple, sporadic horrible days that she just happened to stumble upon him on consistently, then he definitely was rolling his eyes, and scoffing at her when she greeted him, and telling her to stop her dog from fucking barking so late at night (even though he'd only barked once, because there had been a group of people running through the hall loudly) on a very angry post-it attached to her door – then he definitely had stored some distaste towards her. One that made him take the stairs rather than the elevator when she was waiting for it, that made him quicken his pace if he saw her headed down the hall so he could slip into his room, and went out of his way to avoid Pooh-Bear (her dog) when he came to sniff or lick him to say hi.
She's not exactly sure what she'd done. She'd been never rude to him, or yelled at him, and she tried her damnedest to be friendly when he didn't have the chance to dip away. If anything, she feels like she has more of a reason to be mean to him than he has to be to her, but some part of her wants to be liked by her neighbor to some degree. Or at least to make him feel guilty a bit, for being so harsh the past few weeks since she'd moved in. Maybe he was stressed about school? She'd moved in the middle of a semester, everyone was always a bit testy around then. Or maybe she put off a vibe that he didn't appreciate, which she doesn't know how to fix that if that's the problem but she sure would try.
One particular time, that had only muddled her idea on how he felt about his new neighbor, was when she dropped her groceries in front of the elevator and a jar of apple sauce popped open and got onto his boots. She'd apologized profusely, trying to gather up everything by herself, while he remained quiet and its not until she stood up that she realized he'd grabbed a few of her groceries as well. He handed them to her with his face crinkled into a deep frown, "Don't be stupid and carry more than you can handle." He'd told her firmly, "The lobby has carts you can borrow for a quarter."
That'd been the extent of their face to face interaction. Sure, he'd more or less called her stupid, but he did give her advice so maybe he didn't completely hate her? Technically she knows she shouldn't care, but somewhere in her she really can't handle the thought of him just not liking her. Maybe if she'd been a huge dick to him or something, then it wouldn't matter, but all she did was move next door. It's actually sort of driving her up the wall...nobody had ever just disliked her for existing.
When bringing this up to her friends Liam and Adam, they seem to think that he might just be rough around the edges and there's no hope in trying to become buddies, but Y/N just won't believe that. Thinks that there's always some hope in becoming friends with someone who might otherwise not be your friend without a bit of extra effort. That's how she'd became friends with Greta, who was more or less a hard ass on her exterior, but all soft and sweet on the inside. Y/N had to really work for it though; spent at least four solid weeks of being shot down when they had to pair up for partners, until one day she let Greta have one of her donuts when her stomach rumbled during lecture.
Plus, Greta suggested that she bake him cookies, because everybody likes cookies and that might make him soften up some.
So, at 2AM, in a spur of the moment decision not to study for her World Religion exam, she's decided she'd bake him cookies. Give them to him tomorrow morning so they had a proper amount of time to set. And she thought there was very little chance of her actually fucking this up, since they were just precut cookies that she only needed to place on the sheet, set in the oven, and cook. But this oven was confusing as hell, and Y/N really didn't know how to fucking use it so instead of preheating on 400 degrees it preheated on 500. Which means instead of warm, gooey cookies that she could pick off of before presenting them all pretty on a plate, she has a ton of smoke in her flat, a wailing fire alarm, and burnt, hockey pucks.
