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kryptonitejelly · 14 days ago

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this was so fucking cute, but also made me tear a little (in a good way)

next door nightmare ⛐ 𝐋𝐍𝟒

r/aita · @papayadays asked, “aita if i cook a lot of fish dishes because the guy (m25) living next door is constantly streaming and playing games loudly at odd hours?”

ꔮ starring: lando norris x neighbor!reader. ꔮ word count: 4.4k. ꔮ includes: romance, humor. mentions of food, blood. set in monaco, rivals to lovers lite, max fewtrell (<3) makes an appearance!!!, open ending. ꔮ commentary box: my favorite type of reader are the petty ones. thank you, joyce, for letting me breathe life into this one 🐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

You move to Monaco with a suitcase, three pairs of good shoes, and a bruised dream wrapped in bubble wrap. The apartment isn’t yours, technically. It’s your aunt’s. She split for Lisbon and left the keys in your inbox like a lifeline.

Temporary, you tell yourself. A pitstop. A soft landing before the real move to Berlin, or maybe Paris. Somewhere with bookstores that stay open past nine and train stations that hum with poetry. Not a place where every other person looks like a yacht catalog model and wears sunglasses indoors.

But it’s free, and you’re broke, so you unpack.

Your first day? An unmitigated disaster. You get lost on your morning walk and end up at the same roundabout three separate times, each one increasingly humiliating. Your French fails you at the grocery store, where you try to ask for almond milk and accidentally request a marriage license.

Then there’s the glass of water that explodes in your hand while you’re trying to rinse dishes. One shard grazes your thumb, and you watch the blood bloom with the kind of theatrical sadness that makes you laugh out loud in an empty kitchen.

By evening, you just want a single conversation that makes sense. You call your best friend. “You wouldn’t believe the day I—” you start, but the line goes fuzzy.

Then it cuts.

Then it returns just long enough for her to say, “You sound like a blender,” before it dies again.

You hold your phone in your lap, eyes burning. It’s stupid to cry about a call, about a thumb, about almond milk. But it’s never about just that, is it?

You crawl into bed, sheets unfamiliar and stiff with that just-washed hotel feeling, and you close your eyes.

Then, he speaks.

Through the wall.

A man. British, probably. He laughs, loud and unfiltered, and the laugh turns into commentary. “Alright, alright,” he hollers, “easy win, mate!”

There’s the mechanical click of a controller. The hum of speakers turned up too loud. And him. Always him. Saying something about headshots and revives and how someone named Max is the worst support player in Europe.

You press your pillow over your face.

He doesn’t stop.

He is holding court with a Twitch audience or a Discord server or, frankly, Satan himself, because that’s the only reasonable explanation for this level of volume past midnight.

You turn over. You try every sleeping position known to man. Your body is tired, but your brain is staging a mutiny.

Across the thin apartment wall, your neighbor whoops, “Oh my God, that was sick!”

You hate him.

You haven’t seen his face, don’t know his name, but you hate him with the precision of a sniper. You picture his setup. Ring light. Gaming chair. Probably eats cereal straight from the box. Probably thinks emotional intelligence is knowing when to mute himself.

You sit up, exhausted and vibrating with something that might be rage or might just be the weight of everything. Of being new. Of being rootless. Of being twenty-something and two train rides away from where you thought you’d be.

You think to yourself, My neighbor is public enemy number one.

Somewhere in the next room, as if summoned, he laughs again.

You fall asleep planning revenge in the shape of a mackerel.

You learned early that revenge doesn’t need to be grand or cruel. It doesn’t need fire. Or blood. Or police involvement. It just needs fish and patience.

Your neighbor—the one with the ungodly laugh and the microphone seemingly embedded into his windpipe—turns out to be exactly what you feared: a streamer of some sorts. Loud. Consistent. Trapped in the same five phrases over and over like a man who thinks enthusiasm counts as personality.

“Massive clutch, boys!” he yells one night.

You’re brushing your teeth. Your reflection doesn’t wince anymore. It just stares back, resigned.

You start to recognize his rhythms. He boots up around ten, peaks at one a.m., and winds down just shy of dawn. You hear every lezgooooo. Every backhanded insult disguised as banter. Every fake laugh with a delay so practiced it should be in the credits.

So you buy fish.

Mackerel, specifically. Local. Unapologetically pungent.

You get it from the little morning market down by the port, where the old woman with the sharp eyes and the sharper elbows doesn’t judge when you say, “Something that really lingers, please.”

She wraps your fish in yesterday’s sports pages and nods like she’s just knighted you.

You wait. Two nights. Three. And then, on the fourth, the opportunity arises.

He’s at it again.

You’re jolted awake by the sound of crashing digital glass and someone named Alex swearing vengeance over stolen loot. Your eye twitches. Your soul flinches.

You rise.

Barefoot. Silent. Vengeful.

You retrieve the fish from its solemn resting place in your fridge. You unwrap it slowly, ceremonially, like a priest with a grudge. You set the pan on the stove. Add oil. Wait for the sizzle.

Door? Just slightly ajar. You’re not a monster.

The smell hits quickly. The kind that coils through air vents and seeps into memory. Thick. Assertive. Biblical.

You hear him talking.

Then coughing.

Then—“Jesus, what’s that bloody smell?”

You can hear the tinny echo of his stream through the walls. A chorus of confused bros. “Mate, I think something died,” your neighbor complains.

You flip the fish, slow and steady, and for the first time since you moved, you smile.

It is not graceful. It is not healed. But it is something.

There’s a beat of silence before he adds, sounding properly horrified, “I can’t focus. It’s like—like someone deep-fried a sea monster.”

You stifle a laugh.

Another beat.

And then—

“I just threw that round because I couldn’t stop gagging. What the fuck.”

You close your eyes. You breathe in deeply, the scent of your petty, fishy triumph. You feel, for the first time since arriving, like you might survive here.

In the quiet that follows his sudden log-off, you hear something almost tender: the sound of yourself exhaling.

The routine is nauseating and vicious.

Midnight strikes, his headset clicks on, and your stove follows like a soldier obeying orders. You rotate your menu with a quiet, vengeful pride. Mackerel. Bluefish. Herring. The holy trinity of domestic warfare.

Your fridge smells like the Atlantic. You have Tupperware stacked with leftovers that no amount of lemon can redeem. Your clothes faintly reek of brine. Your hallway smells like Poseidon lost a bet.

You blow half your salary on scented oils and humidifiers. It doesn’t matter.

When you hear his stream stutter, when his voice rises an octave mid-sentence, when he lets out a full-body cough on air—you feel something click into place. Not joy, exactly. But electricity, petty vindication. A pulse under your skin.

You’re alive. You’re here. You matter, at least to the man slowly losing his KD ratio to anchovy fumes.

And so are you really that surprised when the letters start?

You find the first one in your mailbox, scrawled on a curling Post-It in handwriting so bad it looks forged by a raccoon.

Please stop cooking fish.

No greeting. No signature. Just a room number: 4B.

Your neighbor.

You laugh. Out loud. Alone.

You grab a pen, flip the Post-It, and write:

Please stop streaming like you’re commentating a demolition derby.

You slip it into his box with the kind of rigor that would make your childhood piano teacher weep. He responds two days later. New Post-It. Different color. Same aggressive penmanship.

You’re ruining my career. I had a sponsorship stream. I nearly vomited mid-Raid.

None of those words make sense or, frankly, matter to you. You write back:

You’re ruining my circadian rhythm. I nearly cried brushing my teeth.

The great war escalates.

Buy a fan, you write once. Or a conscience.

Buy soundproofing, he shoots back. Or a soul.

This is harassment.

This is performance art.

No names. Just numbers. 4A. 4B. Scrawled like rival graffiti tags across increasingly creative stationery. Napkins. Magazine margins. Once, the back of a takeout menu.

You keep them all.

You don’t know why.

Maybe because his handwriting is getting better. Or maybe yours is getting worse. Maybe because his notes are still angry, but the barbs are getting softer. He adds a ‘please’ once. You add a smiley face, very small, like a glitch in the matrix.

It stops being war and starts being—something else.

You still cook. He still streams. The stakes have changed, though. It’s less about triumph now, and more about tension. A taut little thread stretched between your walls.

He says nothing, but one night you hear his laugh falter. Just once. Like he’s smiling at something off-mic. Probably this morning’s Post-It, where you proclaimed you would have him arrested for having the world’s most obnoxious giggle.

You don’t know why your chest goes warm.

You open your fridge. There’s herring, wrapped in foil.

You leave it there. Just for tonight.

Three days later, you’re at the grocery store, waging war with the top shelf.

The cereal you want is just out of reach, wedged between some fancy muesli and a box that promises to change your digestive life forever. You rise on tiptoes. Stretch. Swear under your breath. Contemplate climbing the shelf and dying dramatically in aisle four.

“Need a hand?”

The voice is warm, accented, familiar in a way that makes your stomach tilt. You turn.

He’s tall. British. Hoodie up, sunglasses on like he’s either famous or afraid of fluorescent lighting. Curly hair peeks out at the edges. His smile is quick, polite, and somehow bashful.

You nod, startled. “Yeah, sorry. It’s always the stupid cereal.”

He grabs the box and hands it to you. Your fingers brush. You try not to make it a moment. “Thanks,” you say simply.

He just nods. A twitch of his lips, the shadow of something amused.

You think that’s it—a blink-and-miss-it kindness—but then he reappears in the produce section. Holding a single banana like it’s a business decision. Then again in frozen foods, squinting at ice cream like it might reveal a secret.

And again, finally, in line. In front of you. Holding his sad little haul: oat milk, bananas, a chocolate bar.

You place your basket behind his and say, “That’s a bachelor’s cart if I’ve ever seen one.”

He glances over his shoulder, guarded, but snorts when he sees it’s just you. “Guilty,” he chirps. “You, uh—planning a dinner party for all the pescetarians of Monaco?”

You glance at your cart. Fish. Fish. More fish. Lemons. You smile. “Just making enemies.”

He raises a brow, intrigued, but he doesn’t press. Instead, his gaze dips to the chocolates near the register. “These are rubbish, aren’t they?”

“They are,” you say, “but they’re cheap and I’m sentimental.”

He grins. Something slow and crooked. “Story of my life.”

You reach for a bar and toss it into your cart. Then, like it matters, like it might matter more than you want to admit, you offer your name.

He freezes. Not in a dramatic way. Just a flicker. Barely noticeable. Social norms call for him to give his name back, but it looks like he’s about to make you work for it. “You don’t know who I am?” he asks, head tilted, almost cautious.

You squint. “Should I?”

He shrugs, trying to make it look casual. “Just… most people do. Eventually.”

You gesture at his hoodie and shades. “You’re going very hard on the international man of mystery look.”

That earns a laugh. Light, genuine, like it surprises him a little. He steps up, pays for his things. The cashier doesn’t blink, and you wonder if Monaco’s grocery clerks are trained to ignore famous people. Or maybe she just doesn’t care.

He picks up his tote bag, turns halfway back toward you. “Nice to meet you,” he says, name still unspoken.

His eyes flick down to your cart again. “Hope your neighbor likes fish,” he adds as a final jab, his lips somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

Then he’s gone.

Out the door. Into sunlight.

You stand there with your cereal and your vengeance and a chocolate bar that suddenly feels a little more romantic than cheap. You try to forget about the romcom-ness of it all, which isn’t all that hard.

Especially when your neighbor starts streaming again that night.

You hear it the second you roll over in bed and your cheek sticks to the pillow in that cursed way it does when you’re halfway between dreams and rage. The voice booms through the wall like clockwork, but this time, there’s a second one.

Lower. Calmer. With an accent you can’t quite place and the voice of someone who would absolutely win in a hostage negotiation. “Max, you’re such a tryhard,” your neighbor groans.

Max mumbles something in return. You can’t hear the words, but you can hear the smirk. They’re good together. The kind of good that only comes from years of knowing exactly how to get on each other’s nerves without ever actually bruising anything.

You throw the blanket off with the grace of a corpse rising from the dead.

You consider the herring. You even go as far as opening the fridge. But it doesn’t feel worth it. Not tonight. Not when the noise is less a scream and more a low, persistent thrum.

So instead, you grab a Post-It.

Your pen hovers for a second. You’re too tired to be clever, too annoyed to be poetic.

Some of us sleep. Just a thought.

You shuffle to the hallway, drop the note to the floor, and slide it under 4B’s door. No drama. No ceremony. You’re tucking yourself back into bed when Max’s voice cuts through the wall. “Hey, Lan. You got mail.”

A pause. Some shuffling. Then a laugh. Unmistakably from the bane of your existence.

Your neighbor again, amused: “It’s from 4A. This is basically a love letter.”

You roll your eyes so hard it might count as cardio.

“You two got a little thing going, huh?” Max huffs.

“It’s a game,” your neighbor says. “A little fishy cold war. Very romantic.”

There’s a clatter of something—a chair being kicked, maybe. And then your neighbor’s voice softens, like it always does when he’s trying not to seem like he’s trying. “Alright. I’ll keep it down,” he says.

Not to Max. Not to the stream. To you. Probably.

He does.

The rest of the night is quieter. Not silent. Just gentle. Muffled laughter, low voices, the occasional rustle of something plastic.

But you can’t sleep. Not because it’s loud, but because you caught something else. Hey, Lan.

A name.

Lan.

You say it once in your head. Just to try it. You’ve named your enemy now. Sort of.

You lie there, awake, holding the syllable in your mouth like it might mean more than it should.

Lan.

The name sticks.

It loops around your mind like a lyric you didn’t mean to memorize. You think about it brushing your teeth. Folding laundry. Stirring rice. It hums in the back of your head, louder than any of his streams. More persistent than his dumb laugh.

You wonder if that’s what Max calls him. If that’s what everyone calls him. If he signs hotel check-ins with it or introduces himself that way on streams or if he only ever lets certain people use it.

Whatever it is, you and Lan have now abandoned all pretense of civility. The mailbox game is over.

Now it’s Post-Its under the door, no shame, no waiting. You slide one under when his voice gets too loud. He returns fire when your fish leaks into the hallway. It’s not war anymore. It’s not not war. It’s something else.

A little dance. A game where neither of you know the rules, but you’re both still playing.

One afternoon, you’re juggling three paper bags and a box of laundry detergent in the apartment elevator. You’ve pressed your back to the wall, trying to breathe through the feeling that your arms might just abandon you, when the doors creak open. “Whoa,” someone says. “You need a hand?”

He’s all clean curls and clear eyes, baby-faced in a way that makes you think he’s either younger than he looks or has very good skin habits. His sweatshirt reads Quadrant in big letters across the chest. His duffel bag has the same logo.

He steps in before you can protest and grabs one of the bags from your arm.

“Thanks,” you say, a little breathless. “You don’t live here, do you?”

“Nah,” he replies, grinning. “Just visiting a mate.”

You nod, adjusting the detergent. Small talk is pretty mandatory when the other person is helping you with your groceries. “Nice,” you respond. “You from the UK?”

“Guilty,” he says. “I’m Max, by the way.”

Max. As in Max, you’re such a tryhard-Max. As in Max who said Hey, Lan with the comfort of a best friend.

Your brain stutters. Trips. Goes cold and still. You flinch, almost visibly. You don’t offer your name.

He doesn’t notice, too busy glancing at the elevator numbers. You scramble for a lifeline, something to say that doesn’t immediately tie you to 4A. To the fish. To the Post-Its. To the sleepless nights spent writing anonymous venom and then rereading it like scripture.

“I—I actually forgot my keys,” you blurt out as the elevator doors slide open. “Think I’ll just run back to the lobby.”

You’re already halfway out the doors when Max turns, still holding your groceries. “Wait, do you want me to—”

But you wave him off, doing your best impression of someone not about to spiral. “Just leave it by the floor!” you yell back, making a run for it.

You hide in the stairwell. You wait, then you peek. Max, although confused, does as you asked; he leaves your groceries on the floor by the elevator before walking down the hall.

Right to 4B.

You curse under your breath. You watch him enter with a spare key, and then you wait a full five minutes. You sprint, grab your groceries, and fumble with everything for a full minute.

Door. Key. Lock. Twist.

Inside your apartment, you collapse against the door, heart pounding like you just committed an actual crime. You feel ridiculous.

You also feel something else. Something weirdly like grief.

For what, you don’t know. Maybe for coming close to the possibility of putting a face to the name. Monaco has been lonely in that I’m-just-passing-through way, and you’ve wondered if knowing your neighbor—actually knowing them, beyond the warfare—would ease that ache. You’ve yet to meet him. You’re not sure if you ever will. But you’ve met his best friend, and you try to let that be enough.

Come Monday, you find that you’re not okay.

You have a job interview tomorrow—real job, real stakes, real money that could pay for food that is not fish and therapy—and your brain has decided to stage a coup. Your apartment is a mess. You’ve gone over your answers a hundred times. You’re sweating in places that shouldn’t sweat. Your blazer has a suspicious stain on the inside hem and you’ve just realized you might not know how to tie the scarf you planned to wear.

And next door, Lan is streaming again.

Loud. Oblivious. Laughing in that way he does when he’s not trying to be charming but kind of is.

You sit on your couch, holding a mug of tea that’s gone cold, feeling like a deflated mascot costume. No fish tonight. No energy for spite. You just want silence. You just want sleep. You want tomorrow to come and not completely ruin you.

So you do something you haven’t done before.

You knock at the wall.

Not hard. Just three fingers to the wall. Firm. Sharp.

A pause. Then Lan’s voice, slightly muffled but still infuriatingly warm: “Hang on, chat. Be right back.”

Shuffling. SIlence.

Then, through the wall: “Hey, neighbor. You okay?”

It’s the first time he’s properly addressed you. He sounds close, like he’s pressed up right against the wall. You close your eyes and try to imagine how that looks like.

“I have a job interview tomorrow,” you say, voice thin and smaller than you mean it to be. “It’s important. I really need it. So if you could just… I dunno. Let me have this.”

There’s no way you could know, of course, that this is technically the first time Lan has heard you speak. How he’s frozen on his side of the wall, fingers curled over the plaster like he might be able to reach through it and reach you. How he’s realizing that you’re actually a very real person with very real feelings, not just some caricature he’s been exchanging threats with these past weeks.

A beat. Two. You hear him shift. The faint creak of his chair. The hum of his mic.

Then: “Sorry, guys. Gonna call it early tonight. Something came up.”

You stare at the wall, stunned. Not used to getting what you want without some sort of conflict or fish stench. You wait five minutes, then ten. It really has gone quiet. Lan has called it a night, just because you asked.

You lift your hand and tap twice. Thank you.

There’s a pause.

Then two taps back. It sounds a lot like you’re welcome.

The next day is a blur of sweat, strangers, lukewarm coffee, and a delayed bus ride that smells vaguely of onion. The interview went well. Surprisingly well. You said things like strategic alignment and collaborative dynamic and did not throw up on yourself.

You get home exhausted. Starving. Quietly proud. That’s when you see it.

A bouquet of supermarket flowers, taped crookedly to your door. They’re not fancy. A little wilted. The cellophane crackles in the breeze. But they’re trying, and there’s a Post-It stuck to them.

Hope it went well.

Your stomach does something ridiculous.

You take the flowers inside and set them in a glass, because you don’t own a vase. You sit on the floor beside them, still in your interview shoes. You stare at the wall that separates you from him.

The job offer comes on a Wednesday.

London. Real contract. Real benefits. A desk with your name on it and a swipe card that might actually open something important. More than that: an apartment lease that belongs solely to you. Your name on every dotted line. No inherited clutter. No temporary furniture. No fishy feuds with mystery men next door.

You should be thrilled. And you are, mostly. Enough to dance in the kitchen when the email lands. Enough to call your best friend and scream. Enough to finally let your shoulders drop for the first time in months.

But under that: something a little tight. A little strange.

You’ve done well not forming attachments in Monaco. That was the rule you gave yourself from the beginning. Keep it temporary. Keep it light. Don't grow roots in a place that was always meant to be a layover. A waiting room. A pitstop.

Except.

Well.

Your suitcase is zipped and locked. Your boxes are taped with Sharpie scrawls that say things like kitchen stuff and probably important. They’re already downstairs, waiting for the courier. Everything practical is done.

What’s left is not practical.

You’re in your hallway with one last Tupperware, this time not a weapon but a gesture. Sushi, handmade. No cooked fish. No smell. No passive-aggressive message in the form of mackerel oil. Just rice and seaweed and clumsy affection.

You knock.

At first, there’s nothing. Then footsteps. A shuffle. The door cracks open an inch. Lan peers out.

Or rather, the boy from the grocery store does. Hoodie up. Hair a little messy. That same unreadable look in his eyes.

Recognition hits you both like a comedic pratfall. “Oh my God,” he says, pulling the door open fully. “Grocery store girl.”

You stare. “You’re the hoodie guy?”

“And you’re the fish assassin.” He steps fully into the hallway, barefoot and blinking. “Are you stalking me?”

“I live next door,” you deadpan.

A beat. Then it hits him, too. His jaw drops. “You—You’re 4A?”

“And you’re 4B,” you say, like it’s the final piece of some wildly stupid jigsaw puzzle.

You both laugh. The kind that spills out before you can decide whether to stop it. The kind that feels like relief.

There’s a silence, hanging there. A quiet that isn’t awkward. That sits between you like something gentle. You lift the Tupperware.

“I’m moving,” you say. “Thought I’d say goodbye with something less vengeful.”

His smile falters. Not dramatically. But enough. “Moving?”

You nod. “Job in London. New apartment. New walls. Probably thicker ones. No more passive-aggressive Post-Its.”

He takes the sushi, then hesitates. “So… this is it?”

You shrug, trying to keep it light. “Yeah. Don’t worry. You’ll find a new nemesis to annoy.”

“I don’t want a new nemesis,” he says. “I want my fish-scented wall banshee.”

You snort. “Touching. Truly.”

He lifts the lid on the sushi, looking at it like he’s not entirely sure what to do with it. “Full disclosure,” he mutters. “I actually really fucking hate fish.”

“I figured,” you hum, fingers curling around each other so you don’t do something stupid. Like take back the Tupperware and say you’ll make him something better. “You still let me stink up your living space for three months.”

“I didn’t let you,” he counters. “I endured you. With dignity.”

“Barely.”

“True,” he admits, “but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

And just like that, your chest gets tight again. You both go quiet, standing there in the hallway that always smelled like leftover fish and mild annoyance. Except now it just smells like memory.

You step back, toward your door. “Well. See you around, 4B.”

“See you, 4A.”

You close your door. This is how the story should end.

But five minutes later, there’s a muffled sound. That now-familiar slide of paper against wood. A Post-It, slipped under your door for the last time.

Call me when you get to London. I’m from around there, actually, so I know a thing or two.

There’s a number written beneath it. Black ink. Neat. And, this time, signed with not 4B but with a name.

Lando. You turn it over and over in your head, sifting through all the times you mentally called him Lan and wondered what it was short for.

Lando. Your nightmare of a neighbor. Streamer, grocery store boy, and something else entirely.

You hold his Post-It in your hand longer than necessary. After a long moment, you walk to the wall.

You knock twice.

A pause.

Then, soft but sure, two knocks back. ⛐

#lando norris x reader

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