Of Hipster Rock, Thin Walls and Douchebags
Or
Love Thy Neighbor
A One-Shot
"Seriously?" Bing asked, staring around Darcy's apartment, watching various furniture vibrate ominously as the music blasting through the walls started up again. "You weren't kidding about that?"
Darcy frowned, fuming once again at his new, obnoxiously hipster neighbor's horrible taste in music—or rather the fact that he was once again forced into listening to it entirely against his will. "I told you. All day. I'm about to kill this hipster douche," Darcy growled slamming his laptop shut for the fifth time that week, once again having made little to no progress on his dreaded doctoral thesis.
Bing eyed him wearily. "Let's not get irrational."
Darcy yanked on his dark tufts of unruly hair, stretching out his legs in his overly worn sweatpants and downing the dregs of his now tepid coffee—trying not to wince at how horrible it tasted, or the excessive amount of caffeine already running through his body.
As if in response to Bing's pleas, the music jumped up another decibel and both guys were forced to plug their ears to fight off the dampened beats of a way too loud Mike Snow song.
"Yeah, ok," Bing relented, practically shouting to be heard by his best friend. "Maybe you should go talk to him."
Darcy hopped up fuming, perhaps a little too overzealous in his hatred of his new neighbor's musical volume. Within moments he was zipping the ten steps down the hallway and pounding loudly on his neighbor's door, ready to show that scarf-wearing-pansy-dude exactly what it was like to "feel so close to you right now."
By the time the door was finally swung open, Darcy's anger had stewed past boiling and was rolling on the precipice of volcanic as a bluesy, down-tempo, early Black Keys song rolled into his ears. Now, Darcy was as big of a fan of the Black Keys as any old 25 year old could be, but having it forced upon his cerebral lobe against his will at unknown hours of the day made him want to tear holes in his eardrums, so one can imagine his ire when the owner of said racket finally graced him with a face –to-face encounter. However, before Darcy could unleash the full impact of his loathing, he felt himself stopping short in shock as a pretty brunette girl stood before him in nothing but well-worn boxer shorts and a sloppily askew tank top.
"Too loud?" she asked, a slight trace of amusement across her impish face as Darcy stood there purple-faced and slack-jawed.
To this, Darcy opened his mouth several times, searching desperately for words, in a perfect imitation of a retarded goldfish.
The brunette's amusement doubled.
"You must be my neighbor," she added as he still failed in creating sounds. "I'm Liz, nice to meet you."
"Excuse me," Darcy finally managed, shaking his head to clear his confusion, "but I thought a guy was living here."
Liz looked down at her breasts, noticed that her tank top was precariously askew, but did nothing to rectify the situation before looking back at Darcy with twinkling amusement. "Nope, still pretty sure I'm not a guy."
Darcy frowned, forcing his eyes back up from where they had settled all on their own accord. "Well, um," he stuttered. "Could you keep it down? I'm trying to study."
Liz shrugged. "I will if you will."
To this Darcy had nothing but a frown of baffling confusion. Darcy lived like a hermit, too distracted by his pending death (i.e. thesis presentation) to socialize outside of a few unprompted visits from Bing purely for the purpose of maintaining his ability to communicate with real human beings.
Liz leaned against her doorframe and contemplated him with a smirk. "Did you know you talk in your sleep?" she asked calmly, while Darcy's eyebrows shot up in shock. "I think you might have night terrors. You keep waking up screaming."
Darcy turned slightly pink. Every night he'd been having horrible dreams about being buried alive under the endless stack of books that had taken over his apartment in the never-ending search for viable evidence. Most mornings he woke up gasping for air after a horrible encounter with the sea of atrociously inappropriate research.
Liz grinned at him as he, once again, found himself doing his best goldfish impersonation. "Anyway," she jumped in as he found himself lost in shock. "Great chat, neighbor of unknown name. We should really do this again sometime." She shot him one last sarcastic grin before swinging her door closed and leaving him speechless in the hallway.
After a few moments of baffling shock, Darcy at last turned on his heel and wearily stumbled back to his apartment. Bing jumped up in excitement upon his entrance begging him for details of his treatment of the new guy. "What'd you say? Did you tell him to go screw a sheep or something?"
Darcy looked around his apartment, still not quite sure what had happened to his unfulfilled rage. "Uh. Yeah. That's exactly what I said."
Darcy didn't know if it was just a kind of morbid fascination, like watching a car wreck, or genuine interest, but over the next few weeks he found himself sucking more and more information about his new neighbor through his horribly thin walls. He learned that she had an overbearing mother who commonly questioned her marital status, that she played acoustic guitar and wrote her own music which he begrudgingly admitted to himself was not all that horrible, that she had a part-time job in her overly helpful sister's bakery, and that she had a thing for Quentin Tarantino movies. (Conversely, he did not learn very much on the structural qualities for early romantic poetry, as he should have for his stupid thesis).
After a full month of her presence on the hall, Darcy felt like he knew, somewhat begrudgingly, more about her than he did about his own best friend.
"How is the hottie next door?" Bing asked curious about the girl his best friend had been blathering on about for the past month, one Saturday as he stopped by to make sure Darcy hadn't fallen so deep into his thesis depression that he'd finally just called it quits and drowned himself in the bathtub.
"She's not that hot," Darcy muttered into his laptop, re-reading a particularly atrocious section of his paper. "She's just ok looking."
Bing rolled his eyes and continued to toss around his hacky sack like it wasn't a relic from 1995. "Yeah, ok, Darce."
It wasn't but a few moments later that they heard a knock at Darcy's door. With a groan of frustration, Darcy climbed off his couch and answered the door to a grinning Liz. "Really? Just ok looking?" she asked nonchalantly, still wearing that look of secret amusement, the one that couldn't help but make Darcy feel like he was the butt of the joke.
"Oh," Darcy's face heated with a wild blush and he rubbed his pink neck furiously in frustration. "You heard that?"
Liz rolled her eyes. "I thought we'd already established that I can hear everything?—Hey Bing," she said, shooting an amicable smile over Darcy's shoulder to where Bing was righting a lamp he'd knocked over with his ball.
"Listen Liz," Darcy began, mildly apologetic, but slightly put out that she never looked at Bing with that horrific tinge of mockery. "I'm so—"
"Save it, Darce," Liz stopped him quickly. "I didn't come over here to beg for your approval, surprisingly. I got some of your mail by accident."
Darcy tore his gaze off her illuminated eyes long enough to notice the stack of mail she was holding out to him like a peace offering. He took it from her silently and began to rifle through its contents.
"Sorry, I accidentally opened that one from your sister before I noticed it wasn't mine," she offered as a feeble apology before shrugging nonchalantly.
Darcy felt his ire growing as a scowl drew across his features. "Why would you—"
"Oh, don't be mad at me about that, Darce," she interrupted him with a mockingly innocent smile. "What you should be mad about is the fact that I read the whole thing anyway. Your sister seems sweet though. Let me ask you, is your real name actually Wilbur?"
Darcy's face turned puce. "It's a family name," he grumbled as Bing chuckled behind him.
"It's adorable," she chirped drily.
"Are you making fun of me?" he asked slowly.
"Right in one," she replied quickly already beginning to make her retreat quickly down that hallway. "Catch you later, Wilbur. You too, Bing."
"I like her," Bing replied, still chuckling over Darcy's ire as he slammed the door shut and scowled into the abyss. "She's smarter than you. I find it very refreshing."
"Thank you!" they heard shouted through the wall as Darcy continued to fume.
Over time a sort of game began to develop between the two of them. Almost is if a conversation, they began communicating with each other through the walls. She would blast obnoxious musicals at full volume just to annoy him, and he would run his blender for long stretches of time. She took to bouncing a very heavy ball repeatedly against their shared wall and he would reply by playing Rock Band for hours on end. It was, to Darcy, equally infuriating and exciting. He didn't quite know if he was starting to like their misguided communication or if he just desperately needed to get out more.
Then some time in June, Liz started bringing a certain gentleman home with her. Darcy didn't know why, but he hated the guy immediately and found himself listening in on their dates with his ear pressed firmly against the wall, wondering exactly when he had crossed the line into stalker territory. He knew it was creepy, but he just couldn't help but eavesdrop on their conversations, to chuckle at her one-liners that seemed time and time again to go right over this "Greg" guy's head. Darcy found him illiterate and obnoxious. He thought Liz could do much better—but then again he'd never seen the guy face to face, perhaps he was unspeakably attractive? Darcy couldn't quite figure out why he was so fascinated by the whole thing.
He started making up excuses to knock on her door—"Your vacuum is too loud," "I think your milk has gone off, I can smell it in my apartment," "Don't forget to change your air filters"—to interrupt their dates, or at least catch a glimpse of the competition. Everyday he thanked god he couldn't hear them having sex.
Shit. That was what made him finally realize why he was so fascinated by the life of this stranger. He liked her. Somewhere in between her mocking grin brushing him off each time he stopped by and the repeated replaying of the Mama Mia soundtrack, Darcy realized he'd fallen quite hard for this begrudgingly attractive, purposely obnoxious, horribly mocking neighbor of his. After another night with his ear pressed against the wall, his thesis almost entirely forgotten, Darcy realized he couldn't take it anymore and set out early the next morning to finally take the plunge and declare his feelings.
At promptly 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday, Darcy came a knocking on Liz's door.
After repeatedly having to announce his presence, at long last Liz answered her door, wrapped tightly in her quilt, her eyes still halfway closed, her hair piled up in a knot on half of her head.
"What do you want, Wilbur?" she asked groggily, clearly not happy about the hour of his courtship. Darcy decided to power through his prepared speech anyway.
"I can't take it anymore," he declared.
"What?" she asked with a puff of frustration. "How could I have been making any noise, I was asleep—"
"No, not your obnoxious nighttime rowdiness," he interrupted and she stepped back momentarily as if stung. "I-I… I just wanted to say that even though we have begrudgingly gotten to know each other with a wall literally separating us, even though I try very hard to ignore your very presence, even though you purposely go out of your way to annoy me with all your might… I was thinking maybe you and I should do dinner sometime," Darcy finished with a heavy breath of relief, glad he'd managed to get all that out there.
Liz's eyebrows knit together. "Like a date?"
Darcy grinned. "Yeah, like a date."
"Yeah…" Liz winced drawing out the word, "no thanks."
This time it was Darcy's turn to step back as if stung. "What? Really?"
Liz shrugged. "Yeah, I'm gonna go with a solid no."
Darcy frowned then shook his head to clear away his confusion. "But—but why? We've been flirting through the walls for months now."
Liz let the puzzlement cross her features. "Yeah, that wasn't flirting," she replied slowly. "That was me… oh how did you put it? 'Purposely going out of my way to annoy you,' or whatever you said."
"I thought—" he gaped.
"No, I don't think you thought at all," Liz allowed her ire to shine through. "From nothing but day one you've made me uncomfortable to live happily in my own house. You come over here all the time just to complain about everything I do when, dude! I just want to chill at peace in my own apartment. I just want you to leave me alone. Let's be honest here, Darcy, the only thing you and I share in common is a thinly plastered wall."
Darcy immediately clammed up. "That's what you think?" Hurt and anger overcame his features, unaccustomed to the sting of rejection.
"Well, you've given me no reason to think otherwise," Liz deadpanned. "You come over here at 9:00 a.m. to ask me out, but we've never once had a civil conversation. You've never even said anything nice to me. Not even while asking me out, if that's what that was supposed to be, cause it really just sounded like you were insulting me even more."
"I'm sorry you feel that way," he shot back coldly, turning to strut angrily down his hallway and back to the safety of his apartment before he could further incite her unjustifiable ire.
Darcy racked his brain. Surely it hadn't been that bad? They must have had at least one ok conversation? Like the time he'd signed for her package for her… No, because hadn't he given her a lecture when he'd delivered the box about her interrupting his work yet again?
Oh god, he realized with a gulp as he heard her slamming down objects angrily throughout her apartment.
She was totally right.
Darcy spent the next few weeks reluctant to leave his apartment for fear of running into Liz in the halls. He'd slink out quietly before he knew she'd be awake or while he knew she'd be at work. He'd spend his entire day tiptoeing around the place to make sure she couldn't hear him moving around. Basically, he lived in complete and utter fear of her ever being reminded of his proximity.
Things were quieter on her side of the wall as well. She spent hours out of the house and must had invested in headphones because he no longer heard her music rattling through his apartment. The gentleman of yore stopped making appearances as well. It was almost as if she had moved away, except in the late hours of the night when he could hear her strumming her guitar slowly and barely whispering weepy lyrics of famous love songs. He loved those moments—clung to them sadly—never quite believing that there would be a time that he'd wish to hear her boisterous presence again.
Things hadn't progressed with his thesis either as he filed for a second extension and let the pile of books slowly overwhelm his life just as they had done in his nightmares. His beard began to grow out; he began to screen even Bing's calls. Now he was lucky if he even remembered to put on his sweatpants when he rolled out of bed in the morning.
Days passed. Weeks passed. Darcy grew more and more pathetic with each passing day. Like a caricature from a Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie he'd once seen after having listened to it through Liz's wall. Even he had to admit it now, he was pretty damn pathetic.
That was about the time that it started, one night while Darcy was sitting there watching TV on mute with subtitles so his neighbor couldn't hear, eating cold pizza from two weeks ago. Softly, barely even audible, he heard the gentle sobs of a girl crying. It took him a moment to even place what was happening, her sobs were so soft they seemed to be unreal, just the imagined misery of a pitiful guy. But as they continued he realized it was Liz, crying softly in her apartment just next to his.
Without even quite realizing what he was doing he set off towards his bedroom to find a pair of shorts that hadn't been discarded to the wreckage of his life, a moderately clean t-shirt, and something to take away the lingering stench of his own self-pity. He grabbed a half-empty carton of ice cream from his freezer, two spoons, and set off determinedly to discover what the hell was happening next door.
He knocked gently, suddenly overtaken by shame over what he'd said to her on their last encounter, but propelled on by the strange sinking sensation he felt at the sound of her gentle sobs.
He had to knock three more times before the door was tentatively answered and he was faced with the confirmation of his fears and the red-rimmed eyes of Liz trying desperately to appear as though nothing was wrong.
"Too loud?" she asked quietly, trying determinedly to keep her bottom lip from protruding.
Darcy shook his head slowly not quite sure how the hell to handle this situation. He held up his ice cream as if it would bridge the space between them. "I thought you might need this more than I do," he said eventually as the two of them stared down at the carton in confusion, even Darcy was not quite sure what the hell he was doing with it.
"What is it?" Liz asked slowly, looking back up at him, her sadness replaced in part by her confusion.
"Uh," Darcy shuffled uncomfortably and rubbed his furiously blushing neck. "Ice cream?"
Something akin to a smile flicked briefly across Liz's face. "Let me get this straight…" She bit her bottom lip and considered him seriously for a second, a small smile tucked into the corners of her mouth. "You heard me crying… so you brought over… ice cream?"
Darcy shrugged. "Uh. I didn't want you to be sad?"
"Oh."
Darcy winced as her expression turned decidedly blank, that mocking smile totally and completely gone. "I brought spoons too," he suggested lamely, holding out his other hand with the two silver spoons clutched tightly in his grasp.
"Don't you want to know why I was crying?" she asked suddenly, still eyeing his hand full of spoons.
Darcy shrugged. "Only if you want to talk about it."
"I got rejected from Julliard today," she blurted suddenly, as if desperate to share the news with someone.
His face lit with understanding, thinking about all those times he'd heard her strumming her guitar quite studiously. "That's stupid," he blurted out. "You're insanely good."
Liz eyed him wearily. "Yeah right. You probably sit over there wincing at the sound of my voice."
"No," he replied without a moment's hesitation. "I actually press my ear to the wall and try not to sing along." He grinned at her sheepishly. "It's actually kind of pathetic, really."
She chuckled. Oh god, he'd made her laugh. "That's…" she searched briefly for the word. "Actually, that's probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
"Well," he tried not to wince at all of the horrible things he'd said to her before, "I have a lot to make up for."
"Might as well start now," she said slowly, taking the ice cream and spoons from him before opening up her door a little wider to him. "Would you like to come in?"
And, for the first time ever, Darcy got to see what was on the other side of that wall.
This is a one-shot, in case you hadn't gathered that. Something that was on my brain so I decided to write in down in a coffee-induced delirium. Sorry if it's a bit rough because my head is physically spinning, so proofreading isn't an awesome option right now.
I promise now I will get back to my regularly scheduled writings. Hope you enjoyed the interruption though…?