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Jace knows his infatuation with his neighbor is kind of creepy.
He has been told several times, by Alec and Izzy and Magnus separately, that he needs to either talk to the guy or stop posting about him on Twitter. But that’s much easier said than done.
You develop a certain kind of intimacy with the person who lives in the apartment beside yours. With thin walls that accompany cheap housing, Jace could hear everything that went on in Simon Lewis’ apartment and vice versa. When Simon turned the volume up on his TV too high, Jace could hear direct lines from Ghostbusters. When he played his guitar, Jace could hear it. When he had friends over and he was laughing, Jace could hear it. He had a great laugh.
His crush had first developed nearly five months ago, and since then he’d been hopeless. He’d had a cold and was coughing non-stop, unaware at the time that his neighbor could definitely hear it.
There had been a knock on his door and he’d gotten up to answer with his blanket wrapped firmly around himself, hair unbrushed, looking completely disgusting because he’d assumed it was Alec and he didn’t care how he looked around his brother.
But Simon had been standing there instead, a bowl in his hands and a cheerful smile on his face.
“Hey!” He’d chirped when Jace answered. “I know we’ve only talked like, twice, but you sound really sick and I would’ve felt like a horrible neighbor if I just listened to you suffer and did nothing about it. So I, uh, made you some soup. I hope that’s okay.”
Jace had been overwhelmed and horrified with the fact that his cute neighbor had made him soup and that his cute neighbor was seeing him in a terribly unattractive state, so it took his brain a few moments to sort through it all and formulate an answer.
“Thank you,” he’d said sincerely, taking the warm bowl in his hands, “seriously this is so nice. Thank you.”
Simon had beamed, which Jace was fairly certain had healed him a little bit. “I hope you feel better soon. And you know if you need anything, just knock on my door. Or the wall, I guess.”
And from that moment on, Jace was smitten.
So occasionally, when Simon did something cute, Jace tweeted about it. So what?
It was all fine until he got a notification on his phone which read: @SIGHMONLEWIS STARTED FOLLOWING YOU.
At first, Jace’s idiotic brain had registered this as good news. And then every tweet that he had ever sent out about Simon’s face and his guitar skills and his cute Star Wars pajamas that he wore out into the lobby to get his mail came back in vivid detail and he panicked.
He frantically scrolled down his profile, hastily deleting any tweet that mentioned Simon. He was just starting to calm down, thinking that Simon probably hadn’t even bothered to look down his account, when a DM came through.
Simon had shared a tweet of Jace’s that said “Pretty boy next door is singing again……#blessed” and accompanied it with a message that said “appreciate the feedback, dude” with a laughing emoji.
Jace blacked out for a few moments from extreme terror.
He didn’t even remember dialing Alec’s number, but soon enough his brother’s soothing voice was in his ear, talking him down.
“It’s not as bad as you think.” Alec said calmly. “If anything, he might like it. They’re compliments!”
“Some people think stalking is a compliment.” Jace said with a slightly hysterical scoff. “He’s probably so creeped out, oh my god. He probably sent that message so that I would know he’s creeped out. He’s probably taking screenshots and sending them to his friends and asking them to look for apartment listings.”
“You’re blowing this out of proportion!” Alec insisted.
“How did he even find my Twitter?” Jace wondered aloud, realizing for the first time that he had never shared it.
“Well, Isabelle followed him. And she’s been to your place dozens of times, so he probably recognized her. And you’re always on her feed, because you’re both obsessed with taking selfies together, so he probably found you that way.” Alec sounded proud of himself for his deduction. Jace saw red.
“She followed him?” Jace hissed. “That makes it worse! He’s going to think I talk about him to my family and friends!”
“You do.” Alec pointed out.
“Okay, okay. I’m going to go talk to him.” Jace decided with a deep breath. That was the best course of action. If he avoided Simon, it would be a million times worse the next time he ran into him in the hall. He needed to fix this, or at least give Simon the option to choose never to speak to him again.
“That seems like a bad idea.” Alec advised. “Maybe take a few minutes to calm down first. Think about what you’re going to say.”
“No, no, I have to do it now or I’ll lose my nerve.” Jace said. “Love you, I’ll call you if I need to move in with you and Magnus, bye.”
And he hung up. He spent a few seconds messing with his hair and trying to calm his erratic heartbeat before swallowing his pride and knocking on Simon’s door.
Simon answered after a painstaking couple of seconds where Jace began to convince himself that he’d fled the country. He was in sweatpants and a yellow tee that read “Hufflepuff’ across the chest. His hair was slightly messy and something about him looked off, but he was still beautiful. He smiled at Jace, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Hey, it’s my number one fan!” He teased, effectively making Jace’s face heat up by twenty degrees. “You want me to perform a song?”
“Uh, I wanted to explain.” Jace said, trying to recall his improv skills from high school theatre. “I just, I know it might seem like I’m uh, obsessed with you or something, but I just tweet about stuff that happens in my life a lot so it’s not really you specifically, just…”
Simon seemed amused, his lips pulled into a permanent smirk. “It’s okay, man.”
“It’s weird.” Jace sighed in defeat, shoulders slumping. “I know it is. If you want me to delete my account and never speak to you again, I totally will.”
“What?” Simon shook his head. “No! I mean, really it’s okay. It was kinda...cute, actually.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Simon nodded, then cast his eyes downward. “And I may or may not have a Tumblr where I’ve occasionally posted about my hot neighbor. So.”
All of the panic in Jace’s body thawed and melted into absolute relief, shortly followed by ecstatic joy. He’d never even entertained the thought that his pretty neighbor might be into him, too. It had honestly never crossed his mind.
Simon looked like he was about to say something else, but he very suddenly pulled an arm up and muffled a quiet sneeze in the crook of his arm.
“Sorry,” he said with a sniffle, “I think I’m catching a cold.”
Jace smiled, already moving back toward his door. “That’s too bad. Maybe some soup would help?”
Simon beamed and nodded, already falling into step behind Jace. “That’d be great. And then you could tweet about it.”
“And you could post on Tumblr about it.” Jace countered.
Simon laughed, and it was a beautiful sound to hear on the opposite side of the wall for the first time. “We’re so creepy.”
“It’s not creepy anymore,” Jace pointed out, “now it’s cute.”
“You’re right.” Simon agreed, settling on Jace’s couch. “We’re so cute.”