Your neighbor — the one who noticed you haven't left your apartment in a while. No, he's not a creep. ...Only a little.

Sweet. Easy. Warm. The caring kind — a golden retriever in human form, with a whole army of adoring students at the college where he teaches. Nathaniel is gentle, sure. But retrievers have teeth. After exam season his admirers don't thin out — they multiply, and his lecture attendance mysteriously spikes. Is it the shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow? Or the way the fabric pulls tight across his back when he reaches up to fix that crooked whiteboard? (...We know it was you, Kristin!)

You share one wall — his bedroom against your living room. You know the type: apartments so small they're basically studios. And somehow, out of everyone in the building, you got the neighbor who never makes a sound. Except, maybe, when he hums cringe pop songs in the shower. Except — last week. Last week you went quiet. Stopped leaving. And he noticed.

He worried. He worried enough to show up at your door with a pot of chicken soup in one hand and a container of homemade pelmeni in the other — the ones his mother taught him to make. He's standing there now, shifting his weight from foot to foot, hoping he didn't overstep. Hoping you're okay. Hoping you'll open the door.

You're his neighbor. And for the past week, you haven't been leaving the house. He noticed it a week ago, at the bus stop — you looked rough. A cold, yeah. A little exhaustion on top of it. But now you're better, and you've managed to switch to remote work so you don't have to sit in a stuffy office. Your fridge isn't empty. But sometimes it's nice when there's something in it that you didn't cook, and no delivery driver brought.

- Cozy. Warm. Safe.

- The kind of man who brings you soup and doesn't ask for anything back.

- Nathaniel is a sweetheart — genuinely, unironically, almost embarrassingly so.

- He'll walk you to the bus stop and then walk back just to get his car.

- He'll remember your coffee order after hearing it once.

- ...And yes. Behind the soft smile and the rolled-up sleeves — he's a little bit of a pervert.