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stylesloveclub · 9 months

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sunshine (part 1)

In which Harry's a dick and y/n is a virgin who cries a lot.

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Y/n wonders if she thinks too highly of herself.

She thinks she’s pretty. Not in an obnoxious, self-obsessed way! She knows she’s not a supermodel, and she definitely has a lot of days where she looks and feels totally dead – but at the end of the day, she’s not hideous. She splurges on pretty makeup products, does her hair in the mornings, spends a decent amount of time planning out cute outfits… you know, little things to make herself feel pretty!

She brushes her teeth twice a day, showers regularly, flosses. Wears pretty perfumes that smell like flowers and lip gloss that tastes like strawberries. There’s a stash of gum in her bag that she’s always chewing on, so she knows she doesn’t have bad breath; and she carries an extra deodorant in her backpack too, so you can’t tell her she’s repulsive or anything like that.

She’s kind. She smiles at strangers and always laughs at people’s jokes (even if they aren’t funny)— holds the elevator door open and says a polite “good morning” or “hello!” with her happy, cheery voice. And even though she’s a bit shy, she tries her best to spread love and kindness in the world. It just makes her happy to make other people happy!

Plus, being nice means that everyone else is nicer to you. So even if she’s in a bad mood, she’ll fake a smile and pretend like she’s happy y/n.

But, she wonders... if she has all of these amazing qualities– if she really is as pretty and kind and wonderful as she makes herself out to be– then why hasn’t she been kissed yet?

She loves her friends, of course she does! But how is she so different from them? Why do all of her friends get asked out on dates and have amazing boyfriends while she’s still a lonely virgin who hasn’t even been kissed yet?

It’s not like she’s this super virginal person who gets grossed out by boys! She wants to be kissed, she wants to get fucked! She’s toyed around with the idea of just downloading tinder and losing it all to some stranger in one night stand, but her romantic heart just can’t stand the thought of it.

Yes, she’s desperate… but she’s also romantic. Love is on her mind 24/7. It’s what she thinks about before she falls asleep, what she daydreams about whenever she gets bored. She could spend hours with a romance novel, hyper fixating on the little things that most people wouldn’t blink an eye at. The way the boy’s hand cupped the girl’s jaw while they kissed, or how their fingers brushed as they walked down the street. Little things like forehead kisses and prolonged glances across a room.

She craves it for herself, desperately aches for the affection that she reads of. She wants to rest her head on someone’s chest and listen to their heartbeat as she falls asleep, feel their fingers playing with her hair, or their lips skimming her cheek. Wants to laugh under the covers and share secrets and be vulnerable and in love. She wants it more than anything in the world!

And yet, she hasn’t even been kissed!

Everyone else seems to do it so easily – find a nice guy, go out on a date, and fall in love. So why is it so hard for her? Her friends tell her that she's the prettiest and sweetest girl out there, and that the right guy simply hasn’t come around yet… but y/n can’t help but think, is any of it true?

Is she even that pretty? Is she actually likable?

What’s wrong with her?

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Harry hates these stupid college parties.

They’re loud and stuffy, with way too many people crammed into one room for his liking. The alcohol is cheap, the music is annoying. The entire apartment smells like weed, and there’s not even a secluded corner for him to mope around in without some group of drunk girls completely invading his personal space. Everything about these parties sucks.

If he could, he’d leave. But he’s meant to give a ride home to his roomie Blake, and Blake’s currently hooking up with the host of this party.

So Harry’s stuck here. Great.

He checks his phone, and it’s nearly midnight. Blake should be done soon, right? The blonde girl who’s been talking to him for the past 20 minutes is getting awfully close, her hand trailing on his biceps and migrating towards his chest, and she’s blinking up at him with fluttery bambi eyes.

Any other night and Harry might be into whatever this girl is hinting at, but he’s 100% sober and 100% not in the mood to hook up with a girl who’s taken one too many shots. He grabs the girl's hands and peels them off of his chest gently, muttering something about needing to use the restroom (he doesn’t even need to use the bathroom, he just needs a minute away from the pounding music).

He sends her off in the direction of her friends, who are giggling to each other in a corner across the room and not-so-inconspicuously checking to see if their friend has managed to successfully get with Harry. He’s sure they’ve realized that he rejected her when they all glare at him. Sorry to disappoint, he thinks to himself.

He’s nearly positive that any bathrooms in this shitty college apartment will probably be occupied, either with someone throwing up all the drinks they’ve had or with a couple hooking up. But no harm in trying anyway.

The first door that he tries to open is locked. The second door opens up to reveal a coat closet.

The third door however, opens up to a bedroom.

The walls are decorated with posters and pictures, fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, and tiny pots of succulents placed all over the room… but the one thing that stands out the most is the overwhelming number of books scattered all over the room. There’s a bookshelf on each wall, cluttered with books of all colors and sizes. Stacks of books lie on the nightstand by the bed, a stray book sits on top of a dresser, and a pile of new, untouched books sits pristinely in the far right corner of the room.

Books, books, and more books all over the room. And, a book in the hands of a girl sitting quietly in her bed, staring at Harry.

Dressed in a hoodie and some fuzzy pj pants, the book that she’d once held up closely to her face now rests on her lap as she blinks up at this strange intruder. She sits upright, closing the book but sticking her finger between the pages so that she doesn’t lose her place. “Um… hi?” she says quietly.

He steps into the room, and looks at her blankly. “Hi.” She blinks at him. “S’this room taken?” he asks.

“Um. Well,” she looks at him curiously. “No, I guess not.”

“Okay, good,” he responds, quickly closing the door behind him. He sits on a spinny chair that he pulls out from under a desk and leans his head back, letting out a deep sigh of relief.

The girl, with her finger still lodged between her book, stares at him confused. Who is this guy?

He’s cute, and she’s mildly embarrassed that he’s come into her room when she’s looking so… sleepy. But he also seems kinda grumpy and is obviously not in the mood to talk. He’s leaning back in her chair and closing his eyes, gently rubbing his temples as if he’s meditating.

She observes him with wide eyes. Then after a minute of silence she awkwardly picks her book back up and tries to resume reading.

Kinda hard to do with some random guy sitting in her bedroom, though.

In this secluded bedroom, the sound of the music has decreased dramatically. Harry’s pounding headache starts to fade away, and he feels himself start to relax for the first time since he arrived at this stupid party. He looks around the room that he so luckily stumbled into.

The desk in front of him is, to no surprise, cluttered with more books. A laptop is plugged in in front of him, and there’s a cup full of colorful pens and markers sitting against the wall. Hanging on the wall is a string of pictures starring the same girl with different groups of people.

He looks at the pictures hanging from the walls. Then he looks back at the girl laying in the bed.

“S’this your room?” he asks, finally connecting the dots.

She looks up from the book again and nods.

“Oh,” he hums, surprised. He supposes he should’ve realized it as soon as he walked in. Girl in a room full of books, reading a book. Face clean of all makeup, snuggled up in a blanket, nice and comfy as though she’s just about ready for bed. It’s a bit silly that he only made the connection once he saw her pictures up on the walls. “Why aren’t you out there partying?”

“Um… not really my scene,” she says, closing the book and looking at Harry properly. Her nose scrunches up, “And it smells really bad in there.”

“Jesus, tell me about it,” he groans. “Could hardly breathe in there. In fact–” he says, already standing up, “d’ya mind if we open up a window? Still feels stuffy in here.”

She shows no resistance as he slides the window open, accepting the fact that she’d be sharing her room with this stranger until the party was over. Harry sticks his head out and takes a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. Much better than the sweaty, smoky, sickly smell going on inside the apartment.

When he turns back around, the girl has rearranged herself. She sits criss-crossed on her bed and looks up at Harry, fidgeting nervously with her lip bitten between her teeth.

She’s kind of cute.

Harry breaks the silence again. “I think your roommate is hooking up with my roommate right now.”

“Oh.” She blinks. “Is your roommate Blake?”

He nods.

“Yeah, Maddie’s been saying that she, um… you know,” she looks down at her hands as they play with a loose thread on the hem of her pants. “Wants to hook up with him or whatever.”

He nods his head, leaning back against her wall with his arms crossed in front of his chest. As refreshing as the air is, the night time breeze is cold.

“No offense,” he says, “But you don’t seem like you’d be friends with Maddie.” Maddie (y/n’s roommate) has jet black hair, wears heavy eyeliner and black lipstick everyday, and is at least a little bit high 90% of the time. Y/n, in comparison, has flowery bed sheets, a stuffed bunny tucked in next to her, and is hiding in her bedroom while a party being thrown in her own apartment.

She just smiles softly. “Yeah, we met online. But she’s really nice.”

He raises his eyebrow. “She seems like a bitch.”

She defends her roommate immediately. “She’s not a bitch!” But then she thinks about it for a second. Maddie can definitely come off a bit… harsh at times. “Well… she’s usually really nice to me, at least.”

That makes sense. It would be very hard to be mean to this girl, he imagines. She’s too nice. It would be like being mean to a puppy or something.

Good thing Harry isn’t mean. He’s just… a bit of a grump.

She taps her fingers against the cover of her book awkwardly, staring at Harry as he looks up to her ceiling and closes his eyes. He just wants to be in his bed right now.

After a few more minutes of silence, Harry pushes himself off the wall. “I think Blake should be done,” he says, checking the time on his phone. “I’m going to leave now.”

“Okay,” says the girl quietly. She watches as he leaves with a nod of his head, and shuts the door behind him.

That was weird, she thinks.

Whatever, though. She opens her book and forgets about it.

+++

Don’t people say that drowsy driving is just as bad as drunk driving? What constitutes drowsy driving? Should y/n even be out on the road right now?

She doesn’t know. All she knows is that Maddie woke her up with a phone call at 2 AM, asking if y/n would come pick her up from Blake’s apartment cause she was too high to get back on her own and she doesn’t want to stay the night there.

Y/n, being the sweetheart that she is, obviously wants her roommate to get back safe. So she’s in her car, at 2 AM, yawning every three seconds as she drives to the location Maddie sent her.

She texts Maddie from the car, but Maddie doesn’t respond. She calls her, then sends another text, but still no answer. After 10 minutes of no response, she goes up to the door and knocks.

Maddie doesn’t answer. Instead, it’s Harry.

His eyebrows furrow as recognizes the girl from that party he’d been at two weeks ago. She looks just as comfortable as she did then, in a big pink hoodie and a pair of sweats. “What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice confused and his eyes doubting. Not many people come knocking at his door at 2 AM.

Unlike y/n, who looks like she just rolled out of bed and drove here (that is exactly what she did), Harry looks like he’s been up all night (he’s been playing COD). He’s not wearing a shirt and has a pair of sweats slung low on his hips, showing off a chiseled abdomen that acts as a canvas for a multitude of pretty tattoos. Y/n finds herself staring at the swallows that lie under his collarbones, the butterfly painted above his stomach, and the ferns lining a yummy pair of v-lines that point downwards… she swallows thickly and forces herself to look away.

“Um,” she covers her mouth as she yawns, hiding her cold fingers with the sleeves of her hoodie, “Maddie needed me to drive her home.” She blinks sleepily, and can’t even bring herself to be embarrassed that she looks so dead.

“It’s 2 in the morning,” he scoffs. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

She blinks sleepily again. “I was.”

Harry rolls his eyes. If it were him, he would not have gotten up and driven all the way over here. Someone else’s problems are not enough to get him out of bed. But, this girl… she’s too nice.

He leaves her at the door and goes to Blake’s room, pounding on the door rudely. “Hey!” he yells, irritation evident in his tone, “your roommate’s here.”

He hears a bit of shuffling, before Maddie stumbles out of Blake’s room, makeup askew and clothing only half on. She giggles up at Harry and apologizes playfully, but he just glares at her. Her eyes are glazed over and the whites of her eyes bloodshot, very obviously high if the way she couldn’t walk straight wasn’t enough of an indication.

He feels bad for the stupid girl who drove all the way over here in the middle of the night because her roommate wanted to get high.

Maddie trips over her own feet and falls into y/n, who uses all of her strength to keep her roommate upright and walks her slowly down to the car. “Are you feeling okay?” Harry hears her ask quietly. He scoffs to himself.

He doesn’t get it. How the fuck has this girl not lost her shit? Her irresponsible roommate woke her up at 2 am and made her drive all the way to some stranger’s house, and yet she still manages to be so… gentle. So kind, to someone who barely even deserves it. So caring, to someone who seems to care so little.

As y/n helps Maddie get into the car, she looks back up to the apartment and sees Harry watching them from the doorstep. They make eye contact for a few seconds, his eyebrows furrowed as he leans against the doorframe. His gaze makes her heart stutter, a chill running down her spine. He looks… upset. Almost like he’s mad at her.

It makes her frown. She wants to say something to him, apologize for ruining his night… but then Maddie sticks her head out of the car and vomits.

Harry shakes his head and turns away.

That girl is too nice for her own good.

+++

“Hey.” Blake pokes his head into Harry’s room, where Harry’s busy playing a round on his computer, “Do you mind if Maddie and her friend come over?”

“Don’t care,” Harry mumbles, uninterested, not looking away from his game.

“Sick,” he turns around to go back into his own room, but stops when Harry suddenly pauses his game and calls out to him.

“Who’s the friend?” Harry asks, turning around.

“Y/n,” Blake answers. Harry stares at him, his brows furrowed. The name doesn’t ring a bell. “Her roommate.”

“That quiet girl?” Harry clarifies.

“Yeah, that one.”

Oh. So her name was y/n.

Good to know.

+++

It’s dark out when Harry finally turns off his game, sliding his headset off and stretching his back. He lets out a long groan as he feels his spine crack, a delicious feeling after being hunched over his controller for three hours straight.

Standing up, he scratches at his stomach lazily, throwing his headset onto his chair. His arms feel a bit sore, having been to the gym earlier that day, and his hair is still wet from when he showered. He puts on a sweatshirt, finding his apartment too cold to be roaming around shirtless, and heads to the kitchen to find something to eat.

He stops in his tracks when he finds y/n sitting in his living room all alone.

She’s got a book in her hands, a thick, worn-out novel that looks older than herself. She’s sitting comfortably on their couch with her legs tucked underneath her butt, so engulfed in whatever she’s reading that she doesn’t even realize that she’s not alone anymore.

It’s the first time he’s ever seen her outside of her sleep attire. She’s wearing a pair of loose, comfy looking corduroy pants, and a tight top that cuts off just below her ribs. Her chest rises and falls steadily, eyes skimming across the pages of her book so quickly that he wonders if she’s actually absorbing any of the words or not. She chews on her lip as she reads, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

When Harry finally speaks, it makes her jump in her place. “Where are Blake and Maddie?”

Her book nearly falls out of her hands as she whips her head around. When she sees it’s him, she relaxes. “Oh. Um,” she sits upright, closing her book, “They’re in his room.”

He nods slowly, squinting his eyes. There’s no nice way to ask his next question, so he just spits it out bluntly. “Why’d you come over if you’re just sitting out here while they hook up?”

She tucks her hair behind her ear nervously, feeling a little shy under his intimidating gaze. “Maddie was my ride to campus today. And she wanted to stop by here before we went home.” She shrugs quietly, “So I kinda had no choice.”

He huffs. Of course.

Y/n says that Maddie’s nice, but Harry really doesn’t like her. How weird is it to drag your friend somewhere just to have them sit alone while you go hook up with someone?

“How long have you guys been here?” he asks.

“Like, an hour.”

“So you’ve been sitting around doing nothing for an hour?”

She pouts. “I had my book.”

He blinks. She just sat here reading for an hour, while her roommate abandoned her to go hookup with Blake… and she’s okay with it?

She is too nice for her own good.

“Do y’want some pizza?” he asks, already opening the freezer.

Normally, y/n would say no. She’s kind of an unwelcome guest and she doesn’t want to be a burden on Harry. But… she hasn’t had anything since breakfast. And Maddie still hasn’t come out. She’s kind of starving.

“What kind?” she asks politely.

“Umm… cheese or pepperoni.”

“I don’t like pepperoni,” she confesses shyly. “But also I could just pick it off if you want pepperoni. Whatever you want.”

He rolls his eyes, shoving the pepperoni pizza back into the freezer. He wants to scream at her to stop being so nice! Stop being so considerate and just say what you want!

He puts it in the oven to bake, setting a timer for 15 minutes, then takes a moment to contemplate his next move. He could either go back into his room, where he could lie in bed and nap until the pizza was ready… or he could stay in here and sit awkwardly on the couch so that y/n wouldn’t be all alone.

99% of him wants to just go back into his room where he can be grumpy and alone in peace… but then he looks over at y/n, who’s sitting on the couch all by herself. She looks so uncomfortable and out of place, tracing her thumb over the raised up font on the hardcover in her hands.

The 1% of him that feels bad for her wins. He sits down next to her on the couch.

He nods his head towards the worn out book, which looks thicker than anything he’s ever read. “Are you reading the fuckin’ bible?”

“No,” she shakes her head, laughing to herself quietly. She runs her fingers over the grooves of the title, a feeling so familiar that it comforts her when she’s feeling so out of place. “It’s Wuthering Heights.”

He furrows his brow. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s good,” she says. “Kinda dense, but I’ve already read it a few times. It’s one of my favorites.”

He nods again, tapping his fingers on his thighs as silence overtakes the apartment once more. He looks around the living room, trying to find something else to say.

Y/n’s heart pitter patters in her chest nervously. She can’t help but feel a bit nervous around Harry. She’s pretty shy in general, and Harry’s stoic demeanor certainly doesn’t help her relax. Her voice is quiet as she asks, “Um… what’s your major?” A feeble attempt on her end at a conversation.

“Math.”

“Just math?” she parrots.

“Mhm,” he cracks his knuckles. “Pure math.”

She huffs out a quiet breath, a pout on her lips. “I’m in a math class right now.” Her fingers pick at a piece of fuzz that’s stuck on the couch. “Calc 1. It’s really hard.”

“Mm, yeah.” Harry hums, “Took that during my first year.”

She looks at him with wide eyes, “Did you pass?”

He holds back a smile. It’s amusing, how earnestly she’s asking him – a math major – if he passed Calculus 1. That class was generally easy for him, mostly just beginner stuff compared to the math he does now that he’s in his third year. But he doesn’t say that. “Yeah, I did,” he says simply, not wanting to make her feel bad.

She nods, looking back down at her book. “I’m kinda scared. Our first midterm was really hard.”

He hums sympathetically. Even though it was easy for him, he knows that calc class is infamously hard for others – especially for those who aren’t math inclined like himself. “How about you? What’s your major?”

His legs are spread apart so that he takes up nearly half the couch, whereas y/n sits curled up on the other corner, trying to take up as little space as possible. “Bio,” she readjusts herself so that she’s sitting crisscrossed, her book still clutched to her chest protectively. “With a concentration in ecology.”

Ew. He hates biology. Actually… he hates everything except math. Math is easy for him.

The oven beeps. A rush of relief fills his chest, finally free from this awkward conversation, and he eagerly abandons y/n on the couch to get the pizza out. He’s hungry, starving, and doesn’t bother with a plate or anything before grabbing a slice and shoving it in his mouth.

“Come have some,” he mumbles, mouth full.

She timidly walks over to the kitchen counter that he’s standing at, wiping her sweaty hands on her pants, and takes a slice as well. Blowing on it, she takes a much smaller bite than Harry did since it’s still so hot. She doesn’t know how he managed to already finish a whole slice.

Now that they can focus on eating their food, there’s no need for any more small talk. They eat comfortably in silence, only acknowledging each other when y/n asks for a napkin. He nods towards one of the drawers, asking her to grab him one too, and then they’re back to eating in silence.

Blake and Maddie burst out of his room a few minutes later.

“Harry made dinner!” exclaims Blake, coming over and reaching for a slice of pizza.

Harry yanks the tray out of his reach. “Get your own pizza,” he mumbles, putting the pizza back down in front of y/n. He looks at her, and nods his head towards the pizza, inviting her to take another slice.

Maddie stops her before she can reach for a second slice. “Ready to go?” she asks.

Y/n nods, wiping her hands on a napkin. “Thanks for the pizza,” she whispers to Harry, quiet enough so that only he hears.

“Yeah,” is all he says. He barely looks at her, too busy scarfing down his third (maybe fourth) slice.

She grabs her stuff and follows Maddie out of the boys apartment.

+++

“Hey!” Maddie pushes her way through the stuffed apartment, reaching her hand out towards y/n. “Listen, I’m gonna go home with Blake.”

“W-What?” Y/n’s head is foggy, her brain a little clouded from the few drinks that she’s had. Y/n doesn’t normally drink, so the little bit of alcohol in her system has had its intended effect and gone a bit further as well – her cheeks are warm, and she feels the world sway a little bit as she looks up at Maddie with a pout. “But– but what about me?”

Normally, y/n stays home whenever Maddie wants to go out and party. She prefers the comfort of her own bed and hates the anxiety she feels when she’s drunk and wobbly and surrounded by a bunch of strangers. But Maddie had assured her that they’d be together all night, that she’d take care of her if she got drunk, and that she’d drive them home whenever y/n wanted to leave.

She’s broken all three of those promises.

When they got to the party, Maddie abandoned her as soon as she saw Blake across the room. Luckily, y/n saw some of her own friends that she was able to hang out with, some girls from her ecology class who gave her a yummy strawberry smirnoff. They talked and laughed and y/n was having a good time, slowly but surely getting a little bit tipsy. The drink was so yummy, and Maddie wasn’t there to keep an eye on her, so she didn’t realize that she’d gone a bit over her tolerance.

She’s a bit tipsier than she’d like to be in a public setting, surrounded with people she doesn’t know, and it’s too dark outside for her to get home safely on her own. And now… Maddie wants to abandon her? For Blake?

“Don’t worry!” Maddie exclaims, completely disregarding the worry flickering in y/n’s glazed eyes. “I’ll order you an uber home!”

Y/n bites her lip nervously. An uber? At this time of night, when she’s all drunk and stumbling around like a sad little baby deer?

“Um… can’t you take me home before you go with Blake?”

Maddie rolls her eyes, “come on, really? I’ll pay for the uber. It'll be fine.”

Y/n’s heart beats loudly in her chest, “I-I’m scared of going by myself, Maddie. I think I had too much to drink, I don’t feel safe.”

Her roommate purses her lips in a firm line, as if she’s annoyed. She looks around the apartment, tapping her foot impatiently, then she lights up with an idea. “Stay here,” she tells y/n.

“Harry!” Maddie calls out, making her way back to the other side of the apartment. “Hey, Harry!”

He’s sitting on a couch, next to a pretty girl in a tight black dress who has her legs splayed across his lap comfortably. There’s a furrow in his brow that makes him look pissed off, but his hand rests very comfortably on this girl's thigh and he makes no objections as she plays with the collar of his shirt. His head whips over to Maddie as she tramples her way over to him.

“What is it?” he snaps, voice closed off and irritated.

“Can you drive y/n home?”

He blinks. “Huh?”

“Can you drive y/n home??” she says again, frustrated.

“Why?”

“Cause I’m going over to your apartment with Blake and she needs a ride home.”

He stares at Maddie unbelievingly, and peers over at y/n, who’s sitting all alone on the other side of the apartment. Her lips are pouted sadly, staring down at the floor with a far off look in her eyes.

“Why can’t you take her home?” he grumbles, looking up at Maddie with a glare in his eye.

She huffs, impatiently stomping her foot. “Cause I’m going home with Blake right now! Come on Harry, it’s not that far! Please?”

He shakes his head. “Fuckin’ unbelieveable,” he mutters under his breath, pushing the girl off of him as he stands up.

“Thank you,” she sighs, dragging him behind her. “Y/n,” Maddie says, stopping in front of her. “Harry’s gonna drive you home.”

She looks up, eyes wide and round. “H-Harry?”

“Yes,” she says harshly, “you guys are friends, aren’t you?”

“Um…” y/n doesn’t know what to say. She wouldn’t necessarily consider them friends just because they shared a pizza.

Her night out with Maddie was meant to be fun, but right now, she just feels abandoned and kinda scared. And Harry doesn’t seem too happy about this either, which makes her feel even worse.

“Lets go,” he snaps, jaw clenching tightly as he swings his car keys around his index finger. She flinches at his tone and digs her nails into her palms nervously.

She’s trapped. It’s either Harry takes her home, or she takes an uber all by herself. And she’s too scared to get home alone right now.

With a final look towards Maddie, who stares back at her dismissively and shoos her towards Harry, she stands up shakily and follows Harry out of the crowded apartment.

The air outside is much colder than the apartment, goosebumps immediately rising on y/n’s skin and making her shiver. Harry doesn’t acknowledge the way she stumbles over her feet, walking ahead of her briskly. She’s forced to keep herself composed, wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm and nearly jogging to keep up with Harry’s long strides.

He unlocks his car doors and gets into the driver’s seat. Y/n opens the passenger’s side door for herself and takes a seat, buckling herself in quietly.

Turning on the car, he notices the way her arms are tightly crossed in front of her chest. He turns up the heat, and pulls out of the parking lot.

They play no music and say nothing, driving in silence.

“Sorry you have to drive me home,” she says faintly after a few minutes.

His turn signal blinks softly. “Can’t believe your roommate just left you,” he mutters irritatedly.

She says nothing in response. She stares out the window, a lump in her throat as the drive past the streets of college houses and apartments. The red light they stop at and the name of the streets go blurry from the tears gathering at her waterline. She sniffles softly.

Harry whips his head to her. “Why are you crying?”

Her lower lip wobbles as the first tear falls from her lashes. She wipes it away quickly. “I don’t know,” is all she says with a watery voice.

He stares at her befuddled, brows furrowed and eyes a piercing green, but she refuses to meet his gaze. She just looks outside the window in a melancholy haze, lost in thought, eyes unfocused as tears drip down her face silently.

He sighs deeply and taps his fingers against the steering wheel, praying for the red light to turn green so that he can get this girl home as soon as possible.

+++

When they arrive at her place, he sits in his car and watches as she stumbles up the steps of her apartment. She mumbled out a soft thank you through her tears and managed to climb out of his car smoothly, but the way she wobbles on her feet makes Harry worry that he shouldn’t leave until he’s sure she got in.

She stands in front of her door for a solid two minutes, trying to find her keys, and Harry taps his fingers against his thigh impatiently. When she finally finds them, she struggles to fit the key in the lock, hands shaky and her vision still blurred from the tears. Aaaand then she drops them.

Harry sighs and puts the car in park. By the time she’s picked the keys back up, Harry’s already gotten out of his car and reached the top step. He takes the keys from her and easily unlocks her door. “In,” he mutters, ushering her into her apartment impatiently.

He follows her into her bathroom and turns the light on for her. Their eyes meet in the mirror as he asks, “can you get yourself ready for bed?”

She nods, looking down at the ground sheepishly as he leaves her to take off her makeup and brush her teeth. She opts to skip her skincare routine and doesn’t even bother with putting her jewelry back in her jewelry box, simply just leaving her earrings on her bathroom counter to deal with tomorrow.

Harry’s probably gone back down to his car by now, she thinks. It’s so embarrassing, how he had to drive her home and guide her into her bathroom. He seemed annoyed with her. He probably thought she was so messy – an annoying, overdramatic girl who started crying in his car for no reason.

More tears bubble in her tears as the hot wave of embarrassment washes over her. She was such a mess, of course she’s never been in a relationship. Nobody would want to date someone like her.

She takes off her clothes and whips off her bra, sniffling to herself sadly. Slipping on her favorite sweatshirt, a huge pink one that goes down to her mid thighs and covers her hands, she uses the sleeves to wipe away the excess tears in her eyes. She stumbles over herself a bit and bangs her foot against her dresser as she reaches for a pair of sleep shorts and it only makes her want to cry even harder. Drunk y/n is extra emotional, and every little thing is sending over the edge.

As she’s stepping into her pair of sleep shorts, her bedroom door opens, Harry walking in with a glass of water in one hand and a pill bottle in the other. She trips over herself as she tries to pull her clothes on as soon as possible, but it just makes her lose balance and stumble to the side. His eyes widen and he turns around quickly, muttering a quick fuck to himself.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Are you decent?”

Y/n regains her composure, cheeks burning as she pulls her shorts over her hips. This night could not be going any worse. “Yeah,” she says quietly. She hopes it’s dark enough in the room so that he doesn’t see her flaming cheeks and puffy eyes.

He turns around and hands her the water, which she immediately starts chugging down. She didn’t realize how thirsty she’d been until she’d seen the glass in Harry’s large, tattooed hand.

“Slow down,” he grunts. He pops open the pill bottle and takes out one Advil for her. “Take this.”

She grabs the pill from him obediently and swallows it down with the rest of her water. Then she looks up at him, as if waiting for his next instructions.

“Bed,” he says, nodding his head towards her daisy printed sheets. She goes to climb in but trips over her shoe that she’d messily discarded on the floor. Harry grabs her waist before she can fall to the floor though.

“Jesus,” he murmurs. This was like the seventh time she’s almost fallen over tonight. Is she always this clumsy or was it the drinks?

He grabs her hand and physically guides her into her bed, making sure she lays down properly and lifting the sheets for her to climb under. Grabbing her ankle, he literally has to guide her under the blanket, then lets the duvet fall over her gracefully.

“All good?” he asks, once she’s tucked nicely into her bed, teeth brushed and medicine taken so that she wouldn’t wake up feeling gross tomorrow.

She looks up at him, eyes no longer tear filled but still clearly sad. “Yeah..” she says quietly, however her eyes flicker around her room as if she’s searching for something.

He furrows his brows, and glances in the direction her eyes have landed. A stuffed bunny lies on the floor next to the shoe that she tripped over. He bends over and picks it up, handing it to her questioningly. She takes the bunny and snuggles it into her neck, eyes fluttering as if she can finally relax. “Thanks,” she whispers.

Harry nods curtly and heads for the door. When he turns around one final, y/n is watching him with sleepy eyes. “Bye, Harry,” she squeaks out.

He stares at her for a second. “Bye.” Then he closes the door behind himself.

+++

Y/n wakes up with a pounding headache and an upset tummy.

That was mortifying.

She’s never gonna be able to face Harry again. He was so annoyed with her, she just knows it! The way she dragged him away from that party, cried in his car, and tripped over herself like a stupid goat with clanky legs… oh, he probably thinks she’s the worst!

She wishes she had more control over her emotions, that she could’ve held in the tears until she was alone in her bed… but she just felt so miserable last night. She had wanted to start crying literally when Maddie first yelled at her at the party, but she tried to stay strong. Kept herself together so that she at least didn’t start crying in the middle of a party.

But then… getting in the car with Harry. God. The deafening silence, the irritation radiating off of him… it made her feel terrible. She felt like a nuisance, like an annoyance and a burden.

And she completely humiliated herself in front of Harry! The cute guy that she maybe sort of had started to have a tiny little crush on, simply because he was cute and mildly nice to her and she has a habit of romanticizing small interactions.

There was no chance he’d ever want to be in a room with her after this. He probably wants nothing to do with her.

She stumbles out of her bed and plants her feet on the ground, her head spinning a little bit as she squints her eyes. Her little stuffed bunny has fallen onto the floor again, and she picks it up and places it onto the bed next to herself. She remembers how Harry had picked the bunny up and given it to her before she fell asleep last night, like she was some little kid that he was stuck babysitting.

Ugh. She’s never going to talk to him again.

+++

Harry stands outside of his lecture hall, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed angrily. His eyebrows are furrowed in classic Grumpy Harry fashion and his lips are pursed in a disgruntled frown.

He’s annoyed.

He stares at y/n, who’s sitting on a bench not too far away. Her tote bag sits on the floor next to her feet and there’s a book in her hand, her finger in between the pages as a temporary bookmark to not lose the page she’s on.

There’s something about her that just… annoys him so much. He can’t quite explain it.

The way her cheeks dimple as she smiles up at the guy talking to her, tucking her hair behind her ear gently when it falls into her face… it makes his jaw clench angrily as he watches her from a distance. She’s so nice. Too nice.

She laughs at something the guy she’s talking to says and it makes his stomach feel sour. He doesn’t like it.

Blake’s hand snaps in front of Harry’s face. “Bro. Stop staring.”

Harry forces his eyes to look away, brows still furrowed grumpily. “Wasn’t staring,” he mumbles, pushing himself off the wall and going into the lecture hall.

“You were,” he responds, following closely behind. “She’s really nice… I dunno why you hate her.”

“Who says I hate her?” Harry scoffs. “I never talk to her.” Especially as of late, she’s quiet as a mouse around him. He was over at her apartment to pick Blake up the other day and she’d only said a quiet “hi” before scurrying back into her room, like a scared little bunny in the presence of a snake or something.

“Well… I mean, you could be nicer.”

Harry furrows his brows. “What do you mean?”

Blake hesitates. “Like… I dunno. Maddie says you made her cry.”

“Huh?” He thinks back to that night… “How was that my fault?” All he’d done was driven her home and tucked her into bed? She just started crying on her own!

“She’s just kind of sensitive,” says Blake. “I know you probably weren’t trying to mean, but you’re definitely not sunshine and rainbows. You’re scary, did y’know that?”

Harry rolls his eyes. Everyone seems to have this preconceived notion that Harry's this huge dick who never smiles… and though it’s true that he rarely smiles in the presence of strangers, he’s not an asshole! He just doesn’t feel like wasting his energy in pretending to like people he doesn’t actually like. Or smile when it’s much more comfortable to furrow his brows and pout grumpily.

And he finds that usually his grumpy demeanor works in his favor – people stay out of his way, and he gets to avoid the headache that comes with interacting with people. But now this girl… this sunshine girl who always has her nose in a little book and always says please and thank you and is nice to everyone and stumbles over herself like a little puppy who's learning how to walk… she’s gone on and made him feel bad about it.

How annoying is that? To have the nicest person on the planet think you’re scary?

“I wasn’t trying to make her cry,” he mutters, irritated. “I didn’t even say anything to her.”

“Well maybe that’s the problem. Like… just try. I think you’ll like her.”

He doesn’t think so. She’s too nice. They probably wouldn’t get along.

+++

There are three things y/n does a lot.

The first is studying. Her grades come first, always. She’ll be at the library for hours at a time, snuggled up in a booth with an iced coffee and her color coded notes, studying until she can barely keep her eyes open. It’s unhealthy, and she really should take breaks more often… but she just gets really nervous about her grades!

She’s used to being at the top of her class, and has always been a straight A student. But recently, she’s been struggling. She’s doing fine in her chemistry class, and absolutely thriving in biology. But calculus… calculus is her worst enemy.

The second thing she does a lot is reading. She’s been a bookworm for as long as she can remember. Her most frequent genre is romance (obviously!), but she’ll dabble a little bit in the popular fantasy series, maybe pick up a thriller every once in a while. And if she’s feeling sophisticated, she’ll try to read one of the classics… something philosophical, like Camus, or maybe something a little heavier, like War and Peace. But those situations are rare. She prefers her little world of romance.

The third thing that y/n does a lot… is cry.

She’ll cry if she watches a sad movie, she’ll cry over a sad book. She cried when Finnick died in The Hunger Games, and she cried when she finished Of Mice and Men. She cries every single time she watches Pride and Prejudice (2005), sobs her eyes out when Mr. Darcy says, “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love- I love- I love you.”

She cries if someone yells at her, and she cries if she thinks someone doesn’t like her. She cries almost every time she’s drunk (example: when Harry drove her home), and she cries in the middle of the night when she’s feeling homesick. She cries for no reason when she’s getting close to her period… and sometimes, she cries because she’s just lonely.

Now, you might be thinking… y/n sounds super annoying. But please don’t think that! That would also probably make her cry.

She’s just a tad bit sensitive! She has so many emotions in her little heart, and she’s trying so hard to be responsible and manage life as a young adult but at the end of the day she’s just a girl!!! She’s just a girl, and she’s tired and stressed out and lonely and touch deprived, and sometimes she has a hard time keeping everything together so she just… cries.

If she could control it, she would! Do you really think she wants to be crying in the library? Of course, not! It’s embarrassing, and she’s trying really hard to keep her sniffles quiet and to suck the tears back into her eyeballs… but when she’s sad, she can’t stop the tears.

So now she’s crying in the library. And it’s all because of Issac Newton.

Why did he have to invent calculus? Like, what was even the point? Why did she, as a girl studying ecology, have to take this stupid class?

She buries her face in her arms, the tears unstoppable at this point, and just hopes that anyone walking past will think she’s napping and not crying her eyes out.

She’d studied really hard for that last midterm. Like– she’d literally been in the library for a week straight, just doing calculus problems over and over again. She went to office hours to get help on all the questions she was stuck on, and was watching the Organic Chemistry Tutor’s videos religiously. She did so much math that she was literally having dreams about doing calculus.

And yet, even with all of her studying, she still managed to fail the midterm. Like… she seriously failed it. As in, if she doesn’t get an A on the final, she will literally have to retake the class.

She’s so sad. She’s never gotten a grade this low, ever in her life. And she’d tried so hard!!! The morning of the midterm, she’d actually felt confident! She thought she had it in the bag!

She was so, so wrong.

She feels stupid – not just because she failed the midterm, but because she’s literally having a breakdown about it in the library.

This is stupid. Everything is stupid. School is stupid, Issac Newton is stupid, calculus is stupid–

“Y/n?”

Uh oh. She tries to wipe away her tears discreetly, licking her lips and clearing her throat and desperately hoping that it’s not obvious that she’s been crying.

When she lifts her head, she finds Harry standing in front of her. “Why’re you crying?” he asks bluntly, looking down at her with his brows furrowed.

Ok. So it is obvious.

“Um,” she sniffles, “Hi Harry.” She hopes that maybe if she pretends like everything is fine, then he won’t pry any further.

It doesn’t work.

“Why are you crying?” he asks again. There’s not much compassion or comfort in his voice. Same old grumpy Harry, so blank and impassive.

She shrugs her shoulders, feeling small and embarrassed. “I– it’s silly,” she stammers, looking down at her fingers.

Harry doesn’t say anything, staring at her and waiting for her to continue.

She swallows thickly. “I failed my midterm,” she whispers, her voice catching as a new lump grows in her throat.

“How bad?”

One lone tear falls down her face as she shakes her head disappointedly, which she wipes away quickly. “Really bad,” she whimpers. Her cheeks burn hot as she realizes that she can’t hold back the tears any longer. She quickly averts her eyes from him, staring into her lap and hoping that he can’t see her face.

This is the second time he’s seen her cry, which is two times more than she would like. He probably thinks she’s some silly, over emotional girl… probably thinks she’s so annoying. She just wants to curl up in a ball, hide in a dark hole and cry by herself. She can’t handle Harry’s judgment on top of her shitty midterm grade.

He stands there silently for a moment. Her lower lip has pouted out cutely and he can hear her sniffling quietly. “Was it math?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she grumbles sadly. Stupid math.

He hums. After another tense moment he asks, “Do you want help?”

“Help with what?” She stares down at her fingers, her tone dejected. The happy glimmer that usually sparkles in her eye is gone.

“With math,” he clarifies. “I can help you.”

She looks up at him curiously, still pouting. “You’d help me with math?”

He nods, pulling out the chair next to her. “Let me see your midterm,” he says, nodding his head towards the packet of math problems she’d just been sobbing over. Embarrassingly, the front page is stained with a few tears, but she hands it over nonetheless.

He scans over the first page quickly, reading the question and seeing how she answered it. “Do you know why you got this one wrong?”

She sniffles and shrugs. She hadn’t even tried to look over the questions, too mentally exhausted to even try and understand what mistakes she’d made.

“Look. You tried to cancel out the tan3x, which would make sense in any other case… but since it’s to the power of 4 you could really easily have used integration by parts.”

“Wish I knew that before I took the fucking midterm,” she huffs.

“Hey,” he tsks. “Learn from your mistakes so that you don’t make them again. You need to know this stuff to do integral tests later.”

She shakes her head. “I tried so hard, Harry,” she barely whispers, her voice exhausted. “Like I studied so much, and I really really tried to make it all make sense. But it’s just so hard for me.” She sniffles and wipes away more tears, taking a shaky breath and looking away from Harry.

She doesn’t want to try anymore. She just wants to give up.

He purses his lips, brows furrowed. There’s something about seeing y/n upset that just feels so wrong. She usually brings so much… light into a room. Seeing her cry makes it seem like the entire universe has gotten a little sadder.

“You’ve got the right idea when you’re solving these…” he tries to comfort her (though he’s never really been good at comforting people), “It’s just little things that you’re doing wrong. And it’s probably because you’ve got a shit professor who just has you copy down problems.”

“That’s literally all we do!” she whines, not even caring if she sounds like a baby. “He does the problems so fast and then I have to go home and try and figure out how he did it all by myself!” She sniffles and puts her head in her hands, more tears dropping from her eyelashes. She’s exhausted, her head starting to hurt as she exhales a shuddery breath.

He lets her cry a little bit. “Listen,” he says gently, turning to face her. The normal furrow in his brow is gone, his gaze a little bit softer. “Next time you come over with Maddie, bring your notes and we can go over them together, okay?”

She sniffles. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Like actually?”

“Yes,” he says again exasperatedly, rolling his eyes. He stands up from the table and puts her midterm back down in front of her. “Lighten up, sunshine. One bad score is not the end of the world.”

She feels a bit silly now that Harry’s witnessed her having another breakdown in the library. But, despite how little he said… he actually helped her calm down. This was not the end of the world.

“Okay,” she whispers, “thanks, Harry.”

He nods and walks away.

Maybe he doesn’t hate her, she thinks to herself.

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“I’m going out,” Maddie says as she walks into the kitchen, discarding her half full coffee mug on the counter as she grabs her car keys from the hook in front of the door.

“Your mug!” y/n tuts like a mother. Maddie rolls her eyes as she pours the last of her coffee down the sink and puts the mug in the dishwasher. Y/n ignores the dramatic eye roll, knowing that Maddie’s just playing around, and asks, “Where are you going?”

“Over to Blake’s,” she responds with a wink. She’s been telling y/n about how she’s been waiting for Blake to text her all week because she doesn’t want to be the one texting first all the time… weird situation-ship stuff that y/n’s never experienced before. Seems like he finally texted her, with how excited Maddie is to be going over.

Just as Maddie is about to step out the door, y/n remembers Harry’s offer. He’d been serious, right? He hadn’t just said that because she was crying… right? She really hopes not, because she really could use his help. She’d been up for hours last night, trying to do the homework, but ultimately giving up because she got too frustrated with herself. Maybe… maybe he’d be able to help her?

“Wait!” y/n calls out, “Um… can I come with you?”

Maddie raises an eyebrow, “Why do you want to come over to Blake’s apartment?”

Y/n turns a bit shy, “Harry… he’s, um, helping me with math.”

“Harry?” Maddie’s eyes glimmer curiously. “He’s literally such a dick. He’s helping you?”

“He’s not that bad…” y/n mumbles, remembering the ounce of kindness he’d shown to her in the library the other day. He’s just a little bit… reserved, she’s started to realize.

“Please. He literally never smiles. I dunno how you got him to talk to you, he always ignores me when I’m over.”

(Honestly, she doesn’t blame Harry for not talking to Maddie… she sometimes ignores Maddie in her own apartment too…)

“You have two minutes to meet me in the car or I’m leaving without you!”

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With her schoolbag in hand, y/n taps lightly on Harry’s door. Blake had told her to just go in, but she feels like that’s rude, so she stands in front of his door nervously and waits patiently for him to open.

“What?” he grunts, opening his bedroom door. “Oh.” The furrow in his brow softens the slightest bit when he sees it’s y/n. He’d thought it was Blake bugging him about something. Y/n is a much… nicer surprise.

“Hi,” she says, chewing on the inside of her lip nervously. “I was wondering if… um, you could help me out with my calc stuff?”

He stares at her for a second, then says, “yeah.”

He opens the door wider and she follows him in. His room is messy, but not gross. The bed is unmade, three half full water bottles on his nightstand, and there’s a pair of sweatpants on the floor… but at least it doesn’t stink!

His computer screen is paused mid-game, and she realizes that he’d still been holding his controller when he’d opened up the door for her. He throws a jacket that had been thrown on the back of his chair onto the bed, and motions for her to sit. Then he pulls up another chair that was sitting in the corner of his room to sit next to her.

“Let’s see it,” he says, shutting down his computer.

“So…” she takes her laptop out of her bag, setting it down on his desk and turning it on so that she can open up her homework assignment. While it loads, she unlocks her ipad to the scratch work she’d done last night. “I was trying to do the homework last night, and I think I’m supposed to be doing integration by parts but honestly I’m not even sure how to do that… so I’m kind of lost.”

Harry leans over her ipad and looks at the work she’d done. It’s… wrong.

“Can I see your notes for integration by parts?” He asks, trying to figure out how she ended up with 1 as her answer when it should be a much larger, much more complicated mix of trig and integrals. She scrolls up until she lands on a page titled Chapter 7, and points to the second example on the problem. Her notes are cute, written in pink with girlish, bubbly handwriting. However, it’s clear that she’d been struggling to keep up with the lecture, some of her work completely scribbled out and replaced with messy numbers and formulas. Next to one of the big portions of scribbled out math, she's written “WHAT???” along with a sad face doodled underneath it.

Clearly she’s a bit confused.

“Okay…” he scrolls down to a new page in her digital notebook and copies down the example problem that had confused her. “Let me show you how you do integration by parts first, and then we’ll look at the homework problem, okay?”

“M’kay,” she hums compliantly, crossing her legs and hiding her hands in her sleeves. She feels a bit… nervous. She doesn’t want Harry to think she’s stupid. But she’d rather have her ego a little bruised than fail the next midterm too.

“So… you do integration by parts when you can’t just do normal integration… usually if there’s e^x in there or a natural log then you know that you have to do integration by parts.”

She nods, following along quietly.

“In this one… you have x times e^x dx… you have to break it up into two parts, U and dV. And then you take the derivative of U and find the integral of dV. And you plug that into the formula. Do you know the formula?”

She blinks at him. “Um…” she shuffles through her notes and finds it. “It’s this.”

“Good… so what you do is you assign x to either U or dV and then e^x(dx) to the other… and then you find dU and V based off of that. Should we make x be U or dV?”

She purses her lips, “Make x=U?”

“Yes…” he nods. “Do you know why?”

She shrugs. “I guessed.”

His lip quirks up in the first smile y/n’s ever seen from him, a slight dimple popping up in his cheek. “S’cos we have to either find the derivative of U, or find the integral of dV. It’s way easier to use the derivative of x, cause it’s just one. If we made x equal to dV… then we’d add a fraction and a power of two to our equation and it’ll just make things ugly.”

“Oh.” She stares at his hands as he writes down what he just said in math terms, scribbling in his boyish handwriting that U=x and dU=1. “Okay.”

“So if U=x, then dV is equal to….”

“e^x?” she answers.

“Good,” he says gently. “And what is V?”

She stays silent for a moment, searching the paper as if it’ll give her an answer. He senses her confusion and helps her out, saying, “IF V is the integral of dV, and dV is e^x…”

“Well Isn’t the integral of e^x still e^x?” Her voice is unconfident, looking up at Harry with wide, round eyes.

“You’re right,” he says encouragingly, a soft smile on his face. “Stop doubting yourself so much.”

A reciprocating smile spreads on her face, feeling a little more confident with Harry’s praise.

“All you do now is put your numbers into the formula. Can you do it?”

He hands the pen over to her, their fingers brushing. Her hair falls in front of her face as she leans over the page to write down her answer, and Harry watches softly as she tucks it back behind her ear. He notices how long and delicate her eyelashes are as he stares at her side profile.

“Is that right?” she asks quietly, trying hard to be confident but still so nervous that she’s done it wrong.

He tears his eyes away from her face. “Almost,” he says, leaning forward. Their arms brush against each other, the space that they initially had set between their chairs having shrunk as they worked on the problem together. She can feel his breath as he quietly murmurs next to her ear, “You just need to add +C at the end.”

She furrows her eyebrows and turns her head towards him, and feels her heart stutter as she realizes how close their faces actually are. “What does the +C mean?”

“It’s just like… it’s supposed to represent any constants that we couldn’t find. Because when you take the derivative of a constant it just ends up being zero, so when you’re given an integral and doing the anti-differential process… you don’t know if there was actually a constant there or what it was. So the +C is just representing any constant value that could’ve been in the answer, even though you don’t know what the number is.”

She blinks at him. “Um… okay. I’ll just pretend like that made sense.”

He chuckles, the first time she’s probably ever heard him laugh. “It’s honestly not that important to get it. Just remember to add +C every time you take an integral.”

“Got it…” she says, adding the +C.

“Think you can do the next one on your own?”

+++

“Harry,” y/n pouts. “It says I’m wrong but I dunno why.”

He pauses his game and slides out of his seat, going over to y/n. She’d relocated to his bed after they did a couple more problems together and felt confident enough to do the rest by herself. His chest brushing against her back softly as he leans over her shoulder, going over her work. “What’s the integral of sin(x)?”

“Cos(x),” she says confidently.

“Not quite…”

She sits there for a second, brows furrowed. “Oh!” she adds a negative in front of the cos(x).

“There you go,” he grins down at her.

She lays down on his bed, her hair splaying out behind her as she throws her ipad on his bed, relieved. “Harry. You’re a genius.”

He laughs, a quiet huff of air that passes out of his nose with an amused smile on his face. “So it makes sense?”

“I think you should be teaching our class. You’re so good. Thank you for helping me.”

He hums, giving her a satisfied smirk, and goes back to his game while she finishes her homework. It's a strange setup, sitting in his bed and doing her homework while he plays, but she doesn’t mind it.

In fact, it’s kind of nice.

Harry’s kind of nice.

She kind of likes Harry.

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hope u guys loved it!!!!!! part 2 is up on my patreon already, and will come to tumblr next saturday (july 29) pleeeeaaaase lmk what u rhink and give her a rb and a comment i love u guys so so much!!!

sunshine - part 2 (already posted on patreon!) : In which Harry's a little bit nicer, and y/n is very excited to possibly, hopefully, maybe be kissed.

sunshine masterlist

#harry #harry fic #harry smut #harry styles fic #harry styles smut #harry styles fan fic #harry styles imagine #harry x reader #harry styles x reader #grumpyrry #grumpy harry #mean harry

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stylesloveclub · 1 year

Text

Thumper

In which y/n is pretty sure her neighbor hates her, and Harry needs someone to take care of his bunny.

+++

For y/n, the month of December was truly the best part of the year.

She absolutely loved getting into the holiday spirit: whether that meant hanging multi-colored fairy lights around her bed frame, baking snowman shaped cookies for her friends and family, or busting out her reindeer printed fuzzy socks – she loved it all.

And, more importantly, she loved getting three weeks off from school. Winter break meant the end of finals week, which meant no more flashcards waiting to be memorized or textbooks waiting to be annotated. Just pure holiday bliss and seasonal joy.

The only part of the holiday season that y/n wasn’t particularly fond of was New Years.

While many considered the new year to be a “new beginning,” y/n only really thought of it as the official end to her holiday joy. She never really indulged in the thought of new year’s resolutions – in fact, she found them to be quite silly. Why on Earth would someone create a half-hearted promise to themselves, knowing very well that they would give up on their goal one month into the new year? It seemed like a far too disappointing cycle for her.

But this year… this year was different.

The ending of this year also meant that the lease on her current apartment was ending. Now, don’t get her wrong! Y/n doesn’t hate her roommates or anything. She’s actually incredibly close with the three girls that she’d spent the last two years living with, and considers them to be some of her closest friends.

But, as the months went by, y/n realized that a two bedroom, one bathroom flat was far too small for four girls to peacefully coexist in. They were always nagging each other to clean the dishes, fighting over who gets to shower first in their tiny bathroom. And honestly… she was getting really tired of listening to Nia (a business major) rehearse presentations at 3 AM.

So, when y/n timidly mentioned that she was thinking about moving out, the three other girls agreed that their living situation wasn’t the most ideal, promised that they would still remain besties even if they didn’t live with each other, and began to search for their own places so that they could turn in their keys at the end of the year.

For the first time in her life, y/n had a place of her own. And that was honestly the best thing the new year could’ve brought for her.

+++

It’s safe to say that the first morning y/n wakes up in her new apartment is undoubtedly one the most euphoric moments she’s ever experienced.

The window facing her bed allows for the morning sun to light up her room, slowly rousing her from her slumber. She blinks her eyes open, and it takes a moment for her to fully recognize that: no, she’s not dreaming and yes, she’s actually in her new apartment!

She sits up and stretches, flexing her muscles and twisting her back until she hears the delicious sound of her spine cracking – a sign that she’d slept through the night like a baby. Glancing out the window, she notices a little bluebird perched on her balcony’s railing.

Yes, a balcony!

It had actually been one of the main reasons she chose this apartment building. Although it was a rather small balcony, she immediately fell in love with it. The railings were twisted and had a rustic look that reminded her of the balcony Juliet would stand on in a Shakespearian play, and it overlooked a beautiful cobblestone street. When she first saw the balcony during the apartment tour, she immediately envisioned herself spending her mornings out here with a nice cup of tea, maybe doing her assigned readings out in the fresh air. There was just enough room for y/n to make a cozy little nook for herself, with fairy lights strung around railings and fluffy pillows piled on loveseats for her to chill out on.

She scrambles out of her bed and rushes over to the window, smudging the glass with her fingertips as her palms press flat against it. The glass is ice cold to the touch and fogs up around her nose, a sign of how cold the morning air outside must be. Dressed in a pair of flowery sleep shorts and a sweatshirt with her university’s logo embroidered on the front, she’s hardly dressed appropriately – but she slides the glass door open anyway and steps out onto the balcony. She can’t help it, she’s just so excited!

As soon as she slides the door open, the chilly air invades her senses, her lungs burning and legs prickling with goosebumps. She leans her forearms on the railing and looks at the street below, empty of any cars or people. Directly across the street from her building, she sees a small antique store, and right next to that, a cute little cafe with cartoonish snowflakes painted onto the glass windows. Dozens of other restaurants and boutiques line the street, not yet open but anticipating the rush of people that would most likely flood in within the next few hours. y/n makes a mental note to herself to text her ex-roommates and invite them to visit the coffee shop she currently had her eye on.

Yeah, maybe it was a little cold, and maybe there’s nowhere to sit, but honestly, all y/n could think about was how much she loved her brand new balcony in her brand new apartment.

Life couldn’t get any better than this.

+++

Harry isn't too big on New Year’s resolutions.

You see, he’s not fond of forcing himself to do things (the more pressure he has on himself to finish something, the less he wants to do it), and he really doesn’t like dealing with the inevitable end of year disappointment that comes with not finishing what he starts. He knows the chances of him actually going through with his resolutions are quite slim, so he doesn’t find a point in establishing any.

Therefore, he really only has one goal for the upcoming year. Don’t let Thumper die.

Thumper is the love of Harry’s life. When Harry realized just how lonely living alone could get, he decided he needed a companion to love and care for. He had the fullest intentions of going to his local adoption center and befriending a little kitty like Evie (his cat back home) so that the two cats could get along when he visited his family. But, when he stepped into the adoption center and saw Thumper, tiny and frail compared to most bunnies his age, he knew he had found his new best friend.

So really, Harry’s only “resolution” is something he knows he wouldn’t be giving up on any time soon.

As he brews himself a steaming vanilla latte (with a shot of caramel cream on top), he gives Thumper a little bit of food, petting at the bunny’s furry cheeks as he nibbles some hay from his fingers. When he turns away momentarily to pour his brewed coffee into a mug, the rabbit proceeds to thump its clunky hind feet (hence the name), begging to be the center of Harry’s attention once again.

Obviously, Harry could never ignore his bunny’s pleas for love – so he quickly picks up his mug in one hand, and, similar to the way a mother holds their newborn baby, coddles Thumper to his chest with the other. Thumper tends to get uneasy when he’s high up from the ground, usually thumping against Harry’s forearms to display his displeasure, so Harry always makes sure he’s sitting or lying down when cuddling with his bunny. Taking a seat on his pink sofa, he turns the TV on to a random news channel and gently runs his hand up and down Thumper’s back, cooing every time the fluffy bunny twitches his tiny nose with approval.

Once Thumper is happily settled and Harry’s finished with his coffee, he places Thumper back into his comfy den and puts his dirty mug in the sink. Grabbing the watering can from right underneath, he fills the can until he has a suitable amount of water for the flowers he grows on his balcony.

Whistling along to a happy tune (“Whistle While You Work” from Snow White), he steps onto the balcony and takes a deep lung-full of the pristine air. The sky was serene, the morning dew was fresh on the railing, and everything was at peace.

That is, until an unrecognizable voice far too energetic for the tranquil calm of the morning startles him.

“Hi!”

Harry drops the watering can out of surprise and whirls around, yelping out a “bloody hell!” before his eyes land on a stranger.

“Who are you?” he grumbles, putting a hand on his chest to calm his pounding heart, thumping hard from the scare.

The girl’s eyes widen, clearly not having expected to get such a reaction from her neighbor, and she carefully introduces herself, much quieter than the initial greeting she’d just given him. “Umm, I’m y/n. I just moved in.” She flashes him an apologetic smile, “Sorry for scaring you, wasn’t my intention.”

Harry looks down to assess the damage his startle caused. His watering can is on its side, laying in a puddle and steadily leaking out water, while his sock-covered feet are soaked through (one his biggest pet peeves are wet socks).

Looking back up to the girl, he sees her nervously chewing on her lip and fiddling with the hem of her sweatshirt. She seems more scared of him than he had been of her, and very timidly makes eye contact with him, praying that he wouldn’t explode on her.

Harry saves his breath.

“That’s alright,” he responds as nicely as he can muster up (wet socks = grumpy Harry), picking up the watering can from the floor. He runs into his apartment, slipping on a new, dry pair of socks, refilling the watering can, and grabbing a towel to clean up his balcony.

Y/n still has her brows furrowed in distress when he comes back outside, quickly confessing, “I really am sorry… I didn’t mean to make you jump. I was just excited to meet my new neighbor, I guess.”

He doesn’t make eye contact with her when he says, “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s okay. No need to fret,” focusing his attention, instead, on making sure the floors are dry.

“I just moved in yesterday you know! I dunno if you saw all the boxes n’ stuff, but that was me!” Christ, was she still there? He thought she would’ve gone back inside after he gave so little attention to her.

Again, he barely looks in her direction when he responds, “I hadn’t noticed anyone was moving in.” His answer is short, clipped, and uninterested.

The girl carries on the conversation, “Yeah, I’m super excited about moving in and everything! It’s my first time living without anyone and it’s just so nice to have all this space to myself– y’know I made some cookies last night, and I was gonna bring ‘em over later today to introduce myself but since we already met I could totally bring them over–”

Harry cuts her off right there. “Don’t put yourself through the trouble,” he says tersely, sparing her one final glance before walking back into his apartment.

He holds eye contact with her as he slides the balcony door shut.

+++

Y/n’s positive she’s made her neighbor hate her.

She’s drinking coffee with her ex-roommates, Sameera, Savanna, and Nia, at the coffee shop she saw earlier that morning from her balcony window, explaining her conundrum.

“I just don’t know what to do! I didn’t do anything to make him hate me. I mean, except for balcony thing, but obviously I didn’t mean to scare him! He wouldn’t even look at me!”

She tried to make things up to him, greeting him calmly on the balcony the next time they were out there at the same time, but only managed to get the grimest acknowledgement from him. He avoided eye contact with her whenever they passed each other in the hallways, would shut his door if he ever saw her coming out at the same time as him, and would stay silent if they ever got caught in the elevator together.

He hates her, she’s sure of it.

At this point, she’s honestly just given up, opting to just sit with her mug and book silently when he watered his plants on the balcony each morning. Far better than the hurt she’d feel when he’d inevitably ignore her if she tried to make small talk again.

“Maybe he’s got a fragile sense of masculinity and is embarrassed that he got scared by a girl,” Nia says, taking a bite of her croissant, “so now he can’t face you anymore.”

Sameera adds on to that, “Or he’s intimidated by you. Is he ugly? Ugly guys tend to be intimidated by pretty girls.”

Y/n is quick to deny this with a furrow in her brows. “Oh, but he’s not! He was really cute,” she pouts. Considering his reluctance to make eye contact with her during their short conversation, y/n had plenty of time to unabashedly admire her next door neighbor. He had chocolate brown hair, swept atop his head in messy waves and bright green eyes that glimmered in the dreary, gray morning weather. And though he had an intimidating demeanor, with his short attitude and furrowed brows, the fact that he was wrapped up in a fuzzy, lavender sweatshirt made him ever so endearing to her.

Call her crazy, but she has a bit of a crush.

“What’s his name?” asks Savanna, chiming into the conversation for the first time.

Y/n has to think for a moment before she responds. “I don’t think he even told me! I just said hey and he walked away from me!” She sits back and crosses her arms, huffing sadly, “Maybe this is a sign from the universe that I should just stay away from boys in general.”

“Don’t say that!” Savanna defends, “You’re beautiful and a total sweetheart. Nia’s right, he probably just has a bruised ego for now. Just be yourself and I’m sure he’ll come around.”

+++

Being herself doesn’t work.

Yesterday, when she’d clearly been running with all of her groceries to catch the elevator, he made direct eye contact with her as the doors shut. Made no effort to hold the elevator for her. Just watched her struggle with her groceries as the elevators closed.

Y/n accepts the fact that he’s probably not going to come around.

+++

It’s 10 PM on a Tuesday night when someone comes frantically knocking on y/n’s door.

She’d just been painting in her living room (a casual hobby of hers), dressed in a pair of dark blue, denim overalls splattered with paint, when out of nowhere someone was at her door, knocking as if they were in a life or death situation.

She has no idea who it could be, and is honestly a bit frightened considering this person is pounding on her door so violently, but she hurries over to the door. Peeking out of the peephole, she’s met with a very familiar furrowed brow.

It’s Harry, her next door neighbor. Except, for the first time, he looks more stressed than angry.

She opens the door, a bit embarrassed in her messy painting overalls. She chews on her lip and she stands nervously behind her door, almost as if she’s using it to protect herself. “Hi?” she says timidly, worried about why he might be at her door. Had she done something to make him angry? Was her music too loud or something?

His hair, normally curled atop his head neatly in chocolate colored swirls, now sticks out in every direction as if he’d been running his hands through it constantly, and his eyes are wide and frantic. “My sister…” he pants, out of breath as if he’d run a mile to get here, “She’s in labor. I-I have to go to see her, could you–,” he pauses to catch his breath, chest rising heavily. “Could you please take care of my bunny while I’m gone?”

She blinks for a second. This man, who’d been so cold and mean to her ever since she moved in, was in front of her door… begging her to take care of his bunny?

“Oh!” This was definitely not what she expected when she opened the door and saw Harry standing there. She thought that he was for sure about to yell at her for something, tell her to turn the music down or blow out her candles because he could smell them from his apartment.

This, however… this she could work with. Maybe it would make him finally come around.

“Yes!” she exclaims, after a second. “Oh my gosh, yes, of course! What do you need me to do?”

His shoulders sag with relief. “Thank you,” he says gratefully, letting out a deep breath. He knows that he hasn’t necessarily been the nicest to her and had been worried that she might tell him to fuck off (rightfully so), but he was desperate, and thankfully… she’s an angel.

He ushers her into his apartment, which (as respectfully as she can put it) looks like a tornado has just passed through it. A pile of unopened mail sits on his kitchen counter, abandoned in his rush to get packed, and what seems to be his dinner sits half eaten on his dinner table, fork thrown onto the table next to his plate with a piece of broccoli still hanging onto it. A lone suitcase sits in the middle of his living room, piled with clothes that aren’t folded – just haphazardly thrown in there. It’s abundantly clear that he’s been frantically rushing around his apartment, trying to pack all his stuff together while also figuring out what to do with Thumper.

“Sorry for the mess,” he apologizes over his shoulder, double checking that she’s still within earshot with how fast he’s running around into his apartment. “I-I wasn’t planning on having to go see her so soon, she’s not due for another three weeks,” he rambles, messily shoving a pant leg into his suitcase as he zips it up. “But then she called, and she’s all alone, and–” he looks up at her with wide, earnest eyes, “I just have to be there for her.”

“Hey, don’t be sorry,” she says gently. “I totally get it. It’s no problem.”

He stares at her for a second, eyes flickering between hers, a soft look in his eye. It seems like he’s about to say something– but he stops himself. Instead, he walks over to a large bunny playpen, filled with hay and piles of soft blankets and towels.

Sitting atop one of those worn-out blankets is a fluffy white bunny, nibbling softly on a piece of hay. Harry reaches in and gently picks the little bunny up, who fits perfectly in the palm of his hand. “This is Thumper,” Harry introduces softly, his finger gently petting along the little bunny’s back. “Thumper, this is y/n. She’s gonna take care of you while I'm gone.” The little bunny’s nose twitches softly, chewing on his hay mindlessly.

Y/n doesn’t know what she expected from Harry, but it definitely wasn’t this. From all of her interactions with him, he just seemed so cold and mean and intimidating! But watching him pet his little bunny that sits so peacefully in his large, tattooed hands… hearing him talk to this tiny ball of white fur as if it’s a real person… well it just makes Harry look like a bit of a softie, to be honest. It’s a side of her grumpy neighbor that she never could’ve imagined.

“Hi Thumper,” she coos, taking a timid step forward. “You’re just the cutest thing in the world.”

“He is, isn’t he?” Harry says proudly, a soft dimple in his cheek as he smiles down at his bunny that he loves so much.

Passing Thumper over to her, he maneuvers her hands so that the bunny is resting comfortably. “He likes to be held like this,” he instructs, his hands brushing against hers, “On his stomach, so he can look around. Sometimes he gets a bit nervous when he’s too high up from the ground for a long time, so if he starts thumping that just means he wants to be put down again.”

She nods, copying the way he’d been holding Thumper to the best of her ability. The bunny feels so small and fragile in her hold and she’s terrified of hurting him – but Thumper just twitches his nose gently, completely unaffected by whatever is going on around him.

“This is where he sleeps and spends most of his time,” Harry continues, pointing down at the little den of blankets. “But if you can, try to take him outside for at least an hour everyday. I made the balcony bunny proof and there’s a little grassy area out there with all his toys, so just let him hop around there for a bit. Maybe hang out with him if you can, he’s really playful. It’s just really important for his health, to be outside and have some playtime.”

He puts his hands on his hips and stares at his bunny, who seems totally content in y/n’s arms. A weight is lifted off his shoulders, seeing that Thumper feels comfortable in the arms of this half-stranger. It makes him feel a little less guilty for having to leave him so suddenly.

Harry checks the clock. “Shit!” he cries, gathering his bearings once more. His sister lives almost two hours away, so he needs to leave now.

She follows him, Thumper still in his arms, as he scrambles towards the kitchen. “This is his food,” he says, pulling out a bag of leafy, green vegetables – a nice mix of lettuce, kale, cabbage, and parsley – from his fridge. “Give him a bowlful of these veggies twice a day. He’s not on a really strict schedule, just give him some whenever you have breakfast and dinner. And you saw, he has a bunch of hay in his cage too, which he snacks on all day, so it’s okay if you’re a little late.”

He’s running around his apartment, grabbing things and shoving them into his suitcase at the last minute, and calling out instructions to y/n as fast as he can – frantic, stressed out, with absolutely no time to waste. Y/n watches him with wide eyes, absorbing everything he says, while Thumper sits in her arms quietly completely unbothered by Harry’s frantic bustling.

“Um, if he’s being annoying or thumping or anything like that, give him a treat – they’re in this jar – and he’ll probably calm down. I’m pretty generous with the treats ‘cos he’s just such a good bunny, but also he needs to watch his diet, so I’d limit him to like… 10-12 pellets per day.”

He runs to the living room and picks up his suitcase, dragging it to the door frantically while still spewing out instructions. “He loves cuddling, and he’s a really good bunny so you can leave him on the couch or on my bed and he won’t like– chew anything up. And if it gets really cold at night he has a heating pad in his playpen, just put it in the microwave for a minute or two, and he’ll get on top of it if he wants.”

“Here’s my number if you need anything,” he says, scribbling down his phone number onto one of the abandoned pieces of mail sitting on his kitchen counter. “That’s a three, I know it doesn’t look like it, sorry!” He slams the pen down on the counter and runs into his bedroom, then hurries back out with a backpack, filled to the brim with all his toiletries and other essentials. What seems to be his phone charger hangs out of the front pocket, just about ready to pop out and fall to the ground, but he shoves it in and somehow manages to zip up the overstuffed bag.

“Okay,” he sighs, letting out a deep breath. Now that he’s all packed up and ready to go, he lets himself slow down for a second. He takes a look around to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything, then turns around to face y/n. Thumper looks up at Harry with his cute little eyes.

“Alright bud, I gotta go,” he whispers quietly, petting the bunny’s cheeks. “Be good, okay?” He leans forward and presses a little kiss against Thumper’s forehead, his cheek brushing against y/n’s arm, who still has Thumper coddled to her chest.

“I should be back soon,” he says to y/n, looking at her with gentle eyes. “Thank you again, for taking care of him. I know it’s all last minute.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says with a smile.

Harry smiles back at her softly. The first time she’s ever seen him look at her with a smile. It makes her heart flutter happily, one step closer to making her neighbor stop hating her.

“Here’s the key to my apartment. I… I’ve got to go now. But text me if anything happens.”

With a final deep breath and a pat on Thumper’s head, Harry heads out the door and runs to the elevator.

And then it’s just y/n and Thumper, alone in Harry’s apartment.

Who would’ve thought.

+++

Y/n doesn’t really have much experience with bunnies… but she imagines that if she were a bunny and her bunny Dad randomly left her with a stranger in the middle of the night, then she’d be a pretty stressed out bunny.

Luckily, Thumper seems pretty relaxed.

After Harry left, she just put him back into his playpen and watched him chew on some hay and relax on his comfy pile of blankets. She warmed up his heating pad, just as Harry instructed, but Thumper didn’t even need it. He just headed to bed like a good little bunny and went through the night peacefully, with only the occasional twitch of his nose and a little scuffle as if he were having a rabbit dream.

Just to be safe, y/n spent the night on Harry’s couch, sleeping right next to Thumper’s little pen just in case he started thumping in the middle of the night and needed some attention. In the morning, she scuttled back to her apartment to make herself a quick breakfast, then hurried back to give Thumper his morning veggies. And in the time that she’d normally spend reading on her own balcony, she instead went out onto Harry’s balcony and watched as Thumper happily hopped around in the grass and played with his little bunny toys.

She runs into very little problems while bunny-sitting for Harry, and actually finds herself particularly fond of this fluffy little creature. But she wonders, even if she has no questions for Harry, should she still send him a text? He left her his number in case she had any questions, but he’d probably wouldn’t mind an update text either? I mean… if she were a Bunny Dad and she had to randomly leave her bunny in the middle of the night, then she’d probably want to know that her bunny was safe and happy!

After much overthinking and lots of nervous pacing around Harry’s kitchen, she decides to send him a text. A simple, “Hi, it’s y/n!” accompanied with a cute picture of Thumper, chomping on some lettuce with his floppy ears hanging cutely and his big eyes glimmering. She then follows it with another text, saying that they just ate some breakfast together and went out on the balcony for some morning playtime.

She throws her phone down after she sends the text, beyond nervous to be sending messages to the grumpy neighbor that had scared her for so long. She jumps when her phone chimes with a message less than a minute later, apologizing to Thumper who gives an annoyed thump, as if he’s telling her to stop being so dramatic.

“How’s he behaving?” reads Harry’s response.

“Like an angel!” she says. “Slept through the night without any thumping and had lots of fun playing in the grass.”

“Good,” he texts back, and she thinks that’s the end of it. But after a minute another message comes through. “Give him an extra treat from me, he deserves it :)”

A smiley face! Who knew grumpy Harry knew how to use smiley faces.

She sends back a picture of Thumper with his treat. And a smiley face for good measure.

+++

Harry comes back home five days later.

He’d managed to make it to the hospital just in time. His sister had been in active labor on her own for about four hours at that point, and spent another four hours in excruciating pain once Harry got there. His mum arrived around 45 minutes after he did, and Miles (his sister’s husband, aka the father of this child), arrived last, only about 30 minutes before she was fully dilated and ready to start pushing.

All of them had scrambled to make it there on time, considering how unexpected and early his sister went into labor. He’s just thankful that Miles and his Mum were there too, so that he wouldn’t have to be the one holding her hand while she pushed (as supportive as he wanted to be, he had to leave the room or else he would’ve passed out).

The baby did come a bit early, but after a few tests the doctors said that she was fine, just a bit smaller than usual! They spent the night in the hospital, just to be safe, and were discharged to go home as a happy little family the next morning.

Harry and his mum stayed with Gemma and Miles in their cozy little for a few days, helping around the house while the new parents rested and recovered. Harry helped with the finishing touches of the nursery and went out shopping for extra diapers and baby toys, while his mom cooked homey meals for her kids and tutted over her new granddaughter.

It was nice for them to be all together again, celebrating the newest addition to their happy family, but after a few days the guilt of being away from Thumper for so long was growing too heavy. His mum promised to stay with Gemma and make sure that she’s recovering well, and with a kiss to his newborn baby niece, he headed back home to his precious baby bunny.

He unlocks his door, dragging his suitcase in behind him, and faintly hears a soft, sweet voice from inside. He abandons his suitcase and tiptoes closer and closer to the voice. He finds y/n, out on his balcony with Thumper.

“You are so cute!” she says to Thumper, sitting on her knees and rolling a little ball towards him, which Thumper nudges back with his nose. “I wish I could give you another treat, but your Dad said not to give you too many… I dunno though, should we break the rules a little bit? One extra treat since you’re being such a good bunny?”

Thumper’s nose twitches excitedly, as if he knows that she’s about to reward him with another treat, and Harry’s heart flutters in his chest. This scene – y/n, talking to his little bunny as if he’s a real person, coddling him and giving him treats – it’s a bit endearing. He tries to stop the soft smile growing on his face, to ignore the fuzzy feeling in his tummy… but he can’t help it. He’s endeared.

He tries to casually lean against his couch and watch the scene for a few more moments, but he accidentally knocks a pen off of his coffee table, making y/n yelp and turn around. “Oh!” she bubbles, “Hi Harry!”

He straightens himself out and clears his throat, wiping the silly smile off his face and trying to come off as neutral as possible. “Hello,” he says, with a polite nod of his head.

“How was your sister? Did you have a nice trip?” “Y-yeah it was good, thanks,” he twists his hands nervously behind his back. “She had a little baby girl. Healthy and happy. It was really nice.”

Y/n’s eyes round out, a soft glimmer in them. “Oh, I’m so happy to hear that.”

He ignores the fluttering in his stomach, and wipes away the nervous sweat of his hands onto his pants. “Um– How was Thumper?”

“A right angel!” she exclaims, picking Thumper up and handing him over to Harry. “Wish I could steal him from you. If you ever need me to watch him again, don’t be afraid to ask, I loved hanging out with him.”

Harry can’t help the dimple that pops out on his cheek, blushing slightly at her kind words and pretty smile. “I– Really, I can’t thank you enough.”

“No worries, honestly! Just don’t be a stranger,” she says, a playful glimmer in her eye.

+++

The next morning, sitting on her balcony with her mug in hand, she watches anxiously as Harry steps out of his apartment with his watering can.

Would things go back to normal, with him ignoring her and hating her and pretending she doesn’t exist? Or… has he finally come around?

She holds her breath as he slides his balcony open. He looks at her. She looks at him.

He breaks a smile. “Good morning,” he says, dimple in cheek.

She exhales.

“Good morning, Harry,” she responds with a grin.

+++

Y/n hates thunderstorms.

She hates the sound of thunder, hates how loud and unexpected it is. Hates how her entire body trembles when thunder crashes outside her window, hates how she can feel it shake her apartment. And lightning… don’t even get her started on lightning! She has a recurring nightmare that she’s sound asleep, only to be woken up by electrocution ‘cos the lightning bolt decided her bed was the perfect place to land.

Now, when she lived in her old apartment, she was lucky enough to have amazing roommates who would comfort her during really bad storms. She could sit and talk with Sameera until the storm passed, watch a movie with Savanna to block out the sounds of thunder. Sometimes, if the storm was really bad, Nia would even cuddle y/n to sleep so that she’d calm down. Y/n would bury herself in her roommate’s loving arms, hiding her face in Nia’s chest as she willed away the anxiety attacks and tried not to cry every time she felt the rumbling thunder outside.

Now that she lives on her own, however, she has nobody to comfort her.

She thought it’d be fine, told herself that she’s far too grown to still be hiding in her closet whenever it rained a little bit outside! So she climbed into her bed, snuggled herself under her blankets, and turned on a movie, ignoring the storm outside to the best of her ability. With her pretty fairy lights turned on, her favorite movie playing (Pride and Prejudice 2005), and her headphones blocking out all the thunder, she was 100% confident that she’d be able to get through the night all on her own!

That is… until the power went out.

Her movie paused, her heater went silent, and her fairy lights suddenly turned off. She tried to turn on the main light in her room, but the light switch flicked on and off with no effect. Same with her desk lamp, and the light in her bathroom. Everything was pitch black.

Sitting in the dark, with only flashes of lightning to illuminate her room… it was terrifying for y/n.

She scrambled to turn on the flashlight on her phone, and felt her heart drop when she saw that she was only at 9%. How was she going to survive the night without her phone? She rushes around, trying to see if she has any extra flashlights or candles… but her emergency flashlight has no batteries, and although she has a wide variety of candles to choose from… she has no matches in her new apartment.

She’s thoroughly fucked.

A bolt of lightning strikes outside, followed by a crash of thunder that makes y/n yelp and fall to the floor. She’s on the verge of tears, with nowhere to turn and nothing to comfort her… when she gets a text.

Harry: Everything alright in your apartment?

Her hands tremble as she types out a response.

Not really :( she responds. trying to find a flashlight or something but im having no luck and my phones gonna die soon :(

Another rumble of thunder shakes her apartment. She closes her eyes and tries to regulate her breathing with shaky inhales and whimpery exhales.

Harry responds a minute later.

Do you want to come over to mine?

+++

PART 2 IS ALREADY POSTED ON PATREON :) HOPE U LOVE EM!!!!

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