My Little Bird

The first thing Asher realized upon waking up was that there was someone-- or rather two someones-- jumping up and down on her bed. She groaned loudly in protest but the two someones just laughed and yanked the covers away from her head. "Rise and shine, sleepy head," Louis called obnoxiously.

She cracked one eye open, finding him and Liam still standing up on the bed, looking down at her with huge satisfied grins on their faces. "What the hell is wrong with you two? How are you so chipper at-" she paused to glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table- "not even 9:45 in the morning?"

Liam shrugged, flopping down next to her and folding his arms behind his head. "We don't sleep that much in general."

"If you're looking for sympathy on bein' woken up, you'll have to talk to Zayn," Louis added, hopping down onto the floor. "We bother him constantly until he just gives up on tryin' to get any sleep."

"That makes me feel so much better," she grumbled. "Go away. I'm not done sleeping."

"Ohhh, yes you are!" Louis and Liam each grabbed an arm and pulled her up into a sitting position, earning glares from her.

"Fine, fine, I'm getting up! Jesus Christ!" They released her from their hold and she slid off the side of her bed, going over to retrieve her phone from where it was plugged into the charger. She sighed when she saw that there was a text from Olly and she turned back to the two boys who were watching her carefully. "I have to take a shower and everything but I'll be down in a few."

"Well hurry up because you're missing all the fun," Liam replied before turning to walk out the door. Louis looked back at her skeptically but then he followed behind Liam, shutting the door on his way out.

As soon as they were gone, she she slid her finger across the phone screen and opened Olly's message thread to see what he had said since she didn't respond to his text the night before.

Okay, what have I missed? Did I do something wrong?

Asher sighed, dropping her phone onto her bed as she went to pick out an outfit before heading to the bathroom to take a shower. She felt guilty just writing Olly off completely without giving him a reason as to why, but Eleanor had seemed so insistent about him not being a very good person so she did what she promised her cousin and ignored him.

By the time she'd showered, dried her hair, and gotten dressed it was almost half past ten so she hurried down the stairs, knowing that they were waiting on her to join them. What she found when she walked into the living room was completely unexpected: Louis and Eleanor, Zayn, Harry, and Liam were all sitting around the coffee table with uno cards in their hands. Liam grinned as he plopped his only card down on the table shouting "I win!" at the top of his lungs. The others groaned, dropping their remaining cards.

"Really, guys? This is all the fun I'm missing?"

Zayn grinned. "Was wonderin' when you'd finally make an appearance."

"Oh, bite me," she snapped but it only made him laugh. "You idiots are sitting here playing card games at 10 in the morning."

"Come on, you can play this round."

She slid past Liam and flopped down into the empty seat next to Harry on the end of the sofa. He grinned, which was something he'd lately found himself doing any time she was around. "Morning."

She smiled in return, her eyes looking him over for a brief moment before she could stop herself. For some reason, he looked really good-- even better than usual. He was wearing the same ugly boots as always and the same tight jeans with holes in the knees; his plaid shirt was only halfway buttoned, giving her a peek of the birds inked onto his chest. He had a black snapback sitting backwards on top of his head, his soft curls sticking out at the bottom.

"You look like a frat boy," she snorted, snatching the hat from his head and adjusting it on her own the same way he had had it. "There. Now you're back to the hipster Harry I know and love."

His eyebrows shot up as he looked up at her but she had already shifted her attention to picking up the cards she had been dealt. She sat back in her seat, fanning out her cards in her hand before she noticed that he was still watching her. "What?" she asked, suddenly self conscious.

"What?"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

He snapped out of his daze, shaking his head as a grin hit his lips again. "My hat looks better on you than it does on me."

That's impossible, she thought to herself but she chuckled and said thanks anyway. When it was her turn, she laid down a red 3 on top of Liam's green 3 and Harry groaned, apparently having no red cards in his hand and being forced to draw a card from the deck. It was rather unfortunate that he was sitting to Asher's left because she had played the game with her sisters so many times that she was practically a pro. She used her skip, her draw two, and her wild draw four card on him. By the time the game was over, (she won of course), Harry still had nine cards in his hand, which was even more than he started with. He pouted until she leaned over to apologize and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

It took two rounds of Candyland before everyone decided it was time for lunch and even longer for them to all agree on a place to get food from. Once Harry and Liam finally gave in, it was decided that they were going to eat chinese and Asher volunteered to go and pick it up. A list of everyone's orders was made before Asher went upstairs to get her shoes and when she returned to the living room, she looked around at the room full of her friends. "So who's goin' with me?"

Harry automatically moved to stand up, but Zayn grabbed his arm and gave a subtle shake of the head before standing up himself and offering to go with her. He knew it was probably a better idea for Zayn to go with her considering all the bad press that he'd gotten lately. The band's management team had told him to lay low for a little while while they released their official statements addressing the accusations that had been made about him in the press. So even though he wanted to go, just to get those few minutes with her to himself, he let his friend go instead.

They walked in comfortable silence to the restaurant and Zayn handed over the piece of paper their order was written on before they both took seats to wait for the food.

"Where's Perrie today?" she asked him as she pulled her phone out of her bag to check the time.

"She....had some family stuff." Of course he couldn't tell her that his girlfriend had had to do some television interview so he had to make up a reason for her absence. He immediately winced at how terrible of an excuse he had just given but Asher didn't seem concerned with it.

"Well, I've missed her! We need to go out and get drunk again soon."

He laughed. "Anytime." The question he had been waiting to ask her all morning weighed heavily on his mind but he wasn't sure how she would react to it so he couldn't decide if he should ask it or not. Finally after a few moments of silence, he just blurted it out. "So you're not seein' Olly anymore?"

"Nope," she sighed. She'd been waiting for one of the boys to ask her about him ever since she and Eleanor had talked at the spa. "Whatever you guys said to Eleanor really freaked her out because she literally begged me not to hang out with him anymore."

"That's the only reason? Because we don't like him?"

Asher shrugged. "Every single one of you hate him and think he's a terrible person. But Eleanor is family and you guys are my friends so I know you wouldn't lie to me. Apparently you all see something that I don't, which means I just have to trust you. That's all there is to it."

Zayn grimaced at her statement. She was completely trusting them just because they were her friends and never in a million years would she believe that they would lie to her, when the truth was that every single one of them had been flat out lying since day one. He shuddered to think of what she might do when she found out that little fact.

Luckily the conversation was interrupted by their order coming up because he didn't have any response for her. They both stood up and went to the counter to pay for the food before grabbing the three bags. The walk back was equally silent, but it was more tense than it had been the first time, at least for Zayn. He was feeling guilty and he knew that he needed to talk to Harry about it at some point in the very near future.

The other three boys practically pounced as soon as they walked through the door. The dug into the bags that were set on the coffee table and once they'd found their own, they immediately sat down and started eating. Asher finally found her sesame chicken at the bottom of the last bag and she slid into the empty space on the sofa that she'd been occupying previously. Watching Harry attempt to use his chopsticks to eat was amusing to say the least.

After everyone had finished eating, there was a bit more conversation before people started to leave. Liam left first, offering only a very vague reason, and soon Zayn followed him. Louis and Eleanor left not much later to go out on a nice date and the group dwindled down to just Harry and Asher. She got up to take the empty food containers to the trash bin in the kitchen and he followed with his own. Once the living room was clean, they went upstairs to her bedroom. He reclined on her unmade bed while she opened her iTunes library on her laptop then headed to the closet to find her duffel bag.

She set it on the edge of the bed by his feet and began stuffing items into it in preparation for her trip. Eleanor had already packed all her things, including some dresses for Asher to wear considering she didn't have anything wedding appropriate of her own so all she really had to pack was the essentials. "Hey, are you busy this weekend?" She looked over at him, but he was completely absorbed in whatever was on his phone screen. He probably wasn't even paying any attention to her.

"Don't think so. Why?" he answered after a moment.

"Oh um, well my cousin Sarah is getting married in Brighton on Saturday and I need a date."

He looked up from his phone then, his eyebrows furrowing. "You want me to go with you?"

Her cheeks immediately burned with embarrassment at his tone. She didn't understand why he sounded so surprised at the request considering how much time she usually spent with him. She cleared her throat awkwardly. "Well, I had originally planned on asking Olly, but then....."

It was a lie; she had never planned on asking Olly to go with her, even before she'd stopped seeing him. None of her friends liked him so she knew that him spending a whole weekend with Eleanor, Louis, and her family would go horribly wrong. But she couldn't tell Harry that so she had to make up something to cover up the embarrassment she was feeling.

"And Niall is in Ireland until Monday," she added. She would have gladly asked Niall in order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling she was currently experiencing under Harry's gaze, but he had gone home to Mullingar to visit his family for the week. Harry honestly was the only viable option.

He suddenly cracked a smile as he tossed his phone on the bed next to him and leaned back against the headboard, crossing his arms over his chest. "Oh, so I'm your last resort? Ouch."

Her eyes narrowed at him, while he just sat there, very pleased with himself at being able to use the very same words on her that she had used on him a few weeks before. "Are you mocking me?"

"Maybe," he shrugged, his grin growing wider.

"Fine then," she huffed, turning back to her duffel bag. "I'm perfectly fine going by myself." She wasn't really upset with him, but it was just so easy to make him flustered that she couldn't resist.

He immediately sat up straight, his grin turning to a frown as he tried to apologize. "Oh, Ash, I wasn't-"

"I'm sure my family will keep me occupied."

"Ash-" He tried again, standing to his feet but she cut him off with her rambling.

"Don't worry about it, Harry. Forget I asked."

"For Christ's sake, Ash!" He lunged at her, throwing both of his long arms around her body as he yanked her backward, sending them both falling all sprawled out onto the bed behind them. They landed in a heap of tangled limbs, with her directly on top of him, knocking all the air out of his lungs, but it didn't matter because he'd gotten her to laugh. She rolled off of him and settled by his side, folding her hands over her stomach as she looked up at the ceiling.

"I was just messing with you, you know."

He sat up, putting his arms out on both sides of her body as he leaned over her, the dimpled grin now returning to his handsome face. "I'd be honored to be your escort."

"Good," she laughed. "Because I couldn't handle being Louis and El's third wheel all weekend."

"You don't have to worry about that as long as I'm around." She smiled but didn't give him a verbal response and he was suddenly aware of things like how his arms rested against her hips and how blue her eyes were at that angle and how she smelled like cherry blossoms and how close his face was to hers. It would be so easy to lean down and kiss her.

She seemed to notice their proximity as well, the smile completely disappearing from her face as she stared up at him. She was waiting for him to close the gap between them, her breath caught in her throat and her palms clammy. But then he chickened out, plucking his hat from her head and replacing it on his own before lying down next to her and leaving them both disappointed.