Status: coming soon
Crooked Heart
not a date
Without Niall in the flat, Fiona had free reign of the living room. She had switched shifts with somebody, leaving her entire Saturday open, and almost all of it had been spent working on papers. That morning, she had contemplated doing something different with her makeup or clothes, but then reminded herself that this was not a date. It was not some big special thing, it was just her and Harry having a meal at the flat. Maybe they’d watch a film or play a board game. So she’d covered up the spot on her chin, swiped on some mascara and eyeliner, and kept her lip balm on hand (with the hope that Harry would ask to borrow it, since his lips were perpetually chapped).
Then she’d gotten a text from Allison telling her not to wear joggers, because even if she didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard, one did not wear joggers on a date, even one that technically wasn’t a date. Fiona thought she’d done well. Printed leggings and a plain black vest were, in her opinion, a perfectly regular outfit while not being a lazy one.
It had occurred to her earlier that she was probably overthinking everything, but shortly after that she realized overthinking was unavoidable. This was new territory for her. Never before had a boy made Fiona dinner (in the romantic sense). She thought that maybe Wren had heated up some curry for her once or twice, and perhaps one of her college boyfriends had tried to impress with a meal, but she didn’t remember anything specific.
Everything was new and different with Harry. It was exciting, but it was also unpredictable. After she saw his journals, Fiona had been struck with the awareness that Harry knew her better than she knew him, and he always had. She was playing catch-up, only now paying attention and restructuring the idea of him in her mind. But if they were going to be honest, she hoped that she wouldn’t be falling behind much longer.
She was halfway through editing the second essay she had to have done by the middle of the month when the Skype icon appeared in the corner of her screen, indicating that Eli was ringing from his iPad. Fiona clicked on it and the call went through, and she saw that he was sitting in the cupboard with the door shut, fairy lights illuminating the small space.
“What’re you doing in there?” she asked, crossing her legs and leaning toward the screen.
“Mum and Dad are having a dinner party downstairs,” Eli said.
“But you love it when there’s company,” Fiona said. He shrugged, in a typical kid way of saying that he didn’t want to talk about it. “Eli, what’s up?”
“I was supposed to go to Freddie’s house but I accidentally broke a vase so Dad said I couldn’t, even though I told him it was an accident he just didn’t listen and now I’m stuck here while they have their stupid dinner party,” Eli explained in a rushed voice.
“Was it that fancy one in the sitting room?”
Eli sighed mournfully, and she knew she’d guessed right.
But it didn’t add up to her, because Eli had always been their favourite. He could do no wrong, and making him stay home for knocking over a vase didn’t seem like something her dad would do. If it’d been her, maybe, but not him. “Has Dad been acting strange lately?”
Eli shrugged again. “Him and Mum have been fighting more. I think that’s what he’s angry about.”
“D’you know what it was about?”
“You.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, Mum’s been trying to talk to him about you and getting him to read these things that Allison sent her and made her realize that you’re not—”
“Allison?” Fiona interrupted, examining Eli’s shadowy, confused face. “Allison spoke to Mum?”
“Yeah, a couple weeks ago now. They talked for a really long time and then Allison sent her these things to read online. I didn’t see what they were, I was listening from the other room. But ever since then Mum’s been more understanding, I think. Don’t you?”
Fiona sat back, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “Yeah, she has. She rang me out of the blue to apologize for everything, and I thought it was you who’d spoken to her.”
“What would I say?”
Fiona almost laughed. “That love’s the most important thing,” she said, and Eli furrowed his eyebrows.
“You told me being yourself was important.”
“It is,” she told him. “But so is loving others for who they are.”
“Oh.” Eli rubbed his nose, then his expression changed completely, to one of childlike excitement. “Can I tell you about the book I got yesterday?”
This time, she did laugh. “Yeah, of course.”
They were still chatting when Harry arrived. Fiona knew it was him because Niall was in Oxford at the Model UN conference and nobody else had a key — though Harry rarely had to use his, since they didn’t lock the door unless they were out or asleep — and there was the distinct grumbling and shuffling around in the foyer that only Harry was capable of making.
“Fiona?” Eli asked.
She turned away from the corridor. “Sorry, buddy. Keep going.”
Eli never ran out of stories to tell. His mates at school were always up to something, and then there were all his assignments and projects to go over, along with which class was his favourite that week. His latest tale was about the new (ish) kid, Gregory, who Eli was adamant was very strange and not sociable. Eli was the sort to befriend everyone, so Fiona found his dislike of the new boy interesting.
When Harry emerged from the corridor, Eli was mid-rant about something Gregory had done in Maths class. His arms were full of groceries, but he awkwardly waved down Fiona’s silent offer to help.
She had to put in extra effort to stay focused on Eli, because Harry was there and it was starting to feel like a date. He was dressed perfectly normal, just like she was, but the sight of him made her feel nervous all over again, and she didn’t want that to keep happening. It was the anticipation that was killing her, the wondering of what it would be like to be that person with him, with anyone, when she thought she wouldn’t be able to again after it all fell apart with Wren.
Because Fiona had thought once that she had it all sorted, and that had been her mistake.
“Fiona?”
She was overthinking again. Fiona gave Eli an apologetic smile, running a hand through her hair. “Sorry again.”
“Is someone there?”
“Yeah,” she replied, and Eli raised his eyebrows. “It’s Harry.”
“Harry!”
At Eli’s call, Harry sauntered over and flopped down next to Fiona, throwing his arm across the back of the couch and angling himself toward the screen, which meant leaning into Fiona. He grinned and looked like he was about to greet Eli, but then he frowned. “Where are you?”
“In the cupboard.”
Harry glanced at Fiona, who shrugged. “All right then. How are things?”
“Good. Is Niall there?”
“I’m afraid he’s gone this weekend.”
Eli looked disappointed. “Will you tell him I said hi?”
“Of course,” Fiona said. “I’m gonna have to say goodbye now, kid. Don’t sulk all evening, yeah? We don’t want Mum and Dad angry with you too.”
“Okay. But you know Mum isn’t angry with you anymore,” Eli reminded her, though Fiona didn’t think she’d ever forget it.
“She’s always stressing about something, I don’t want to get too hopeful,” Fiona replied in what she hoped was a joking tone. Eli grinned, it seemed that she’d succeeded. “Talk to you soon, yeah?”
“Okay. Bye, Harry!”
“See you!” Harry lifted his hand to wave, beaming into the webcam. The call disconnected a moment later, and he tilted his head toward Fiona. “What was all that about your mum?”
Fiona realized that the only person she’d spoken to about it was Allison, who she now knew had orchestrated her mum’s path to acceptance. Even though Harry knew more than Niall, Zayn, or Cassidy after their conversation in London, she still hadn’t mentioned the call with her mum. It wasn’t something she’d thought about, because she was so used to not talking about her parents with her uni friends (one of which she considered to be Harry, despite the fact that he didn’t go to uni).
“Oh, er, so she’s sort of apologized for being a bad mum,” Fiona said quietly. Harry’s hand on the back of the couch dropped to her back and began sliding up and down her spine. “It was weird, she just rang out of nowhere. But apparently Allison had spoken to her about it, somehow managed to bring her around.”
“That’s brilliant, Fee,” Harry said, just as softly. “And your dad?”
“No progress there,” she scoffed, leaning back. Harry shifted around so his torso was directed toward her, his arm draped across her shoulders and his other hand lingering dangerously close to her thigh. “But he’s not the type to pick up the phone and talk it out, so…”
“You think he wants to, though? Make things better between you?”
“Mum says he might listen, but if they’ve been fighting more then I dunno.”
“Well, he’s a shit dad if he doesn’t come around at some point.”
“He’s already a shit dad.”
Harry sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, it’s nowt to do with you.” Fiona nudged him with her elbow, wanting to improve the mood. “What’ve you brought over, then? I’m ready to cook.”
“What?”
“I’m helping, obviously.”
“That wasn’t part of the agreement.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t remember there being an agreement.”
“You agreed to let me cook you dinner.”
“Yeah, and I wanna help.”
He rubbed his lips together, scanning her expression. “Fine. But you have to listen to what I tell you, or else it won’t be any good.”
“Oi, I’m not you, I can follow instructions.”
They moved to the kitchen and began unpacking the groceries. Harry claimed that they already had a lot of the ingredients, but Fiona still thought he’d brought over enough to feed five, not two. In one of the bags was a single item: a cheesecake, still in it’s baking tin.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“That was supposed to be a surprise,” Harry grumbled. “See? This is why I didn’t want you helping.”
He came over and pulled it out of the bag carefully, then set it on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Next to it, he placed a carton of raspberries and whipped cream. “You made a cake?” Fiona said, still in shock. She bit down on her lip, which didn’t hide her grin at all. “That’s adorable.”
“I’m an assistant pastry chef,” Harry replied seriously, placing his hands on his hips. “Of course I made a bloody cake.”
“What else is there, then?” she asked, peering in another bag. “Chicken?”
“Oh no, you aren’t going anywhere near that,” Harry said, pulling it away from her. Fiona raised her eyebrows, watching the serious expression on his face. Food was the one thing Harry wouldn’t joke around about, it seemed. “You can peel potatoes. They should be in that cupboard, unless someone cooked them, which would also ruin everything. I trust you know where the peeler is?”
Fiona scoffed. “Obviously.”
Since neither she or Niall had cooked anything in the past few days (their meals had consisted of leftovers, takeaway, and cereal, as per) the potatoes were in the cupboard Harry indicated. Fiona dragged them out and began peeling, side-eying Harry preparing the chicken as she did so.
There was something about the set of his shoulders, his focused expression, and the fact that his hair was pulled back into a bun, that made it hard to tear her eyes away. Fiona had never been unaware of the fact that Harry was attractive, she just hadn’t particularly cared, because she thought he was a twat and he was Niall’s friend and having sex with him just wasn’t something she’d considered.
But somewhere along the line, that had changed. Fiona had no idea how attraction worked, because it made absolutely no sense at the best of times, but that click when perception changes and just the way somebody moves feels like dragging a match along the edge of a tinder box and watching the tip spark and ignite had happened months ago, and she wasn’t sure why she’d ever tried to fight it.
He was still her mortal enemy, because he was still a twat and she was still a bitch and she didn’t expect that to change. But he was also Harry, who wrote secret poems about asparagus and made her tea just right and knew when to push her and when to let her be. And she liked him, in the silly romantic way where that certain smile of his tugged at her heart and his breath against her neck when they’d slept next to each other made her feel warm inside, right down to her toes.
Harry moved over to the sink and washed his hands, then came to check on her progress. “You’ve peeled three potatoes,” he said, hands on his hips. “I would like to say I expected more from you, but that would be lying. I’ll finish up, yeah?”
Fiona hummed and moved aside. The flutter in her stomach hadn’t gone away, but there was no wave of anxiety along with it like before. She stared at Harry’s back for a moment, lower lip caught between her teeth.
Then she took a step forward, close enough to reach up and run her hand along his shoulder, her fingers lingering on the skull tattoo on the back of his bicep. At the same time, Fiona brushed her lips over the skin at the nape of his neck, featherlight. Harry stilled, and she saw him set down the peeler as she placed another kiss to his neck. He turned around, leaning against the counter with his eyebrows raised.
“And I thought I was the distracting one,” he said. Fiona shrugged, her hand still on his arm, skimming over his rose tattoo.
Harry grinned, slipping his hand beneath her hair and leaning in, the rest of his body lifting off from the counter in one fluid movement to get as close to her as possible. With his mouth pressed to hers, Fiona could taste the gum he’d been chewing earlier, and his lips were somehow chapped and soft all at once. She ran her hands up his arms and wound them around his neck, going up on her toes so he wouldn’t have to lean over as much.
Without breaking the kiss, Harry turned them around and directed her over to a clear space on the counter, then secured his hands on her waist and lifted her up. Fiona pulled back in surprise, and ended up banging her head against the cupboard. “Oh, fuck,” she hissed, rubbing the sore spot on her scalp. Harry chuckled, pulling her forward a bit so they were closer, and so she wouldn’t hit her head again. Fiona scowled at him. “Shut up.”
She tightened her legs around his hips, her hand leaving her hair to begin undoing the buttons of his flannel. There were only three that were actually fastened, so she made quick work of it, and she pushed it off his shoulders impatiently. The moment his arms were free again, Harry’s hands were back to wandering, sliding up her thighs and under the back of her top. Fiona tugged his hair out of its bun, raking her fingers through the curls and hanging on when Harry’s mouth broke from hers and drifted along her jaw. He sucked on the skin below her ear, the dip where her neck met her shoulder, and began on her collarbone when she placed her palm on his chest.
Rather than push him away, like she’d done before when she wasn’t ready or the time wasn’t right, Fiona lifted her top over her head and tossed it down with his. But Harry wasn’t looking at the newly exposed skin, or the cute bra she was wearing. His eyes were on her arm, focused on the tattooed words in full view thanks to her forearm draped over his shoulder. Fiona slouched a little. She hadn’t expected Harry’s reaction to seeing her topless (not entirely, but still) to go like this. When several more seconds passed without him saying anything, she reached up with her other hand and held onto his chin, drawing her thumb across his bottom lip.
“Hello in there?” she said.
“Sorry,” Harry murmured. “Spaced out for a second.”
“You overtired or something?”
“No, I was—” Harry’s eyes drifted down, finally taking in the wine red bra she was wearing. His gaze flicked back up to hers, and Fiona raised a single eyebrow. “I was trying to remember my favourite line from The Tempest.”
Fiona had no idea that Harry had even read The Tempest, and she could list a dozen more lines from it that she liked, though not as much as the one she’d had tattooed on her arm. But she was more focused on the fact that no progress had been made on the snogging front. “You can do that later,” she said, and caught his top lip between hers.
“Potatoes,” Harry mumbled a few minutes later, pulling away again with swollen lips. Fiona couldn’t help the irritated growl that came from low in her throat, because they’d finally been getting somewhere and she didn’t have a reason to stop it this time. “Need to finish making dinner.”
He had a point, so after one more long, breathless kiss she let him go, then hopped off the counter and picked up her top. Harry put his back on too, but he didn’t bother buttoning it. Fiona went over and sat down on the couch under the pretense of getting some reading done, but she ended up watching Harry.
When it was ready (and the process included Harry refusing to let Fiona help him set the table, because she wouldn’t do it right) and she had sat down, Harry put down a plate in front of her that smelled heavenly. With him watching her intently, Fiona felt incredibly scrutinized as she speared a few spinach leaves with her fork and popped them into her mouth. She tasted everything on the plate, set her fork back down, and looked up to see that Harry still hadn’t touched his.
“You should cook for me all the time,” she concluded.
Harry grinned. “Already do.”
“Even more than usual, then. In fact, never leave. I’ll employ you as my personal chef.”
“You couldn’t afford my fee. Personal chefs get paid quite a lot.”
She raised her eyebrows. “With the amount I’ll be saving by not ordering takeaway every other night, I think I’ll do just fine. Niall will contribute, of course.”
Harry picked up his fork, shaking his head at her. “I’m glad you like it, Fee.”
+++
An hour later, Fiona and Harry moved over to the couch, each with a slice of cheesecake. Harry had made a joke about sharing a piece to be more romantic, but Fiona shut him down immediately. The second he listed the ingredients — raspberry, white chocolate — she needed an entire piece to herself. Probably two.
They fought for the centre cushion, but Fiona’s legs somehow ended up in Harry’s lap and he wound an arm around her knees, preventing her from shifting around. He leaned over and picked up his plate from the coffee table, grinning triumphantly at her. “Should we watch something?” she asked.
Harry hummed, reaching for the remote. But he only clicked through the channels, never settling on one program. Fiona was surprised when he passed the food channel, but Harry said it wasn’t very romantic. “Don’t you have, like, a million playlists on your phone?” he asked. “For every scenario?”
“For any studying scenario,” she corrected. Harry gave her a dubious look. “It’s like, you can’t listen to the same thing for writing essays as you would to read. It’s a completely different atmosphere. Then there’s an exam revision playlist, and—”
“I get it.” He shifted around to dig his phone out of his back pocket. A few seconds later, slow, smooth jazz began playing. Fiona raised her eyebrows, trying not to laugh.
“What is this?”
“My cooking playlist.”
“You cook to jazz?”
“Not when I’m here. We have it playing in the kitchen at work sometimes, I like it,” he shrugged, licking his lips when he saw her incredulous face. “Cooking, jazz, and romance. It all goes together.”
“Please stop saying romance.”
His expression was somber. “Still don’t like that stuff, huh?”
She stared at her nearly empty plate, feeling his thumb tracing circles just above her knee. “It’s not that,” she said, and looked at him. “I just feel like you’re going to start talking about how well your ‘wooing’ and ‘courtship’ of me is going.”
Harry scoffed. “Please, Fee. I’ve already wooed you.”
“Is that so?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
She grimaced, scooping up the last of her cheesecake. “What a horrible decision that was. I don’t even like you.”
Fiona set hers and Harry’s plates onto the coffee table, and was about to tie up her hair when Harry caught her cheek, a look of focus on his face, and he swiped at the corner of her mouth with the pad of his thumb, removing a bit of whipped cream that she hadn’t noticed. He drew his hand back and sucked the whipped cream off his thumb, looking at her with eyes she’d never noticed were quite so green.
It seemed that his music had done the trick, because she was leaping at him not a moment later, her fingers splayed across the hard line of his jaw and her mouth colliding with his. Harry made a surprised noise, but was pulling her into his lap without a moment of hesitation. They had been in this position before, albeit on a different couch, but there wasn’t anything in the way this time.
Fiona pushed Harry’s shirt off his shoulders and he discarded it with an impatient noise, already dragging hers up her torso. When it had been tossed aside, Harry had a very different reaction than he had the first time, closer to the one she’d expected of him. His lips found just the right spot below her ear and his hands explored her upper body, deftly unfastening the clasps on her bra before pulling the garment off.
Fiona tilted her head back and sighed as Harry’s mouth wandered further down, nipping at her skin and then kissing the same spot a moment later. Fiona ran her fingers through his hair, tipping his head back just enough for her to lean down and kiss him again, over and over and over, as he pushed down the waistband of her leggings until it was bunched around her hips, then sliding his hands back up to cup her breasts, giving a squeeze that made her moan. Fiona abandoned Harry’s hair to rake her fingers down his chest, getting him to sit up a little straighter when she skimmed the leaves inked over his hipbones on her way to his belt.
When she’d unfastened it and was working on the button of his jeans, Harry gave her shoulders a gentle push. “Up,” he mumbled.
There was a flurry of movement as they both shed their trousers, Harry’s tight jeans delaying him a few seconds longer than it took Fiona to remove her leggings. By the time he kicked them off, Fiona was already laughing, her hand over her mouth muffling the sound.
“Not funny,” Harry said, pointing a finger.
She couldn’t help it any longer, and let out a full laugh. “I’m sorry, I always wondered how awkward you’d look taking those off… it was even more hilarious than I imagined.”
“You thought about me taking my trousers off?” Harry asked, closing the space between them.
“Not like that,” she said quickly, then realized that this wasn’t the sort of scenario that called for denial of such things. “Well, once or twice.”
“If we’re playing this game, I’ll be honest — no matter how fit you look in that all that spandex running gear, no one could make taking a sports bra off look sexy.”
She appraised him, her gaze flicking down to the bulge in his pants briefly before wandering up his chest, her hands sliding up alongside it. “Want a bet?”
“Next time we go for a run, I’ll take you up on that offer,” he said. “But in the meantime—”
Harry captured her lips with his, walking backward willingly (after he’d picked up his phone) when she began to push him toward the corridor. “Hang on a second,” she said, when they got to the bathroom.
“What is it?”
“Do you really want to be running out here in a few minutes to get a condom?” she asked, breaking from him to open the cupboard below the sink.
Harry stared. “Why am I not surprised that there’s a communal condom box,” he muttered.
“This way we don’t have to go into each other’s rooms if we’ve run out,” she explained with a grin, dragging him the rest of the way to her bedroom. “And it’s economical.”
“I’ll be sure to pass the idea onto Zayn and Louis,” Harry replied, turning back around when his phone had been set on her bedside table and coming over, snaking his hands around to her hips as she shut the door behind them.
They fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, Harry ducking his head to trail fervent, open-mouthed kisses down her neck. Fiona hooked her fingers into the waistband of his pants, not wanting to waste any more time, and Harry picked himself up off her to remove them, then turned his focus to her knickers. There was a pause as his fingers skimmed the mesh material, and Fiona could feel her heart racing, her eyes taking in the boy before her. The one she hadn’t stopped thinking about in months, the one she never would’ve considered herself being in this position with before that, the one she wanted, needed, desperately.
But the beat ended, and Fiona lifted her hips so Harry could pull off her knickers. He knelt on the mattress, one of his knees between her legs, and licked his lips. “Tell me what you want.”
Fiona’s lips parted involuntarily. “Come here,” she said, and he was there in an instant. The room was illuminated only by the fairy lights twisted around her bedframe, and paired with the jazz playlist on Harry’s phone, Fiona realized that this was the most cheesy, romantic sex she’d ever experienced.
With nothing between them, Harry’s touch was different. More urgent. And the last thing Fiona wanted was to go slow — they would have time for that later. She caught Harry’s lip between her teeth, feeling his hips twitch when her fingers grazed his v-lines.
“Touch me,” she breathed.
Harry’s hand travelled from her breast down her stomach with an almost nervous slowness, and he kissed her along her jaw, his teeth nipping at her skin in the same moment he dragged a finger over her. Fiona hissed as his thumb circled her clit, her fist balling in the crumpled sheets, and Harry picked up his pace before sliding a finger into her.
She moaned when he slipped in a second finger, her eyelids fluttering and Harry’s breath on her cheek. Fiona could feel the heat building inside her, Harry’s hardness against her thigh. “Feel good?” he mumbled, his voice hoarse.
“Mmmm,” was all she was able to reply, cut through with a gasp as Harry’s fingers curled inside her. “Fuck.”
The smirk on Harry’s face was the same self-satisfied one she’d seen hundreds of times before. Without really thinking, she gave his shoulder a push and he fell onto his back in surprise. “Did I do something?” he asked, eyes widening.
Fiona smiled deviously, positioning herself over him. “For once,” she said, and wrapped her hand around him. Harry swallowed, his gaze flicking from her hand to her face and back again. “Those stupid dimples of yours actually turned me on.”
She didn’t get more than a few strokes in before Harry was scrambling for the condom, muttering in between grunts about how he couldn’t wait any longer. Fiona saw it first, tossing the packet onto Harry’s chest while biting back a grin. Harry rolled the condom on, then sat up and cupped her cheeks, his mouth on hers, filled with desire. Though she would have kept kissing him, Fiona wanted to see the look on his face when this thing he’d been waiting for finally happened, so she gave his chest a shove and lifted her hips, positioning herself above him. Harry’s hands slid down her sides, pausing at the swell of her hips as she lowered herself slowly, watching the focused expression on his face, his brows pulled together and his lips pulled in between his teeth.
Their hips moved together, finding a rhythm, and Fiona leaned down to give Harry a mark of her own, to go with all the ones he’d left on her skin. But then he was flipping her over, his thrusts coming faster and harder as he hooked her leg around his waist, his hair tickling her cheek and his breath hot against her collarbone. Fiona bit back a whimper of pleasure, but it escaped anyway, her body not expecting to be brought to the edge quite so soon.
Because Fiona had quite a lot of sex, and she’d come to expect some things. In spite of all the teasing he received from Niall, and the several month long lull in his sex life up until his birthday, Harry was leagues better than she had anticipated. His constantly roaming hands, that mouth, the movement of his hips in just the right way, the low rumble of his voice spilling expletives against her skin — all together they pulled her apart, spreading out from her lower abdomen to the tips of her fingers and down to her toes.
Fiona arched her back, gripping Harry’s curls as she came and letting out a cry of pleasure. It was like the sound of her losing herself in him was all Harry needed, and his thrusts became sloppier, his lips moving along her jaw. Their hips collided again before Harry’s breath hitched and then released in a rush, and he tumbled to the mattress next to her.
“Fuck,” he sighed.
“Fuck,” Fiona agreed.
Harry removed the condom and leaned over Fiona to toss it in the bin next to her desk, then settled on his side, propped up by his elbow, his hair falling into his face as he gazed down at her. “What time is Niall back tomorrow?”
Her eyes had slipped shut, but she opened them just to glare at him. “Well, you’ve just ruined my excellent mood. Well done, Harry.”
“I’m only asking because there’s clothing all over the place,” he said. “And the cheesecake is out in the open.”
“He said in the evening, but who really knows. Apparently these conferences have pretty wild after parties, so he might not get back till Monday.”
Harry contemplated their options, but apparently decided he’d rather the flat be inconspicuous. “Won’t be a mo,” he said, and kissed her forehead before he clambered out of bed and picked up his pants. In his rush to leave the room, he stumbled while still pulling them up, and looked back to narrow his eyes at Fiona when she laughed. “I’m glad you find me so amusing.”
“It’s better than when I used to shout at you for breathing too loud, isn’t it?”
“Loads,” he said, and disappeared into the corridor.
There was nothing like good sex to help Fiona fall asleep, and she was out before Harry returned.
+++
She woke up at half past five, itching for a cigarette. Fiona carefully untangled herself from Harry, which was easier said than done. Her leg was hitched over hip, one of her arms caught under his neck and the other thrown over his torso, while he had his face buried in her collarbone and his arms locked around her middle.
But he only grumbled a little bit when she wriggled out of his grasp, then rolled over and continued snoring softly into a pillow. Fiona pulled on a sleep shirt and clean knickers from her closet, then padded out of the room with her pack and lighter.
It was still cold out, but warmer than it had been all year, which she took as a good sign. They wouldn’t see any decent weather until June, most like, but she could bear through the gooseflesh on her legs until then. Fiona leaned against the railing, cigarette dangling between her lips as she tugged her hair back into a bun.
She smoked it quickly, wanting to get back to the warmth of Harry and her bed. His feet were perpetually frozen, as she’d discovered when they’d shared her bed earlier in the week, but the rest of him wasn’t. She stubbed out the end in the ashtray and slipped back inside, leaving her cigarettes on her desk before climbing under the covers.
“You almost made it through the night,” Harry croaked, grunting tiredly as he turned onto his side. His hand slid up her thigh and under her shirt, settling on her hip so he could pull her closer. This time, Fiona curled up against Harry’s chest, tracing one of the swallows on his chest with the tip of her finger.
“I was tired,” she said.
“You’re always tired.”
“I sleep,” she defended, but Harry only chuckled.
“Only when your body forces you to,” he said. Fiona’s silence was enough of a confirmation. Harry’s arms tightened around her. “Have you ever thought about seeing a—”
“No.”
“I was only—”
“I know what you were doing, and I’m telling you to stop.”
“Fiona—”
“No, Harry.”
He sighed and pulled the elastic out of her hair, putting it around his own wrist before smoothing his hand over her head. “Fine. Let’s try and sleep some more, yeah?”
But even though Harry was asleep in a matter of seconds, his breathing slow and even, Fiona couldn’t do the same. He didn’t protest when she turned around, her back against his chest, and she managed to plug the fairy lights back in (he’d unplugged them after cleaning up in the living room) and grab her book off the bedside table.
Fiona spent the next few hours reading, and ended up finishing her book entirely before Harry woke up just a little bit past nine. He pushed her hair aside and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck, humming against her skin. “Did you sleep?”
“No.”
Harry hummed again, only lower and less satisfied. “Tea?”
“I can make it.”
Harry scoffed, kissing her neck again and rolling out of bed on the other side. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, pausing at the door. “Your tea is terrible.”
While he was gone, Fiona flicked on the overhead light and picked up the stray clothes on the floor, leaving Harry’s in a pile in the far corner of the bed and tossing hers into the laundry basket next to her closet. She tucked the book she’d finished in the early hours of the morning back into its spot on the shelf, scanning the ones around it for her next read. It was habit to have something non-academic by her bedside to read when she couldn’t sleep, just to make the hours pass by faster.
Thinking of Harry, she picked out a collected works of Neruda, skimming through the pages and seeing that she’d marked some of them up, but she didn’t remember when. She sat on the floor, leaning against the side of her bed, and was still reading when Harry returned.
He handed her the steaming mug carefully, then went around to the other side of the bed and leapt onto it, crossing his forearms on the mattress by her head and leaning his chin on them. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Neruda.”
“Ah,” Harry said. He licked his lips. “‘I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.’”
“Harry.”
“’Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.’”
She touched her chin to her shoulder, knowing the lines that came next. It was probably the worst one he could have picked, and by that she meant the best, because just the idea of Harry saying ’I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,’ had her biting her lip and trying not to throw herself at him.
“Are you trying to get a reaction out of me?”
“Always.”
Fiona sniffed and snapped the book shut, sliding it back onto the shelf. Her fingertips trailed along the spines, lingering whenever Harry made a sound of recognition. She remembered the books she’d seen in his room, and thought he could do with some literary education. “So, you know Neruda,” she began, plucking a book off the shelf. “What else?”
“Not as much as you, I’m sure,” he replied. “I don’t read much prose.”
“Poetry, then.”
Beside her, Harry shifted around clearing his throat several times. “Well, I did a year of English. You know that.”
He didn’t talk about it much; Harry’s short life as an academic was almost entirely swept under the table. In the past, whenever she brought up literature he wouldn’t even contribute, though she knew after seeing his collection that he’d read most of the same books she had in her first year, and several others she’d had mentioned. It didn’t make much sense to her why he kept that part of himself hidden, because to her, it was everything. Like the culinary arts were for him.
“And you still read?”
“Er, yeah. A bit, I guess,” Harry shrugged. “Mostly poetry.”
“Yeah?” she prompted.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s always been more appealing to me than prose,” he said slowly. Fiona felt something new, a surge of pleasure and fulfillment at hearing him begin to open up. She wondered if this was how he’d felt the first time she complimented his food. “I dunno, there’s something about it… it’s like cooking, in a way. Like, therapeutic and gratifying, while also being a challenge? You’ve got to think about it, and I like that. But at the same time, you can get lost in either one. Not in the restaurant, of course, but when I’m cooking for myself, I just let it happen. And when I’m writing—”
He stopped, frowning. Fiona had turned around completely just to watch Harry talking about something he was passionate about, and she held her breath without realizing it the second he paused. Though she knew about his poetry already, he wasn’t aware of that, so it was like a big reveal had happened. And not when he’d intended it. But this was what they both were trying to work toward. Fiona told Harry about things she’d never admitted out loud, and he’d just done the same.
“I, er,” he stammered, propping himself up on his elbow and raking his hair back. He met her gaze, looking conflicted. “I’m a bit of a poet myself.”
Fiona smiled softly, stretching a hand across the mattress to him. She didn’t know what to say, and it definitely didn’t feel like the right time to tell him that she had secretly read his journals, so she hoped that linking their fingers together was enough. Harry looked down at their hands and his frown disappeared completely. The muscles in his jaw twitched as he mulled something over, and after a long moment he looked at her again.
“I’ve even written a few about you.”
There was nothing that could have prepared her for that. “Me?” she mouthed, unable to make a sound.
“Not in a creepy way,” he said, his eyes widening. “I write about everything. You’ve just ended up in there a lot lately.”
She thought about his ode to asparagus that had stuck in her mind for no apparent reason, and knew he wasn’t lying. But it was still a shock, given how lovely the poems she had read were. Reading Neruda was one thing. It would be quite another if he were to read something out of his own mind.
“Why did you have to be such an annoying twat when we met?” she asked, moving onto her knees so their heads were level. “If you’d been like this… god, Harry.”
“You wouldn’t have been ready for it,” he said. “You’ve changed a lot since we met too, Fee.”
There was truth to his words. The Fiona of a year and a half ago would never have even considered proper dating. She was too restless, too angry, too stubborn.
He lifted her hand and kissed the back of her palm, her knuckles, and made a point of kissing the inside of her index finger, where she had a lightsaber (Luke’s from the original film, naturally, though you couldn’t really tell the difference since the handle was too small) tattooed for her nineteenth birthday. He kissed the pulse point of her wrist, up her forearm to her elbow, then settled back onto his stomach and shimmied forward to kiss the tattoo on her inner bicep.
“Are you going to kiss my foot now?” she asked, sliding back onto her bum to lift her left foot, where the little crown Zayn had inked for her was.
“I could.”
“Well, don’t. That would be weird.”
Harry grinned before kissing her shoulder, and she leaned in to give him access to her jaw. He nudged her nose with his own, and then they were kissing, but it didn’t last long because Harry was craning his neck and the angle wasn’t quite right.
“What was the book you picked out?” Harry asked after he’d pulled away and readjusted on the mattress so he was lying on his side, head propped up by his hand. It had been forgotten on the floor some time in their conversation. Fiona picked it up and held it out for him to read. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Everyone’s read her.”
“No, they’ve read that one sonnet.”
Harry’s eyes lit up. “’How do I love thee?’”
“Not funny,” she said. She dropped the book onto the mattress. “The flagged pages are my favourites.”
“For me?”
“Obviously.”
Several more books followed in quick succession. “I’ve not read any of these,” Harry peered at the cover of the latest one, an Ishiguro, his bottom lip jutting out, then added it to the little pile next to him on the mattress.
She had been picking ones she didn’t remember seeing on his shelf. “I sort of looked at what you already had when you let me sleep in your room that one time,” she said hurriedly, stretching up to grab one of her Eliot collections. She handed it to Harry.
“Okay, this I’ve read.”
“Yours didn’t have ‘Prufrock.’”
“What the fuck is a ‘Prufrock?’” Harry asked, brow furrowed. He’d already started flipping through the book, pausing on the particularly annotated pages.
Fiona stopped what she was doing to stare at him incredulously. Not having read it was one thing. But liking T.S. Eliot and not having ever heard of ‘Prufrock’ was unacceptable. She liked The Waste Land and ‘The Hollow Men’, but ‘Prufrock’ was brilliant. “Just read it. You’ll like it, I promise.”
He sighed and added the book to the pile. “It’s going to take me ages to finish all of this. I don’t have as much free time as you clearly think I do.”
“You’ll find time,” she replied, turning her gaze back to the bookcases. “Since we’re talking about American poets now, you should try reading something that isn’t by a white male.”
“Okay,” he said, chuckling.
“I’m serious, Harry. Instead of reading Leaves of Grass for the seventeen-millionth time, try Langston Hughes instead. Or Maya Angelou. You like Poe, right?” she asked, and Harry shrugged. “Well, read Poe. But read Emily Dickinson too.”
“Are you still mad that I like Bukowski?”
She pursed her lips, because he wasn’t getting the point. “Look, I’m not saying that liking Bukowski is a bad thing. You can like him all you want, some of his stuff is really good, if you ignore the alcoholism and misogyny. But if you like poetry in the way that I’m pretty sure you do, then you’ve got to expand your horizons a little bit. However, if you’d like my personal opinion, you should toss out all the Bukowski and stick to Neruda.”
Because he had enough reading to last several weeks, she stood up and moved the stack of books over to where his clothes were folded on the corner of her bed, then took their place next to Harry. He flopped onto his back and smiled up at her. “We should eat the rest of that cheesecake.”
Her gaze wandered down his naked torso. “Off each other?”
“That would ruin the flavour,” Harry said immediately. She blinked at him, disappointed. “But I appreciate where your mind is going.”
“Well, we’ve got to make the most of our time alone,” she said, and hitched a leg over him so that she straddled his hips, placing her hands on his chest and arching an eyebrow.
Harry promptly sat up, his hands finding her waist. “Are we going to tell Niall?”
“Absolutely not,” she declared. “His mind would explode.”
“Fair point.”
Then he kissed her.
Then she’d gotten a text from Allison telling her not to wear joggers, because even if she didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard, one did not wear joggers on a date, even one that technically wasn’t a date. Fiona thought she’d done well. Printed leggings and a plain black vest were, in her opinion, a perfectly regular outfit while not being a lazy one.
It had occurred to her earlier that she was probably overthinking everything, but shortly after that she realized overthinking was unavoidable. This was new territory for her. Never before had a boy made Fiona dinner (in the romantic sense). She thought that maybe Wren had heated up some curry for her once or twice, and perhaps one of her college boyfriends had tried to impress with a meal, but she didn’t remember anything specific.
Everything was new and different with Harry. It was exciting, but it was also unpredictable. After she saw his journals, Fiona had been struck with the awareness that Harry knew her better than she knew him, and he always had. She was playing catch-up, only now paying attention and restructuring the idea of him in her mind. But if they were going to be honest, she hoped that she wouldn’t be falling behind much longer.
She was halfway through editing the second essay she had to have done by the middle of the month when the Skype icon appeared in the corner of her screen, indicating that Eli was ringing from his iPad. Fiona clicked on it and the call went through, and she saw that he was sitting in the cupboard with the door shut, fairy lights illuminating the small space.
“What’re you doing in there?” she asked, crossing her legs and leaning toward the screen.
“Mum and Dad are having a dinner party downstairs,” Eli said.
“But you love it when there’s company,” Fiona said. He shrugged, in a typical kid way of saying that he didn’t want to talk about it. “Eli, what’s up?”
“I was supposed to go to Freddie’s house but I accidentally broke a vase so Dad said I couldn’t, even though I told him it was an accident he just didn’t listen and now I’m stuck here while they have their stupid dinner party,” Eli explained in a rushed voice.
“Was it that fancy one in the sitting room?”
Eli sighed mournfully, and she knew she’d guessed right.
But it didn’t add up to her, because Eli had always been their favourite. He could do no wrong, and making him stay home for knocking over a vase didn’t seem like something her dad would do. If it’d been her, maybe, but not him. “Has Dad been acting strange lately?”
Eli shrugged again. “Him and Mum have been fighting more. I think that’s what he’s angry about.”
“D’you know what it was about?”
“You.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, Mum’s been trying to talk to him about you and getting him to read these things that Allison sent her and made her realize that you’re not—”
“Allison?” Fiona interrupted, examining Eli’s shadowy, confused face. “Allison spoke to Mum?”
“Yeah, a couple weeks ago now. They talked for a really long time and then Allison sent her these things to read online. I didn’t see what they were, I was listening from the other room. But ever since then Mum’s been more understanding, I think. Don’t you?”
Fiona sat back, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “Yeah, she has. She rang me out of the blue to apologize for everything, and I thought it was you who’d spoken to her.”
“What would I say?”
Fiona almost laughed. “That love’s the most important thing,” she said, and Eli furrowed his eyebrows.
“You told me being yourself was important.”
“It is,” she told him. “But so is loving others for who they are.”
“Oh.” Eli rubbed his nose, then his expression changed completely, to one of childlike excitement. “Can I tell you about the book I got yesterday?”
This time, she did laugh. “Yeah, of course.”
They were still chatting when Harry arrived. Fiona knew it was him because Niall was in Oxford at the Model UN conference and nobody else had a key — though Harry rarely had to use his, since they didn’t lock the door unless they were out or asleep — and there was the distinct grumbling and shuffling around in the foyer that only Harry was capable of making.
“Fiona?” Eli asked.
She turned away from the corridor. “Sorry, buddy. Keep going.”
Eli never ran out of stories to tell. His mates at school were always up to something, and then there were all his assignments and projects to go over, along with which class was his favourite that week. His latest tale was about the new (ish) kid, Gregory, who Eli was adamant was very strange and not sociable. Eli was the sort to befriend everyone, so Fiona found his dislike of the new boy interesting.
When Harry emerged from the corridor, Eli was mid-rant about something Gregory had done in Maths class. His arms were full of groceries, but he awkwardly waved down Fiona’s silent offer to help.
She had to put in extra effort to stay focused on Eli, because Harry was there and it was starting to feel like a date. He was dressed perfectly normal, just like she was, but the sight of him made her feel nervous all over again, and she didn’t want that to keep happening. It was the anticipation that was killing her, the wondering of what it would be like to be that person with him, with anyone, when she thought she wouldn’t be able to again after it all fell apart with Wren.
Because Fiona had thought once that she had it all sorted, and that had been her mistake.
“Fiona?”
She was overthinking again. Fiona gave Eli an apologetic smile, running a hand through her hair. “Sorry again.”
“Is someone there?”
“Yeah,” she replied, and Eli raised his eyebrows. “It’s Harry.”
“Harry!”
At Eli’s call, Harry sauntered over and flopped down next to Fiona, throwing his arm across the back of the couch and angling himself toward the screen, which meant leaning into Fiona. He grinned and looked like he was about to greet Eli, but then he frowned. “Where are you?”
“In the cupboard.”
Harry glanced at Fiona, who shrugged. “All right then. How are things?”
“Good. Is Niall there?”
“I’m afraid he’s gone this weekend.”
Eli looked disappointed. “Will you tell him I said hi?”
“Of course,” Fiona said. “I’m gonna have to say goodbye now, kid. Don’t sulk all evening, yeah? We don’t want Mum and Dad angry with you too.”
“Okay. But you know Mum isn’t angry with you anymore,” Eli reminded her, though Fiona didn’t think she’d ever forget it.
“She’s always stressing about something, I don’t want to get too hopeful,” Fiona replied in what she hoped was a joking tone. Eli grinned, it seemed that she’d succeeded. “Talk to you soon, yeah?”
“Okay. Bye, Harry!”
“See you!” Harry lifted his hand to wave, beaming into the webcam. The call disconnected a moment later, and he tilted his head toward Fiona. “What was all that about your mum?”
Fiona realized that the only person she’d spoken to about it was Allison, who she now knew had orchestrated her mum’s path to acceptance. Even though Harry knew more than Niall, Zayn, or Cassidy after their conversation in London, she still hadn’t mentioned the call with her mum. It wasn’t something she’d thought about, because she was so used to not talking about her parents with her uni friends (one of which she considered to be Harry, despite the fact that he didn’t go to uni).
“Oh, er, so she’s sort of apologized for being a bad mum,” Fiona said quietly. Harry’s hand on the back of the couch dropped to her back and began sliding up and down her spine. “It was weird, she just rang out of nowhere. But apparently Allison had spoken to her about it, somehow managed to bring her around.”
“That’s brilliant, Fee,” Harry said, just as softly. “And your dad?”
“No progress there,” she scoffed, leaning back. Harry shifted around so his torso was directed toward her, his arm draped across her shoulders and his other hand lingering dangerously close to her thigh. “But he’s not the type to pick up the phone and talk it out, so…”
“You think he wants to, though? Make things better between you?”
“Mum says he might listen, but if they’ve been fighting more then I dunno.”
“Well, he’s a shit dad if he doesn’t come around at some point.”
“He’s already a shit dad.”
Harry sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, it’s nowt to do with you.” Fiona nudged him with her elbow, wanting to improve the mood. “What’ve you brought over, then? I’m ready to cook.”
“What?”
“I’m helping, obviously.”
“That wasn’t part of the agreement.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t remember there being an agreement.”
“You agreed to let me cook you dinner.”
“Yeah, and I wanna help.”
He rubbed his lips together, scanning her expression. “Fine. But you have to listen to what I tell you, or else it won’t be any good.”
“Oi, I’m not you, I can follow instructions.”
They moved to the kitchen and began unpacking the groceries. Harry claimed that they already had a lot of the ingredients, but Fiona still thought he’d brought over enough to feed five, not two. In one of the bags was a single item: a cheesecake, still in it’s baking tin.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“That was supposed to be a surprise,” Harry grumbled. “See? This is why I didn’t want you helping.”
He came over and pulled it out of the bag carefully, then set it on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Next to it, he placed a carton of raspberries and whipped cream. “You made a cake?” Fiona said, still in shock. She bit down on her lip, which didn’t hide her grin at all. “That’s adorable.”
“I’m an assistant pastry chef,” Harry replied seriously, placing his hands on his hips. “Of course I made a bloody cake.”
“What else is there, then?” she asked, peering in another bag. “Chicken?”
“Oh no, you aren’t going anywhere near that,” Harry said, pulling it away from her. Fiona raised her eyebrows, watching the serious expression on his face. Food was the one thing Harry wouldn’t joke around about, it seemed. “You can peel potatoes. They should be in that cupboard, unless someone cooked them, which would also ruin everything. I trust you know where the peeler is?”
Fiona scoffed. “Obviously.”
Since neither she or Niall had cooked anything in the past few days (their meals had consisted of leftovers, takeaway, and cereal, as per) the potatoes were in the cupboard Harry indicated. Fiona dragged them out and began peeling, side-eying Harry preparing the chicken as she did so.
There was something about the set of his shoulders, his focused expression, and the fact that his hair was pulled back into a bun, that made it hard to tear her eyes away. Fiona had never been unaware of the fact that Harry was attractive, she just hadn’t particularly cared, because she thought he was a twat and he was Niall’s friend and having sex with him just wasn’t something she’d considered.
But somewhere along the line, that had changed. Fiona had no idea how attraction worked, because it made absolutely no sense at the best of times, but that click when perception changes and just the way somebody moves feels like dragging a match along the edge of a tinder box and watching the tip spark and ignite had happened months ago, and she wasn’t sure why she’d ever tried to fight it.
He was still her mortal enemy, because he was still a twat and she was still a bitch and she didn’t expect that to change. But he was also Harry, who wrote secret poems about asparagus and made her tea just right and knew when to push her and when to let her be. And she liked him, in the silly romantic way where that certain smile of his tugged at her heart and his breath against her neck when they’d slept next to each other made her feel warm inside, right down to her toes.
Harry moved over to the sink and washed his hands, then came to check on her progress. “You’ve peeled three potatoes,” he said, hands on his hips. “I would like to say I expected more from you, but that would be lying. I’ll finish up, yeah?”
Fiona hummed and moved aside. The flutter in her stomach hadn’t gone away, but there was no wave of anxiety along with it like before. She stared at Harry’s back for a moment, lower lip caught between her teeth.
Then she took a step forward, close enough to reach up and run her hand along his shoulder, her fingers lingering on the skull tattoo on the back of his bicep. At the same time, Fiona brushed her lips over the skin at the nape of his neck, featherlight. Harry stilled, and she saw him set down the peeler as she placed another kiss to his neck. He turned around, leaning against the counter with his eyebrows raised.
“And I thought I was the distracting one,” he said. Fiona shrugged, her hand still on his arm, skimming over his rose tattoo.
Harry grinned, slipping his hand beneath her hair and leaning in, the rest of his body lifting off from the counter in one fluid movement to get as close to her as possible. With his mouth pressed to hers, Fiona could taste the gum he’d been chewing earlier, and his lips were somehow chapped and soft all at once. She ran her hands up his arms and wound them around his neck, going up on her toes so he wouldn’t have to lean over as much.
Without breaking the kiss, Harry turned them around and directed her over to a clear space on the counter, then secured his hands on her waist and lifted her up. Fiona pulled back in surprise, and ended up banging her head against the cupboard. “Oh, fuck,” she hissed, rubbing the sore spot on her scalp. Harry chuckled, pulling her forward a bit so they were closer, and so she wouldn’t hit her head again. Fiona scowled at him. “Shut up.”
She tightened her legs around his hips, her hand leaving her hair to begin undoing the buttons of his flannel. There were only three that were actually fastened, so she made quick work of it, and she pushed it off his shoulders impatiently. The moment his arms were free again, Harry’s hands were back to wandering, sliding up her thighs and under the back of her top. Fiona tugged his hair out of its bun, raking her fingers through the curls and hanging on when Harry’s mouth broke from hers and drifted along her jaw. He sucked on the skin below her ear, the dip where her neck met her shoulder, and began on her collarbone when she placed her palm on his chest.
Rather than push him away, like she’d done before when she wasn’t ready or the time wasn’t right, Fiona lifted her top over her head and tossed it down with his. But Harry wasn’t looking at the newly exposed skin, or the cute bra she was wearing. His eyes were on her arm, focused on the tattooed words in full view thanks to her forearm draped over his shoulder. Fiona slouched a little. She hadn’t expected Harry’s reaction to seeing her topless (not entirely, but still) to go like this. When several more seconds passed without him saying anything, she reached up with her other hand and held onto his chin, drawing her thumb across his bottom lip.
“Hello in there?” she said.
“Sorry,” Harry murmured. “Spaced out for a second.”
“You overtired or something?”
“No, I was—” Harry’s eyes drifted down, finally taking in the wine red bra she was wearing. His gaze flicked back up to hers, and Fiona raised a single eyebrow. “I was trying to remember my favourite line from The Tempest.”
Fiona had no idea that Harry had even read The Tempest, and she could list a dozen more lines from it that she liked, though not as much as the one she’d had tattooed on her arm. But she was more focused on the fact that no progress had been made on the snogging front. “You can do that later,” she said, and caught his top lip between hers.
“Potatoes,” Harry mumbled a few minutes later, pulling away again with swollen lips. Fiona couldn’t help the irritated growl that came from low in her throat, because they’d finally been getting somewhere and she didn’t have a reason to stop it this time. “Need to finish making dinner.”
He had a point, so after one more long, breathless kiss she let him go, then hopped off the counter and picked up her top. Harry put his back on too, but he didn’t bother buttoning it. Fiona went over and sat down on the couch under the pretense of getting some reading done, but she ended up watching Harry.
When it was ready (and the process included Harry refusing to let Fiona help him set the table, because she wouldn’t do it right) and she had sat down, Harry put down a plate in front of her that smelled heavenly. With him watching her intently, Fiona felt incredibly scrutinized as she speared a few spinach leaves with her fork and popped them into her mouth. She tasted everything on the plate, set her fork back down, and looked up to see that Harry still hadn’t touched his.
“You should cook for me all the time,” she concluded.
Harry grinned. “Already do.”
“Even more than usual, then. In fact, never leave. I’ll employ you as my personal chef.”
“You couldn’t afford my fee. Personal chefs get paid quite a lot.”
She raised her eyebrows. “With the amount I’ll be saving by not ordering takeaway every other night, I think I’ll do just fine. Niall will contribute, of course.”
Harry picked up his fork, shaking his head at her. “I’m glad you like it, Fee.”
+++
An hour later, Fiona and Harry moved over to the couch, each with a slice of cheesecake. Harry had made a joke about sharing a piece to be more romantic, but Fiona shut him down immediately. The second he listed the ingredients — raspberry, white chocolate — she needed an entire piece to herself. Probably two.
They fought for the centre cushion, but Fiona’s legs somehow ended up in Harry’s lap and he wound an arm around her knees, preventing her from shifting around. He leaned over and picked up his plate from the coffee table, grinning triumphantly at her. “Should we watch something?” she asked.
Harry hummed, reaching for the remote. But he only clicked through the channels, never settling on one program. Fiona was surprised when he passed the food channel, but Harry said it wasn’t very romantic. “Don’t you have, like, a million playlists on your phone?” he asked. “For every scenario?”
“For any studying scenario,” she corrected. Harry gave her a dubious look. “It’s like, you can’t listen to the same thing for writing essays as you would to read. It’s a completely different atmosphere. Then there’s an exam revision playlist, and—”
“I get it.” He shifted around to dig his phone out of his back pocket. A few seconds later, slow, smooth jazz began playing. Fiona raised her eyebrows, trying not to laugh.
“What is this?”
“My cooking playlist.”
“You cook to jazz?”
“Not when I’m here. We have it playing in the kitchen at work sometimes, I like it,” he shrugged, licking his lips when he saw her incredulous face. “Cooking, jazz, and romance. It all goes together.”
“Please stop saying romance.”
His expression was somber. “Still don’t like that stuff, huh?”
She stared at her nearly empty plate, feeling his thumb tracing circles just above her knee. “It’s not that,” she said, and looked at him. “I just feel like you’re going to start talking about how well your ‘wooing’ and ‘courtship’ of me is going.”
Harry scoffed. “Please, Fee. I’ve already wooed you.”
“Is that so?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
She grimaced, scooping up the last of her cheesecake. “What a horrible decision that was. I don’t even like you.”
Fiona set hers and Harry’s plates onto the coffee table, and was about to tie up her hair when Harry caught her cheek, a look of focus on his face, and he swiped at the corner of her mouth with the pad of his thumb, removing a bit of whipped cream that she hadn’t noticed. He drew his hand back and sucked the whipped cream off his thumb, looking at her with eyes she’d never noticed were quite so green.
It seemed that his music had done the trick, because she was leaping at him not a moment later, her fingers splayed across the hard line of his jaw and her mouth colliding with his. Harry made a surprised noise, but was pulling her into his lap without a moment of hesitation. They had been in this position before, albeit on a different couch, but there wasn’t anything in the way this time.
Fiona pushed Harry’s shirt off his shoulders and he discarded it with an impatient noise, already dragging hers up her torso. When it had been tossed aside, Harry had a very different reaction than he had the first time, closer to the one she’d expected of him. His lips found just the right spot below her ear and his hands explored her upper body, deftly unfastening the clasps on her bra before pulling the garment off.
Fiona tilted her head back and sighed as Harry’s mouth wandered further down, nipping at her skin and then kissing the same spot a moment later. Fiona ran her fingers through his hair, tipping his head back just enough for her to lean down and kiss him again, over and over and over, as he pushed down the waistband of her leggings until it was bunched around her hips, then sliding his hands back up to cup her breasts, giving a squeeze that made her moan. Fiona abandoned Harry’s hair to rake her fingers down his chest, getting him to sit up a little straighter when she skimmed the leaves inked over his hipbones on her way to his belt.
When she’d unfastened it and was working on the button of his jeans, Harry gave her shoulders a gentle push. “Up,” he mumbled.
There was a flurry of movement as they both shed their trousers, Harry’s tight jeans delaying him a few seconds longer than it took Fiona to remove her leggings. By the time he kicked them off, Fiona was already laughing, her hand over her mouth muffling the sound.
“Not funny,” Harry said, pointing a finger.
She couldn’t help it any longer, and let out a full laugh. “I’m sorry, I always wondered how awkward you’d look taking those off… it was even more hilarious than I imagined.”
“You thought about me taking my trousers off?” Harry asked, closing the space between them.
“Not like that,” she said quickly, then realized that this wasn’t the sort of scenario that called for denial of such things. “Well, once or twice.”
“If we’re playing this game, I’ll be honest — no matter how fit you look in that all that spandex running gear, no one could make taking a sports bra off look sexy.”
She appraised him, her gaze flicking down to the bulge in his pants briefly before wandering up his chest, her hands sliding up alongside it. “Want a bet?”
“Next time we go for a run, I’ll take you up on that offer,” he said. “But in the meantime—”
Harry captured her lips with his, walking backward willingly (after he’d picked up his phone) when she began to push him toward the corridor. “Hang on a second,” she said, when they got to the bathroom.
“What is it?”
“Do you really want to be running out here in a few minutes to get a condom?” she asked, breaking from him to open the cupboard below the sink.
Harry stared. “Why am I not surprised that there’s a communal condom box,” he muttered.
“This way we don’t have to go into each other’s rooms if we’ve run out,” she explained with a grin, dragging him the rest of the way to her bedroom. “And it’s economical.”
“I’ll be sure to pass the idea onto Zayn and Louis,” Harry replied, turning back around when his phone had been set on her bedside table and coming over, snaking his hands around to her hips as she shut the door behind them.
They fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, Harry ducking his head to trail fervent, open-mouthed kisses down her neck. Fiona hooked her fingers into the waistband of his pants, not wanting to waste any more time, and Harry picked himself up off her to remove them, then turned his focus to her knickers. There was a pause as his fingers skimmed the mesh material, and Fiona could feel her heart racing, her eyes taking in the boy before her. The one she hadn’t stopped thinking about in months, the one she never would’ve considered herself being in this position with before that, the one she wanted, needed, desperately.
But the beat ended, and Fiona lifted her hips so Harry could pull off her knickers. He knelt on the mattress, one of his knees between her legs, and licked his lips. “Tell me what you want.”
Fiona’s lips parted involuntarily. “Come here,” she said, and he was there in an instant. The room was illuminated only by the fairy lights twisted around her bedframe, and paired with the jazz playlist on Harry’s phone, Fiona realized that this was the most cheesy, romantic sex she’d ever experienced.
With nothing between them, Harry’s touch was different. More urgent. And the last thing Fiona wanted was to go slow — they would have time for that later. She caught Harry’s lip between her teeth, feeling his hips twitch when her fingers grazed his v-lines.
“Touch me,” she breathed.
Harry’s hand travelled from her breast down her stomach with an almost nervous slowness, and he kissed her along her jaw, his teeth nipping at her skin in the same moment he dragged a finger over her. Fiona hissed as his thumb circled her clit, her fist balling in the crumpled sheets, and Harry picked up his pace before sliding a finger into her.
She moaned when he slipped in a second finger, her eyelids fluttering and Harry’s breath on her cheek. Fiona could feel the heat building inside her, Harry’s hardness against her thigh. “Feel good?” he mumbled, his voice hoarse.
“Mmmm,” was all she was able to reply, cut through with a gasp as Harry’s fingers curled inside her. “Fuck.”
The smirk on Harry’s face was the same self-satisfied one she’d seen hundreds of times before. Without really thinking, she gave his shoulder a push and he fell onto his back in surprise. “Did I do something?” he asked, eyes widening.
Fiona smiled deviously, positioning herself over him. “For once,” she said, and wrapped her hand around him. Harry swallowed, his gaze flicking from her hand to her face and back again. “Those stupid dimples of yours actually turned me on.”
She didn’t get more than a few strokes in before Harry was scrambling for the condom, muttering in between grunts about how he couldn’t wait any longer. Fiona saw it first, tossing the packet onto Harry’s chest while biting back a grin. Harry rolled the condom on, then sat up and cupped her cheeks, his mouth on hers, filled with desire. Though she would have kept kissing him, Fiona wanted to see the look on his face when this thing he’d been waiting for finally happened, so she gave his chest a shove and lifted her hips, positioning herself above him. Harry’s hands slid down her sides, pausing at the swell of her hips as she lowered herself slowly, watching the focused expression on his face, his brows pulled together and his lips pulled in between his teeth.
Their hips moved together, finding a rhythm, and Fiona leaned down to give Harry a mark of her own, to go with all the ones he’d left on her skin. But then he was flipping her over, his thrusts coming faster and harder as he hooked her leg around his waist, his hair tickling her cheek and his breath hot against her collarbone. Fiona bit back a whimper of pleasure, but it escaped anyway, her body not expecting to be brought to the edge quite so soon.
Because Fiona had quite a lot of sex, and she’d come to expect some things. In spite of all the teasing he received from Niall, and the several month long lull in his sex life up until his birthday, Harry was leagues better than she had anticipated. His constantly roaming hands, that mouth, the movement of his hips in just the right way, the low rumble of his voice spilling expletives against her skin — all together they pulled her apart, spreading out from her lower abdomen to the tips of her fingers and down to her toes.
Fiona arched her back, gripping Harry’s curls as she came and letting out a cry of pleasure. It was like the sound of her losing herself in him was all Harry needed, and his thrusts became sloppier, his lips moving along her jaw. Their hips collided again before Harry’s breath hitched and then released in a rush, and he tumbled to the mattress next to her.
“Fuck,” he sighed.
“Fuck,” Fiona agreed.
Harry removed the condom and leaned over Fiona to toss it in the bin next to her desk, then settled on his side, propped up by his elbow, his hair falling into his face as he gazed down at her. “What time is Niall back tomorrow?”
Her eyes had slipped shut, but she opened them just to glare at him. “Well, you’ve just ruined my excellent mood. Well done, Harry.”
“I’m only asking because there’s clothing all over the place,” he said. “And the cheesecake is out in the open.”
“He said in the evening, but who really knows. Apparently these conferences have pretty wild after parties, so he might not get back till Monday.”
Harry contemplated their options, but apparently decided he’d rather the flat be inconspicuous. “Won’t be a mo,” he said, and kissed her forehead before he clambered out of bed and picked up his pants. In his rush to leave the room, he stumbled while still pulling them up, and looked back to narrow his eyes at Fiona when she laughed. “I’m glad you find me so amusing.”
“It’s better than when I used to shout at you for breathing too loud, isn’t it?”
“Loads,” he said, and disappeared into the corridor.
There was nothing like good sex to help Fiona fall asleep, and she was out before Harry returned.
+++
She woke up at half past five, itching for a cigarette. Fiona carefully untangled herself from Harry, which was easier said than done. Her leg was hitched over hip, one of her arms caught under his neck and the other thrown over his torso, while he had his face buried in her collarbone and his arms locked around her middle.
But he only grumbled a little bit when she wriggled out of his grasp, then rolled over and continued snoring softly into a pillow. Fiona pulled on a sleep shirt and clean knickers from her closet, then padded out of the room with her pack and lighter.
It was still cold out, but warmer than it had been all year, which she took as a good sign. They wouldn’t see any decent weather until June, most like, but she could bear through the gooseflesh on her legs until then. Fiona leaned against the railing, cigarette dangling between her lips as she tugged her hair back into a bun.
She smoked it quickly, wanting to get back to the warmth of Harry and her bed. His feet were perpetually frozen, as she’d discovered when they’d shared her bed earlier in the week, but the rest of him wasn’t. She stubbed out the end in the ashtray and slipped back inside, leaving her cigarettes on her desk before climbing under the covers.
“You almost made it through the night,” Harry croaked, grunting tiredly as he turned onto his side. His hand slid up her thigh and under her shirt, settling on her hip so he could pull her closer. This time, Fiona curled up against Harry’s chest, tracing one of the swallows on his chest with the tip of her finger.
“I was tired,” she said.
“You’re always tired.”
“I sleep,” she defended, but Harry only chuckled.
“Only when your body forces you to,” he said. Fiona’s silence was enough of a confirmation. Harry’s arms tightened around her. “Have you ever thought about seeing a—”
“No.”
“I was only—”
“I know what you were doing, and I’m telling you to stop.”
“Fiona—”
“No, Harry.”
He sighed and pulled the elastic out of her hair, putting it around his own wrist before smoothing his hand over her head. “Fine. Let’s try and sleep some more, yeah?”
But even though Harry was asleep in a matter of seconds, his breathing slow and even, Fiona couldn’t do the same. He didn’t protest when she turned around, her back against his chest, and she managed to plug the fairy lights back in (he’d unplugged them after cleaning up in the living room) and grab her book off the bedside table.
Fiona spent the next few hours reading, and ended up finishing her book entirely before Harry woke up just a little bit past nine. He pushed her hair aside and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck, humming against her skin. “Did you sleep?”
“No.”
Harry hummed again, only lower and less satisfied. “Tea?”
“I can make it.”
Harry scoffed, kissing her neck again and rolling out of bed on the other side. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, pausing at the door. “Your tea is terrible.”
While he was gone, Fiona flicked on the overhead light and picked up the stray clothes on the floor, leaving Harry’s in a pile in the far corner of the bed and tossing hers into the laundry basket next to her closet. She tucked the book she’d finished in the early hours of the morning back into its spot on the shelf, scanning the ones around it for her next read. It was habit to have something non-academic by her bedside to read when she couldn’t sleep, just to make the hours pass by faster.
Thinking of Harry, she picked out a collected works of Neruda, skimming through the pages and seeing that she’d marked some of them up, but she didn’t remember when. She sat on the floor, leaning against the side of her bed, and was still reading when Harry returned.
He handed her the steaming mug carefully, then went around to the other side of the bed and leapt onto it, crossing his forearms on the mattress by her head and leaning his chin on them. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Neruda.”
“Ah,” Harry said. He licked his lips. “‘I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.’”
“Harry.”
“’Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.’”
She touched her chin to her shoulder, knowing the lines that came next. It was probably the worst one he could have picked, and by that she meant the best, because just the idea of Harry saying ’I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,’ had her biting her lip and trying not to throw herself at him.
“Are you trying to get a reaction out of me?”
“Always.”
Fiona sniffed and snapped the book shut, sliding it back onto the shelf. Her fingertips trailed along the spines, lingering whenever Harry made a sound of recognition. She remembered the books she’d seen in his room, and thought he could do with some literary education. “So, you know Neruda,” she began, plucking a book off the shelf. “What else?”
“Not as much as you, I’m sure,” he replied. “I don’t read much prose.”
“Poetry, then.”
Beside her, Harry shifted around clearing his throat several times. “Well, I did a year of English. You know that.”
He didn’t talk about it much; Harry’s short life as an academic was almost entirely swept under the table. In the past, whenever she brought up literature he wouldn’t even contribute, though she knew after seeing his collection that he’d read most of the same books she had in her first year, and several others she’d had mentioned. It didn’t make much sense to her why he kept that part of himself hidden, because to her, it was everything. Like the culinary arts were for him.
“And you still read?”
“Er, yeah. A bit, I guess,” Harry shrugged. “Mostly poetry.”
“Yeah?” she prompted.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s always been more appealing to me than prose,” he said slowly. Fiona felt something new, a surge of pleasure and fulfillment at hearing him begin to open up. She wondered if this was how he’d felt the first time she complimented his food. “I dunno, there’s something about it… it’s like cooking, in a way. Like, therapeutic and gratifying, while also being a challenge? You’ve got to think about it, and I like that. But at the same time, you can get lost in either one. Not in the restaurant, of course, but when I’m cooking for myself, I just let it happen. And when I’m writing—”
He stopped, frowning. Fiona had turned around completely just to watch Harry talking about something he was passionate about, and she held her breath without realizing it the second he paused. Though she knew about his poetry already, he wasn’t aware of that, so it was like a big reveal had happened. And not when he’d intended it. But this was what they both were trying to work toward. Fiona told Harry about things she’d never admitted out loud, and he’d just done the same.
“I, er,” he stammered, propping himself up on his elbow and raking his hair back. He met her gaze, looking conflicted. “I’m a bit of a poet myself.”
Fiona smiled softly, stretching a hand across the mattress to him. She didn’t know what to say, and it definitely didn’t feel like the right time to tell him that she had secretly read his journals, so she hoped that linking their fingers together was enough. Harry looked down at their hands and his frown disappeared completely. The muscles in his jaw twitched as he mulled something over, and after a long moment he looked at her again.
“I’ve even written a few about you.”
There was nothing that could have prepared her for that. “Me?” she mouthed, unable to make a sound.
“Not in a creepy way,” he said, his eyes widening. “I write about everything. You’ve just ended up in there a lot lately.”
She thought about his ode to asparagus that had stuck in her mind for no apparent reason, and knew he wasn’t lying. But it was still a shock, given how lovely the poems she had read were. Reading Neruda was one thing. It would be quite another if he were to read something out of his own mind.
“Why did you have to be such an annoying twat when we met?” she asked, moving onto her knees so their heads were level. “If you’d been like this… god, Harry.”
“You wouldn’t have been ready for it,” he said. “You’ve changed a lot since we met too, Fee.”
There was truth to his words. The Fiona of a year and a half ago would never have even considered proper dating. She was too restless, too angry, too stubborn.
He lifted her hand and kissed the back of her palm, her knuckles, and made a point of kissing the inside of her index finger, where she had a lightsaber (Luke’s from the original film, naturally, though you couldn’t really tell the difference since the handle was too small) tattooed for her nineteenth birthday. He kissed the pulse point of her wrist, up her forearm to her elbow, then settled back onto his stomach and shimmied forward to kiss the tattoo on her inner bicep.
“Are you going to kiss my foot now?” she asked, sliding back onto her bum to lift her left foot, where the little crown Zayn had inked for her was.
“I could.”
“Well, don’t. That would be weird.”
Harry grinned before kissing her shoulder, and she leaned in to give him access to her jaw. He nudged her nose with his own, and then they were kissing, but it didn’t last long because Harry was craning his neck and the angle wasn’t quite right.
“What was the book you picked out?” Harry asked after he’d pulled away and readjusted on the mattress so he was lying on his side, head propped up by his hand. It had been forgotten on the floor some time in their conversation. Fiona picked it up and held it out for him to read. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Everyone’s read her.”
“No, they’ve read that one sonnet.”
Harry’s eyes lit up. “’How do I love thee?’”
“Not funny,” she said. She dropped the book onto the mattress. “The flagged pages are my favourites.”
“For me?”
“Obviously.”
Several more books followed in quick succession. “I’ve not read any of these,” Harry peered at the cover of the latest one, an Ishiguro, his bottom lip jutting out, then added it to the little pile next to him on the mattress.
She had been picking ones she didn’t remember seeing on his shelf. “I sort of looked at what you already had when you let me sleep in your room that one time,” she said hurriedly, stretching up to grab one of her Eliot collections. She handed it to Harry.
“Okay, this I’ve read.”
“Yours didn’t have ‘Prufrock.’”
“What the fuck is a ‘Prufrock?’” Harry asked, brow furrowed. He’d already started flipping through the book, pausing on the particularly annotated pages.
Fiona stopped what she was doing to stare at him incredulously. Not having read it was one thing. But liking T.S. Eliot and not having ever heard of ‘Prufrock’ was unacceptable. She liked The Waste Land and ‘The Hollow Men’, but ‘Prufrock’ was brilliant. “Just read it. You’ll like it, I promise.”
He sighed and added the book to the pile. “It’s going to take me ages to finish all of this. I don’t have as much free time as you clearly think I do.”
“You’ll find time,” she replied, turning her gaze back to the bookcases. “Since we’re talking about American poets now, you should try reading something that isn’t by a white male.”
“Okay,” he said, chuckling.
“I’m serious, Harry. Instead of reading Leaves of Grass for the seventeen-millionth time, try Langston Hughes instead. Or Maya Angelou. You like Poe, right?” she asked, and Harry shrugged. “Well, read Poe. But read Emily Dickinson too.”
“Are you still mad that I like Bukowski?”
She pursed her lips, because he wasn’t getting the point. “Look, I’m not saying that liking Bukowski is a bad thing. You can like him all you want, some of his stuff is really good, if you ignore the alcoholism and misogyny. But if you like poetry in the way that I’m pretty sure you do, then you’ve got to expand your horizons a little bit. However, if you’d like my personal opinion, you should toss out all the Bukowski and stick to Neruda.”
Because he had enough reading to last several weeks, she stood up and moved the stack of books over to where his clothes were folded on the corner of her bed, then took their place next to Harry. He flopped onto his back and smiled up at her. “We should eat the rest of that cheesecake.”
Her gaze wandered down his naked torso. “Off each other?”
“That would ruin the flavour,” Harry said immediately. She blinked at him, disappointed. “But I appreciate where your mind is going.”
“Well, we’ve got to make the most of our time alone,” she said, and hitched a leg over him so that she straddled his hips, placing her hands on his chest and arching an eyebrow.
Harry promptly sat up, his hands finding her waist. “Are we going to tell Niall?”
“Absolutely not,” she declared. “His mind would explode.”
“Fair point.”
Then he kissed her.
♠ ♠ ♠
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