Crooked Heart

“Here. Earl Grey, right?”

Fiona stared at the cup Liam was holding out, thumb hooked around the straps of her tote to stop it from slipping off her shoulder. They had met outside the library, and were about to go in and do some revision together while they both had a break between classes. Fiona’s was only an hour and a half and Liam’s three, but she’d been writing her series of papers in the middle of the night and they definitely weren’t her best work, so she wanted to seize the opportunity and have him take a glance. They only had one class together this term, thanks to different electives mixing up their schedules, and it also happened to be the one that Fiona was the least certain about.

“Er, yeah,” she said, taking it from his grasp. “Thanks, Liam.”

He smiled. “You always look so tired,” he said, which made her frown. “And I remember you saying how you don’t like coffee, so…”

“I only drink it under dire circumstances,” she admitted, taking a sip of the tea. There was too much milk, but it would do. “Next time I’ll return the favour. What’s your drink?”

“Americano.”

“Fancy.”

They headed inside, and Liam chuckled. “Not really.”

It was a busy time of year, with students in every department rushing to finish assignments and crowding into every available study space on campus, including the formerly quiet library that Fiona and Liam had been frequenting all year.

The top floor had several individual study spaces available, but they had to share a table with a few Biology students because there wasn’t any space for two people to sit together anywhere else. Luckily, the others weren’t the sort that gave dirty looks for talking, since they were doing it too. So the table was filled with quiet chatter — albeit about completely different subjects — and Fiona didn’t have to tell anybody off for being uptight.

“How are things?” Liam asked, looking up from his computer. They’d been working in relative silence, with the occasional request for the other to read a paragraph over.

“All right,” Fiona shrugged.

Liam raised his eyebrows. “Just all right? They seemed pretty good on Monday when Harry picked you up from class. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, pausing with her cup halfway to her mouth. “What are you suggesting?”

“That you’re sleeping with him,” Liam said. Before she could open her mouth to argue, he pointed at her and grinned. “You are. I know that look!”

“Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong,” Fiona said firmly, sipping her tea.

“Except that you definitely are.”

Fiona made a disgruntled sound, scowling at him over her laptop. Liam sat back in his chair, looking pleased with himself. “It’s complicated.”

“Ha!” Liam exclaimed. It was a bit too loud, and the boy at the other end of the table looked up from his notes. Liam muttered an apology, then leaned toward Fiona. “So you do have a heart.”

“Piss off.”

“I’m happy for you,” he said earnestly. “I mean, I’m not going to deny the fact that I was still kind of hoping something would happen with us, but this is okay too.”

“Thanks?” she said, confused.

Liam chuckled. “That sounded weird, I’m sorry. But I really am happy for you.”

“Okay,” Fiona looked back at her screen. She didn’t like talking about this sort of thing, especially not with Liam, who she’d turned down for months. But the fact that he’d noticed something was going on with her and Harry by a simple look was concerning — there was a possibility that Niall had noticed something too. He hadn’t mentioned anything yet, but it had only been three days since he got back from Oxford.

“Hey, I’ve just sent you my conclusion for the ‘Tintern Abbey’ essay, could you give it a read?”

Fiona clicked on the email that had just popped up, feeling the need to tell Liam that he could just send her his essay when it was finished rather than copy and pasting each paragraph into a separate email as he wrote them. But he’d probably keep doing the same thing anyway, so she looked over his conclusion and replied with her advice.

“You’re getting better with intros and conclusions,” she said. It was where Liam had struggled in the past. He tended not to get carried away in the middle, like she did, so they made a good proofreading pair.

But soon enough she had to head to her class, and she left Liam to work on the rest of his assignments in the library.

+++

Fiona saw him from the corner, grabbing a duffle bag from the backseat of his car. They met at the door, and she glanced at the bag in his hand as he reached for the door, keys already in his hand. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” she asked.

“I’m only on dinner service now,” Harry replied, grinning sideways at her.

“Is that a good thing?”

“It means I don’t have to be up at the crack of dawn to bake scones,” he said. “I’ve proved myself as a capable assistant pastry chef, so now I get to work in the evenings regularly instead of once or twice a week.”

They got in the lift. “So, what’s the difference?”

Harry glanced at her, and she could see he was pleased that someone was asking about his work. “Basically it’s just me and the head pastry chef, instead of a rotating schedule of cooks assisting her. I’ll be doing a lot more precision work as well, like with sugar and fondant and stuff.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been practicing. My buttercream is ace.”

Fiona couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips. Harry blinked at her, clearly not finding it amusing, but didn’t comment as she unlocked the flat and went inside. Niall wouldn’t be home until at least seven, and they were going to the pub for the student discount on Thursdays. Fiona had been planning on texting Harry about it, but it was clear he wouldn’t be able to come now.

She tossed her jacket on the bed and started to unpack her tote onto her already cluttered desk, noticing how Harry left his duffle by her door before flopping onto the bed with one of the books she’d lent him. With another glance, she saw that it was A Clockwork Orange. “What d’you think of that so far?” she asked, setting her bag on the floor so she could sit in her chair. She rolled it closer to the bed and propped up her feet.

“I have no idea what’s happening,” Harry admitted. “Most of it isn’t even in English.”

“Keep at it,” she encouraged. “It’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, that bit’s pretty obvious.” Harry read another page, then looked back at her. “Your taste in literature makes absolutely no sense to me.”

“Good.”

Harry chuckled, sliding the scrap of paper he was using for a bookmark in before snapping the book shut and dropping it onto the mattress. He rolled onto his side, nudging her leg with his foot and gesturing for her to come over. “C’mere,” he said, when she stayed where she was. Moving from her chair onto the bed, Fiona lay next to Harry, and he lifted his arm to accommodate her, letting her curl up against his chest. “You should know now, before you commit to this, I’m a cuddler.”

“Before I commit?” she asked quietly.

“Well, I mean, I know we had all those serious talks before,” Harry said slowly. “But this is like… a warm-up. We’re still getting to know each other, yeah? Like, romantically?”

She hummed. She had forgotten what it was like to be held. Harry’s hand sliding along her back, gazing down at her with his head propped up on his fist, blinking slowly. He was all warmth, apart from his feet. But he was wearing socks, so she didn’t notice as much. “Then you should know that I need to be alone sometimes, and I’m sorry if it gets in the way of us, but—”

“You don’t need to explain yourself,” Harry interrupted. “I knew that about you already.”

“But you don’t always leave me alone,” she mumbled.

A deep frown came over his features, knitting his eyebrows together. “I’m sorry. From now on I will, you just need to tell me, yeah?”

Fiona nodded, feeling a little weight lift off her.

They lay there for a while, eventually shifting so they both lay on their backs, and Fiona rested her head on his shoulder. Harry’s fingers trailed along her collarbone, his arm hooked under her neck, and she told him about Liam and how he’d figured out something was going on when Harry picked her up from class on Monday.

"That's not such a bad thing, is it?"

"I sort of wanted to be in control of when we tell people, that was the whole idea with Niall wasn't it?"

Harry hummed. "Niall's a bit different though, isn't he? Like, Zayn knows, but he's not gonna go shouting it from the rooftops and making a fuss like Niall would."

“Zayn knows?” Fiona asked, sitting up so she could look Harry in the eye.

"Yeah?" Harry said, sheepish. "I've sort of been going to him for advice, ever since... well, always, if I'm honest. You and him are similar, and he understands you better than I do sometimes. Helps me figure out how to approach you. Mostly he just tells me not to be a cheeky bastard, though."

Fiona raised her eyebrows, still feeling lingering annoyance toward him. She'd known that Harry went to Zayn when he needed someone to talk to, but having it confirmed that Zayn knew practically everything that had gone on between her and Harry made her uncomfortable. Fiona cherished her privacy.

But Zayn knew that, and Harry was right; he wouldn’t tell anybody unless they explicitly said he could.

“That’s good advice,” she decided. Harry grinned, his nervous expression disappearing. Perhaps he’d been expecting her to blow up at him. Fiona went back to her previous position, and Harry let out a low, contented hum that reverberated in his chest. “Y’know, Zayn knowing means we could hang out at your house more.”

“Louis is going home this weekend, too, so we wouldn’t have to tell him yet,” Harry added.

“That must be why he was so adamant we go to the pub,” Fiona said.

“You’re going?”

“Yeah, I’ve been dodging their invites lately,” she said. “Dunno how I used to go out every weekend in first year.”

Harry chuckled, and his hand slipped under her denim shirt to rest against the small of her back. “You’ve become old and boring.”

“I’m not even twenty yet,” she grumbled.

“Just boring then.”

“Oi!” she smacked his chest and Harry only laughed louder.

The time for Harry to leave came around faster than she would’ve liked. He disentangled himself and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then scrambled around for his things. Fiona sat up, sliding to the edge of the bed, and she watched him tug on his boots through the open doorway. “Should I go back to yours, then? After the pub?”

“What would you say to Niall?”

“That I’m staying at yours? Zayn’ll be there, and I don’t expect he’ll want to stay out too late. I’ll just leave with him.”

Harry hitched his duffle onto his shoulder. “Sure.”

“Then you can drive me to my eight-thirty class tomorrow,” she said with a grin.

“Hilarious,” Harry replied dryly. She raised an eyebrow. “Fine.”

+++

Niall arrived home with a pizza, leftover from one of his meetings. His final term at uni had been hectic thus far, with something going on all the time — from meetings to classes to studying. Fiona could tell he was really looking forward to the pub, especially since she’d finally accepted his invitation to join them.

“Harry’s usually here by now,” Niall said, collapsing on the couch and setting his plate onto his stomach, four slices of pizza piled onto it. “Know where he is?”

There were only two slices on Fiona’s plate, but she’d skipped lunch to study with Liam and would probably end up eating more than her flatmate by the time the pizza was gone with the way her stomach was growling. “He’s on dinner service now, full time,” she said, tearing off a bit of the crust and popping it in her mouth.

“That’s good… right?”

“He said it was,” Fiona shrugged. “I’ve no idea what a buttercream is, but apparently his is ace.”

Niall let out a single, loud HA! dropping the slice in his hand back onto his plate. “It’s a kind of icing,” he said, but he was eyeing her curiously. “You and Harry are getting on, eh? Seems like you’ve been closer since New Years.”

“I guess.”

“It’s much quieter around here without you two fighting all the time,” he said. “Careful though. Fights with friends can be much worse than ones with people you don’t like in the first place.”

It was strangely wise, coming from Niall. “I’ll try not to be too nice to him then,” she said.

“Good plan,” Niall nodded.

“Why don’t we ever fight, Niall?”

He looked over at her and shrugged. “Dunno.”

“I think I wasted all my angry energy on Harry.”

“To be fair, he kind of asked for it.”

Fiona laughed, and Niall joined in, excited as he always was whenever she displayed his favourite emotion.

They finished up their pizza, and then Niall rang Louis to see when he and Zayn were thinking of heading to The Gallery. It turned out they were already there and about to start their second round, even though it was only half past eight and the plan was to meet at nine. Niall gave Louis a few choice words before leaping off the couch and grumbling about how he still had to change his shirt.

Fiona waited for him by the door, raising her eyebrows when he finally emerged from the bathroom with his hair sticking out in every direction. She raised them further when he chose to wear a denim jacket with only his henley underneath, and clad in his ever-present ripped jeans. Then, if it were possible, her eyebrows would’ve receded into her hairline when he tugged on a pair of Chelsea boots not unlike her own.

“Did you let Harry talk to you about clothing again?” she asked, striding into the hallway.

Niall scoffed, but didn’t answer her. With the door locked, they left the building and headed straight for the bus stop. “Can’t believe those wankers started without us,” he grumbled, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his jacket.

It was early in March, so it was still cold out. Not to mention that there was always a chance of rain, which Fiona was prepared for with the hoodie she’d tugged on over her shirt. That and her wool moto jacket left her nice and toasty, while Niall would have to drink several pints before he stopped feeling the cold.

When they got to The Gallery, they found Louis and Zayn at a booth along the wall, watching as a group of guys across the pub played a pitiful round of darts. After dropping off their jackets, and Niall flipping Louis the bird for not ringing him when they got there nearly an hour ago, they went up to get their drinks.

Back at the booth, Fiona slipped in next to Zayn and Niall sat next to Louis, if only so he could smack him upside the head. “Oi!” Louis exclaimed, as Zayn laughed.

“It’s your fault too!” Niall hollered at him. Zayn held up his hands and stayed quiet. “Right, lads night out!” Niall exclaimed, slapping his palm against the table. Fiona cleared her throat before sipping her pint, meeting Zayn’s amused gaze. “Come on, Fiona, you’ve always been one of the lads.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Because I fuck girls too?”

“Well—”

“Please think about what you were about to say, and I guarantee you’re going to reconsider saying it.”

Niall glanced at Louis, who shrugged back. “I apologize for making a judgement based on your sexuality.”

She smiled at him and tipped her glass to his. “There’s a good lad.”

“But—”

“Are you really going to argue with me on this one?”

Niall grunted and drank his beer. Louis clapped him on the shoulder, directing his attention to a pair of girls near the bar. “That’ll cheer you up, mate.”

“Not in the mood anymore,” he replied, sending Fiona sour look.

“Oh, come on!” Louis exclaimed. “I’m going home for the weekend, and as much as I love my mum, she’s not the sort of person I can take to a pub to chat up girls. I need my wingman!”

“All right, all right, let me at least get a buzz on before we go talk to them, though,” Niall said. Louis gave a cheer and tapped his glass to Niall’s. They fell into a discussion that didn’t apply to Zayn or Fiona, leaving them in each other’s company on the other side of the booth.

“How’s things with Harry?” Zayn asked quietly.

Fiona glanced across the table at the other boys before she spoke. “Fine, yeah. I mean, it hasn’t even been a week yet, so.”

“You both seem pretty happy about it, though.”

“Got tired of telling myself it was a bad idea,” Fiona said, and Zayn chuckled. “By the way, I’m gonna be staying at your house tonight.”

“Cass’ll be there.”

“That’s fine.”

“Louis too.”

“Well, he’ll be too drunk to notice,” she said. “Besides, I’ll probably be in Harry’s room the whole time. What time’s Louis’ train?”

“9 AM.”

“And he’s out tonight? Looking to get off with someone?”

Zayn shrugged. “It’s Louis.”

Fiona realized she’d done the same thing half a dozen times before, right before a train ride down to London. She had that winter break, in fact — only she hadn’t been looking to get off with someone. Still, taking the train home with a hangover was not fun.

“I’m getting another,” Niall said, sliding out of the booth. “Fiona?”

“I’m all right, cheers though.”

He nodded, sauntering off to the bar. Meanwhile, Louis leaned his forearms on the table and fixed Fiona with a serious stare. “When was the last time you actually had sex, Kingsley?”

“None of your business, Tomlinson.”

“You used to be dead fun,” he said in a resigned tone. “What the hell happened?”

“So suddenly I’m not fun because I don’t want to get off with someone on a Thursday night?”

Louis sighed. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“Yeah,” she said. Out of the corner of her eye, Fiona saw Zayn smirking into his glass. She elbowed him for good measure.

When Niall returned, he and Louis went straight back to scheming. But Fiona took a glance at the girls in question and shook her head. “You know, if you were smart you would’ve just gone up and talked to those girls instead of making it into a big thing.”

“What?”

“They’ve got company.”

It was the shit dart players, which only served to annoy Louis. But Niall had seen a girl sitting alone at the bar when he went to get his second pint, and directly Louis’ attention to her. A few minutes later, Louis was heading over with Fiona’s warning not to be too much of a dickhead.

“You’re really not gonna go for it tonight?” Fiona asked Niall.

He shrugged, taking a drink. “It’s lads and lady night. I finally got you to come out, what kind of mate would I be if I ditched you to go talk to a girl?”

Fiona gave him a sympathetic look. “I wouldn’t be mad, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You’ve just been different about this stuff lately,” Niall said. “After that last guy, at least.”

Fiona ignored Zayn’s raised eyebrows. Niall was still the only one who knew about Oliver, and things were still feeling a little shaky on that front, what with her text ending things going unanswered. And though he was one of her best mates, Fiona thought Niall was the worst person to tell things to. It was why she was hesitant about telling him about her and Harry; she liked the privacy that came with him not knowing.

+++

Fiona hadn’t been back in her own flat for more than ten minutes in the past two days. She had work in a few hours, but she started around the same time as Harry so he offered to drop her off. For the time being, she was content to lie about the house and get some reading done. Zayn and Cassidy were somewhere around too, but they’d disappeared shortly after the four of them had breakfast together and she hadn’t seen them in nearly three hours. She suspected they’d fallen back asleep after the omelettes Harry had made.

“You’ve been staring at that page for twenty minutes,” Harry said, interrupting her thoughts.

She glanced over her book to where Harry was sprawled out on the other couch. He’d been reading the last time she looked up, but now the novel was sitting on the coffee table and he held the remote in his hand. She hadn’t even noticed that the television was on.

“The Monk’s Tale is complicated,” she replied.

“I can see that,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for ages.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Sorry.”

“S’all right.” Harry promptly got up and plucked the book from her hands, ignoring the sound of protest she made. Once it had been set on the table with her page marked, he held her face in his hands and leaned down to give her a lingering kiss.

When he pulled away, Fiona frowned. “What was that for?”

“You looked like you could use a kiss,” he shrugged. “And now you look like you need to stop doing coursework for a minute and come cuddle with me.”

“Harry—”

“No arguing,” he said, grabbing her hands and hauling her up and out of the recliner. Soon enough they were lying on the couch, her back against his chest. “Do you feel more relaxed yet?”

“Is that what this is about?” she asked. “This is just a busy time of year, Harry, I’m allowed to be stressed. Don’t you remember anything about uni?”

His breath fanned the back of her neck right before his lips brushed over the curve of her shoulder, bared by her wide-necked t-shirt. “I was only trying to take your mind off it, Fee,” he mumbled.

Harry’s hand flattened against her stomach, his thumb moving in slow, sleepy circles. If she were the sort of person who took naps, Fiona might drift off right there. But then Zayn and Cassidy decided to appear, and he snatched the remote off the coffee table. They both sat on the recliner Fiona had been occupying moments earlier, Cassidy folded up in Zayn’s lap and his arm draped over her shoulders.

Perhaps she should have noticed it earlier at breakfast, or even the night before when they all argued over what film to watch (which Harry arrived in the middle of and promptly fell asleep with his head in Fiona’s lap), but it was smacking her right in the face just then and she had no idea how this had all happened so quickly.

She lifted Harry’s arm and got to her feet, pushing a hand through her hair as left the room. She grabbed her cigarettes and jacket, shrugging the latter on as she walked out onto the front porch and sat down on the steps. When she’d taken a few drags she felt a little better, the smoke swirling out from between her lips in hazy spirals.

When she went back in and took off her jacket in the foyer, Harry came from around the corner, his brow creased with concern. “Everything all right?”

“You and I used to fight a lot,” she said, because it was all she’d been thinking about outside. “I could barely tolerate being in the same room as you.”

“Okay,” Harry said slowly, taking a few steps toward her.

Fiona tucked her cigarettes into her jacket pocket, where it hung next to a slew of the boys’ coats. “It’s just strange, how we went from that to this… domestic life. In, like, a week.”

“Does it feel like it’s been a week?”

“I dunno, it’s all blurred together.”

“It’s okay to be boring sometimes, Fee,” Harry said. “Can you imagine if we still fought all the time?”

“But we do still fight,” Fiona flicked her gaze to his, and felt her own frown reflected back at her. “We had a row about raspberries versus blackberries this morning. But it wasn’t even a proper row, I mean, I wasn’t angry with you or anything. Things just… it feels too easy.”

He pursed his lips, closing the gap between them to rub his hands over her shoulders. “Remember how I said this was like a warm-up?” he asked, and she hummed to indicate that she did. “Well, maybe this is part of that. Maybe we’re the sort of people who just spend time together. You don’t want to have the sort of relationship where we actually make plans to go on proper dates, do you?”

“Sounds horrible,” she mumbled.

“Exactly,” Harry replied, and she could hear the smile in his voice. She wanted to tilt her head up to see it, but she was too comfortable leaning into his chest, feeling his gravelly tone reverberate against her cheek. “And it shouldn’t be difficult. If it were, that would be a red flag, wouldn’t it? Who says we need to be fiery and exciting 24/7? I think we should save that for the bedroom, myself. Do you have any idea how exhausting it was to try and think of ways to annoy you all the time? I’d much rather lie on the couch and not talk for two hours.”

“You wouldn’t be able to stay quiet for that long.”

“Heeey,” Harry complained.

“You bother me even when you aren’t trying,” she continued. “But sometimes it’s a good sort of bother.”

His hand tucked under her hair, tilting her chin up so they looked each other in the eye. “I dunno what sort of relationships you’ve been in, but you don’t have to worry about, like, disappointing me. If that’s what this was really about and all.”

Though she might not have wanted to admit it, the anxiety had been there. Her past relationships had failed because she had not been attentive enough of what the other person wanted. But here was Harry, telling her exactly what he thought.

“I don’t want it to seem like I’m not trying,” she said.

“Like I said,” Harry’s thumb brushed over her cheekbone. “I really am the boring domestic sort. I’m a bloody cook, for christssake, I practically live in the kitchen — the epitome of domesticity. Sure, I’ve got a lot of energy, but I’d rather go for a run than to a party.”

“But I didn’t think I was the boring domestic sort. I never used to be.”

Harry shook his head at her. “Really, Fee, with all the reading you do…”

“What?”

“Surely you didn’t think you’d be the same person your entire life.”

She blinked. Though she’d been actively trying to be better over the last several weeks, she hadn’t thought that it might be happening without her noticing. Sure, she’d always had weeks where she didn’t feel like going out and getting off with the first person who smiled back at her, but those were mostly filled with constant moodiness and no sleep.

But ever since she decided to do right by Harry, and through him, herself, she had been feeling better. She’d actually pulled it off, and her one mistake had been expecting it to result in some big event where she was congratulated for not fucking something up for once. It was still early, and she knew that, but her shoulders didn’t feel so tense anymore as they walked back into the living room.