Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Fuck,” Harry curses, quickly ducking behind the white, undeniably phallic sculpture in the middle of the gallery. As he jumps, the cheap champagne he’s holding sloshes over the edges of his plastic cup, soaking his right hand and the sleeve of his button-down. “Fuck,” he repeats. He knew it was risky filling it up that much, but originally he’d just been worried about his professors judging him for being too liberal in the face of free alcohol, and maybe getting a bit too tipsy at a department function.

But here he is, crouching on the floor, hiding behind a penis, and staring desperately up at Liam with a wet hand and ruined sleeve. “Liam, what the fuck ,” he whispers furiously, eyes wide and frenzied.

Liam looks absolutely bewildered at Harry’s behavior, frowning down at him with a cup of his own, filled only a quarter of the way, because he knows the meaning of restraint. Smart fucker. Harry hasn’t broken eye contact, but evidently the alarm signals he’s trying to communicate aren’t connecting, as Liam just looks down at him blankly, turning his head side to side in confusion like a lost puppy.

Harry gives up on any semblance of subtlety. Liam’s obviously too thick. “Why didn’t you tell me he’d be here?” Harry growls, straight to the point. He chances a glance around the dick altar to peek at the two figures making their way to the refreshments table, no doubt also taking advantage of the free champagne before it runs out; after all, it’s usually gone within the first fifteen minutes of these functions. Louis is gesturing wildly as he pours himself a glass, making the same mistake as Harry, and almost spilling as he swings the cup he’s filled to the absolute brim.

“Well, it’s not like anyone really RSVPs,” Liam defends when Harry turns back to him, holding his cup close to his chest as he tries to make himself as small as possible behind the giant, white dick. “No one takes Facebook events seriously.” Harry rolls his eyes, still finding it within himself to get annoyed in his moment of panic. Liam has been complaining about the lack of accountability Facebook events have bred in their generation since he went to a Delta Chi party sophomore fall with the sole purpose of trying to actually talk to his crush Sarah, only to discover she wasn’t actually at the party she committed to on Facebook.

“But aren’t you guys friends?” Harry asks, trying to convey the urgency in his tone.

“Well, I mean, I talk to him when he stops by the office for supplies sometimes,” Liam reasons, “But I wouldn’t say we’re friends, exactly. Maybe more like, friendly acquaintances?”

Harry groans. “You’re the fucking worst.”

“He’s an art major, Harry, are you really telling me you’re surprised that he’s at an event showcasing art students?”

Harry levels Liam a flat stare, wholly unimpressed with his logic.

Harry is well aware of that, he just hadn’t really considered it.

“You’re an asshole and I hate you,” he announces.

Liam grins. “Oh, Louis,” he calls across the room, smiling evilly as Louis Tomlinson strides over to them. He’s wearing sweatpants, Adidas sneakers, and a t-shirt, completely underdressed for the professional departmental function he’s attending, but also entirely unashamed.

“Hey boys,” he greets. “Hiya Harry,” he says, directly, smirking at Harry on the floor. Harry stands sheepishly, and tries to shake some of the liquid off his wrist, taking a smooth sip of his champagne with the other.

“Louis,” he says, nodding. He can play it cool and aloof. He is a mature, sophisticated art student with a show on. He is not a coward who hides on floors underneath dicks.

“You coming to the soccer game tomorrow?” Louis asks, grinning as Harry stutters.

“I am,” Liam cuts in happily, and Louis looks over at him. He seems a bit surprised at Liam’s response, but appreciative nonetheless.

“Oh yeah?”

Liam nods. “Harry was assigned to the track meet though, right Harry?”

“Um, yeah,” Harry nods, his voice shaky.

“Ah, that’s a shame,” Louis responds, and he actually looks genuinely disappointed at the prospect of Harry missing his soccer game, even though Harry has never once been in attendance. “Maybe next time, yeah?” He proposes.

Harry nods again. “Look, so I, uh, I’ve got, stuff, to do and, I gotta—”

“Oh, is this your work?” Louis says, excited. He walks over to the wall on the left side of the gallery, where Harry had been standing, answering questions about his photography before spotting Louis at the entrance.

“Yeah,” Harry admits, hanging back as Louis steps up close to the wall to read his artist’s statement. Harry’s black and white images suddenly feel much too colorful, too large and loud even though there’s only six of them. It’s only a mid-semester exhibition, meant for the pre-thesis students to get an opportunity for public critique before they begin work on their full projects next fall. It’s not that big of a deal, it shouldn’t mean anything. It shouldn’t.

It still feels like Harry is making a big statement as Louis peers carefully at them. His face hardens as he moves through them, eyes squinting when he reaches the last two, and Harry feels his chest tighten and knows that it’s all too much. Too big of a statement, of leaving his heart on his sleeve.

“It’s really—it doesn’t mean…” Harry begins, trying to defend himself prematurely against any (correct) assumptions, but he trails off when he sees Louis’ shrewd face.

“They’re really good,” Louis says, his voice strained. He’s frozen, suddenly, standing much straighter than he had moments before, holding his cup of champagne that much tighter.

“Yeah, like, they’re just meant to—”

“Hey Zayn,” Louis calls over to the friend he’d entered with. His best friend. Fuck. Harry is so screwed.

“No, no, that’s not. You don’t have to…”

Louis shakes his head, “No, he should see these. They’re,” he swallows, eyes darting around the gallery space, looking everywhere except at Harry. “They’re really good, Harry.”

“Thanks,” Harry mumbles.

“And Zayn will want to see them, too,” Louis adds. “I mean, he’s the expert, right? I’m just a drama major, what does my opinion matter?” He laughs this fake little thing and lifts the champagne to his lips, taking a big gulp of half his cup as Zayn saunters over. Slowly. Because everything he does is so fucking cool and disinterested.

Harry looks down at his feet, he can feel his face heating as Zayn joins them. “Hey,” he murmurs, his voice as deep and sexy as ever. Harry wants to die.

“You should see Harold’s pictures here, Zayn,” Louis announces, wiping the sleeve of his arm messily across his mouth to wipe away any stray champagne. “They’re just beautiful .”

And, look, Harry doesn’t actually know Louis that well, definitely not well enough to be able to determine his tone from a few words, but he does know how to read people, generally. He’s not some oblivious idiot. And Louis almost sounds…mocking. And that’s just not fair. He doesn’t have to like Harry’s work, in fact he could really actively dislike Harry’s work, but he doesn’t have to be mean about it. He doesn’t have to be rude and patronizing, and everything else he’s being right now.

Zayn looks up at the wall and Harry continues to stare at the floor, hoping against all logic that it will open up and swallow him whole right this instant. Zayn’s quiet as he inspects the photos, and Harry has quite literally never wanted to disappear as much as he has in this moment.

He’s so embarrassed. So ashamed. When he first began the project, it had felt so honest, like he was opening his heart up for critique, not his art.

Now it just feels childish.

Any damn middle-schooler can take pictures of their crush. Just because Harry’s an art major and knows about aperture and exposure and the fucking rule of threes doesn’t mean he’s any better than them.

Actually, it probably means he’s worse, because he could do more, he could do so much better, and instead he’s plastered six creeper shots of the boy he likes (god, he even sounds like he’s thirteen) up on a gallery wall for the entire school to see.

It’s not honest, it’s shallow.

Zayn hums as he examines the prints, and Harry feels his face blush an even deeper red. He doesn’t want to look up and see his reaction. Louis’ cold, unconvincing praise had been one thing, but for the subject of the photos to dismiss them just as easily? Harry doesn’t think he could handle it.

“I mean, look at this one,” Louis says, and Harry peeks his eyes up from where he was focused on Liam’s loafers to see the one of Zayn hunched over a desk in the back of the drawing classroom. Harry had originally thought the use of black and white and high contrast would emphasize the tension and stress evident in Zayn’s shoulders, the perfect portrait of a dedicated artist. Now it just feels like he’s trying too hard. Like he’s some kid messing around on VSCO, rather than an actual photography student with access to a darkroom.

“It’s so…good,” Louis finishes lamely. God, Harry’s so pathetic Louis can’t even drum up a convincing compliment for his work.

“Yeah,” Zayn agrees. “Yeah, really cool, Harry.”

“I like how it’s so,” Louis pauses, turning his head and squinting at the photos, moving between the one of Zayn walking across the quad to the science center, to the one of him drinking a coffee and reading the school newspaper at a table in the dining hall. “Realistic? Like it’s artsy, but still feels like real life. Does that make sense?”

He poses the question at Zayn, nudging him in the side roughly. “Is that a real thing, Zaynie? You’re the art expert, after all. You’d know so much better than me.”

“Yeah, realism,” Zayn agrees. “It’s cool.”

Harry has never felt like a bigger idiot in his entire twenty one years.

“Right, well,” he says. “I forgot, um, my camera in the photo studio,” he says quickly, “And I should go grab that, before they lock up for the night, cause, I’m, uh. Covering that track meet tomorrow, so I kinda, uh. Need it.”

The three other boys look over at him, confused.

“Don’t you have access?” Zayn asks.

“Wait, did you get removed?” Liam asks, pulling out his phone, “I can add you back to the list,” he offers, too helpful as always, “It does that sometimes, it’s a really old system.” He already has his email open, ready to help even though Harry definitely still has access to the photo studio, all fucking photography students do, he’s just a shit liar.

“No, you don’t have to, Liam, I can just talk to Professor Abrams, it’s okay.”

“Dude, it’s literally my job,” Liam responds, already scrolling through names.

“No, it’s just—” He looks between the three of them, Liam with his eyes glued to his phone, ever the diligent, hard worker, Zayn staring at Harry with a confused, unsure, completely unimpressed expression, and Louis glaring at his now empty cup of champagne.

Harry’s not going to make it out of this without a good explanation.

So he goes with his next best option. He runs.

Two days later and he’s still a bit embarrassed. Not majorly so, the frankly obscene amount of shots he and his fellow photography majors had done last night took care of most of that (now he just feels ashamed for mostly different reasons) but the dull ache of embarrassment from Friday evening remains.

It doesn’t help that he’s trying to edit his photos from the track meet yesterday to submit to the school newspaper’s Sports section and he just can’t get them right.

This is literally his major. He should be good at this. But it’s just not clicking. He’s unhappy with all of them, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong. In theory, he knows that it’s fine. It’s just the school newspaper. And, save that one photo of Zayn reading it in the dining hall, he’s pretty sure no one actually reads it. Most of the students, himself included, that are involved are in it for the experience, not the campus notoriety. The concept of that is actually laughable.

When the third picture he tries working on, one of this guy Russell from his philosophy class last semester running across the finish line completely red in the face, doesn’t work out either, he figures he’ll put it off and move onto his assignment for his creative writing seminar on Tuesday, so he closes Photoshop and opens up his email instead.

Louis’ critique is predictably, sitting in his inbox with a little notification saying it arrived at 10:32 that morning. He’s supposed to have it in by midnight on Saturday night, giving him two days to critique and Harry two days to edit, but they’re in the seventh week of the semester and he’s never once sent it on time. Harry doesn’t really mind though, he’s a chronic procrastinator, so he’s never exactly in a rush to edit his work. It’s only times like this, when he’s procrastinating on more pressing matters that he actually starts his assignments early.

He pointedly ignores the ding of an email from his editor asking him to send his pictures ASAP so she can get started on the week’s layout scheme, and instead opens Louis’ Google Doc.

He hadn’t known Louis very well before the start of the semester. He vaguely remembered him from some of the orientation get-to-know-you games, and they’d ended up having meals together a couple times in their first semester, when freshmen would still regularly eat in groups of 12 or more in a desperate ploy to make friends. He thinks they’d even ended up going out together once or twice as well, back when “going out” consisted of walking up and down the campus huddled in groups of way more freshman than necessary or productive, trying to find parties that wouldn’t immediately kick them out.

As an upperclassman, he fully understands why these groups of seven first years were immediately kicked out of the parties they randomly wandered into in huge groups, but he does think there needs to be a better system for freshmen to join social life in the first few weeks to avoid the embarrassing treks for the first semester.

Despite never actually becoming friends after awkward freshman group hangs, Louis and Harry had run in somewhat similar circles after that, and their school is notoriously tiny, so over the last few years, Harry’s remained vaguely aware of Louis’ presence. Especially since he’s Zayn’s best friend, and Harry’s been hopelessly in love with Zayn since last summer, when they’d both stayed on campus for separate art fellowships and had spent hours alone in the art building together.

Of course, they’d never really talked , per se, except for the odd remark on the other’s work or asking to borrow a tool, but Harry had gotten to watch Zayn’s process and experience his artful soul and he’d fallen fast.

This semester, though, Harry and Louis had been paired up as partners in their Advanced Poetry seminar, what with Styles and Tomlinson being so close in the alphabet. Each week, they critique each other’s work ahead of presenting it in their group seminar. Louis was, in general, a great partner, even if he did have some sort of issue with the actual critique side of the assignment. He always only had positive things to say about Harry’s work, even after Week 3 when their professor had said he had to start offering constructive criticism because Harry’s work wouldn’t actually improve if he was given nothing concrete. Louis now dropped in some nuggets of advice, but still always put a positive spin on it, and apologized profusely in the document’s comments when he made even the slightest negative remark. Harry wouldn’t admit it in class, but he really appreciated Louis going easy on him. Poetry was absolutely not his strong point and he appreciated knowing he had a class partner who supported his work and wouldn’t rip it to shreds just to support their own ego, like some of his friends in the class had experienced.

Which makes it all the more strange when Harry opens the document and finds it almost completely highlighted in yellow, signalling Louis’ almost incessant comments. Which, in itself, isn’t exactly strange, as Louis generally has quite a lot of praise to offer on Harry’s work, but as he reads, he’s overwhelmed by words like “derivative” and “awkward” and “really Harry?” By the time he reaches the end of the poem, he hasn’t read one positive comment; Louis has absolutely ripped him to shreds, with some kind of snide comment on every line of the poem.

Harry feels his stomach sink. He knows it wasn’t exactly the most creative subject in the world—they’d been assigned to imitate the style of the poems they’d read for last Tuesday’s class, which had been European symbolism—and it was kind of a drivel-y ode to Zayn but like…any time the assignment was open to it, he wrote about Zayn. If he was being perfectly honest, most of his poems were all pretty similar, and Louis had never had such a problem with them before. What had he done wrong?

He could feel tears prickling at the edges of his eyes, and a sense of dread pooling in his gut. This was so stupid, it was just a dumb poem for his poetry class, and he was just getting peer criticism, the entire point of the class. Why was he getting so worked up?

As he tried to tell himself this, however, he got even more upset with himself for even being upset, and eventually felt so overwhelmed that he closed the document entirely and his homework window of Chrome.

He’s obviously not going to get any work done now, so he gets up from his desk and moves to the bed, laying in to watch an episode (or three) of The Office before he takes another shot at editing the track meet photos and trying to put Louis out of his mind completely.

On Tuesday afternoon, Harry is nervous for Poetry in a way he hasn’t been all semester. He can’t eat anything more than a few nibbles of his lunch and is distant through the whole hour, which he genuinely feels guilty about, as it’s the only time he and Perrie really get over the week to catch up and talk, what with their busy schedules. At first, Perrie’s trying to figure out what’s up, and pushes him to eat more of his fries, but how is he supposed to explain that he’s just nervous because his acquaintance ripped apart his love poem and he feels embarrassed about it? Eventually, Perrie lets him be and settles for stealing his fries and complaining about the director of the mainstage production she’s currently in. In fact, he’s so distracted that he doesn’t even notice Louis in the cafe line next to their booth, at least not until Louis’ gotten through the entire line, swiped his card, wrapped up his plate to go, and is walking past them and out of the cafe altogether.

“Wait, Louis!” Perrie calls, and Harry jerks from where he was dejectedly smudging a fry through his ketchup pile and glances up. Louis’ stopped tentatively at their table, hovering and watching them warily. He glances carefully at Harry, and Harry avoids his eyeline, looking back down at the fry and popping it into his mouth, even though he doesn’t have much of an appetite and it’s much too slathered in ketchup at this point. “You are just the person I was hoping to see,” Perrie says, oblivious to the sudden cold tension. “I was just complaining about Trevor in yesterday’s rehearsal.”

“Oh, yeah,” Louis nods. “I heard about that from Katie. That was pretty fucked up.”

“Here, sit,” Perrie invites, sliding over in her side of the booth. “I just want to rant for a few minutes before I have to go to Econ.”

“Um, I actually,” he jerks the thumb not holding his plate behind him, “I have class in a few, so…”

“Yeah, but you have poetry with Harry, don’t you? You guys can walk together. Please? I haven’t seen anyone from the department all day and I am absolutely fuming.”

Harry can tell Louis’ been backed into a corner, and at the moment, he really regrets how small this fucking school is, and how everyone he knows literally knows everyone else on campus. He thought attending a liberal arts school with less than 2,000 students would be a fun and welcoming community, but really it just means he can’t fucking escape anyone he’s trying to avoid.

Louis sits down and tentatively opens up his lunch, which he had packed to go and eat during the first few minutes of their seminar, like he does every week. Harry remembers him saying once that he has a work shift before class that means he doesn’t have enough time to grab a proper lunch, and their campus’ cafe is the perfect place to get greasy and quick food on the go. He complains quietly with Perrie about their professor, Trevor, who’d lead the play’s cast through some stupid activity in rehearsal yesterday. Harry feels like a shit friend, but he honestly hadn’t been paying attention when Perrie first explained it at the beginning of their lunch. About half the conversations he has with Perrie these days revolve around her complaining about the fucked-up theatre department, and after a while, it all starts to blend together. He munches on his fries, letting them chat and get all their frustration out.

After a while, Perrie checks her phone and groans, gathering up her trash and pulling her jacket back on. “I have to head to Econ. You guys have class on North Campus, right?” Harry nods, and Perrie groans again. “Ugh, fine. I’ll see you later, Lou. Harry—you better be bucked the fuck up next week, I can’t take another hour of just monologuing, okay?”
Harry gives her a grim smile and agrees, even though he knows that she absolutely can take that, she normally drives their conversations anyway. Besides, she’s an actress and is perfectly suited to monologuing for long periods of time.

Harry and Louis gather their things too, and the three head to the door together. Perrie goes right when they leave, and Harry and Louis go left, each giving her a wave goodbye. They make it to the crosswalk ahead before they speak. “So uh, how was your weekend?” Harry asks.

Louis shrugs. “Fine. We won our game on Saturday.”

“Oh yeah? That’s great. Congrats.”

“Thanks.” It’s silent for a couple moments, before Louis thinks to ask, “And you?”

“Hmm?” Harry asks, looking up from where he’d been watching his feet, trying not to slip on the snow-trodden path. It was early April, so there really shouldn’t be snow anymore, but this was rural Massachusetts, so they knew they likely had a few more weeks until it melted completely. “Oh. Yeah, good. It was good.”

“I didn’t see you out on Saturday night,” Louis says.

“Yeah,” Harry nods, “The photography majors had a crawl, but we’re not very organized, so we mostly just stayed in Travis Carrol’s suite most of the night,” he chuckles.

Louis nods, “Ah.”

They don’t say anything else until they arrive in class. Harry had been hoping to sit somewhere else today as a pointed move to send a message to Louis. After Week 1, students never changed their seats, so switching it up would definitely make it clear that he was annoyed, even if he theoretically had no reason to be. But since they arrived together, he has no choice but to slide into his usual seat next to Louis.

He’s more than a little frustrated, all semester they’d been getting closer, and he was starting to consider them actual friends, beyond just acquaintances that shared a mutual circle of friends, but now he just felt awkward around him.

They don’t say anything else as they settle in for class, Harry pulling out his notebook and Louis taking off the saran wrap to eat his sandwich and the rest of his fries. The professor comes in a few minutes later and class starts, this week a discussion of a chapter in their book about Modernism and examples from Ezra Pound, who their professor points out had actually gone to their school, as if any of them were unaware. He was one of the only truly famous figures to graduate from their small school, so the school makes it very clear. There’s even a huge portrait of him hanging inside their Writing Center, along with the few other famous writers who attended the college.

Louis’ cold next to him throughout the lesson, scribbling notes furiously during the discussion, and contributing no snide comments to Harry like he normally does.

Which Harry is absolutely fine with. He’s annoyed with Louis, even if it is for a kind of stupid reason, and he doesn’t want to hear his silly jokes anyway. (That’s a lie, their three-hour class is significantly more boring without Louis’ jokes to get him through.)

But, he realizes about halfway through that he doesn’t feel any satisfaction in the cold attitude he’s been projecting, and decides to instead confront Louis and see if that won’t make it better.

At the conclusion of the discussion, Louis packs up his things quickly and is almost across the room by the time Harry plucks up the courage to say, “Wait, Louis uh—”

He almost doesn’t want to say anything, but it’s been picking at him, and he just has to know. “Was there um, was there anything you wanted to tell me about my poem from last week?” He asks, and then winces. What a weird way of phrasing that.

Louis scrunches up his face and cocks his head in confusion. “Uh..” he says, “No, why?”

Harry gets the sense that he’s playing up his nonchalance, but shrugs it off. “No I just, you um…I don’t know, it was just kind of harsh. Harsher than usual?”

Louis’ face hardens, like he’s putting up a front. “It just wasn’t your best work, Harry. I was just being honest.”

“Oh,” Harry nods, looking down at his notebook, still open on the table in front of him, even though most of the class has cleared out at this point. “Okay, I—” But when he looks up again, Louis’ already out the door.

Huh. That was weird, much ruder than Louis normally is. Though, the entire situation arose because Louis was much harsher than usual so…maybe he’s just going through something this week. Whatever. Harry tries to put Louis out of his mind as he packs up, since Tuesday afternoon means his Art Collective meeting, which means a full hour of staring at Zayn. Harry smiles a bit as he pulls his backpack on and heads towards the arts building. He’s not even going to think about Louis for two days until he has to email him this week’s poem just before Thursday’s class session.

Harry’s a little late to the meeting as usual. It starts at 4, which is the same time his seminar lets out, but he slips in the back and takes a seat next to Liam.

Their president, Caroline, is at the front of the room, making some kind of announcement. “So anyway, it’ll open the weekend before finals, so I know it’s a pretty big ask, but it’s the last event of the year and we’d really like to get it right. Is anyone interested?”

“What’s she talking about?” Harry whispers to Liam.

Liam shrugs, “Some exhibit thing.”

Zayn, while still doodling in the notebook in front of him, and somehow managing to look cool and effortless and perfect, raises his hand gently.

“Awesome!” Caroline calls, her energy level so significantly higher it’s comical. “Great, thank you so much Zayn. Anyone want to co-chair?”

Harry’s hand shoots in the air. He’s not even sure what he’s agreeing to, but if it involves working together with Zayn, giving him an excuse to actually talk to his crush, instead of being an obsessive stalker loser, he is so there. “Harry. Cool. Wow, I did not expect people to go for this so quickly, I thought I’d have to be bribing people to take on more responsibility at the end of the semester,” Caroline jokes.

Zayn turns around and looks at Harry, who settles back into his seat smiling. He doesn’t exactly look happy to be paired up with Harry, and he kind of just stares him down, intensely thinking, then turns back around again.

“What’s his deal?” Harry asks.

“Could be the stalker pictures currently on display in the lobby,” Liam jokes and Harry gasps, elbowing him in the gut.

“Liam,” he hisses. He’s never heard Liam actually make a joke like that before. “Fuck,” Harry sighs. “Called out.” Liam smirks and nudges Harry towards Caroline, who’s continuing the meeting with their next order of business.  

At the end of the meeting, Harry bounces up to where Zayn’s sitting at the front of the room before he can pack up and leave. “Hey,” he greets eagerly.

“Oh, hey,” Zayn says, slowly, looking up at Harry blankly.

“So looks like we’ll be working together, partner.”

Zayn nods, “Yeah, I guess so.”

He’s acting weird, and kind of shifty, but Harry presses on. “Do you want to meet up and start planning?”

“Actually, I have a big project due tomorrow, so I don’t really have any time now.”

It really feels like he’s trying to brush Harry off, which is not a great feeling, but Harry is nothing if not persistent. “How about tomorrow?”

Zayn’s face scrunches up, like he’s trying to visualize his schedule, then shrugs, “How about same time on Thursday? We know we’re both free. We can get coffee at Symphony and plan it out?” Harry grins. A coffee date . Even more perfect than he could have imagined.

“Absolutely! I’ll see you then,” he grins, hiking up his backpack and heading back to his dorm for a quick nap before dinner.

He rides the high of excitement for the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday, and by the time he’s back in his seminar on Thursday afternoon, he’s completely forgotten that he’s, in theory, still mad at Louis. He’s too excited for his not-a-date coffee date with Zayn to care that Louis insulted his stupid poem. It’s not like it was really that good anyway, none of his poems are, they’re just kind of angst-y pining for Zayn. Only this week’s is different, because they have plans and they have an excuse to talk to one another consistently until the end of the semester, one-on-one, and Harry is totally going to seduce Zayn and finally, after a year , get his man. This week’s poem, written hastily before class this morning, reflects that excitement.

Louis slips into his seat next to Harry right before class begins, opening his cafe lunch just as their professor calls them to order. He’s quiet all through class again, but Harry doesn’t notice as much today. Since he’s not actively expelling an air of “you’re a jerk,” he kind of just doesn’t notice Louis at all. But as class is over, Louis packs up quickly, and then just sort of hovers above Harry, instead of leaving.

Harry squints up at him, but doesn’t ask, as it’s clear Louis is working himself up to say something. “So, I just wanted to say, uh. Sorry,” Louis starts. “I, um. Well I was pretty rude on Tuesday, and in the comments. I just—I was having a bad weekend, and I took it out on you, and you didn’t deserve that.”

Harry nods. “Thanks, Louis. I appreciate that.”

But Louis’ not done. “Can I um, can I buy you a coffee? To make it up to you? I have practice in half an hour, so it’d have to be quick, but...”

Harry’s eyes widen. “I, uh, I sort of have plans to get coffee with Zayn already.”

“Oh,” Louis’ entire face falls, and he deflates a little bit. “Oh, okay.”

“Yeah,” Harry nods. “Yeah, we’re co-chairing this exhibit thing that Art Collective is putting up, so we have to plan.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Louis shrugs, picking up his backpack and turning around.

He looks so dejected and disappointed, and Harry feels really guilty for some reason, probably all the brooding earlier on in the week, when Louis clearly didn’t mean to be so harsh and was just going through something. “Wait but—we can go next week, if you want? I have Art Collective on Tuesday, but I’m free next Thursday after class?”

Louis smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, um. Yeah that’d be cool. Bye, Harry.”

Harry waves, then packs up his things, smiling to himself. He is so fucking excited for this not-date.

Working with Zayn is almost like a dream. Almost, because Zayn’s still pretty quiet, and doesn’t involve Harry in much of the planning. So far, they’ve had two meetings and he just kind of does his own thing and leaves Harry with the busy work he doesn’t want to deal with. But , Harry treats him to a black coffee, and shares his ideas for the exhibit, and Zayn nods and considers them, his face pinched and brooding, and he actually did take one of Harry’s suggestions towards the end of their second meeting, so, progress. Harry thinks a couple more coffee not-dates and they’ll be flirting like old friends. Or, that’s not a good analogy. Harry doesn’t flirt with any of his old friends. He’s a little overwhelmed by it all, but he’s excited nonetheless.

He’s wrapped up in the heady wind of Zayn’s (not) affections for the next week or so. He’s been lusting after him for the better part of a year, and finally, they’re actually interacting, so it’s bound to be overwhelming. As a result, he’s in a much better mood in Advanced Poetry this week. Louis also hadn’t been as harsh in his critique over the weekend. He still had some most constructive than celebratory things to say, but the poem wasn’t completely unreadable thanks to all the remarks, so. Progress.

He smiles at Harry as he settles into his seat on Thursday and offers Harry one of his fries. Harry accepts and munches on it as their professor enters and calls class to order.

Three-hour seminars are rough and holding them twice a week is a particular brand of hell. Most seminars don’t meet that often, in fact, this is one of the only classes in their college that’s granted that much class time, but since it’s an advanced level creative class, their professor gets away with bending the rules a bit.

By the end of the three hours, Harry’s drained and almost forgot about his outstanding plans with Louis. Luckily, Louis’ hovering at his desk again, waiting for Harry, and it only takes a few moments of confusion for Harry to snap and remember, just in time for Louis not to notice. “So, you have practice after this?” Harry asks, to fill the time as he packs his books away.

“Yeah, at 4:30.”

“Oh,” Harry zips up his bag and stands, “So we really don’t have very much time, do we?”

Louis shrugs. “I can be late, it’s fine.”

“Aren’t you the captain?” Harry teases.

“Yeah,” Louis says, matter-of-factly, “So no one can get me in trouble.”

Harry laughs and knocks his shoulder against Louis’. Symphony is the only real coffee place on campus, and it’s across campus from their academic building, so they settle in for the walk.

“How’d you fare with the assignment for this week? Am I gonna be impressed?” Louis asks.

Harry shrugs. “I don’t know…” Harry hedges, “Better than last week? I’m not really good with turning my like, personal thoughts into something intellectual. And like, I know we’re doing late modernism, but it just feels too confessional. I’m kind of nervous for you to read it, actually, it’s pretty sappy.”

Louis swallows. “I’m sure I’ll suffer through.”

Harry laughs, “Hey,” he chides gently, holding out the vowel.

“Kidding.”

“Wait,” Harry stops, thinking about it. “Did you send me yours? I don’t remember seeing it before class started.”

Louis looks away, kicking at the pavement, since Harry’s stopped walking now. “No, I, um. I haven’t finished it yet. I wasn’t really satisfied.”

Harry nods, “Yeah, I get that. It was one of the harder weeks. I won’t tell Professor Marcus that it was late,” he promises, like he’s keeping a dire secret for Louis.

“Thanks,” Louis says. They fall into companionable silence again until they get to the coffee shop. Harry’s friend Rachel is working behind the counter, and he orders his regular (an iced hazelnut latte, even if it is still just a bit too cold for it) and chats with her about how her thesis is going while she makes it. He tries to hand over his Campus Card when she’s finished, but Louis quickly swipes him aside. “My treat,” he says, offering his own and asking for a breakfast tea. “Remember?”

Harry shakes his head, “You really don’t need to, I was just being overly sensitive. You’re supposed to critique my shitty poetry.”

Louis shakes his head firmly, “Nope. I insist.” He smiles at Rachel and hands over his Campus Card for her to complete the transaction.

“Thanks,” Harry says, smiling down at his drink as he sprinkles in some vanilla powder and stirs it together.

“You’re welcome,” Louis’ smiling too, and it’s getting pretty sappy, so Harry caps his drink and turns to find them a table. There aren’t many at this time in the afternoon. Symphony closes from 4:30-7:30, while everyone is getting dinner, so it’s pretty busy after class when people are finally free and trying to get their last rush of caffeine in for a few hours. Eventually, though, Harry finds space in the corner, and they settle down to drink. “How’s your week been going?” Harry asks. He does genuinely want to know, but he also, selfishly, has been having a great week, and hopes Louis will ask him as well, so he can gush.

See, the thing is, Louis is Zayn’s best friend. So, although Harry thinks he’s been making progress with Zayn, Louis would know . They live together, after all, and Zayn could be coming home from their meetings and could have been telling Louis about how he just met the love of his life. Unlikely, based on how he seemed not very affected by Harry in their meetings, but not altogether impossible.

It could happen. Maybe. Harry has faith.

“Well, Simmons is out with a torn ACL, so I’m kind of screwed for Saturday, but—” Louis is clearly in the middle of a long explanation when he cuts himself off. “Sorry, that’s more than you needed to know, you’ve never even been to one of the soccer games.”

Harry shrugs, trying to mask that he wasn’t paying attention. “No, but it’s relevant,” he assures. “I mean, I work for the sports section, don’t I? I have to be aware of what’s going on on the teams.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “You take pictures for the sports section, it doesn’t matter if you know who’s getting subbed out or not.”

“I take photos for the sports section,” he corrects and Louis scoffs.

“Right,” he agrees, muttering, “pretentious asshole,” afterwards, but he’s laughing, so Harry knows it’s in jest. He kicks at his ankle, anyway, just to get him back.

“How about you?”

Harry smiles. “It’s been great . I told you about the Art Collective thing, right? Well it’s this student showcase we’re doing, another chance for underclassmen to display their work, since we don’t get many chances to, beyond class finals, and it’s going to be themed, but we’re still trying to narrow them down now, Zayn’s got a whole list he came up with in his notebook, and—” Harry cuts himself off. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Louis nods, “Yeah, but I don’t mind,” he reassures him. Harry blushes.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Louis leans forwards, smiling, “Of course, Harry.”

“Um, you might know this already,” Harry admits, scratching at the his hair, “What with my photo project, and all the sappy poems and everything, but…I kind of have a crush on Zayn? Like, a big one.”

“Oh,” Louis says, looking taken aback. He sits back again, and takes a moment to compose his face, folding his hands over his lap. “Do you, now? I, uh, I couldn’t tell.”

Harry laughs, “Please, you so could, it was really obvious.”

Louis nods a few times in quick succession, still looking down at his lap, “I mean, I had a feeling, but I, uh, I wasn’t sure..”

“Yeah, so, I’m like, really excited about this project, because of that,” Harry explains. “‘Cause, we haven’t really spent much time together, at least not since last summer. And even then…like, we were the only ones doing art research projects over the summer, so we ran into each other at lot, but it’s not like we hung out , you know?” Louis motions his understanding, and for Harry to go on. “Yeah, and like. I don’t know, I guess I’m just wondering, like, has he said anything to you? Like, I know you guys are really close, so that’s why I’m asking. I can’t really tell what my chances are here, and it’s been really nice getting to know him this week and getting all this one-on-one time, and—”

“No,” Louis cuts him off. “No, he hasn’t mentioned you at all.” He stands up abruptly, grabbing his backpack and his half-drunk tea. “Listen Harry, I have to go. I have practice in a few minutes, and I’m leading it, so I really shouldn’t be late, and I have to change anyway. So I’ll uh, I’ll see you on Tuesday, right? Bye.”

And then he’s off, running out of Symphony before Harry can get out a word of farewell.

Harry’s mostly put Louis’ weird behavior behind him by that evening, though he’s a little annoyed he walked away with no more information about what’s going on in Zayn’s head. He’s just finishing up a reading for his Government lecture the next morning when he gets an email notification from his editor. He’s been assigned Saturday’s soccer game for this week’s issue. Well. Looks like he will be seeing Louis before Tuesday.

Since he wants to show Louis that he was, in fact, listening to him (even though he wasn’t) this afternoon, to try to get across that he wasn’t just using him to get intel on Zayn (even though he was), he decides to give Louis a heads up. He doesn’t have his number, so he pulls up Facebook messenger and writes,

looks like I did need to know that Simmons is out this weekend, seeing as i’ll be photographing your game! 😅

He doesn’t get a response back, but. Whatever. It’s fine. It’s not like the type of message that really needs a response anyway. With that sorted, he closes down his email and opens Netflix to re-watch To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before again, satisfied that that’s quite enough work for the night, especially when it’s a Thursday night and he only has one class on Fridays.

On Friday, Harry ventures all the way to the South side of campus for a party. He’s astounded with himself at the dedication he has to his suitemates that he’d put up with them dragging him to a frat party all the way across campus. Very soon after, he’s just annoyed, as the party is broken up not twenty minutes after they arrive.

It’s a brisk night for late April, and Harry pulls his jean jacket tighter around himself while he and Alex stand on the porch waiting for their third roommate to come back from pissing in the bushes.

“Sorry, man,” Alex apologizes, picking up his phone again. He’d been checking it constantly that evening, all through the pre-game and walk over, trying to meet up with some girl from his computer science class that was meant to be at the party tonight. Harry was a little annoyed with him, as they’d lost their round of beer pong because he didn’t have his head in the game.

Harry’s so dismayed he doesn’t even have it in him to be amused by his High School Musical reference. That’s the real sign of a shit night out.

“I mean, it’s fine, I didn’t have anything else going on,” Harry reassures him, though he does distinctly think that lying in bed watching Netflix would be preferable to freezing your nuts off a ten-minute walk from your bed while your roommate pees in some bushes.

“Let’s go, gentleman,” Justin shouts as he rejoins them, acting as if he is returning victorious from a dangerous mission, rather than peeing.

“I heard there’s Background Spongebob Characters party going in the suites,” Alex proposes.

Harry levels him with a flat look, “Is Ashley meant to be there?”

Alex avoids his eye, “Irrelevant.”

“I might just head to bed, I’m not dressed for a theme party,” Harry says as they set off heading back towards their side of campus anyway.

“Laaaaame,” Justin chides, swinging his arm around Harry’s shoulders and ruffling his hair. Harry’s really not sure how he ended up hanging with these guys or why he puts up with them.

“Just walk around screaming ‘my leg!’” Alex suggests.

Harry doesn’t have a good excuse for that, but luckily, they run into two other people outside the student center.

“I am heartbroken ,” one of them is crying, obviously drunk. He’s lying across the ground while the other hovers above him, but his hand is draped across his forehead dramatically like a dame in an old movie, so it’s clear he’s playing this up for dramatics. “Shattered to absolute pieces,” he whines and as Harry moves closer, he realizes it’s Louis and Zayn.

“Get the fuck up, you’re not dying,” Zayn groans.

“ No,” Louis insists. “Not without my love.”

Harry can’t see it through the dark, but he can sense Zayn rolling his eyes. “Bro, this is your problem. You’re too dramatic and angsty.” Louis sits up, looking a bit like a pouting toddler who’s just finished his tantrum on the path.

“Are you saying I’ll be more lovable if I’m more excitable?”

“Yeah, man, whatever you need to get the fuck off the floor,” Zayn complains.

“How could I be more excitable when I am already so theatrical, though,” Louis ponders from his place on the floor, as if it’s the most daunting philosophical question of his life.

At this point though, Harry and his roommates are so close that they’re about to pass, and Alex and Justin have reached a lull in their teasing about Alex trying to find Ashley, so their group slows in front of Zayn and Louis.

“Hey guys,” Harry says. At the sound of his presence, Louis bolts up, standing quickly and brushing the dirt from his pants. He stumbles a bit, clearly intoxicated, but then straightens, and it’s clear he putting on an act of being dramatic and weepy.

“Hi Harry,” he says, while Zayn mutters his greeting too. “You go to the party in Birkholtz?”

Harry shakes his head, but Justin quickly shuts in, the drunk loon, “It got shut down.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, we’re just heading home,” Harry explains, jerking towards the North side of campus.

“Well, do you wanna—”

“Noooo,” Justin interrupts, “We are going to Spongebob.” He begins panting “Spongebob!” insistently, to the confusion of Louis and Zayn, and Harry has to quickly shrug and push him along, hoping to alleviate the scene he’s making in the center of campus.

Saturday finds Harry power-walking to the soccer field at around 1:30, thirty minutes after the game was set to start. In theory, it would probably have been better to arrive at the beginning of the game, but he was having a really good, greasy brunch with his suitemates to soak up the last remnants of his hangover, and it’s not like it really matters, as he only needs two or three strong photos anyway. There’s a loud swell of cheers as he gets closer, and he looks around at the celebrating teammates, in his school’s red and white uniforms, and turns to a girl he recognizes from the campus radio.

“What happened?” he asks her.

“We just scored,” she answered, clapping as she does.

Harry feels a twinge of guilt in his stomach as she turns back to the game, whistling in support, and removes his lens cap. Yeah, he definitely should have been here earlier, capturing the goals is one of the most vital aspects of his job.

But it’s alright, he missed the big moment, but he can at least get a shot of the team’s celebration. He raises his camera quickly, and is able to get some shots of the last few seconds of the team’s celebratory huddle. Louis emerges from the middle after it breaks up, a grin breaking across his face, and throws his fist up in the air. Harry’s camera clicks at exactly the right moment, and he pulls away as the game resumes to view his camera roll, particularly proud of the last one of a triumphant Louis.

Harry settles into the empty seat next to the radio girl, who he thinks is named Anna, to re-calibrate before continuing. “So what’s the score?”

“We’re up one,” she answers, her eyes still on the field, “Louis’ goal was the first of the game.”

Harry twists his mouth. “Damn, I should’ve arrived a minute earlier.

Anna laughs, “Yeah, bad timing.”

Harry sits back and lets her focus, lifting his camera to his eye again. He can’t get a great shot from the bleachers, so he leaves his stuff on the bench and stands to try to get some better shots from the sidelines.

It’s hard to really focus on the progress of a game with a camera attached to your face, so Harry isn’t able to follow how the players are doing particularly well, but they seem to be in high spirits when the whistle blows signaling half-time, so he figures it’s going well. He lowers his camera, and is thinking about grabbing his stuff and heading to the studio, since he should have enough photos after fifteen minutes of shooting, when Louis jogs over to him.

“Hiya Harry,” he greets, grinning wide, as if he hadn’t stalked off in annoyance the last time they spoke.

“Oh, hey Louis,” Harry replies. “Good game so far?”

Louis nods, “Yeah, we’re doing great.” He’s in an undeniably good mood, sort of embodying the team’s excitable spirit in the game so far, so Harry really can’t blame himself when he lifts his camera to his face again and clicks the shutter a few times, then looking down, satisfied, at the resulting image on his camera.

“Triumphant captain after a successful first half,” Harry narrates, twisting his camera so Louis can see the playback screen. “Good caption, right?”

Louis laughs, blushing just a little bit. “Yeah, absolutely.” He turns around to where some of his teammates are calling him over to a huddle. “Listen, are you sticking around for the rest of the game?”

He looks really hopeful, and oblivious to his teammates calling his name more insistently, a blonde one Harry recognizes from his Gov class being particularly loud. Harry had been planning on ducking out, but with Louis grinning at him like that, and how he seems to have forgiven Harry for using him to get to Zayn, Harry can’t exactly say no.

“Yeah, yeah, of course I’ll stay.”

“Cool,” Louis grins. “Great, I’m really glad. I’ll see you after, okay Harry?” And with that, he’s turning around and running back to join his teammates, smiling and watching Harry over his shoulder.

Harry feels a stirring of his stomach at that, and he can’t exactly pinpoint what it is—he thinks maybe guilt? He hasn’t been the best sort-of friend to Louis lately, but he resolves to make that up to him, settling in next to Anna and cheering Louis’ name as halftime ends and the game starts up again, Louis taking possession of the ball almost immediately.

Harry follows the second half of the game more closely, partly because he doesn’t have a camera attached to his face anymore, and partly because he feels like he has to, what with Louis looking over at him every few minutes, as if making sure he’s still there. Harry smiles and waves the first few times he does this, but eventually it becomes so frequent that he feels silly and just settles back on the bench, watching the game and occasionally checking in on his Twitter feed when it’s a particularly slow play.

The second-half feels significantly longer than the first, though that could rightly be because Harry missed the vast majority of the first, but by the time he pulls out his camera again, figuring he might as well get some more shots while he waits for it to be over, it’s coming to a close with their team in a slight lead of one goal.

Louis jogs over once the final whistle blows, ignoring the celebratory team huddle and coming to hug Harry instead, his sweaty body colliding with Harry’s camera. “You stayed,” he crows.

“Yeah,” Harry laughs, “I promised I would, didn’t I?”

Louis shrugs, “These games can be kind of boring, especially if you’ve never been to one before.” He reasons. Harry doesn’t want to admit it, but he honestly agrees, it had been a tedious 45-minute half.

“It wasn’t bad,” he lies, reassuring, which just makes Louis perk up even more. Harry takes another picture, because he can’t resist, and celebratory captain is definitely a good angle for the article covering the win. Even if most of the photos are action shots, but even if it isn’t used, Harry could use it for his portfolio, to show that he has a diverse range. Either way, he pulls back and admires the photos, Louis leaning in to look over his shoulder at them. Harry only grimaces a little at him once again getting his sweat so close to his very expensive camera.

Once Harry’s sufficiently sifted through the photos, he turns off his camera and straightens up. Louis takes a step back too. “So, uh, the soccer team’s having a party tonight in Marcus’ suite, do you wanna come?”

Harry cocks his head, “Am I really supposed to be there? I’m not on the team.”

Louis laughs, “It’d be a pretty lame party if it was just the team,” Louis jokes. “Plus, no girls on the team.”

Harry feels pretty stupid, of course it’s not just the team. No one does that in college. And Louis’ right, it would make for a pretty unexciting party, especially when it’s the people you hang out with all day every day. But still, he hadn’t even considered the fact that girls wouldn’t be invited, as flirting with girls isn’t exactly his top priority.

“I honestly wouldn’t have considered,” Harry explains, “I’m gay.” He thought Louis had known that, considering he’s pretty out on campus, and he’d been gushing about having a crush on Zayn, but…who knows, some straight guys can be pretty obtuse.

Louis barks, “Obviously, Harry.”

Well, that’s a little uncalled for.

“I am too. I just mean, most of the other guys on the team aren’t.”

“Oh.”

And, right. Harry does figure he’s seen Louis around with guys over the years. Sometimes, he guesses. He honestly hadn’t been paying that much attention.

“Soo, you’ll come?” Louis looks really hopeful again, but Harry’s really behind on his work and had been planning on staying in tonight. Final projects were creeping up on him, even if there was still a month left in the semester.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, explaining the situation. Louis looks more crushed than he’d expected, but also Harry stayed for his entire game instead of getting a crack on that homework, so he shouldn’t feel as bad as he looks.

“No, it’s alright. I’ll see you on Tuesday, right?”

“Yeah,” Harry laughs, wondering if it’s a joke, “Yeah, it’s class. It’s kind of required…”

Louis shakes his head, “Right. Right, yeah, no I know. Okay. I should probably go,” he jerks his hand back at the rest of the team, still gathered on the field. “Thanks for coming.”

“Kind of my job,” Harry says, holding up the camera.

“I know, but still.” He hedges, already starting to walk backwards a bit. “Thank you.”

Harry twists his mouth as he watches him go, then raises his camera to get one more shot of the team celebrating. It was just a really great win, is all.

Zayn texts him on Sunday morning, which is just about the most exciting thing Harry’s ever experienced. Zayn reaching out to him .

It is, of course, about the exhibit, and he says he’s made significant progress with the planning and do they want to meet up and talk about it before bringing it to the Art Collective meeting on Tuesday. Harry’s too busy on Monday, but he agrees he can make time that afternoon to meet.

He spends the rest of the morning nervous and excited for their (not) study date, and working on brainstorming for his final photography project. He’s meant to create a new work to present as a conclusion to his advanced seminar and although he probably should come up with a new concept, he’s hoping he can just adapt what he presented for his mid-semester exhibition. It was meant to be practice for the thesis, anyway, so it feels like a natural jumping off point.

The only problem is now that he’s tentatively friends with Zayn, it would be a little awkward if still took creepy shots from afar, which left him with the terrifying ordeal of having to ask Zayn to pose for him . Harry shuddered at the thought.

First though, he would have to get through working with him all afternoon, which was turning out to be an effort in itself. Even more so because every student left their work until Sunday afternoon, so essentially every public study space on campus is occupied, leaving them to study in Zayn’s suite common room. It’s pretty gross, with dried beer on the floor and empties overflowing in the trash (apparently Louis had hosted some of the soccer team after their party last night), but it has a table and a grimy couch, and Harry’s spending time with Zayn, so he isn’t going to work up a fuss.

They’ve been having an issue with space; there’s obviously only so many walls in the student exhibition space, and with final projects going up simultaneously, there’s not exactly room to expand. Zayn’s been trying to solve the issue since their last meeting on Wednesday, and had seemed totally stumped. Apparently, not anymore, though.

“You know those blocks they use for final projects, for all the extra work?” Zayn explains.

Harry nods, “Yeah, but they’re going to be way too cramped in the space we have.”

Zayn shakes his head quickly, “Not necessarily. I was thinking, if we arrange them in a way that they’re not just stuffed in the middle of the room, but in a pattern, like a maze to lead the viewer through, or a square amongst the middle of the room, then it won’t feel claustrophobic, and we’ll have enough room to display everything that everyone’s signed up to present.”

“And you think there’ll be enough blocks? They’re probably all going to be in use by the classes.”

Zayn shakes his head at that, too. “No, we only need like three or four, we don’t have that much we need them for, it’s just the spillover from the walls, and I already spoke to Liam, he said the Intro classes are doing their displays in the student center, so they won’t need the last few blocks.”

“Zayn, that’s brilliant, you’re brilliant,” Harry crows, slapping him on the back and grinning, quickly pulling up the Excel spreadsheet of all the students who’ve signed up to display work.

A groan sounds from the other side of the room, and Harry looks up to find Louis sweating in gym shorts and a t-shirt, pulling a Gatorade from the fridge and leaning against the counter to drink it. “What’s he done this time?” Louis asks, rolling his eyes, but with a fond smile on his face.

“He’s just solved our entire problem,” Harry gushes, giving Zayn an adoring smile. It probably comes off as much more fawning than he’d intended, but. So be it.

“Well, I’ll leave you and the absolute genius to it then,” he says. He downs the rest of his drink, throws it onto the already overflowing pile of trash, and retreats to his room.

“Ignore him,” Zayn says, quietly, looking back to his notes. “He’s been in a bad mood all weekend.”

Harry snorts. “He kind of seems like he’s perpetually grumpy. I mean, he was like a toddler throwing a fit on Friday night.”

“He’s really not. He’s usually a lot more upbeat. Was really jumpy on Saturday morning, so I thought maybe he’d gotten out of his funk, but…” He grunts, and Harry figures that’s answer enough.

Around forty minutes later, they’ve finished pretty much everything they need to, and Harry’s been spending a good five minutes trying to find an excuse to stay longer. He’s blessed when he finds a perfect one walking in wearing flip flops, a towel, and carrying a shower caddy. “Zayn, did you take my aftershave—oh, Harry, you’re still here,” Louis stops, and lifts his free hands to cover himself, as if he isn’t fully naked (with just a towel) in his common room. He covers his nipples with his arm and smiles meekly, and Harry snorts at the absurd attempt at modesty.

“Have you guys finished up your project?” Louis asks, as if he isn’t dripping a sizable puddle onto the floor.

“Yeah,” Zayn grunts, closing his notebook and gathering his supplies from the table.

“Great! Harry, you wanna hang out for a while? We usually have people over and play drinking games on Sunday evenings.”  

Harry looks to Zayn, who looks unenthused, and back to Louis, who is still, obviously, unclothed. And has water dripping down his chest and off his hair and...Harry is still absolutely devoted to Zayn but there’s also a naked man standing dripping right in front of him and Harry is not immune. He swallows.

“Uhh…”

“That was an invitation for you to play with us,” Louis laughs, smirking as he turns around. “I’ll just be a few minutes. Zayn, do you wanna set up? Niall’s coming by, he’s gonna be here in a few minutes.”

Harry turns to Zayn, for confirmation that he is, in fact, invited, and Zayn just shrugs, his eyes squinting even more at his work as he gathers it up and carries it across the room, presumably to dump it in his room before anyone can fuck with it. “Yeah, stay if you want,” he says. He’s remarkably less enthusiastic than Harry would have liked, but it’s an excuse to spend time with him nonetheless, so Harry packs up his laptop and sets it aside in a corner of the room.

Louis comes in after another few minutes, now dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but still with wet hair. He smiles at Harry as he pulls more chairs around the table Harry’s been sitting at and goes into the kitchen to go rifling through the fridge. “I was thinking Kings. Do you like Kings?” He asks.

Harry shrugs, which he supposes Louis can’t see, with his back to Harry, but he’s not exactly sure Louis was even talking to him, except for the fact that there’s no one else in the common room at the moment.

“We haven’t played Kings in a while…” Louis says, mumbling to himself.

“No one else is coming?” Zayn asks as he re-emerges from his room, still in a sour mood.

“Nope, Marcus has an exam tomorrow, and all the theatre people are in tech.”

Zayn scrunches his face, and sits back down at the table, across from Harry this time. Harry tries not take it personally that he hasn’t reclaimed his spot on the couch, and puts it out of his mind when Louis sits down and hands him a cold bottle of cider.

“D’ya wanna play Kings, Harry?”

Harry shrugs, “I’m fine with whatever you guys want to play. Do you like Kings, Zayn?” He winces, after asking the question, as this whole conversation is getting frustratingly circular.

Zayn rolls his eyes and gets up silently, returning a minute late and tossing a deck of cards onto the table without a word.

Thankfully, a blonde boy who Harry vaguely recognizes from the soccer team bursts in then, shouting, “What’s up, bitches” while grabbing a beer from the fridge. “I just submitted the worst paper of my sorry college career, so let’s get fucking drunk, ” he announces.

Harry giggles uncomfortably, and Louis squishes even closer to him, to make room for the new player.

“Hey Niall, this is Harry, you guys don’t know each other, do you?”

“Nope,” Niall sticks his hand out across the table for Harry to shake. “Pleasure, man. How do you know these assholes?”

Louis answers, “He’s in my poetry seminar—”

At the same time Harry replies, “I’m in Art Collective with Zayn.”

Niall grins, “So you’re active then? That’s good. Gotta beef up the resume.”

Harry snorts, “I hardly think my art major is going to be impressive on any resumes in the future.”

“About as good as theatre,” Niall jokes back, nudging Louis. “Alright then, what are we playing?”

He settles in and Zayn, still without speaking, begans shuffling the cards, then spreading them out on the table in a circle. “We’ll play ring of fire?” He suggests as he goes. Somehow when taking the lead, he still manages to look absolutely uninterested in the proceedings.

“Ugh, no,” Louis complains loudly, picking up the cards and ruining Zayn’s progress, gathering them swiftly into one pile. “It’s a fucking Sunday night, I’m not drinking anything nasty, not after last night. We’ll just play standard and stick to beer.”

Zayn sits back and doesn’t argue.

It’s a pretty standard game of Kings. Niall suggests the “Little Man” when he pulls a King on the third draw, which makes them all groan. They promptly abandon the rule a few rounds late because all of them, Niall included, constantly forget and get much too drunk for a Sunday evening.

Harry also quickly learns that Niall is a dirty cheater. When Zayn pulls a Jack and prompts the “Never Have I Ever” round, Niall cackles and calls, “Never have I ever had a cock in my ass,” making all three others drink.

Harry, however, absolutely dominates as question master, Niall and Louis naively answering all his questions. Only Zayn keeps his head enough to remain silent, though if that’s through his own character or game strategy remains unclear.

Throughout the game, Louis moves closer to Harry, to the point where he’s practically on Harry’s lap by the time they finish their third round, constantly leaning in and whispering jokes in Harry’s ear, beer strong on his breath.

“Niall’s always got the slowest reflexes for four and seven,” he whispers, conspiratorially after they’ve just finished a Heaven round.

Harry laughs, “Yeah, I’ve noticed. He’s lost almost every one of them.”

Niall splutters as he finishing taking his sip and glares at them, “I heard that, assholes.”

Louis reaches for his next card, then nudges Harry and smiles before throwing it down on the table and throwing his hand into the air. Harry follows, and Zayn casually points upwards, leaving Niall staring around at all of them blankly, then sourly groaning.

“Not again ,” he complains. “Two in a row, you fuckers are all cheating,” he mutters, then drains the last of his beer and stands.

“Alright, as much as I’d love to keep drinking with you boys until class tomorrow, I really need to get home and finish my lab. See you at practice tomorrow, Lou?” Louis nods absently, picking up the cards and sorting them back into their box, then moving on to the empty beer bottles around them.  

“I should probably go too,” Harry says, realizing this is the natural point for the end of the night.

Except…

This is his perfect opening, seeing as Louis is now wrapping up the recycling to take outside, which is the furthest he’s been from them since he got out of the shower. “So, Zayn,” Harry starts, and Zayn glares over at him again. Harry will admit that the sexiness of his brooding is a lot of what attracted him to Zayn, but when he is constantly looking like he’s in a foul mood, it’s quite disheartening for having an actual conversation.

“I was wondering. Um, my final project for Advanced Photo is coming up, and the assignment is a portrait series, and I mean, I guess you saw, I—” Harry reconsiders, unsure he actually wants to bring up the embarrassing clusterfuck that was his mid-semester show and Zayn realizing he’d been an unwilling model for a photography project. Only, he doesn’t really know how to continue now that he’s cut himself off, and he’s silent enough that Louis re-enters, grabbing the second bag of bottles that the overflowing bin had produced.

“I just—” Harry tries, “Would you mind modeling for it? Maybe?”

Across the room, Louis drops the bag of bottles and they make a crashing sound on the concrete.

“Uhh—” he says, before quickly retreating to his room, slamming the door and leaving the garbage behind in the middle of the suite.

“Umm,” Harry says, too, trying to break the tension.

“Uh,” Zayn says, looking between Harry and Louis’ slammed door. “Uh, yeah, fine, whatever,” he agrees, already standing up. “Look, I have to,” he jerks his thumb at Louis’ door, and backs away quickly. “Just let yourself out, okay?” And then he’s gone too, and Harry is left wondering what the heck just happened.

Louis doesn’t show any signs of weirdness on Tuesday, but he’s also not back into that weird, hyper-friendly space he was in on Saturday and most of Sunday night. He’s just back to normal, albeit, a little quieter than usual, and less likely to make jokes during class. But Harry brushes that aside, figuring that finals week is quickly approaching, and he might just be focusing on his work. Harry doesn’t give it any thought. He is, after all, focusing on his own work as well, so beyond a couple minutes of idle consideration, he forgets about Louis entirely.

He’s pretty much the same on Thursday, as well, greeting Harry quietly, but not exactly talkative . There’s no little comments about the lecture, but the critique he’d turned in was moderate, if leaning positive, so Harry figures it’s a toss up about how he’s feeling. He chalks it up to Louis being a weird guy and tries to ignore it. In fact, he invites him to grab a coffee after class at Symphony again, figuring it could be a weekly ritual and maybe get Louis to relax around him a little more.

Louis seems taken aback by the offer, though. “Oh. Uh—”

“I mean, we don’t have to,” Harry quickly amends. “I just figured, you know, we hung out this weekend a bit, and getting coffee wasn’t dreadful last week, was it?”

Louis shakes his head, “No, you’re right it wasn’t. Let’s do it.”
He stands, packing his bags into his backpack while Harry puts his own on his shoulders, feeling a little like he was a second choice, but weirdly, excited to hang out with Louis nonetheless. He tells himself it’s just because Louis is funny and friendly and so well-connected on campus that he’s generally just a good person to know, but as they start walking and his stomach swoops with excitement as Louis starts complaining about the topic of today’s discussion, he briefly worries if that isn’t all there is.

He pushes that thought aside though, and tunes back in, just as Louis’ criticizing something one of their classmates contributed during their free share time.

“I mean, Ryan does this every week , he’s the first to volunteer to read his work and it’s always so derivative. It drives me insane when those people sit at the front and think they’re God’s gift to class because they’re the first to participate, even if what they’re contributing is absolute shit, and everyone else is just waiting for something more meaningful to add.”

Harry nods his head, “Totally.” He purses his lips in agreement.

“How come you never share, though?” Louis asks, having obviously picked up on Harry’s practiced avoidance during the last twenty minutes of class each week.

Harry shrugs. “I guess I don’t want classmates gossiping to their friends about my shitty poetry on their walk out of class,” he reasons, just to be a snarky asshole.

Louis barks out a laugh. “You’re a fucking little shit, you know that?” He says, nudging Harry’s side. They walk quietly for a few moments, deep in thought. “They wouldn’t though, you know that right?”

“Hmm?”

“They wouldn’t make fun of you. I mean, If anyone was likely to, it’d be me, and you know I don’t think your work is anywhere near as awful as Ryan’s. I really like it.”

“Thanks, Lou.”

Louis smiles and looks down at his feet, kicking at the pavement. “So, how’s your photography project going?”

Harry looks up, his brow furrowing. He hadn’t realized Louis had been paying attention to that. He shrugs. “Not made much progress, honestly. I haven’t seen Zayn since Art Collective.”

Louis’ mouth twists. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I think we’re planning on meeting up tomorrow night.”

Louis nods. “Gotcha.”

Harry can sense this conversation isn’t really going anywhere, and Louis’ just getting more closed off. “What about your thesis? Have you had to do any projects leading up to it?”

“No, thank god. Theatre theses aren’t until the Spring, so I don’t have to worry about it for a year or so. We do have to submit our proposals during the fall semester though, which is a pain, and have to write multiple and then the department chooses which they’d like you to actually do.”

“So you have to come up with two separate thesis ideas?”

“Yeah.”

“And do they, like, both have to be, you know, good ideas?

Louis laughs. “Well, I mean, some people have ideas they’re really excited about, and they’ve talked to their advisor and know it’s going to work, so they just write one good one and one throwaway because they know the good one will be approved, but I really have no idea what I want to do, so I’m not sure what I’ll end up with.”

Harry groans. “Sounds like a pain.”

“Imagine doing it while drafting a whole other thesis for another major as well. That’s what Anna Crane was doing this fall. Nearly killed her.”

“I couldn’t handle two theses,” Harry admits. Louis laughs and agrees and just like that, the conversation is back on track.

Harry walks Louis to his practice after they grab coffee, wrapped up in complaints about their classes and the horrible poetry their classmates submit. They come to a lull as they approach the field where the other players are already warming up, but Louis stalls before joining them. “Listen, so, the team and I, we go to trivia on Thursdays? After practice. Would you want to join us tonight?”

Harry’s taken back, a little bit, at the invitation. He didn’t realize he and Louis were at that level, they were just class friends, but. Well, he had fun playing drinking games with him and Niall on Sunday, and maybe he’d get some sort of insight on Zayn if he hung out with them some more. Louis is his best friend, after all, and his wooing mission up until this point has totally failed. He probably needs to change his approach before their meeting tomorrow. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees.

Louis looks relieved. “Awesome,” he sighs. “Are you any good at trivia?”

Harry laughs. “Absolutely not.”

“That’s okay,” Louis says. “We’re all pretty rubbish too, just go for the fun of it. You’ll fit right in.”

Louis, as it turns out, is a big, fat liar . Harry arrives at the campus pub at half-past eight, glass of beer that he stopped off at the bar to get in hand, and finds a table of six soccer bros with pint glasses of water and soda, heads ducked around a scribbly piece of paper, arguing intently. Louis waves frantically once he catches his eye and pulls out the seat next to him. “Hey! Harry, come join us. We were just reviewing some notes.”

“We were strategizing ,” Niall corrects, eyeing Harry suspiciously. Harry takes a sip of his beer and tries to avoid his eye. “You gave him the quiz, before you invited him, right?” He aims at Louis.

Harry coughs up the beer down onto his shirt. “What?”

“Oh fuck off, Niall,” Louis rolls his eyes. “That quiz isn’t real.”

“It is ,” Niall insists. “And if you don’t start taking this competition more seriously, we’re going to have to remove you from the team.”

“Now hang on,” one of the other players cuts in. He has spikey blonde hair and blue eyes, and Harry hasn’t seen him around before. “Let’s not be rash.”

“Yeah, Louis gets more answers than any of the rest of us,” another one argues, pulling the paper out from the center of them. “Look,” he counts quickly on the paper, then puts it down again in front of Niall, “ Nine of last week’s answers were his!”

“Please,” Niall counters, “It’s not like they were only his, he’s just the quickest so he gets credit! We would’ve come up with them on our own.”

Harry’s a little astounded by the conversation, “Wait, why do they have the answer sheet from last week?” Harry whispers to Louis.

“Oh, it’s not the answer sheet, we keep track of all the questions from week to week so we can strategize. You know, like, if we know the patterns of the hosts, we can predict future categories and answers?”

“That is…truly insane,” Harry concludes. “But I can respect it. I’m pretty competitive myself.”

Louis rolls his eyes, “Oh babe, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Harry must have been a little too loud in his comment, as Niall cuts in, “That’s why we take it seriously , and we require new members to be properly vetted.”

“Seriously, Niall, fuck off,” Louis says, his tone more serious and firm now than Harry’s ever heard it before. “He’s already here. If he doesn’t contribute anything, we’re no worse off than we would be without him. Just let him stay.”

“Fine,” Niall grumbles. “But I don’t want him drinking any more beers. It’s just making me want one.”

Harry furrows his brow. “I mean, the line’s not that long—”

Louis shakes his head though, laughing. “No, we can’t drink. 48 hour rule.” At Harry’s still confused expression, he explains, “We’re not supposed to drink less than 48 hours before a game, and we’ve got one on Saturday afternoon.”

“Ohh,” Harry nods, settling back into his seat. “Sorry, guys.” He tries chugging his beer to try to finish it more quickly. “I hadn’t realized.”

Louis brushes him off, letting him know that it’s no big deal. He drags the paper across the table towards them and angles it towards Harry. “Here, have a look at what the general idea is.” Harry scans the page, reading “What airport uses the sign FPO? “What is Whoopi Goldberg’s real name?” and “What US state shares a border with only one other state?”

“Shit, this is…. Intense,” he says. He’s pretty intimidated—he doesn’t know any of this and he wants to contribute as much as he can, to fit in, yes, but also because Louis’ team clearly has a chance at winning.

Niall glares. “We take this team seriously.”

“Okay, seriously, Niall, fucking chill out,” Louis admonishes. “It’s just a game, we’re here for fun.”

As the game begins, however, it becomes very clear, very quickly that they are not, in fact, here for fun. Louis’ teammates are intensely competitive, crouching together in furious whispers at each question, almost all of them throwing out answers with strong defenses of reasoning. Harry’s only been to trivia a couple times with his friends, and each of those times they only knew about four or five answers for certain and just chatted for the rest of the game. That is not an option tonight; even Louis is contributing to the intense atmosphere.

After about ten minutes though, he seems to sense Harry’s tense posture, because he wraps his arm around Harry and pulls him into their huddle in the middle of the table, pulled together tightly to prevent other teams from overhearing. “So, Harold my boy,” Louis begins, “What do you know about cycling speeds?” Louis asks, in reference to the current question of the maximum speed a bicycle has ever reached.

“Um, not very much,” Harry admits.
“Well, that’s alright, this will be your first lesson,” Louis decides, “But you’ll need to pay close attention. If you’re going to be a regular member of this team, you’re going to need to learn some very obscure facts.”

Harry giggles at Louis’ absurdity, but tucks closer into his side anyway. It’s nice to feel included, and it’s nice to be with a new group of people. He can sense that they would be very welcoming under any other circumstances, especially since the spikey-haired guy, John Paul, keeps whispering hints to Harry and Mikey had subtly pushed the bowl of popcorn towards him while Niall furiously scribbled a math equation trying to calculate some equation for the question Harry hadn’t heard.

“There’s a lot more math involved than I would have expected,” Harry says in an aside to Louis.

“There’s not usually this much,” Louis clarifies. “This game just seems to have a lot of questions about speed limits. He’s not even really doing a problem though, he’s just trying to convert miles per hour to kilometers.”

“What was the question again?”

Louis laughs, “Oh getting into it, are you?” He teases. “It’s what’s the speed limit on London’s canal network, in kilometers per hour.”

Harry sits up in his seat. “Wait, I know that one!” He announces. The rest of the table turns to look at him.

“Really?” Niall asks, cautiously.

“Yeah!” Harry nods, “We took a boat tour when we went to visit my sister during her semester abroad! It’s six!”

“Are you sure ?” Mikey asks, his hand poised over the answer paper.

“Absolutely,” Harry says. The rest of the team still looks dubious, but “Fergalicious” is almost finished playing—she’s teaching them how to spell D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S—signaling answers are almost due. The team has no choice but to scribble down “6 kph” and for Mikey to run the answer up to the podium at the front of the pub.

Luckily, the host—Jared from Harry’s Critical Theory class—announces that the answer was “6 kph” and the whole team screams and embraces Harry. He feels a swell of pride within himself, excited that he’s gotten the answer right and contributed to the team. Harry laughs and grins over at Louis, who’s smushed against him in the pile of celebrations, feeling fully initiated.

It isn’t until he’s waved at them from the quad and is walking back into his suite that he realizes he forgot to gain any sort of intel on Zayn.

Instead, Harry meets up with himm the next night with no plan but to wing it and hope his project, and his love life, both come out on top. They meet up outside the arts building, then head towards the hiking trails on the side of campus to begin their shoot. Zayn’s wearing a ratty t-shirt, jeans, and high tops, and the unbothered look he gave Harry when he first walked up tells Harry that his style is more due to Zayn’s overall reaction of aloof-ness towards all things Harry, rather than an effort to look particularly artsy for Harry’s photos.

Harry doesn’t mind though. He does look cool anyway, after all. And Harry can work with pretty much anything if Zayn’s in the shot.

“Thanks again for doing this,” he says, nodding at the camera bag hanging from his shoulder. “I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well. Your stuff’s pretty good, when it’s not blatant stalker content,” Zayn says, a slight smirk on his face.

“Ohmygod,” Harry laughs, “Was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?”

“I am an outrageously funny person,” Zayn says, kicking a pebble out of his way.

“I always figured you were too serious for frivolous things like joking,” Harry admits.

Zayn narrows his eyes, giving Harry a shrewd look, “What the fuck would I put up with Tomlinson then?”

Harry laughs. He had always wondered how someone as loud and obnoxious as Louis was so close to the ever cool and collected Zayn. “Fair,” he says, laughing. They’ve come to a dip in the path where there’s a bit of an artsy setup amongst the trees. “Here good?” He asks Zayn, slowing down.

Zayn nods, “Yeah, man, it’s your shoot.”

Harry pulls out his camera while Zayn starts to pose and they go for about twenty minutes. Harry isn’t really satisfied with any of them though, so they move to another section of the trails, and then another. Eventually, they gp for a more candid approach, trying to replicate Harry’s stalker shots that he was so proud of initially. But even that comes up with weak images after several minutes of trial and error. By 8:00pm, Harry’s getting frustrated and Zayn clearly annoyed.

“Just a few more, I know we’re going to get it,” Harry reassures him, though looking back at his footage so far, he’s starting to feel major doubts.

Zayn suggests they leave the preserve and try another part of campus, but they stumble upon an abandoned car on their way back, and Harry has to take about 100 shots of it.

By the time they get back to campus, having agreed to grab a late dinner together since they’re both starving, the dining hall is closed for the night.

“Fuck,” Harry says, watching as Maggie, the woman who swipes them in to meals, packs up her station and the servers carry the empty food trays back to the kitchen. “Should we get stuff from the cafe?” He suggests.

Zayn shakes his head, “No, man, that stuff’s way too greasy for me,” he says.

Harry resigns himself to calling it a night altogether then, since there’s no more excuse for them to keep hanging out, when Zayn shoves both his hands into his pockets, “I’ve got my car in Sanders Lot, though, do you want to grab something downtown?”

This is, probably, the most triumphant moment of Harry’s life. His heart starts beating faster, and has has to quickly get a handle on himself to come off as calm and collected.

Zayn. Wants to get dinner with him. Downtown. It would be almost like a date.

Not exactly, because they’ll probably just get crappy burritos and then come straight back to campus, but still.

Harry agrees, his voice slightly strained because he’s trying so hard to play it cool, and they head towards the lot.

Instead of burritos at the tex mex place in the village, Zayn drives them 20 minutes into the nearby pseudo-city to get Indian food at one of Harry’s favorite places. “You know,” Harry says, mouth full of samosa as they wait for their mains, “I always get delivery from here, but I’ve never actually come in person. I’m shocked there aren’t more students here.”

Instead of responding to that like a normal person, Zayn goes red and ducks his head down, covering his face and going red. “Oh fuck,” he mutters.

“What?” Harry says, turning quickly towards the entrance that Zayn is clearly trying to avoid.

“I fucking forgot why I was craving Indian tonight, I’m so stupid,” Zayn says. He’s clearly trying to hide them, but it’s an open floor plan restaurant, and Louis instantly spots them.

“Hi boys,” he says, tightly, as he and the guy he’s with pass their table. “What’s going on here?”

The guy behind Louis looks on at them bored, but otherwise doesn’t react. He’s tall and kind of broad, with sandy, curly hair and piercing hazel, almost golden, eyes. He’s wearing and old band t-shirt and a flannel with faded jeans and Doc Marten’s, the epitome of art-sy cool.

He wonders why he hasn’t seen this guy around before, if he’s such good friends with Louis that they’re hanging around off-campus. They run in the same circles, so Harry knows most of Louis’ friends, and he’s never even seen this guy around campus before.

“Dining hall was closed after our shoot. Sorry, Lou, I didn’t mean to intrude, I totally forgot you’d be here.”

Louis shrugs, “It’s fine, man,” he brushes off, even though he looks awkward and distinctly, not fine with the situation.

Harry feels his stomach sinking, still trying to suss out what exactly is happening.

The guy reaches out and gently places his hand on Louis’ lower back. “Come on, let’s sit down, the staff is giving us weird looks,” he whispers.

Oh.

Louis is on a date with this guy. A date Zayn knew about.

Harry’s chest tightens with the realization and the awkwardness of the situation sinks in. This must be the guy Louis was ranting about the night of the Spongebob party. This is the reason for all his dramatic romanticisms, his new approach had clearly worked. Harry hadn’t been affected by it then, but now he feels a distinct sinking in his stomach. Louis nods at the guy—his date— and offers a tiny wave at Harry and Zayn before passing them and settling at a table across the room.

“Shit,” Zayn sighs, burying his face in his hands, “Harry, I’m so sorry. He mentioned this this morning, I’m just a total spaz and forgot, I just knew I was craving Indian.”

“It’s fine,” Harry reassures him, pushing around the rest of the samosa on his plate, his appetite suddenly leaving him. “Really, it’s not a big deal,” he says, trying to determine why then, his chest is doing weird things that signal it is indeed a Very Big Deal.

He can’t keep his gaze from darting over to Louis and his date throughout the rest of their meal, and he only eats a quarter of his Coconut Chicken, packing up the rest of it to go (which isn’t strictly a problem , as he loves leftovers, but it’s the principle of it.) He’s quiet on the ride back to campus too, and feels guilty at his food stinking up Zayn’s car, even if he has his own container of leftovers sitting on the floor in the backseat.

“Anyway, thanks for tonight,” he says as Zayn idles outside Harry’s dorm.

“Yeah, sorry that was so weird,” Zayn apologizes again.

“No, really, it was fine,” Harry says.

“See you on Tuesday?”

Harry nods, then climbs out of the car and trudges back inside, feeling distinctly worse than he had at the beginning of the night.

Harry sleeps in on Saturday, still unsure why his stomach was so in knots last night. He was finally out with Zayn (kind of), yet he was antsy and awkward the entire time. He’d gotten what he wanted, they got along better than they ever had before, Zayn actually expressed interest in hearing what he had to say during the meal, and Harry still felt unfulfilled. Still couldn’t even focus on the one conversation he’d been dying to have for nine months.

He finally opens his laptop around 11am, bored of his frustrated and confused dozing. It’s still early, and he doesn’t have any pressing assignments, so he doesn’t feel like doing any real work. He opens up Photoshop and figures he’ll get a head start on editing the photos from last night. They’re pretty much exactly what he was going for in his mid-semester exhibition a few weeks ago, except Zayn’s actually posed and put an effort into looking good, rather than the candid, admittedly creepy, shots Harry had initially used. They should be perfect for his final project.

But after about twenty minutes of fiddling with the contrast and exposure, he’s still not happy with them. He’s worked on three different photos at this point, and all of them look worse once he’s done editing than when he had initially started.

Frustrated, he decides to work on his portfolio, gathering about some of his favorite shots. After all, he still hasn’t nailed down his summer plans (another source of internal stress) and applications will want to see his work. He picks through some of the most recent photos in his feed, and finds himself drawn to the sweaty pictures he’d taken of Louis at last week’s game, the ones he hadn’t edited for the paper because how is he supposed to submit close-ups of the captain goofing off for a serious sports editorial?

He decides to take a crack at editing some of those and emerges an hour and a half later with several he really likes, surprised that it’s now well into the afternoon and his stomach is grumbling something intense.

It’s a weird revelation, that he could feel so much more inspired by some candid shots he took of Louis on the field than the posed pictures of Zayn in a shoot he’d been imagining for months. Zayn looks so artsy and broody in his, which is exactly Harry’s style. But Louis’ are happier, lighter. They don’t look right in a black and white filter, which is Harry’s artistic staple, but they’re still some of the ones he feels most passionate about from the past year.

He thinks back to last night at the restaurant. To be fair, he was in a really good mood until they ran into Louis on his date. So it can’t have been Zayn and their conversation so much as it was Louis.

Harry sits up, suddenly, putting his laptop aside. Fuck, was it… had Harry just been an idiot this entire time? Had he been lusting after Zayn for going on ten months when Louis was so much of a better fit for him?

He thinks of how much fun he and Louis have in class, before the exhibition when things got all weird, how Louis’ always happy and makes Harry laugh and clearly doesn’t get annoyed with him hanging around. He’s had to fight so hard to get Zayn to pay any semblance of attention to him, but Louis is always asking him to hang out and make him feel included. Louis always had his best interests at heart, and Harry realizes that his heart gets so much lighter looking at these photos of Louis because he could be happy with him.

But, he realizes with a sinking feeling, Louis is dating someone, and probably wasn’t even interested. He was keeping it no secret that other men were interested, and the poems he submitted for class were always similarly sappy to Harry’s, maybe he’d been dating this guy for months. Harry clearly has no chance, Louis wasn’t interested, Harry’s circumstances hadn’t actually changed, and Harry still felt frustrated and lovelorn because he knew he was lusting after someone who very, very likely wouldn’t like him back.

For the first time, Harry well and truly dreads going to class on Tuesday. After a borderline existential crisis that spanned most of Saturday and well into Sunday, he’s concluded that he might maybe possibly have a small crush on Louis. He’s still really confused about it, but he knows that seeing Louis will only exacerbate the situation, as Louis’ always bright and sunny and making Harry feel happy so he’s not at all looking forward to the feelings this will foster.

He also may have written a very sappy poem ahead of this week’s assignment and he knows once class is over on Tuesday, dick around time for last week’s assignment is over and he’s going to have to send it over and just hope Louis can’t tell who it’s about.

This is a disaster.

As it turns out, he’s right to be apprehensive. Louis enters class a few minutes late, as usual, and slides into his seat next to Harry, as usual. But then, this content and satisfied look slips over his face as he leans on his fist and fixes his gaze on Harry. “So what have I missed?”

He looks so fucking soft and Harry can’t take it. He’s smiling lazily and his gaze is unfocused and his hair fringe soft and clean. He’s just so calm and sedated and Harry feels a sinking in his gut because he knows exactly what it is.

Louis had sex this weekend.

Of course the weekend Harry would get his shit together and realize he likes Louis—because he’s aware now, finally faced with Louis in front of him, that that’s exactly what this butterfly feeling is, it’s a big, fat crush—Louis would finally come into class looking like some post-coital sex god personified.

The revelation makes Harry feel awkward and apprehensive, which is the only explanation for why he spits out, “Good, yeah, fine,” to which Louis narrows his eyes and squints because that was not remotely an appropriate answer to the question Louis had posed, was it?

“How’s your poem going?” Louis asks him about halfway through class, when they’ve broken up for partner analyses of the Romanticism poems they’re studying this week.

“Oh uh, I haven’t started it yet,” Harry responds, trying to portray an attitude of cool and unaffected. He hopes if he maybe maintains an attitude like he hasn’t put too much thought or effort into it, then Louis won’t look too much into it when Harry submits a poem on Thursday that is clearly all about him.

“Did I do something wrong?” Louis blurts as Harry’s underlining a line from the poem.

Harry startles, looking up at Louis quickly, “What?”

“Nothing, nothing, it’s just, you were acting all weird downtown on Friday night, and you’re all weird now, and I know it can’t be because you finally grew some balls and made a move on Zayn, because he’s already told me nothing happened between you two but you’re still so skittish and nervous and—”

“No, fuck, Louis, it’s not,” he sighs, trying to get the words right. “I’m not mad at you. It’s not your fault,” he struggles between Louis thinking he’s done something wrong and looking so cute and downtrodden, but knowing he can’t tell Louis what’s really going on, because he has a boyfriend and it’s embarrassing to have an unrequited crush. “I can’t—” He cuts himself off, his eyes starting to sting as he stares intently down at his papers. “I have to go,” he mutters.

Harry can’t believe he’s actually doing this, but he gathers his things and leaves class early. For the first time. He feels a wave of anxiety in his gut as he walks down the stairs of the building, worried about what his professor and the rest of the class will think, guilty at leaving before its time, but also aware he could not have held it together for one more minute in Louis’ presence.

He manages to compose himself until he reaches the quad, out of earshot of any open classroom doors, then lets out a little sob and cries quietly until he can make it back to the privacy of his room.

He feels like such an idiot. He hadn’t looked past Zayn for so long because he was so sure he was the man of his dreams, and now he’s realized that Louis is probably a much better fit, but Louis is dating someone else and why would he ever be interested in the dorky kid who writes sappy poetry when he could have Cool, Artsy Doc Marten-wearing boys? If Harry had just gotten his shit together earlier, maybe things would have been different, maybe Louis would have noticed him before finding someone else, but things weren’t. Harry was just an unlucky in love idiot who didn’t know what was good for him.  

Harry’s still pretty depressed when 4:15 rolls around and he has to drag himself out of bed and make it to Art Collective. To be fair, less than two hours have passed, so he doesn’t think he’s quite reached the threshold for self-pity, but.

Still. He and Zayn still haven’t made too much progress with their plan, and Harry’s never missed a meeting yet, so even though he truly defied the odds by skipping class this afternoon (which he has already emailed Professor Marcus about, apologizing profusely and maybe lying that he had been suddenly overcome by a mysterious “illness” that makes it sound like he was about to puke all over her classroom so she forgives him), he can’t miss Art Collective.

Which is how he finds himself slumped in his seat when Zayn comes in, averting his gaze and avoiding his eye, because he’s certain Louis has already texted him about Harry’s weird behavior in class.

Turns out, he was right, as Zayn makes a beeline for him, and whispers out of the corner of his mouth, “So.”

Harry grimaces, and hides his face in his hands. “Hello.”

“Louis told me what happened.”

Harry flushes. Of course he could not be given one break, once in his life. “Did he?”

“Yeah, he was pretty worried about you,” Zayn says, effectively making Harry feel 1000% worse. Harry groans loudly and sinks even lower in his seat.

“Dude, what is going on with you?” Zayn asks, concern lacing his voice now too. Harry feels like crap. He’s such an asshole.

To make it worse, Liam comes in and makes an announcement that there’s something wrong with the building’s WiFi, so the meeting will be a couple minutes late while they get it sorted out.

“Harry, look,” Zayn deadpans, “Could you please just let me know what’s going on? Louis’ really worried, he thinks he’s done something wrong.” Harry groans again.

“No, I’m like—I’m not mad at him, if that’s what he’s thinking.”

“Then what could possibly be going on?”

“So, um, I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but I’ve sort of had this really embarrassing crush on you since last summer?”

“Yes, go on,” Zayn says, with absolutely no surprise on his face. He’s actually smirking a little bit. Harry winces. So there goes playing it cool. Obviously Zayn and known and just completely not cared.

“Well, I sort of realized that I think I might have gotten it wrong, and I might actually like Louis. But now he’s seeing someone, and he seems really happy and—” He cuts himself off when he sees Zayn’s face, who seems to be stifling a laugh, biting his lip and smiling gleefully.

“Well you don’t have to fucking rub it in,” he mumbles bitterly.

“No, it’s not that,” Zayn says, still through laughs. “It’s just, Lou’s been in love with you since freshman year.”

Harry balks. “What.” he says blankly.

“Yeah, man. It’s borderline creepy how into you he is. He was so fucking pissed when he saw your show last month, I felt bad for the guy, but it was also really funny.”

“You’re fucking with me,” Harry concludes. “Honestly, Zayn, you could have just told me you weren’t into me and let that be the end of it, this is just—”

“No, I’m serious , Harry,” Zayn says, reaching out and laying his hand across Harry’s wrist to hold him in place and looking into his eyes. “Louis has a huge crush on you. He has since you fell out of that tree in pre-orientation.” Harry flushes at the thought. He’d hoped no one remembered that. “And his date this weekend went well, yeah, but it was just one date, and if he knew you liked him back, he would…” Zayn trails off, “Well, honestly, I’m not even sure what he’d do, probably piss himself in excitement.”

Harry’s starting to come around on the thought, but he’s still hesitant. “Really?”

“Fucking really, you asshole. So please don’t put him through any more agony, because I seriously cannot take it anymore. He’s been whining for months. ”

Harry sits back and really considers it for a moment. Maybe Zayn was right. After all, this all started after Harry’s installation. That’s when Louis got really bitter, really…jealous, almost. Could he maybe like Harry back? Or, Harry supposed he would be liking Louis back, if Louis had liked him since…freshman year. For two and a half years?

“Shit,” Harry finds himself saying, for the second time in one afternoon. “I should um, go. I think I’ve got a lot to do,” He says, grabbing his backpack and fleeing, just as Liam comes in waving triumphantly.

He was evidently going to miss the meeting, but suddenly had something much, much more important to address.

He grabs his camera from his room, then beelines for the soccer field. He’s got an absolutely brilliant idea for what to do about this new development, and he can’t wait to get started.

On Friday afternoon, it’s finally ready. Harry hasn’t worked this hard on something in a long time, he’s spent so much time in the dark room the past few days he really hasn’t been sleeping. He’s smushed what was once a six-month long project into just three days, but.

It looks good. It looks really, really good. He’s convinced Liam to give him the keys to one of the classrooms for the weekend and he’s completely transformed it into his own makeshift gallery space, at least for the night. It’ll have to be gone by Monday morning when they next host class in here, but Harry’s hoping it’ll be worth it.

He finds Louis in his dorm after dinner, knocking lightly, because in the back of his mind he’s worried that Zayn was wrong and Louis doesn’t feel the same way and this is all for nothing. But, Louis smiles a little when Harry opens the door, and that’s a good sign.

It’s the first time they’ve interacted since Harry bolted on Tuesday. He skipped class again yesterday (and sent an email ahead to their professor that his mysterious illness had not indeed been cured) to give him more time to focus, and because he couldn’t bear to face Louis until he had sorted it out. He also hadn’t sent the poem over, not wanting to give anything away too soon and ruin the surprise. He just hoped Louis wouldn’t say anything to their professor that he hadn’t received it, or that his sickness would grant him a little bit of an extension. After all, if this went right, Harry wouldn’t mind Louis reading his sappy feelings in the slightest. He’d welcome it, as long as Louis felt similarly sappy.

“Hi,” Louis says, clearly surprise to see him.

“Hi,” Harry says.

Louis leans his head against the open door and studies Harry. “What’s up?”

Harry feels all his bravery leave him, this gorgeous boy standing in front of him and smiling at him. It should put him at ease that Louis looks inviting, all things considered, but Harry’s stomach just gets more twisted up in knots. “I um, I have something I want to show you? If that’s alright?” Harry says.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so like, if you have a few moments, now, that’d be um.”

“Okay?” He pauses, looking down the hall, “Like now?” Harry nods. “Uh, sure, I guess,” he says, stepping back to let Harry into his room.

Harry shakes his head furiously. He’s fucking this up. Shit, Louis is going to think he’s such a freak. “No, I mean, like, it’s um? You have to come with me.”

“Oh.” Louis says. He studies Harry for another second. “Do I need my coat?”

“I don’t know, it’s just in the arts building.”

Louis shrugs, grabbing his keys and Campus Card from the shelf next to the door and closes the door behind him. His dorm is right next to the arts building, so he takes the lead and starts walking down the hallway with Harry shuffling after him to keep up.

Louis is obviously a little taken aback by Harry’s sudden request but, if Zayn was right and Louis actually likes Harry back, he hopes this will be worth it. Louis eventually slows and lets Harry pass ahead of him. He gives Harry an odd look, like he’s confused why he’s not making conversation during their trek, but doesn’t say anything himself. Harry steadfastly ignores him. He’s too nervous for small talk.

When they arrive outside the photo classroom that Harry has set up, he stills. “Now listen, this is um, I mean it’s—”

“Oh would you just show me, you loser,” Louis rolls his eyes, pushing past Harry and into the room.

He stops in his tracks after a few steps, turning slowly to look at the photographs along the wall. Mounted around the room are the photos Harry’s been taking and editing for the past couple days. Louis in the dining hall. Louis walking across the quad. Louis studying in the library. But there’s also the photos from the soccer match. Louis running across the field, Louis victorious after winning a goal, Louis sweaty and smiling at Harry.

In retrospect, Harry’s a bit of an idiot.

How could he have not realized earlier that his love for Zayn was all artful pining? He very clearly felt those feelings because he wanted to feel deep and heartbroken and, ultimately, have a passionate fling with a fellow artist that would tear them both to pieces and inspire their work. But Louis…

Louis was his light. He was bright and funny and kept Harry inspired in a whole new sense. Instead of anguished unrequited love he was laughter and happiness and maybe Harry wouldn’t feel so madly, passionately in love to create the dark and artsy work he envisioned, but he was still creating and it was lighter and more authentic.

And who’s to say? Maybe they would fall madly and passionately in love. The thought propels Harry to scuff his feet nervously and finally look up at Louis, who’s examining the pictures intensely. He’s studying them intensely, probably because they’re all so different from Harry’s usual style, splashed with color rather than his traditional black and white, but Harry thinks it’s some of the best he’s done all year, at least, and he hopes Louis isn’t too creeped out.

“So, what do you think?” He prompts, finally ready to stop stalling and hear an answer.

Louis jumps, like he forgot Harry was with him. “Harry...” he breathes, “What is all this?” He finally turns around but rather than abject excitement, his brow is furrowed, his arms crossed. Harry’s stomach drops.

“Well,” he tries to explain, “At my show a few weeks ago, you seemed to really hate my work, and the Zayn helpfully explained that it was because you maybe had a crush on me?” Louis reddens, avoiding Harry’s eyeline, and Harry rushes to correct, “And I realized that I liked you too, so I thought, you know, I could like, recreate it? But with you. Because Zayn had inspired my work previously, but then I took all those pictures of you at your game, and you just…working on them, you were so light and happy and—”

“And what?” Louis bites, his eyes narrowing.

Harry shrugs. This wasn’t going how he’d expected it to at all.

“And…I don’t know. I just thought, I wanted to do this romantic gesture for you?” It sounds stupid now that he’s having to explain it, but Louis is slowly smiling and looking between the photos on the wall and Harry’s clearly nervous face.

Finally, Louis shoves at Harry’s shoulder, laughing at he does, so Harry doesn’t think all hope is lost.

“Well, you didn’t have to stalk me for it, you weirdo.”

Harry blanches. Shit. “It wasn’t stalking,” he defends.  

“It kind of was.”

“Well, I didn’t mean—I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, if that’s what you think. Fuck, this was such a mistake, I’m sorry,” Harry says, immediately backtracking.

Louis reaches out and grabs his hand.

“No, no Harry. I…I do like you. I have since freshman year,” he admits, a clear blush covering his cheeks now. “I just mean you didn’t need to go to all this effort for me.”

“But I want to go through this effort for you. I think I’d do quite a lot for you, Louis.”

Louis smiles and Harry finally feels his butterflies settle.

“Well how about you settle for just kissing me and we’ll go from there?” Louis suggests.

Louis moves in and brushes their lips together. It feels like coming home.

Of course, Louis soon has a change of tune.

The next morning, he wakes Harry up with a series of kisses across his chest and a beaming smile, laughing, “You put up a whole exhibit for me.” He sounds delighted at the prospect, a stark change from his assurance that Harry didn’t need to go to such trouble the night before.

Harry blushes and lifts his arm from around Louis’ back to cover his face in shame. “Oh shut up.”

“No. No I won’t,” Louis shakes his head valiantly, sticking his mouth back on Harry’s chest for a minute, sucking at the skin. “You made a whole show just for me . To woo me. What a sap.”

Harry groans. “And now I’ve got to go clean it up before class on Monday.”

“You did it illegally because you luuurve me,” Louis teases. He leans up again, kissing Harry on the mouth this time.

“It wasn’t illegal,” Harry insists, even through kisses. “It was all above board, informed Liam and everything.”

“Still,” Louis says. “You did it just. For. Me.”

Harry finally relents. “Yeah. I suppose so.”

Louis settles his arms across Harry’s chest and rests his chin on them. “Seriously, you know. I really like you.”

Harry laughs. “You know, I think I got that during the second or third round last night,” he jokes, taking his own shot at teasing. “And through the screams of ecstasy,” he adds, to which Louis swats him in the face.

“I mean it though,” Louis insists. “I’ve liked you for a while, Harry. And you…I just want to make sure you’re not going to break my heart.”

“No,” Harry shakes his head. “Not planning on that anytime soon.”

“Good.” Louis concludes.

“I like you a lot, too,” Harry whispers into Louis hair. “Not planning to let you go anytime soon.”

Although it had ultimately been created as a grand romantic gesture, Harry decides he really does love the series of photos he’d created of Louis. Rather than try to adjust the Zayn series to make it fit, he decides to adapt them as part of the final project he’d been working towards. He even presents some of them for his submission at the Art Collective exhibition.

He and Zayn mount their project in the last week of the semester. They don’t manage to get an champagne, since it isn’t a department function, but they did score a small budget from Student Government, and were able to put out a cheese platter and some juices as refreshments.

This time, Harry wanders through the exhibit making small talk with everyone who’s come to see it, and spends at least twenty minutes standing by his display to answer questions, not ducking behind any statues this time around.

Louis comes late, as Harry is quickly learning is typical for him, and piles himself a huge plate of cheese before making his way over to Harry.

“So,” he starts, mouth full of a mixture of brie and grapes. It’s absolutely disgusting and Harry is needlessly endeared. Lord help him, he is so gone for this boy. “What’s the inspiration behind this one, then?” Louis asks, once he’s swallowed.

Harry’s mouth twists in a fond sort-of smile.

“Well,” I sort of had a crush on this guy,” he explains.

Louis laughs, “Oh really?” He teases, “Do tell me more.”

“Well,” Harry teases back, “He is absurdly beautiful, but he was going out with this other guy, and I knew I had to do something big to get his attention.” He reaches out and grabs a piece of cheddar off Louis’ plate and Louis slaps his hand away. Harry fake gasps in outrage, so Louis offers it up to him and places a soft kiss to his temple.

“Only joking, love,” he whispers. He puts the arm not holding his plate around Harry’s shoulder and tugs him close. “Getting lots of questions on your masterpiece?” He asks into Harry’s hair.

“Here and there,” Harry answers honestly. “’ve had a lot of people telling me it’s ‘cute.’ Unsurprisingly, you’ve shown the most interest.”

“Well that’s a damn travesty,” Louis responds. “This type of beauty should be shared with the world. ”

He is so needlessly dramatic and Harry likes him so. much. He giggles.

“You didn’t really need like you needed to steal me away from Tyler, did you?” Louis asks, quietly. Harry picks at some of the cheese on his plate and feeds it to Louis, since his hands are otherwise occupied.

“I mean, it was pretty intimidating,” Harry admits.

“Should’ve sorted your shit out earlier, then,” Louis teases, “I was only going out with him because I could tell the guy I really liked was otherwise occupied.”

Harry pouts. “A bit unfair to Tyler, isn’t it?”

Louis shrugs, jostling Harry as he does. “Eh. I’ve heard he’s going out with a rugby player now. He’s doing fine.”

“Well that’s good then,” Harry decides. “I am kind of glad I saw that, anyway,” he says. Louis just hums his response, so Harry goes on, “Kicked me into gear, you know? I was so jealous.”

“Oooh, talk dirty to me,” Louis laughs.

“But you know, I do my best work when I’m pining,” Harry says, gesturing at the wall next to them. “What if I’m screwed for my thesis?” He worries.

“What makes you say we won’t break up by then? Plenty of pain for you to make art about.”

“ Louis ,” Harry admonishes, elbowing him in the stomach.

“Kidding, kidding,” Louis reassures. He pulls Harry closer and presses another kiss to the side of his face. “I promise, babe, your thesis is going to be great. You’ll just have some new inspiration now.”

Harry smiles over at Louis, feeling loved up in the warmth of his smile, and thinks, yeah, with this boy’s arms around him, it’s going to be great.