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Harry conveniently shatters her phone screen the first time she ever meets Louis Tomlinson.

She is tucked beneath Nick's heavy arm, breathing out a stale puff of cool air when a body stumbles into her and jostles her phone out of her hand and onto the concrete ground.

"Shit," Harry ducks out of Nick's arm and bends down to pick up her phone, turning it over. "Shit, shitting fuck. Fuuck." 

Harry pokes dismally at the now shattered plexiglass of her phone -a phone that she's only had for a week, shit, her mum is going to kill her- and mutters another fuck for good form.

"Holy shit, mate. I am so sorry. I wasn't looking where I was going, this was completely my fault." A high, definitely northern voice rattles frantically. "Oh fuck, please tell me I didn't shatter your phone."

Harry stands up from the ground and looks at the girl that's standing on one of the bleachers with her mouth popped open in worry. She is flanked by two other girls on each side and there are about fifteen people that is watching this entire scene intently. This is sufficiently the most embarrassing and saddening moment in Harry's entire life. Her new phone was practically her newborn child, and the girl that bumped into her looks like she's four seconds away from either crying or getting sick.

"It's fine, really," Harry says quickly (which is more like the normal speaking pace for every other human on planet Earth, in all honesty.) "it was just an honest mistake. It happens -"

"You shattered her phone," Nick cuts Harry off, enunciating every syllable dramatically because he's Nick. "You have to pay for it."

"You're right, yeah. You're totally right." The girl starts feeling around for her pockets while tucking a loose, slightly wavy strand from her pony tail behind her ear. "Fuck, Liam, where's my wallet?" she asks the other girl.

"You don't have to pay for it," Harry rushes to say, holding out her hand to try and make the girl stop fluttering around anxiously. "I have insurance, it's completely alright. Don't worry about it."

The girl's shoulders sag with relief, just as the girl to her left -who has long, brown hair and furrowed brows that makes her look like some sort of adorable puppy, and Harry supposes is named Liam- hands her her wallet.

"Haz, you're being too kind. This girl owes you something. She just plowed you over and broke your phone." Nick says and Harry silently wills him to just please shut up.

"He's right," the girl nods. "At least let me buy you something from concessions? It'll make me feel so much better."

"Can you arseholes move? You're blocking the footie game!" A man from the back of the bleachers hollers at them.

The girl turns around on her -insanely small- foot and stomps on the bleacher that she's perched on.

"Shut up and eat your popcorn, arsehole." She shouts back at him before turning back to face Harry. The shift in her face from pissed off to apologetic in the matter of a second is nearly hysterical. "Please let me buy you something. I truly am sorry for running into you."

"Can you at least sit the fuck down?" the same man yells.

The girl's jaw clenches and she rolls her eyes pointedly before turning towards her two friends. She says something to them that Harry can't make out over the din of the footie game surrounding them, before the girls walk away and she smiles down at Harry apologetically.

The girl jumps off of the bleacher and onto the cement beside Harry. Harry's kind of shocked to notice how much shorter the girl is than Harry;  the top of her head barely even reaches Harry's shoulder and she finds it oddly endearing. Harry waves goodbye to Nick as the girl wraps a small hand around her wrist and guides her towards the long line for concessions.

They stop at the end of the line, and Harry feels slightly nauseated by the musky smell that hangs over it that's essentially like a combination of sweat, powdered cheese, and dumpster trash. The scoreboard of the footie game reads 3-2 with their school winning, and there's an awkward silence enveloping Harry and the other girl like an all encompassing cloak.

Harry awkwardly slides her eyes over the girl's frame, taking in the flannel that's tied around her narrow waist and the artful holes in the knees of her skintight black jeans. The lighting is much better by the concessions, and Harry notices that the girl's hair is a dark purple that turns lighter as it gets to the ends. Half of her wants to reach out and twine her finger into the thick strands of purple, but the other -more rational- half reminds her that that would be a definitely creepy thing to do to someone that she's only talking to because they made her break her phone.

It's just that Harry really likes dyed hair on girls, has always found it insanely aesthetically pleasing. Niall still teases her for the time that she stalked a girl across the entire mall just because she really liked the pastel blue colour of her hair, but in Harry's defense, she might've eaten a few too many of Niall's 'world famous special cookies.'

The girl turns towards Harry with a small smile itching at the corners of her mouth. The small movement is enough to make Harry realize that she's been just staring silently at this girl for the past few minutes like a complete creep. Right, she should probably say something to her.

"I like your shirt," Harry rushes out to say.

"My shirt?" The girl echoes before glancing down at her torso. She looks back up at Harry with a smile that makes her eyes crinkle up adorably at the sides. "Oh, are you a 21p fan, too?"

"Yeah, I nearly sobbed from pure joy when I heard the songs on Blurryface for the first time." Harry shifts her weight from one pigeon-toed foot to the other. "But I've been a big fan ever since Vessel came out."

"Really?" One of her intensely arched eyebrows rises even higher. "I would've never thought a girl that wears daisies on her forehead would be a fan of them."

Harry pouts and raises a cautious hand up to her hair, "Do you not like my flower crown?"

"No, I do. It actually suits you."

Harry smiles, placated. She likes her flower crowns, they make her feel pretty and like she's a part of nature. Like she can walk through an arbor and the flowers could look at her and consider her as a welcome, flower loving friend. (She also thinks that her the flower crowns distracts people away from the fact that her hair is so flat against her head at the top, and that it actually helps compliment her natural curls, but she likes to use the quirkier reason as an excuse because it makes her seem more earth-y and is also a way for her to test whether any prospective new mates will deal with her random ideas about certain things.)

"Thank you," Harry preens. "I never caught your name, by the way."

"Oh, I'm Louis.." she holds out her small hand for Harry to shake. "And you're Harry, we had a pottery class together last year. And a creative writing class together this semester. We have had a lot of classes together, actually. I usually sit behind you, though. So I understand if you don't like, recognize me or anything."

"Louis.." Harry furrows her brows and gazes at the girl in front of her once more, taking in her small nose and soft features before a metaphorical light bulb flickers over her head. "Wait, you're Louis Tomlinson. I know you! You're the girl that flipped off Mrs. Johnston after she cut you off mid-presentation. Didn't your hair used to be brown?"

Louis lets out a soft tinkle of a laugh, "Yeah, I actually just dyed my hair recently. It took me about a month to convince me Mum to let me do it."

Harry laughs along with her, looking back over her shoulder at the scoreboard to see that their team is now tied with the opposition.  Louis seems to notice, too, because she lets out a small groan. A person clears their throat behind Harry and she glances up to realize that they're next in line for concessions.

Louis steps forward and rattles off an intricate list of sweets for herself, then looks expectantly at Harry to do the same.

"May I have a.. uhm... water, please?" Harry asks the kindly smiling woman with an unfortunate hairnet sat on her head.

"No way," Louis snorts and rests her hand on Harry's wrist. "I shattered your bloody phone. I have to repay you, and I feel like a bottle of Asda's brand water isn't going to be a proper retribution. Go ahead, buy every article of junk food you desire. I won't judge."

"While that does sound fun, I'm not that big on sweets. Also, I'm on a date. And I feel like coming back with an armful of sweets that another person bought me would be bad form."

"Oh," Louis' smile drops, and half of Harry wants to ask for it to return. It's a really good smile. It's that particular brand of blindingly bright that's reminiscent of the videos of solar flares that Harry watched in year ten Environmental Science, and it feels just as much like witnessing a natural phenomena as watching those videos, too. "Who are you on a date with?"

"Grimmy?" Harry replies slowly. "Nick Grimshaw. He's like, really tall.  Pretty funny. Doesn't have much of a filter. He was sat beside me when we bumped into each other."

"Didn't he get held back, like, three times?" Louis asks.

Harry furrows her eyebrows, "Yeah, why do you ask?"

The woman behind the concession stand clears her throat politely, and Louis startles and shovels her over a handful of quid to her, saying, "Add a pack of gummies, too. This one's too thin to get by with only drinking water."

They make their way back to the concessions with Louis' arms laden with an outstanding amount of sweets and Harry carrying a water bottle and the package of gummy worms in one hand. She offers to help Louis carry her sweets but Louis waves her off, saying something about how she already owes Harry too much already.

"I only asked that because I know that you're outlandishly smart." Louis explains as they shimmy past the guest stands. The score is still tied, and both crowds are getting restless as the match is getting closer to its end. "And usually the super smart kids tend to be friends with and date the other super smart kids."

"I hate that social construct," Harry says while reaching out her free hand to adjust the shoulders of her kimono. "Like, this isn't High School Musical. There isn't some status quo that constrains us all to certain cliques. I like making friends, and I don't care what 'label' they fall under, I just want to make them smile and feel like they have someone to come to.

I don't care if someone is smart or popular. I just care if they have a good personality that I get on well with. And Nick is one of those people, even if he isn't the smartest when it comes to classes."

Louis nods slowly, "I respect that statement. Not many people like you think that way."

They stop in front of their student section. Louis' friends are sat at the top of the bleachers and Nick is still sat where Harry left him, with a slither of space left for Harry to sit while he chats amiably with Pixie and a girl from their AP English class.

"People like me?" Harry echoes, looking up to where Louis was already scaling the steps of the bleachers.

"Yeah, you know. The smart, pretty type. The kind that isn't quite the most popular in school, but the exact brand of person that everyone is most envious of, because they have everything going for them and they more than likely know it? Usually people like you vehemently resent slackers like Grimmy and I."

Harry is left gawking at Louis Tomlinson's -apparently majestic in shape, according to her current ogling- bum as she sprints up the bleachers in shock. Harry doesn't... she didn't know that that's how random, near-strangers at school perceive her.

"Hazza!" Nick yells from his seat on the bleachers, waving wildly towards her. "God, I thought that you buggered off on me. That would've been an awful way to end our third date."

Harry laughs and slides next to Nick, pressing her thigh to his with a practiced ease and angling towards him so that she can stare straight at his smile. Nick hooks his arm over her shoulder and Harry's stomach fumbles with this type of excitement that she supposes is what butterflies would feel like.

"So what did the emo chick have to say about shattering your phone?" Nick says into Harry's ear after the other team scores another goal.

"Emo chick?" Harry asks, confused. Nick tilts his head backwards to where Louis had left. "Oh, you mean Louis. She is really sorry about it, and seems like a good person. I'm pretty sure she hates me, though."

"Probably," Nick agrees and Harry's mouth opens up in shock. "Girls like her tend to have an instant distaste for girls like you. They think that you're fake and will probably make jabs at them as a soon as they turn your back. It's hard for them to think that you might be the actual cherub that you appear to be, when they're used to people always acting backhanded to them."

"Is that how you feel towards certain groups of people?" Harry asks, but Nick doesn't answer.

Their striker, Luke, has apparently scored a goal, and the entire student roars to life as they all come to their feet and cheer. Luke slides across the field on his knees and Nick accidentally jostles Harry's flower crown off her head.

Two goals, five kisses on the cheek from Nick, and seventeen more gummy worms later, the game is won and Nick is guiding Harry to his moped by a gentle hand pressed against the arch of her spine. The line to get out of the parking lot is borderline insane, but it's a little bit bearable because Nick indulges her as she makes as many traffic jam puns as she possibly can in the span of a minute.

;;

When Harry came home after the game, she immediately ran into her Mum and ended up pouting down at her phone as her Mum lectured her about taking better care of her property. But she was saved by Gemma stopping by for their Mum to wash her laundry.  Of course, she had laughed hysterically at Harry's shattered phone once she figured out about it.

Soon, after Gemma's mountain of Uni-filth-slathered clothes was put in the wash, they all pile up on their couch. Gemma forces them into marathoning the Real Housewives of New York (which is completely atrocious, by the way, Harry will never understand American telly.) Robin pops in a little bit later, smiling at their mum before saying that he's going to head on up to bed. And that's when the interrogation starts.

"So how was your night with Nick?" Gemma asks Harry, eyes glinting with mirth. "I would be worried that you two buggered off and shagged in his backseat the entire time, but seeing as he doesn't even have a backseat, I've decided to not be too worried over it."

"Gemma," their Mum berates, her voice light with a laugh tickling the edges of it.

"He uses a moped because he cares about the environment and wants to reduce his carbon footprint," Harry defends calmly.

"I'm not complaining about his choice of ironic transportation. " Gemma puts her hand to her chest haughtily. "Even though I do find it hilarious, I am glad that this is one way for me to ensure that my little sister's flower is safe."

"I do not want to think about any of my children's 'flowers,' God, you two are so blunt." Their Mum stands and shakes her head. "On that note, I am going to bed. Please don't set the house on fire."

"Night, Mum." Harry calls after her as she disappears up the stairs. She turns to Gemma once she's sure that their Mum is out of hearing range. "You twat, why would you talk about that in front of Mum."

"Because the safest sex is no sex, H. Also, you make the funniest faces when you're shocked." Gemma laughs and turns down the volume just as Romana goes on a loud tirade directed at Bethany. "What? Are you actually shagging Nick?"

"No!" Harry near-yells, face flushing.

And that's kind of the problem, isn't it? The fact that she's not shagging Nick. Or, more so, the fact that she kind of doesn't want to.

;;

Harry is sat alone at her usual lunch table, waiting for Niall to join her with both of their trays, while thumbing forlornly at her shattered phone screen. Today is a Monday, which means that today already generally sucks. It's also hamburger day, which means that literally everything in the school smells like greasy mystery meat and it makes her stomach turn. And the fact that her phone screen is so shattered that it completely distorts her Instagram feed to where Kim Kardashian's latest selfie looks achingly similar to a foot doesn't help matters at all.

"Shit, H." Niall's loud, boisterous voice pulls her out of her reverie. "What happened to your phone?"

"Louis Tomlinson happened."

"Louis Tomlinson?" Niall echoes, sliding Harry her wilted-lettuce-ladened tray before plopping down beside her. "Isn't that the really short girl with the red hair that never smiles and hangs out with all of the other punk rock kids? Did she break your phone?"

"Her hair is purple now, and kind of. She bumped into me at the game."

"You went to the footie game without me? I thought you was going on a date with Nick." Niall pouts at her, blue eyes losing some of their bright light.

"That was my date with Nick."

"Oh," Niall perks up again and smiles. "Do you want a bite of my hamburger?" she asks, holding up the greasy burger like a peace offering.

Harry scrunches her nose and shakes her head, her curls brushing over her shoulder.

"I'd rather eat my own foot than that slab of glorified grease filled pseudo-meat," she tells Niall primly.

"How was your date, then?" Niall asks, nonplussed, as a stray hair flops out of her bun and right on the middle of her forehead. Harry reaches out and fixes it for her. "Did Nick try to fondle your tits again?"

"No, he did not. He told me that he was completely fine with taking it slow." Harry twirls her plastic fork (because God forbid that their school gives them real, metal forks for eating. It's almost like they're all prisoners that can't be trusted with anything that might be a weapon here) in her sad excuse of a salad before sighing. "And that's weird of me, right? To want to take it slow?"

"What do you mean?" Niall scrunches her brows. "H, it's totally normal to be a virgin at our age. And you shouldn't push yourself to do anything that you're uncomfortable with."

"No, it's not that. It's just." Harry tries to gather the words to explain but just can't. "It's just that he's a very attractive lad and I like him, but I don't feel drawn to him in that way."

"Do you think that that's because of your... fancying girls thing?" Niall takes another bite out of her burger, and ketchup squelches out of the side. Harry tries her hardest not to gag.

The thing is, Harry has already had her 'holy fuck I fancy girls just as much as I fancy lads what in the hell am I supposed to do?' sexual crisis phase. She has accepted the fact that she likes being kissed by both boys and girls alike. And she even realized that she really doesn't mind being with any gender at all, after she dated a trans boy for a bit. She now knows that she is romantically inclined to people for their personalities, and she has slowly learned to accept that and even be proud while telling people that she is pansexual.

(Of course, that doesn't mean that she didn't have her fair share of self doubting spells about it, too. The amount of random girls that she snogged and tears she shed in the span of one year during her 'Big Sort-Of Gay Freak Out' is astonishing. And Gemma and Niall had to hold her hand and force feed her so much chocolate to placate her as she vehemently denied the fact that she liked girls. But once she was over that obstacle and came out to her Mum and some of her schoolmates, it all got a little bit easier as time went on. So, small victories.)

The real problem for Harry is that this kind of feels like the Big Sexual Crisis 2.0. Which. Shouldn't be happening. She already knows her label and is proud of it. But there's just this, small, niggling worry in the back of her head. Filled with questions that she doesn't want to ask or even dare to search for the answers for. Because the more she thinks about it, the more she feels like her twat is broken or something.

"It's definitely not that," Harry laughs and slides closer to Niall, lowering her voice. "I am as open to the thought of cock as I am to pussy. I find both very aesthetically pleasing. My problem is just that I don't really want to be sexually active with either of those things."

"What're you saying, H?"

"I'm saying that I'm not like... sexually attracted to Nick. Or anyone, I think. I'm just... I am more into it for the romantic and loving parts of the relationship?"

"Oh," Niall takes another, contemplative bite out of her burger. "That's a... unique situation."

Harry sighs and slides her fingers through her hair to move it away from her eyes. She feels like her chest has loosened up a little bit from telling Niall, but the ease of pressure is hardly significant. She's still confused, and she hates feeling confused.

Harry is smart, alright. She has been on the advanced track for years and is known for always being the girl that has her homework finished and the one that always understands what the teachers are talking about. She prides herself on being aware of her surroundings and being quite knowledgable about it. And when a problem arises in her life, she does her research and analyzes all of the possible solutions until she can solve whatever is happening to her rationally and logically. She isn't the type of person to just coexist with confusion. And the fact that it's something in her own mind that's making her at a loss is even worse.

"Hey, do you want some of my muffin?" Niall asks Harry, waving a monstrous chocolate smelling muffin under her nose. "Comfort food is always the answer."

Harry smiles and leans forward, taking a bite out of the top of the muffin while it's still in Niall's hands. Niall squawks and jerks the muffin away from her. Harry laughs with her mouthful while Niall pouts at her for 'defacing the beautiful masterpiece of a baked concoction.' The entire situation is just what it takes for Harry to get her mind off of all of the questions about herself for a little bit, and it also makes Niall smile manically and. Well. Harry has always thought that Niall's smile could cure cancer. So that helps her feel more at ease, too.

;;

Harry is always early to her classes.

She doesn't see the point of loitering around in the hallways. All it does is cause everyone else to get pissed at her for blocking the halls and for her to be jostled around like a ragdoll because people in these hallways are brutal and will shove you if they feel like you're in their way. So, she's usually the first one sat in her desk and answering the class's warm-up prompts while everyone else slowly filters in because they have enough balls to withstand the claustrophobic halls just so that they can converse with their significant others and mates for a few more precious minutes.

But Harry is actually early to her creative writing class for a different reason today. That reason being Louis Tomlinson.

She sweeps in with a minute to spare before the warning bell, her mouth set in a small scowl and her majestically purple hair loose and reaching down to her prominent collar bones, this time. She looks slightly threatening, with her narrowed eyes and clunky Doc Martens and her red and blue flannel that's wrapped around her small waist.

Harry nearly chokes when she realizes that Louis is wearing a crop top. A striped little thing that showcases the small swell of her breasts and her flat and -overwhelmingly aesthetically pleasing- stomach.  She's also wearing a choker. Which. You know. Is fine. Harry is fine. Harry is totally fine and semi-exclusive with Nick Grimshaw -who is intensely fit and also a lad that Harry has had a crush on for literal years- and she is totally, not at all attracted to the semi-punk rock girl that broke her phone.

That doesn't mean that she can't try to be mates with her, though. And that's what she will do. She kind of wants to prove Louis wrong, show her that she is more than a 'smart, pretty type' of person that doesn't associate with 'punk rock slackers' like her. She wants to show her that they are totally a good fit to be great mates. (She also kind of wants to have a little bit more of a peek into the alluring enigma that is Louis Tomlinson, but that's something that only Harry and her cat has to know.)

"Hii, Louis." Harry greets her, smiling impishly up at her as she shrugs off her (endearingly Marvel printed) backpack. "Are you having a good day?"

"Hii, Harry." Louis echoes, the small smile that itches at the corner of her mouth telling that she's mocking her. A spark of electricity zaps through Harry's fingers when she realizes that, for some reason. "You do realize that it's a Monday, right? There's no possible way that I could be having a 'good day' when I'm stuck in this hell hole."

"Oh, cmon. It's not that bad. That one lad from the library was handing out lollies today, which always makes the day a little bit more bearable."

"Are you talking about the guy that refers to himself as King James?" Louis plops down in her desk behind Harry, and she turns around in her seat to face her. "Please tell me that you're not taking his candy. I am at least a trillion percent sure that he laces everything he hands out with arsenic."

Harry giggles and shakes her head, "O, ye of little faith. He's just trying to make everyone smile. I think it's nice. He really is a kind lad, you should talk to him one day."

Louis scrunches her nose adorably and makes a distasteful 'meh' sound. "I'd rather not, I hate people."

"You seem to like me just fine," Harry doesn't realize how flirtatious that sounds until she has already said it.

Right. She should probably reel herself in. Nick, her mind supplies helpfully. You have Nick and he's fit and witty and you definitely don't want to lose your chances with him. Plus, you don't even know if Louis is gay or not. Harry sits up a little straighter and tries to force herself to stop smiling. The aching in her cheeks is a signifier enough of how spontaneously her efforts are failing.

"That's because I am practically being forced against my will to begrudgingly become mates with you." Louis deadpans with a mostly straight face. "It's your form of cruel and unusual punishment for me shattering your phone."

"Aw, Lou-eh. You want to be my mate?" Harry asks excitedly. "Does this mean that we can make friendship bracelets?" Harry gasps excitedly and leans forward. "Can I make us friendship flower crowns?" She's only half joking.

Louis giggles, bright and sunnily, blue eyes crinkling up at the sides as she tilts her head back with the force of it. A girl from the desk to the left beside them shushes them. And it's like a light flickers off in Louis, because she turns to the girl and tries to school her face into one of cool disinterest. But Harry can still see the laughter threatening to break through Louis, like a light that can't be contained, and it makes her feel oddly smug.

The late bell rings and Harry shoots Louis a small grin before turning back around to face frontwards in her desk. Their teacher starts to drone on about how he wants them to try and write a scene that is composed of complete satire. Harry opens her notebook and turns to a fresh page when a wad of paper tumbles over her shoulder and lands primly on her lap.

Harry shoots a subtle glance over her shoulder at Louis, who just stares blankly at Harry but nods for her to open it. Harry turns back around and unfolds the crumpled mess of paper.

She skims over it and a burst of warmth shoots through her chest. She turns back around and mumbles a quiet 'thank you' around her smile to Louis before looking back at the paper. She smooths it down with her hand and rereads the note.

'I think I like the flower crown you're wearing today best. The roses look good on you. xx Lou'

;;

For their fourth date, Nick takes Harry to Jesy Nelson's party.

Which, isn't the most romantic date that they could've went on, but at least there's brownies. And Harry really likes brownies. They're like, the warmest and happiest food in existence. She could devote her entire life to baking a million different types of brownies. (But she's probably just saying that because she used to be baker.) She also really likes Nick, with his loud laugh and his ability to magnetize everyone in the room's attention to him and his handsome jawline. Harry takes another bite out of the brownie before leaning her side against Nick's.

"You have a splendid jawline," Harry slurs slightly then furrows her eyebrows. She never realized how wonderful the word splendid is until just now. "Splendid. Spuh-len-did. Splendid."

"You are as high as a kite right now," Nick laughs at her and tucks her under his arm. "Maybe you shouldn't eat anymore brownies for a bit?"

Harry gasps, then pouts. "But I love brownies. They're so sweet and kind and I want to marry them."

"But these brownies also have weed in them, and you was supposed to be the designated driver."

"But," Harry rests her hand on Nick's chest. "Marijuana is illegal. They would never put something like pot in brownies."

"Harry. There is a literal world-wide known thing called 'pot brownies' for a reason. Have you never seen a shitty American college movie before?"

"I thought that that was just a myth," Harrys cheeks heat with color as Nick folds his mouth in to avoids smiling. "Why would you put something that's bad in something so yummy and innocent? Why didn't you warn me?"

"Harry." Nick stares at her blankly. "We are at a party with a bunch of drunken idiots. Did you really think that the brownies would be normal?"

"I just figured that Jesy's mum left out some brownies for her birthday guests." Harry pouts for a moment then gnaws nervously on her lower lip.

Nick tosses his head back and laughs like that's the funniest thing he's ever heard in his entire life. He wheezes before looking down at Harry fondly. Leaning a little bit down to kiss her right on the forehead.

"You're too adorable," he states simply.

And then he kisses her.

Nick and Harry have snogged a few times before. And Harry likes it. She likes the feeling of soft, yielding lips on hers, she likes the warmth that spreads through her bones. She likes how intimate it feels. To Harry, kissing is like the closest you can be to a person. There's something about sharing breaths with someone else and feeling the tremble of their lower lip as they slowly get into the rhythm of sliding against one another that is just so delicate and vulnerable. Kissing is like stripping yourself bare and putting yourself out there to see how your partner will treat you.

Her heart is beating as fast as a hummingbird's wings in her chest as Nick swipes his tongue across her lower lip and she pliantly parts her own lips for him. She's content, and the kiss is blissfully mind numbing. But there's still that small voice niggling at her saying that something is not quite right.

(And Harry tries to not think about it, she really, really does. But she knows that when people kiss for long enough, they typically get turned on. But she just. Doesn't. Kissing has never been a sexual thing for her. And she's had more than a few instances where snogging sessions in her basement have gotten a tad heavy, and even when there was a hand on her chest or a leg slotted between her thighs, but she still just didn't feel that rush of electricity and pure want that everyone else seems to get. And she knows that the people she snogs with are fit and have good personalities and are the exact kind of people that she would fuck if she wanted to. But it's like her libido is missing this switch that makes her want to have sex. And the more she tries to find it, the farther away it seems.)

Nick's mouth tastes bitter like alcohol, and his hands are fluttering over her sides like a skittish butterfly. Somehow, they have ended up press against the wall of Jesy Nelson's insanely posh living room. The music is thudding The Weeknd at high volume and one of Nick's massive hands is sliding under the hem of her shirt and skimming higher up until his thumb brushes the underside of one of her breasts. The atmosphere is practically pulsating with sex and bad decisions and Harry just can't breathe.

Harry tilts her face away from Nick's plush lips and slowly extracts herself from where she was pinned between the hard line of his body and the wall. Nick makes an aborted whining sound, and his wide eyes turn to her in confusion.

"Harry?" he asks, voice dry and throaty from the kiss. "Is something wrong? Did I push you too far?"

And the thing is that Nick looks so genuinely worried that he pressured Harry and that just makes everything drastically worse.

"No," Harry shakes her head, inhaling deeply and silently willing for the room to stop spinning. "You didn't do anything wrong. I just.. need air."

With that, Harry ducks out from under Nick's arms and walks like a newborn deer to the inordinately massive double doors that lead outside. The fresh air burns her lungs as she's finally out of the oppressive crowd of partygoers, and her heart rate immediately starts to slow from its harried pace. The sky is full with stars that hold a distant promise of a better tomorrow, so she focuses on those as she moves towards where she knows Nick parked. Which, of course, is why Harry nearly brains herself tripping over a conveniently placed yard gnome. (Which, seriously? Who even uses that ironic type of yard decoration anymore?)

Thankfully, a pair of hands grip her by the waist right before she smacks the cobblestone walkway with her face.

"Steady there, mate." A warm, feminine voice says around a laugh. "Had a bit too much to drink already?"

Harry clears her throat shakily, only just now realizing the tears that were building in her eyes as she turns to her savior.

"I'm fine, really," Harry says, her eyebrows knitting together when she realizes that the girl in front of her looks achingly familiar.

"Harry!" A voice that is unmistakably Louis' scream-yells. "Making friends with Lima Bean, are you?" she breaks out into a high, breathy chuckle. "God, look at you, you're proper sloshed!"

Harry is still confused. She is the epitome of confused. She is as confused as Sir Mixalot after his music career fell flat after the success of Baby Got Back. Who is Lima Bean? Why does Louis like she's glowing even though it's in the dead of night? Why isn't she sexually attracted to Nick? Why does she feel like she wants to simultaneously run a marathon and vomit? Again, who in the everloving fuck is Lima Bean?

"Not drunk. Did you know that pot brownies are, like, an actual thing?" Harry says, words slow and sticking to the back of her throat. "No one has ever told me that. I thought  that Hollywood was supposed to be a pack of dirty, sensationalized liars?"

Louis laughs, and Harry feels like there's a supernova swirling in her chest. Whenever she gets home she should make a list of all of the successful things she has ever done, and right at the top it should say 'making Louis Tomlinson giggle.' And then she should probably list the fact that she hasn't wet herself since she was a toddler. Which, has to be a pretty major success, right?

"You're weird." Louis tells Harry, and it feels oddly like a compliment.

"You're pretty." Harry's left hand seems to have acquired a mind of it's own, because suddenly it's reaching out to touch Louis' hair. Harry uses her other hand to bat it out of the way before she does something truly creepy like trace Louis' thin, soft-looking lower lip. "Whoopsie."

"Is this your first time getting high?" Louis almost looks fond in the way that her eyes are practically shooting beams of happiness directly at Harry. "You seem pretty out of it."

"No, not the first time. I've gotten high a few times before with my mate Niall. I usually end up standing in front of a Taco Bell salivating over cinnamon twists before the night is over when I do get high, though."

"Hey, Lou?" The girl from before -Harry's savior that looks like a human hug, her mind helpfully supplies-  interrupts with a soft voice. "Zee and I are going to head on in to the party. Are you coming with?"

Half of Harry wants to glare at the girl for interrupting this lovely moment in which Louis' attention and sparkly eyes was solely focused on her. But then she quickly berates herself for thinking like that because this girl is sweet and has eyes that look like syrup and clearly doesn't mean to be committing the heinous crime of disrupting this legendary moment of time in which Harry and Louis were in a deep, friendship cultivating conversation.

Harry scans her eyes over the two other girls that she completely forgot about once Louis Tomlinson opened up her candy-floss coloured lips. They both have warm brown eyes, and the other girl that Harry's never heard say anything before is like inordinately beautiful and smirking over at Louis with a knowing tilt to her lips.

"You guys are pretty, too." Harry throws her hands up in the air, trying to spin in a circle but probably looks more like Bambi trying to walk for the first time. She inhales the sticky, summer night air and feels like there's a thousand galaxies expanding in her lungs. "This is all just so lovely. Everyone is beautiful."

"Oh, she's one of those love-everyone-and-promote-world-peace drunks." The quieter girl with the glossy black hair says in a voice that is  rough yet elegant all at once. "That's disgusting."

"Thank you, Harry. You're beautiful, too." Lima Bean says.

Harry preens, and Louis' mouth settles into a small pout.

"I thought I was special," she says before turning back to the other two. "You two can go on ahead. I think I'm going to take Hazza here to Taco Bell."

Harry's stomach flips with excitement and she's not sure if it's because of hunger or the thought of spending more time with Louis. Either way, Harry is totally up for the direction that this entire night is heading.

"Alright," the two girls say and stalk up the stairs to Jesy's main entrance while snickering to each other.

And that is how Harry finds herself folding her never ending legs to fit into Louis' compact blue Mazda while Louis curses the very existence of 'douchebag motorcyclists that decide to park their pompous means of transportation behind her car.' Harry is feeling around the bottom of her seat for the lever to yank her seat backwards and Louis looks like a disturbed kitten and it's all just perfect. She never wants to forget a single detail of this very moment, even if Louis' car does smell a bit like stale tacos.

"Can I play us some music?" Harry asks after she's finally situated her legs to where it's somewhat comfortable. "Please?"

"Go wild." Louis shrugs and turns on her turn signal, the street lights playing clever games to outline her ethereal frame.

Harry smiles and plugs her phone in with the AUX cord. Scrolling through one of her overmany playlists before pausing over a suitable song and pressing play. Louis reaches out one of her small hands to turn up the volume. Harry finds herself fonding over Louis' chipped, black nail polish for really no reason at all.

"Oh my God," Louis barks out a laugh before the chorus has even began. "I would've never pegged you as a Fetty Wap girl."

"That's because I'm not one," Harry says around a giggle. "I was just trying to impress you with my valuable knowledge of pop culture. Did it work?"

"Cmon, Harriet. Everyone knows Trap Queen."

Harry pouts and presses her thumb to her home button, scrolling through her phone to try and find the most obscure song that she has on her phone rebelliously.

"That's it. You asked for it. I'm going to make you listen to the best five minute banjo solo you've ever heard in your entire life. You're welcome."

Louis sighs for approximately seventeen years. "I am beginning to regret my decision on leaving Zayn and Liam to have all of the fun and get sloshed while I indulge you and your dorky ways."

"Oh my god. Liam is Lima Bean. I get it now." Harry feels right chuffed with herself for figuring it out, turning towards Louis with a proud smile before the rest of what she said digests in her head. "And heeeey."

"I'm kidding, I swear. I'm actually enjoying this so far. You haven't made me want to crash into a tree yet, so, you can't be too bad of company. I am surprised that I ran into you, though. I haven't seen you at any parties before."

"That's because I am really not a partier. I would much rather be camped out with Netflix and a tub of cookie dough than surrounded by a bunch of sweaty people acting like they're more inebriated than they really are."

"Then why'd you come to Jesy's party?"

"Nick asked me to come. It was like a date, of sorts."

"So are you and Nick, like, boyfriend and girlfriend?"

"Oh, no. We aren't official or anything. We're just dating to see how we fit together."

"Well, obviously your date didn't go too well, or else you wouldn't be in this car with me instead of trying to not choke on Grimmy's hairspray fumes."

Harry laughs a little before the severity of the entire situation comes crushing down on her. She unlocks her phone and opens up her message thread with Nick. She thumbs out a quick text to him saying that she decided to leave with someone else because she didn't feel too well. Which isn't a total boldfaced lie. Her stomach has been quivering and feeling like a thousand butterflies are fluttering about ever since Louis Tomlinson decided to come from the woodworks in her dark ripped jeans and manic smile.

"It was alright." Harry answers vaguely. "Do you like to party, then?"

"Meh," Louis scrunches her nose adorably and turns on the right turn signal. "I'm not a big fan of people, quite frankly. But I like music and Mike's Hard Lemonade, so it's not too awful."

Harry hums and barks out a laugh when she glances up to see where Louis is pulling into their local Taco Bell and barks out a quick laugh.

"Oh my God, you're actually taking me to Taco Bell."

Louis laughs and gets in the line for the drive-thru, "Where else would I be taking you without asking for directions first?"

"I.." Harry tosses her hair over one shoulder and laughs quietly at herself before glancing back towards Louis' impossibly perfect profile. "I actually have no idea."

Their laughs entwined with Edward Sharpe and his Magnetic Zeroes singing about home as the yellow lights from Taco Bell's parking lot filtered in through Louis' smudged sunroof and it all just feels so right. Harry doesn't know if it's just the weed talking, but she personally feels like this moment with Louis is light years better than being pressed against a wall with Nick singing along to awfully dubstepped music while drunken people tried to perfect the methods of having sex while still wearing clothes.

"You're so pretty," Louis giggles out around a smile, a mischievous glint overtaking her eyes. The tone of her voice and the smirk that's itching at the edges of her mouth directly implies the 'okay so that was kind of dumb of you to do, but you're still cute though' message. Harry still preens and sits up straighter in the passenger seat anyways. "Cmon now, stop staring at me like that and tell me what you want."

Harry rattles off her order to Louis, who repeats it back to the woman with a depressingly monotone voice that's taking their order. Louis pulls up to window and Harry finds out that she was sitting on a stick of deodorant for the entire ride, but she doesn't move it out from under her bum because she thinks that the lady at the window would judge her for randomly pulling a deodorizer out of her arse. (Hashtag first world problems, her mind mentally provides, and then of course, she gets the world's worst laughing fit known to man. Louis just stares blankly at her for a few seconds before turning away to hide what Harry feels like is a fond smile. She'll mark this happening as a success, then.)

"Your hair is really pretty," Harry tells Louis as she pulls out of Taco Bell. "Like really, really pretty. I want to touch it."

Louis chances a glance over at Harry as she drives, one eyebrow arched inquisitively as the tip of her tongue sticks out adorably from between her pink lips from focus. Her eyes are gleaming with something (either from the street-lights, mischief, or happiness -- Harry can't decide which) that makes a flame burn in her stomach. She has never felt this exciting essence that constantly engulfs her veins because of someone so quickly before, and it's exciting.

"I feel like you tell that to all of the girls," Louis laughs thinly, but Harry can still make out the muted blush that is coloring the apples of Louis' cheeks in the low lighting.

"Just you, actually. I think it's the purple; it really appeals to my aesthetic."

"You honestly make zero sense, I hope you realize that. Like, half of the things you say are just -- what are you doing?"

Harry stops her fingers from where she was undoing the buttons of her high waisted jeans and looks at Louis, a slow smile spreading across her lips.

"I thought that these jeans made my bum look really good; so I decided to where them to the party. Which was a fatal error. I can't even feel my vagina anymore. I think I'm going to die these jeans are so tight."

Louis stomps on the brakes in the middle of the road and leans forward against the steering wheel and let's loud, cackling laughs peel out of her mouth in the most possibly endearing way ever. She smacks her hand against the wheel, which makes the car horn blare, which, in turn, makes both of them jump in their seat and begin to laugh together.

"You fucking idiot--" Louis wheezes through laughter.

"No you're the idiot, you have us stopped in the middle of the road--"

"Who platonically unbuttons their pants in front of someone that they've only known for less than a week"

"Oh come on, if you was in my position you would do the exact same."

Louis shakes her head and sits back up, wiping under her eyes and still giggling as she eases off of the brakes and slowly sets the car in motion again.

"I would never be in your position. I purposefully dress like a Raging Lesbian™ not only to ward off any possible male suitors, but also for the comfort that comes with stretchy waistbands and oversized shirts."

Harry looks over at Louis, taking in her dark jeans with the knees cut out and a fucking Jurassic Park shirt with a massive flannel over it. Louis is looking at her over her shoulder, lips puckered in a kittenish smirk with her eyes sparkling so mischievously that Harry feels her brain slowly shutting down all of its interior systems so that it can just focus solely on Louis.

"I hate stereotypes," Harry says slowly. "But you really are the epitome of a lesbian right now. I mean, you're in a flannel and an obscure shirt while driving down the road in the middle of the night with a girl with unbuttoned pants in your passenger seat."

Louis laughs again, and Harry wonders how creepy it would be if she stealthily recorded her laugh and listened to it every night.. Answer: definitely creepy. But she can't be blamed for thinking about it, Louis has a really wonderful laugh, alright.

"I swear you're not funny," Louis shakes her head and takes a sharp right turn. "I'm only laughing because you do that little smirking thing like you're so proud of yourself for saying something so dumb."

"You think I'm hilarious," Harry reaches her hand over the gear shift and lightly pinches Louis' arm. "If I was a comedian, you would come to all of my shows."

"You're quite cocky, you know?" Louis says and takes another turn.

Harry leans her head against the headrest and sighs while looking out the window. The stars look like glitter, she realizes, a beautiful, magnetizing type of glitter, and she wants to dance with them. She wonders if Louis will dance with her and the stars, if she'll hold her hand and become a galaxy with her.

"Your laugh is like spring rain," Harry mumbles over the sound of the music that's playing in the background. "It's light and misty and has the promise of beautiful things being born form it."

"What are you saying right now?"

Harry giggles and slides her hair out of her face and shrugs. "I have no idea, to be honest. I'm just verbally enjoying your presence."

Louis stops the car and unbuckles her seat belt. Harry follows suit, not even really thinking about how she has no idea where Louis has drove her to, and doesn't really absorb her surroundings until she's out of the car.

"You didn't take me here to murder me and cut my body up into tiny pieces, right?" Harry asks, turning to look back at Louis, who is leaning back in the car and turning up the volume of the car so that they can hear it from the outside.

"Please, if I planned to murder you, I would've put you down in a dark corner at the party. That way there would've been more people to blame than me."

Harry stares blankly at Louis in all of her tiny glory. "It scares me that you have invested so much thought into my murder."

"Several semesters of being the shortest girl stuck in the seat behind the tallest girl in class can really build up some anger, yknow?"

Louis jumps up onto the hood of her beat up car, swinging her legs adorably and beckoning for Harry to come sit beside her. Her hair is fluttering aimlessly in the wind in soft tendrils and she looks so indescribably soft at this very moment in time.  Harry wants to do things like braid her hair and trace patterns on the palm of her hand that it physically hurts.

"It's not my fault that you're so cute and small."

Louis pouts and sits up a bit straighter, puffing out her chest and ceasing the way that her small feet were swinging back and forth. "Fuck you, I'm average height and terrifying."

Harry snorts unattractively and sits on the hood beside Louis, close enough to where she can feel the heat radiating off of her skin.

"Sure, love. But that still doesn't explain why you decided to take me to an abandoned parking lot that is conveniently detached from civilization."

Louis twirls a strand of her own hair around her finger and shrugs. "I wanted to show you the view."

"The view," Harry echoes gazing at the turned over trash cans and the overgrown shrubbery that encase the cracked pavement of the parking lot.

Louis lays back on the hood of her car and grabs Harry's hand, making her do the same. "Yeah, the view," she points up towards the sky, and Harry finds herself short of breath.

"Holy fuck." Harry breathes, she's never seen so many stars in one place.

"This place is far from town, which is why it's vacant, and also why you can see so many stars. It's away from pollution."

"Lou, this is beautiful." Harry tilts her head back as far it can go, soaking in the starlight that envelops the treetops in a deep indigo blue. "I think I've found nirvana."

"I really like this place. It's a good spot to just.. get away from my family for a bit and just get to witness how beautiful nature can be." Louis' hand tightens around Harry's, she somehow forgot that they were entwined together. "I mean, I'm not a religious person. At all. But this is kind of like a way for me to feel spiritual every so often, you know?"

Harry nods but doesn't say anything, something about the frail tremor in Louis' voice beckons her to stay quiet, signals for her to let Louis say whatever she feels like she needs to.

"And I remember you read a poem about stars one time in our English class, so I thought that you'd maybe appreciate this as much as I do."

"I love nature." Harry states simply. "But I love the stars most, because they're always so warm and give off this welcoming aura. The stars won't judge you if you're different and like to have daisies in your hair; the stars don't care if you think that somethings wrong with you. They're there, and they'll shine for you no matter what. I think they give off a positive message."

"Do you think that there's something wrong with you?" Louis asks after a while.

"Yeah." Harry swallows around the lump that's quickly forming in her throat and nods mutely. "I mean, this probably sounds really stupid. But I think that my vagina is broken."

".... What?"

"Like, I'm a teenager. And teenagers are ridden with hormones; obviously. But. You know how you're supposed to feel sexually attracted to someone?"

"Yeah?"

"Well I don't feel that way. For both genders. Like, it's not my first, second, or even fiftieth thought to have sex with someone, you know? I'm more inclined to the romance side of it."

Louis tightens her grip around Harry's hand comfortingly. "This will sound very cliché, but you feeling that way is totally normal. There's a few people in my LGTBQ+ group that talk about feeling that way. There's classifications about things like asexuality and demisexuality, and maybe you fit on that spectrum? I know this probably isn't helpful at all but I would just say that you need to research things like that. You don't have to label yourself as anything, but it might comfort you to know that you're not alone?"

"That's.." Harry inhales and closes her eyes. The motor of Louis' car is humming against the small of her back, and for some reason she feels a little placated from that, a little less confused. "That's actually really helpful. Thank you for your advice, Lou."

"No problem, love." Louis says and Harry redirects her attention to the stars, the feel of Louis' small hand in her's, and the ending strings of Vinyl Theatre crooning to a close.

They lay in a mutual silence, staring up at the sky in a wide eyed glory in such a way that they could be filmed and this moment in time would be easily defined as being a romantic phenomena in any mundane teenage love story, and it's just pleasant. Harry could lay here until her bones deteriorate and her soul ascends and joins the sky to waltz among the stars with Louis'.

"I fucking love this song," Louis says and sits up just as the opening strings of Round and Round fills the humid air that's enveloping them.

Louis turns to look down at Harry, her shoulder-length hair moving to the side to give Harry a perfect view of Louis' inordinately perfect profile. Her eyelashes touch her cheekbones as she blinks ethereally, and then her searing azure eyes are focused on Harry. She forgets how to breathe for a few moments.

"Will you dance with me?" Louis asks her earnestly, moving their conjoined hands slightly and raising one of her eyebrows.

Harry clears her throat and finds herself nodding before she even knows what Louis has said, and then Louis is smiling coquettishly and helping Harry sit up and shimmy off of the hood of the car.

Louis stands in front of her, dropping Harry's hand and doing an overdramatic bow before stretching and interlocking her hands behind the nape of Harry's neck. Harry takes a step forward and rests her hands on Louis' small waist, reveling in the fact that her hands are large enough to nearly completely span Louis' body. They begin to sway with the slow, lilting melody, and Louis is gazing up at Harry with a shine in her eyes that's reminiscent of the stars above their heads.

I won't run away this time, Till you show me what this life is for. Harry finds herself wishing that she never has to leave this moment, because there's something about the way that Louis looks at her, the way that their bodies slot so perfectly with one another, that is addictive and calming all at once. It's more than the fact that Louis is beautiful, and funny, and clever, it's the fact that Louis is Louis, and Harry could spend hours standing here and admiring what she's like.

;;

It's three in the morning when Harry is finally in the driveway of her own home, with flushed cheeks, a new snapchat contact, and a massive smile permanently etched on her lips as she leans down to look into Louis' passenger window.

"Thank you so much for the ride," Harry tells her earnestly.

"It was really no problem. I wouldn't mind doing this again. " Louis' smile at the moment could fuel a thousand lighthouses, and Harry basks in it gladly.

"I should really go inside," Harry says. "It's freezing and I have church tomorrow."

Louis laughs and turns down the volume of her radio a bit. "Alright."

Harry nods to herself and waves, starting to head down the driveway before she quickly turns on her heel and signals for Louis to roll down her window. She summons up every ounce of courage she has in preparation for this.

"Did you forget your keys or something?" Louis asks around a laugh.

"No, uhm." Harry laughs and takes a small step backwards. "I was actually wondering if you know what the word limerence means?"

"No? I don't think I do." Louis smiles, but her eyebrows scrunch adorably in confusion. 

"When you get home, look it up." Harry turns and heads back towards her own door before looking over her shoulder and yelling another quick, "Thanks for everything!"

And then she's in the warmth of her own home, with warm cheeks and a new vivid outlook on life that she hasn't ever felt before.

;;

"Well if it isn't my own personal Cinderella," Nick Grimshaw lilts as he slides into the seat across from Harry. "Did your pumpkin get you home alright?"

Harry lays down her highlighter from where she had it poised over her book as her cheeks flood with heat. Nick leans back in his chair with ease as he smiles toothily at her. She tries to smile back but can't, so she opts to divert her eyes for a moment, her cheeks still burning uneasily. She feels guilty for some irrational reason. There's something about the irony of Nick openly pursuing her after their date wherein he kissed her and she ran away from the party with someone else. (And an admittedly insanely fit someone else, too. Which doesn't help her guilt situation at all.)

"Did you find the glass slipper that I left for you to remember me by?" Harry closes her book and rests her elbow on the table as Nick chuckles throatily.

"I did, but I traded it with a homeless man on the side of the street for a pack of gum."

Harry presses her hand to her chest and forces herself not to smile, "Oh, this is truly modern romance at its finest."

Nick laughs along with her and reaches across the table to thumb over the pages of her book. Harry prays to all of the Gods above that he doesn't make her lose her spot as he turns the book to asses the cover with a critical tilt taking over his thin lips. The anxious knot of guilt that was slowly rising in her throat starts to loosen, and she feels like she can actually look Nick in the eye without wanting to break down and apologize for the way that she acted.

"It's Kind of a Funny Story," Nick reads the title aloud. "Sounds... peculiar."

Harry grabs for the book and clutches it to her chest protectively. "I wouldn't call it that, it's original. It's about this boy that goes to the mental hospital because he tries to commit --"

"Darling," Nick cuts her off with an uprisen hand. "If I wanted to know about it I would just look it up on CliffsNotes."

"Oh." Harry looks away from Nick and runs her hand over the book's well-worn spine dismally. The library is practically bare at this time of day, seeing as no one ever bothers to come here unless it's required for a class and it's currently free period. So the alcove of hidden worlds encased in book-covers serves as a barrier to seclude Nick and Harry from the rest of the world. "To each their own, I suppose."

Nick's foot moves under the table and hooks around Harry's ankle that is only covered in one of her knee high socks, forcing her to look back at him once more. He's still aiming that thousand-watt smile at her relentlessly, and she hesitantly forces herself to smile back. The guilt returns swiftly, because Nick just looks at her with this open attraction -- and she's not sure if he would be attracted to her if he knew everything about her.

"Do you want to come look for a book with me?" Harry asks him.

Nick nods, and then they're standing up. Harry smoothing her pleated skirt before leading the way to the New Releases. She feels Nick's hand ghosting over the small of her back as she turns past the Nonfiction books. She studiously ignores the warmth of his hand as she slides her palm over the spines of the library books. She stops just as her finger runs over the embedded title that's spelling out A Midsummer's Night Dream, her eyes narrowing on the.. unprecedented sight that lies before her.

"H?" Nick asks, the warmth of his chest pressing against her back as he runs into her. "What's wro - holy shit."

Harry swallows nervously as she watches no one else but Louis Tomlinson standing on her toes so that she can properly snog a girl with glasses that Harry recognizes as the quiet girl that's in their Econ class that they have together. The girl's hand settles snugly on the curve of Louis' petite waist as she guides her to be slotted in between her spread legs, and Harry feels an uncomfortable coil pull in her stomach that she has never felt before. She turns around quickly, feeling like an intruder, and accidentally causes for an entire row of books to fall over as her body clumsily flails against the bookshelf. Fuck. Harry watches in horror as Louis detaches from herself the other girl's lips and turns to look directly at them.

"Abort mission," Harry feels her cheeks flood with heat as she stumbles away from what feels like the bad opening for a shitty lesbian porn film where the girls end up scissoring on a desk. "Abort, abort."

Harry paces back to her table and sits down on the uncomfortable chair. Her cheeks flaming as she thinks about the pile of books that she just left on the floor. I'll pick them up later, she reasons. But for some indiscernible purpose, she still feels wholly embarrassed about what just happened. (Harry absolutely refuses to think about the most logical answer -- this is high school; everyone walks in on someone in the middle of a proper snog at least once per semester. She shouldn't feel guilty for stumbling in on Louis and her... someone.)

"What in the hell was that?" Nick murmurs quietly as he sits back down in his seat across from her. He looks to be in total disarray: his eyes are wild with confusion and a stray curl of his hair is resting out of place on his forehead adds to the affect. "Was that Creepy Louis? Do you think she's... gay?"

This is probably his first time seeing girls kissing outside of the dehumanizing-porn-realm, Harry realizes, which probably justifies the glazed look in his eyes. She can relate to the confused yet fascinated tilt to his lips; it's quite the religious experience when you see two fit girls snogging the lives out of each other first time. She closes her eyes and forces the thought of how Louis' long eyelashes fluttered delicately as the other girl tangled her petite hand in her soft, purple hair out of her mind. She instead looks Nick in the eyes as she reaches up to adjust her flower crown - today's choice was light blue peonies decorated with some baby's breath that she picked out of her Mum's garden the day before - trying to look admonishing.

"You can't just assume someone's sexuality, Nick." Harry asserts before picking up her pink highlighter and finding her page once again. "She definitely isn't straight, yes, but that doesn't mean she's a lesbian, either. She could be somewhere on the spectrum, and it's unfair to erase all of the other sexualities."

Nick grabs one of Harry's pens that she had laying in front of her and clicks it recessively as he mulls over what she said. Harry takes the time to look back at her book. She rereads the same line over and over again uselessly before Nick finally sets down her sparkly, pink pen and clears his throat until she glances back up at him.

"I don't fully understand what you just told me," Nick tells her bluntly, but he cushions it by laying his hand over Harry's free one. "But you looked really serious when you said it and it was quite cute. You're cute. Anyways. Pixie totally called it. She told me the other day that Faux-Punk-Louis was gayer than Elton John and I didn't really see it until now. Oh, I should text her about this."

Harry slides her hand out from under Nick's and pouts. "You're kind of a jerk at times, you know."

"And you're too sweet for your own good," Nick grabs the pen again and twirls it between his fingers. "That's why we balance each other out so well."

Harry's cheeks flush in annoyance, and she's not even sure why she feels so upset. She just wants to be left alone in peace so that she can finish her book and reread the part where Noelle and Craig meet again. She wants Nick to stop talking shite about Louis and she wants to stop thinking about how she made a colossal tit of herself after catching Louis snogging another girl. Harry shouldn't even be phased by the thought of Louis with someone else, Louis is just her friend, after all. A friend she's hardly known for that long and shouldn't feel possessive over. But this simple fact still does nothing to ease the knot of discomfort that's forming in her stomach every time she thinks about what she saw.

"Oh yeah," Nick says once he puts down his phone. "I forgot that I actually hunted you down for a reason. I was wondering if you wanted to go watch that new film with me this weekend. I'll pay for your snacks and everything."

"I.." Harry lays down her highlighter and closes her eyes tightly before opening them again. "Actually, I.."

Nick looks at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something that'll probably be positive because he's Nick, and Nick always gets what he wants. And Harry tries to envision it, tries to see herself hopping on the back of Nick's uncomfortable mo-ped and watching some shitty film while he tries to smoothly run his hand up her thigh and the prospect of it all just feels wrong. It feels wrong because Nick probably has this idea of how their relationship would go.

He probably thinks that they'll go on a few more dates and then he'll ask to make it official. And then they'll be boyfriend and girlfriend and will be one of those couples that waste space in the thin hallways in between classes just for a few more minutes of conversation. And then Nick will tell her that he loves her, and she'll feel obliged to say it back. And then he'll snog her heavily until he's pushing her back on his twin-sized bed and hinting at the fact that he wants to have sex. And that's just. She doesn't. It doesn't seem like it'd be fair to him.

How can she possibly love someone like Nick and be wholly happy with him if she doesn't even love herself? She isn't at the phase in her life to throw herself in a relationship when she can hardly even look at herself in the mirror without being ridden with confusion. She doesn't know what's wrong with her, she doesn't know why she doesn't want to have sex with anyone (male, female, or in between), and she just doesn't feel ready to be committed to someone else if they don't even know what they're getting in to.

"Actually, I think we need to have a talk." One of Nick's eyebrows rises comically. "Not that kind of talk, but like a. Talk. But not.. the talk."

"What do you mean by a 'talk' then, love?" Nick leans back in his chair and grins. "You know I couldn't have possibly gotten you pregnant."

Harry throws her highlighter at his forehead and giggles. "Of course, you're right. But this talk kind of falls under that category?" Nick nods for her to proceed. "I was just wondering, if, like, you plan to have sex with me at one point?"

"What?" Nick's eyes widen comically. "I mean -- yeah, of course. Are you like ready? Do you want to do that instead? Because, I'm pretty sure I can get my parents out of the house on any day you want and-"

"No," Harry inhales through her nose and crosses her legs nervously. "I.. I'm not ready. I'm trying to tell you that I'll never be ready."

Nick laughs cautiously, raising his hand to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck.

"Are you, like, wanting to become a nun?"

"No," Harry shakes her head, her curls cascading over her shoulder wantonly with the movement. "It's not, like, a religious or moral thing. It's more so the fact that I'm not sexually attracted to you. Quite frankly, I don't think I'm sexually attracted to anyone."

"Well, how could you say that if you've never had sex with me?" Nick's eyes look confused, and for some reason Harry wants to cry. "What if I can change your mind?"

"I don't want you to try to change my mind," Harry mumbles. "I don't want to have sex with you, Grimmy. I'm sorry."

"Then I.." Nick stands up from his seat. "I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't go to the movies this weekend."

Harry looks away and purses her lips, "Maybe we shouldn't," she echoes.

;;

It's only fitting that it starts to rain as soon as Harry begins her five-mile walk home.

The torrential downpour of rain-droplets is soaking through her thin blouse and she feels like she has swallowed the entire Atlantic Ocean. Her lungs are contracting with the heaviness of the threat of fallen tears and she feels like she is about to collapse in sobs at any given moment. She liked Nick, she truly did. She liked the way he would look at her and the banter that they had. She felt secure. She didn't even begin to predict that he would react so badly to her telling him how she felt. Perhaps Harry is broken; she doesn't see any other teenagers struggle so openly with the thought of having sex with someone else. Maybe she should've kept quiet about her feelings and continue to be with Nick. Maybe Nick was her only chance at finding that one true love.

Or maybe she's acting like the melodramatic-teenager-that's-walking-with-waterlogged-shoes-on-a-flooded-sidewalk-just-after-being-(kind of)-dumped that she is.

Harry stops for a moment to let a weathers Volkswagen into their driveway and takes the time to look up at the sky. The clouds are an ashy blue that hold the promise of raining for hours on end and the rain is falling in massive droplets that smack Harry's cheeks with force. Its an awful thunderstorm fit for an awful day, Harry notes. And she tries to find something optimistic about today to cheer herself up but she can't. Gemma has gone back to Uni, Niall is contaminated with the flu, Nick's name rhyming with prick is not a mere coincidence, and Louis bloody Tomlinson is probably still snogging that --admittedly pretty-- girl from the library.

A crack of thunder pulls her out of her reverie, "Fuck." She still has a solid four miles until she'll be at her house and the rain shows zero signs of letting up.

Harry hoists her shoulder bag over her head and continues to walk down the weathered sidewalk. She feels so done with everything, she just wants to go home and watch Blue is the Warmest Color and have a proper, melodramatic strop while stuffing herself with a mixture of Buncha Crunch and popcorn and forget that this day ever happened.

"Now why in the everloving fuck," an achingly familiar voice yells over the sound of the rain. "Would a smart girl like you be walking alone in England without a bloody umbrella?"

Harry pivots on her foot, narrowly avoiding a massive puddle. She squints through the heavy sheets of rain to make out the shape of a beat-up blue Mazda.

"Louis?" she yells and walks closer to the car. "Do you live close to here?"

"Not at all, actually. But I thought I saw your little skirt and followed you."

"That's insanely creepy, you know." Harry says, but she's still smiling at Louis for some reason like she's the sun that has broken through the onslaught of rain clouds.

"Creepy," Louis leans across the console and opens up the passenger-side door. "Or chivalrous? Seeing as I am saving you from the Bubonic Plague."

Harry raises her eyebrows at Louis, taking in her disheveled appearance that is contained in a black raincoat that is much too big for her and her wide smile. Maybe she is the sun. The rain is essentially drowning Harry, and she still has so many unanswered questions about herself swimming around in her mind, but for some, indescribable reason it all comes to a halt when her eyes look into Louis' alarmingly beautiful azure ones.

"I'm more likely to get pneumonia before I get the Bubonic Plague, you know."

"Get in the fucking car, Styles." Louis yells, smiling at Harry with a certain luster in her eyes that makes Harry feel so significant, like she's this special being that's the center of Louis' life. But she's not, Harry thinks of the girl in the library, of her friends that practically hang on to he every word. "Don't just stand there, you boob."

Harry bends down and settles into Louis' matchbox of a car. Her hair is wet and beginning to frizz and her clothes are absolutely soaked and she's pretty sure she's dripping all over the interior of Louis' car. Louis is listening to some obscure song that she's pretty sure is by Panama Wedding and her car smells weirdly like salad, this time. Rain is covering her windshield, making a mosaic of the street lights before them.

"If I'm a boob then you're a goob," Harry says as she buckles herself into the seat.

Louis cackles and shakes her head, "You are probably the most random person I know."

Harry gathers all of her hair to one side and wrings the water out of the wet curls, assessing Louis out of the corner of her eye. She has a bruise forming on her collar bone and a lipstick stain on her jawline, and for some reason that makes Harry feel upset. She pins the feeling on the rejection from Nick bleeding into the forefront of her mind from all vessels.

"Thank you," Harry says quietly, but she's pretty certain that her voice is drowned in the sound of the singer crooning about Uma.

"Why were you walking in the rain anyways?" Louis asks as she eases to a halt at a stoplight. "I thought Grimmy was toting you around everywhere in his scooter on steroids."

Harry shifts in her seat and plays with the hem of her skirt. Goosebumps have overtaken the formerly smooth skin of her thighs and she pouts when she realizes that this means she has to shave tonight.

"Grimmy and his mo-ped isn't really an option for me, anymore." Harry swallows nervously. "It turns out that boys don't really enjoy it when you tell them that you aren't sexually attracted to them."

"What the fuck?" Louis stomps on the gas pedal and they jerk forward. "What kind of douchesack dumps someone like you because of that?"

"Someone like me?" Harry echoes.

"Seriously, what the hell? Is a person's worthiness now suddenly the equivalent to the amount that they have sex? Just because you don't want to give him that part of you doesn't mean that you don't have anything else that's worth his time. He's suck a fucking arsehole. I want to punch his massive nose and make him cry." Louis hits her small fist against the wheel, making the small car emit a honk. "Nick Grimshaw deserves to cry."

"I don't think he should cry," Harry argues.

"Anyone that hurts you deserves to be ejaculated into the pits of hell."

"I.." Harry coughs. "I don't think that ejaculate was the best thing to say in that context."

Louis huffs and slides a small hand through her hair. Harry watches the movement, mesmerized. There's something about Louis, she thinks, something that makes even the most mundane thing that she does seem mystical, in a way.

"Even if that's not the correct term, I'm still right." Louis reiterates. "This is your road, right?"

"Yeah," Harry affirms. She watches as Louis turns the wheel to make the turn intently. "If we're going to be asking intrusive questions, then I feel like I deserve to ask you about the girl from library."

"What girl from the library?" Louis asks.

"The girl," Harry turns her body fully towards Louis. "You know, the one that had her hands in your hair and was all -" Harry throws her head back to expose her neck and releases a fake moan, her chest heaving as she runs her hand down her wet chest. "While you was trying hump her to death."

The car swerves dangerously off the road and Louis is hurling explicits into the nothingness and Harry can't help but laugh at the wild blush that is overtaking the clear skin of Louis' cheeks.

"Harry," Louis gasps. "You can't go all... pornstar on me when I'm driving, fuck. We almost died."

"Almost being the operative word," Harry adjusts her sodden flower-crown primly, a proud smile forming on her lips. "Anyways, I didn't know you had a girlfriend."

"That was Eleanor, she's in our Econ class." Louis coughs awkwardly. "And she's not my girlfriend. She's just.. kind of my friend."

"Oh," Harry sits back in her seat properly. "I didn't know that you gave your friends that kind of treatment."

"Well, I guess, like. If you want to be a fuckboy about it, then the correct term for it would be a 'fuck buddy'."

"Oh."

"It's not like, you know, the cliche type." Louis shrugs. "It's just hard to be an out of the closet lesbian during high school. There's a very slim selection to choose from if you're not the popular one. I just wanted to have some experience, and Eleanor has always fancied me a bit. So we made an arrangement with no feelings attached."

"That makes sense, but you didn't have to like.. justify it to me? Just because I am personally not vying for sex doesn't mean that I will judge you for having it."

"Not all people are wonderful like you, Harry Styles." A private smile forms on Harry's face as a result of Louis' soft tone. The song changes into something by PVRIS that blends melodically with the rhythm of the rain hitting the window just as Louis pulls into Harry's driveway.

"Thanks for the ride, Lou." Harry tells her, her cheeks blushing something fierce as she picks up her schoolbag.

Harry leaves the car and runs to her front porch quickly but still feels like there is an entire ocean being soaked into her bra once she has reached her door. She slams her bag down and rummages through it for her keys, squinting against the onslaught of rain that's getting in her eyes.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Harry mumbles to herself as she goes through the contents of her bag again. "No fucking way."

She tries to remember the last time she saw her keys and all her brain can provide is the image of her keys still on its lanyard draped over her doorknob. A glance at her driveway proves her theory that her Mum still isn't home. Fuck. Harry has locked herself out of her own house.

A small hand taps her shoulder and Harry jumps up from where she was knelt over her bag.

"Holy shit," she wheezes as she turns to look at Louis. "We need to put a fucking bell on you or something -- fuck."

Louis grins, "Oh, so I'm a cat now?"

"I would think that you're more of a kitten than a cat, honestly."

"Duly noted. You do know that you left this in my car, right?" Louis holds up Harry's still-shattered phone.

Harry grabs her phone sheepishly, unlocking it to catch a glimpse of a selfie of her and Gemma dressed up like Piper and Pennsatucky from Orange is the New Black. (Dusty was their Bennett.) Before looking back up at Louis.

"I didn't know, but, actually. And I hate to be a burden on you. But I was wondering if maybe I could kip with you wherever you're going for the next few hours? It appears that I've locked myself out of my house."

Louis snorts and walks away from her, "Get in my fuckin' car, Haz."

Harry hoists her schoolbag over her head once again and sprints back to Louis' Mazda. She beats Louis into the warm interior of her car and is already settling her schoolbag between her frigid feet once Louis opens the driver's side door.

"It's unfair that you have abnormal giraffe legs," Louis huffs as she buckles into her seat. "You never give the normal people a chance in a race."

"Lou, you're so small that your tiny legs could never let you win a race."

"I am not tiny. I am rugged and punk and -- for fuck's sake I have purple hair and a heart of steel."

Harry rolls her eyes and leans her head against the headrest. Louis' windshield wipers are working vainly to try and keep the flood of rainwater off of the windows and her radio is now singing about wanting someone to take their love and run and Harry just wants to close her eyes and bask in this moment forever. She opens her eyes to look at Louis, who is bathed in the speckles of shadows that occur from the mixture of raindrops and streetlights.

"I feel like you know so much about me already," Harry mutters over the music. Louis takes a second to look over at Harry. "I like it."

Louis' lips pull into a beautiful smile that could compete with the most dazzling of sunsets.

"I like it, too."

"But what about you--" Harry takes off her flower-crown and lays it in her lap. "what's your story?"

Louis clears her throat and takes a sharp turn. Her face is a bit guarded but she smiles nonetheless.

"That's for you to figure out."

;;

"I definitely didn't imagine your room to look like this," Harry says as she runs her hand over the poster that's on Louis' wall.

"Really? What did you imagine, then?"

"Generous amounts of pink," Harry looks at the weird-rock-lamp thing that sits on Louis' dresser. "Some tulle. Marble floors.  A bedspread that says 'princess' across it. A lot of sparkles."

"Love, I think you just described your own bedroom to me."

Harry blushes for truly no reason at all and turns around just in time to see Louis laying down on her massive bed. Louis' room is like something from Harry's tumblr dashboard. It's simple with fairy lights strewn all over the place, a black and white comforter, and a few obscure posters hanging on her walls. It's very cute and very Louis, in all of her complex ways.

"I think I'm chafing." Harry pulls her thin, rain-soaked blouse away from her skin. "Everywhere."

Louis giggles and sits up from her bed. She walks over to her dresser and pulls out some sweats and a t-shirt.

"These are big on me, so they should fit you." She hands the clothes to Harry. "There's a bathroom down the hallway but you might have to be bombarded by the girls, and I can't assure that you'll survive."

Harry laughs, earlier on when they first came into Louis' house, Louis practically sprinted her past the living room so that she wouldn't have to face the 'brood of over-inquisitive siblings'. Harry can still hear the loud Telly playing cartoons and the sounds of people laughing downstairs. She looks down at the clothes in her hand and smiles at the fucking Chipotle logo that's on the shirt.

"Turn around," Harry tells her.

"What?"

"Turn around."

Louis turns on her small falling over her shoulders delicately. I have to get my hands on that hair, Harry thinks to herself before taking off her shirt.

"Why am I turning around, again?" Louis asks. Harry throws her blouse in front of Louis and laughs at the small gasp that she emits. "Are you changing in my room?"

Harry pulls the dry shirt over her head, stretching at the mildly tight waist-line before shimmying off her skirt. She throws the skirt towards Louis, too.

"Holy shit," Louis' voice cracks. "There's a partially naked Harry Styles in my bedroom."

Harry slides the sweatpants over her legs and strides towards where Louis is still standing, her back is still to her and her frame is insanely small in comparison to her own. Harry gently shoves Louis onto the bed, causing for her to elicit a shrill squeak. Louis turns around and laughs, her eyes shining brighter than all of the stars in the universe combined before grabbing Harry's wrist and pulling her down onto the bed with her.

"Your pants are too short," Louis whispers.

"That's because your legs are too short," Harry retorts.

Louis shifts in the bed to where she's sitting, and Harry rolls over to reach for her phone before sitting up, too. She unlocks her phone to see that Nick still hasn't texted her back since this morning.

"Did you really like him?" Louis asks gently.

Harry runs her hand over a quite large crack in her screen and shrugs. "He was funny. And I've known him for quite some time. We've been friends for years.  I thought that maybe he'd.. I don't know, I thought that he, over anyone, would want to stay with me even with all of my problems."

"I just," Harry sniffs delicately and looks at her absolutely wilted flowercrown that's resting on Louis' dresser. "This makes me think like. If Nick still doesn't want to be with me for me, then will anyone else want to? What if I can never learn to love myself for who I am? What if I never get love at all?"

"Haz," Louis breathes and takes Harry's phone out of her hand. "I understand that you're in a very delicate place right now because Grimmy is the biggest twat to ever exist. But you have to know that you, above anyone else, deserve love."

"I.." Harry shakes her head.

"Listen, just because you're not sure what label you go under does not mean that you're invalid." Louis' hand tentatively reaches up and rests in Harry's knotted curls. Harry nods slightly in consent and she begins to rub placatingly over her hair. "Several people are going through this, and you would never tell them that they don't deserve love - right?"

Harry nods.

"Then you have to see how beautiful and smart you are. And you have to know that someone is out there that is made to love you and make you feel valid. Sex is not the most important thing in a relationship. And you will find someone that doesn't want to push you into anything that you don't want. You're seriously the best person that I've ever met. And I will do anything to make sure that you don't have to cry over something as stupid as Nick fucking Grimshaw ever again."

"Louis.." Harry swallows over the tears that are threatening to fall from her eyes. "That's really, really kind."

"And it's also really, really true. I might not be the genius that you are, but I do know my shit." Louis' hand rubs soothing circles in Harry's hair. Harry closes her eyes and leans against Louis' warm hands. Fond waves of electricity are happily thrumming through her veins with every gentle touch, and she just wants to bask in this forever. Harry's upset -- she's morally lost and has no fucking idea what is going to happen to her friendship with Nick -- but Louis, with her sweet smell and her fairy lights, truly help everything. "Hey, love, don't cry."

Harry stares into Louis' warm eyes, taking in her gentle smile and the way that her hair is slightly frizzed from the humidity, "I'm crying?"

Louis gently runs her finger under Harry's eye, "Yeah, babe, you are. Fuck, you're cute."

"You're cute," Harry murmurs.

Louis inhales sharply and looks away, "How about we have a proper cuddle, then? That always makes my sisters feel better when they're upset."

"I'm little spoon," she declares.

Louis lays down on her bed, her purple hair splaying against the pillow and a warm smile overtaking her pink lips. She pats her hand against the open space beside her and Harry slowly lays down beside her. She slots beneath Louis' warm arm and relishes in the feeling of Louis' chest moving against her back. The fairy lights cast their shadows on the opposite wall and Harry smiles at the sight of Louis' hand's shadow slowly inching forward to entwine with her own. Friends don't act like this, she thinks. But she can't quite bring herself to care.

They lay like that for what feels like hours. A song about fools is playing lowly from Harry's phone and they can still hear the muffled discourses that are going on downstairs. Louis' smaller hand is wrapped tightly around her own and Harry's tears have long dried. Harry shifts in her position on Louis' bed until she's facing Louis. Her breath smells like peppermint and sunshine.

"Tell me a secret," Harry whispers, not wanting to break the perfect silence that they've created.

"Okay," Louis blinks slowly, her eyelashes fanning delicately against her cheekbones. "I.. have never had a proper girlfriend."

"Really?" Harry whispers in shock. "But you're so beautiful. How could someone not want to be with you?"

Louis slides her tongue over the bow of her mouth quickly, and Harry tracks the movement closely. "That's one of the sweetest things you've told me today."

"You deserve to be showered in compliments all the time," Harry whispers.

Louis' so close, is the thing. And Harry could kiss her. She wants to kiss her. She wants to slide her fingers through that hair and slot her mouth against Louis' lips and feel like a million galaxies are expanding in her chest and she just wants. Harry slowly leans forward, closing her eyes delicately just after seeing Louis' move forward too. She tilts her head and she can feel Louis' breath hitting her own chapped lips and it's just so close to happening -- so close to serendipity.

And then Louis' phone rings and they both jerk away like they've been electrocuted.

"It might be my mum," Louis mutters and shimmies to get her phone out of her pocket. Harry rests her head on her shoulder while Louis unlocks her phone.

Louis opens her texts and Harry immediately jerks away when she sees the item that interrupted them.

"I should go," Harry stands up and grabs her shoes and her still-wet clothes. "My mum's probably home by now and the rain has went down and I should go."

"Harry --" Louis starts but Harry's already closing the door and practically sprinting down her carpet-clad stairs.

She closes her eyes and sighs, trying to get the image of Eleanor's nude that she sent Louis out of her mind.

;;

Harry wakes up in a cold sweat.

Her shorts that she went to sleep in are bunched messily around her hips and her chest is heaving as she tries to remember how to breathe properly. Holy fuck. She sits up and slides her hair out of her face, glancing at her cracked phone screen to learn that it's only three in morning. Brilliant.

Harry is awake at three in the morning on a fucking Friday because of a fucking wet dream about fucking Louis Tomlinson. She lays back on her bed and throws her arm over her eyes, trying to block out the blue glare from her telly that's promoting some informercial for bra genies or whatever. Remnants of the dream attacks her as soon as she closes her eyes.

The dream began innocent enough, with Harry in the library catching Louis with Eleanor again. Watching as Louis pressed Eleanor against the bookshelf and pressed her lips against her's fiercely. But suddenly the dream shifted and Harry was in Eleanor's spot. And Harry was the one that had Louis' thigh pressing neatly against her twat while their lips slid together sloppily and Harry delved her hands in Louis' soft hair. And it was on Harry's neck that Louis left marks and released breathy moans into while Harry palmed over the small swell of her breasts. And it was Harry's name that Louis was mumbling as she pressed against her body so tightly, almost as if she was trying to meld their souls to bind together.

And now it's Harry that is lying awake in bed while Aquilo croons softly in her headphones and confusion swells through her mind.

Harry picks up her phone and opens up her message thread with Niall.

'emergency powwow is integral this morning before school starts. i am in disarray.' Harry sends along with a string of red siren emojis.

Niall reads her message immediately, and the small blip shows that she's already typing out a reply. Harry looks up at the fairy lights that she has strung along her wall and thanks whatever God that decided to create Niall Horan, even if she does have insomnia and likes to prank Harry by throwing random pieces of food at her face sometimes.

'its 3 in the fuckin am and i am not a dictionary u twat. translate.'

Harry giggles and texts out her reply of, 'just meet me in the caf early, weenie head.' before sitting down her phone and staring at nothing.

She thought that she was figuring things out. She had been googling relentlessly and surfing chatrooms ever since her and Nick broke up and she thought that she finally found on answer. That maybe she wasn't so much of an outlier after all -- but then this happens and everything goes to shit.

;;

"I'm sorry, what?" Niall says as she stabs her plastic fork through the mostly-frozen waffle that their school has decided to deem as a 'well-balanced and healthy breakfast.'

Harry rolls her eyes and hands her her packet of syrup. She didn't even want to get school breakfast, but they are the only people in the cafeteria this early in the morning (which is why Harry wanted to meet here) and the lunch ladies looked so expectantly at them when they first walked in, like they were so pumped for someone to actually eat the food that they slave over every day.

"I said," Harry whispers, aware of how the lady at the washing station has been watching them like a vulture. "that Nick and I are over."

"Yes, I heard you. It's not like a funereal is more lively than this place, or anything." She says sarcastically around a bite of waffle. "I was just saying what because I thought Nick was so far up your arse that you wouldn't be able to walk properly. I thought he was the Cassius to your Clay."

"That doesn't make sense at all because Cassius Clay is just one person," Harry corrects and takes a swig from her water. "But, no. We're not. I told him that I wasn't sexually attracted to him and then he left me."

"Haz," Niall drops the waffle and holds one of Harry's hands with her syrup-covered fingers. Gross, Harry tries to pull out of the embrace but Niall doesn't let her. "I'm so sorry, babe. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Harry shrugs. "-ish."

"-ish?" Niall echoes. "Are you upset because of Grimmy or the-" Niall looks around and lowers her voice, "-Pussy Problem."

Harry smacks Niall's shoulder with her free hand, "I told you to stop calling it that. It's bad enough that you and Gemma tried to make a support group with that title."

Niall snickers and Harry steals her fork, giving it back when she starts to pout.

"And, if you must know, it does have to do with the.."

"Pussy Problem," Niall fills in for her.

"Fuck you. But, yes. I thought I had it figured out last night. Like, I looked up stuff and I saw something defined pretty closely to what I feel on this spectrum of 'asexuality' and I was totally fine with it when I started realizing that there was more people like me." Harry takes a deep breath. "But then this morning happened."

"What happened?"

"I.." Harry clears her throat. "I technically had a wet dream about Louis Tomlinson."

Niall smacks her hand on the table and barks out a loud laugh, "Holy shit."

"Niall," Harry grabs Niall's hoodie and yanks on her arm. "Shut up, you're going to get us in trouble."

"I'm sorry," Niall wipes at a tear that was forming under her eyes and laughs. "But could you be any more cliche? Good-Girl-and-Infamous-Flower Child Harry Styles gets wet as hell for Grunge-Mystery-Girl Louis Tomlinson. Fuck, that's amazing."

"Shut up, it's not funny it's complicated." Harry whines. "What am I supposed to define myself as? 'Sexually attracted to nobody except for the girl with the purple hair that's in my creative writing class'?"

"Why do you need a label, though?" Niall asks seriously. Her smile has went down from glaringly bright to pleasantly warm and she finally lets go of Harry's hand. "You're you, Harry, and you are amazing and unique on your own. I mean, what other girl could wear what you're wearing and get away with it? You're wearing high waisted jeans and a pink crop-top with daisies in your hair and you don't even look like a fake bitch."

"My clothes have nothing to do with my sexual preference," Harry points out.

"You're right, but it has something to do with you. You're special and can't be defined as one specific thing, so why should you try to define yourself sexually?"

Harry throws her arms around Niall's neck and tries not to cry. She smells like fruity laundry detergent and waterfalls and Harry has never been more thankful that she is her best friend. Niall hugs her back and slowly runs a hand through the ends of her curls.

"I really needed to hear that from you," Harry murmurs into the blond tendrils of hair that has let loose from her messy bun. "I love you so much."

"And I love you," Niall pats her back and Harry giggles a bit. "But, speaking of wet dreams, did I tell you about the one I had last month? It was stellar -"

"Niall," Harry cuts her off. "You're my best friend and you can do no wrong but I swear to God if you talk about my sister being the star of your wet dream I'm going to smack you on the tit every single day from this day, onward."

Niall detaches from the embrace, her cheeks red and a silly smile on her face. "What wet dream? We were talking about wet dreams?"

Harry laughs and smacks Niall's boob anyways.

;;

Harry jumps in her seat and locks her phone when the door to her creative writing class slams open, light from the bustling hallway pouring into the dark room.

She has been sitting in her desk for the entirety of her free period, drowning in the darkness of the room because her teacher hasn't been there the entire time and she is too nervous to turn on the light. Which, is dumb. She shouldn't have spent her entire free period in an empty classroom just because she has been deliberately avoiding any chance of seeing Nick or any of their mutual friends. And she shouldn't be afraid of being yelled at for turning on a bloody light. But she is, and that's not really something she can change. Anyways, she has taken advantage of this free period of solitude to study for her Psych 100 class and absolutely pummel Niall at Stop for the sixth time, so it's not like she has been acting like a complete sodding idiot for the past hour.

"What do you mean that this can't go on anymore?" A girl's voice hisses as soon as the door slams shut behind the two figures that have just stalked into the room. "You seemed more than fine with everything twenty-four hours ago. What changed?"

"El, you know that I haven't been fully into this lately."

Harry chokes on air when the other person speaks, but they don't seem to notice her wheezing presence. Please don't have a hate-fuck in front of me, Harry silently prays, please. She watches as Louis' smaller silhouette waves her hand in the air after sliding it though her hair, which is something that Harry has noticed that she does when she doesn't know how to put what she feels into words. Eleanor's long, thin frame is hunched over by a desk, Harry can see that her arms are crossed. I saw that girl naked, she thinks.

"Yeah, I know that and I respect that. But that doesn't mean you can be a dick and send me a text saying that you think that you don't want to fuck me anymore." Eleanor paces forward to where she's standing directly in front of Louis. "Who in the hell does that?"

"I know I handled it badly," Louis sighs. Harry wonders if she should make her presence known somehow. "But I was just sitting under the bleachers with Zayn and Li, and I told them how I felt about everything and they told me to tell you that I wanted to end this as soon as possible. So I texted you. And I'm sorry El, I'm sorry that I texted you like a prick but I just had to say it before I talked myself out of it."

Eleanor sits on one of the desks, her arms uncrossing from her chest and her voice losing it's hard edge, "What do you mean by everything?"

"Like everything. Like the fact that you always smile when I talk about wanting us to go hang out with Perrie. And you're totally arse over tits for her, El, you can't deny that." Louis sighs and sits down on the desk beside Eleanor, they're both facing away from her. "And we're not really into it anymore, you know that. And things are different from when we started. We're not the only out lesbians anymore, we have options."

Eleanor sighs and leans over to where she's leaning her head on Louis' shoulder. Harry watches as they both breathe in rhythm with each other closely, they don't look like lovers --they just look like friends that are going through a monumental period of time together. And for some reason that excites her, makes hope swell in her stomach and rise through her chest until a smile forms on her lips.

"So you're not going to fuck me anymore just because I have a crush on Pez?" Eleanor laughs. "Bullshit. This is about the one with the flowers, innit?"

Harry shifts in her seat, she's heard too much, she can't just invade their privacy like this that's wrong. She clears her throat a bit but neither of the girls seem to hear her.

"It's just," Louis sighs. "This is the first time in my entire life that I feel like something amazing is about to happen to me. And I know this is probably stupid, but I just feel like this is fate, you know? I can't just fuck everything up."

"Lou," Eleanor hums and Harry watches as she reaches up to mess with Louis' hair. "You really do like her."

"Shut the fuck up. I like nobody. I have a heart of stone that feels nothing for anyone."

"That's the biggest lie you've ever told me. And you've tried to convince me that you liked penis at one point of our friendship."

"Even if I do happen to like her.. a lot, I think I've already ruined everything with her anyways. I mean -- she saw your fucking tits."

"She saw my tits?" Eleanor yells just as the door opens.

The light flicks on and their creative writing teacher breezes in with a plastic McDonald's cup in hand. Eleanor gets off of the desk and heads towards the doorway, shooting Louis an angry glare before disappearing into the heavy masses of the hallway. Harry slides down in her desk when Louis turns around, feeling her heart race unsteadily in her chest when she gets a proper look at her.

She's wearing a crop top again, which. Fuck. A sinful sliver of tan, smooth skin is showing just above the waist line of her black jeans. Louis looks so tired, her eyes are shiny from lack of sleep and her purple hair is hanging loosely around her face. Her crop top is a soft-looking sweater that has this heather grey material and Harry just wants to give her warm coffee and kiss under her eyes and cuddle her relentlessly. Louis gives her a sleepy smile, one that Harry easily returns. She walks over and sits down in the desk behind Harry.

Harry turns around in her desk, "I didn't mean to eavesdrop on you guys. I have just been here all free period and I didn't expect you to come in and the lights were off because I was too scared to turn them on and I just didn't know what to do because she was yelling and --"

"Haz, you're totally fine, take a deep breath." Harry nods and inhales slowly. Other people that are in their class are starting to trickle in. "And I guess we're even, now."

"Even?"

Louis blushes and raises her small hand to push a strand of purple hair behind her ear, "I might've overheard everything when you talked to Grimmy in the library."

"Are you--" Harry begins but is cut off by their teacher standing up and telling them to get out their notebooks.

Harry doesn't listen to the teacher when he starts talking about short stories and being creative. She can't hear anything over the sounds of blissful fireworks exploding in her chest.

A tap on her shoulder makes her look back at Louis towards the end of class. She hands Harry a small slip of paper that she unfolds on her desk. Harry grins at the crude sketch of the back of Harry's head and the flower crown that she has on today before looking back at what the note says in Louis' God-awful handwriting.

'Are you free this afternoon? If so, meet me @ my car in the parking lot. I want to take you on an adventure.'

;;

Harry pigeon toes as she waits in front of Louis' beat-up blue Mazda, searching the waves of people coming into the parking lot for a glimpse of her. She got out of her Pscyh 100 class early because their speaker didn't show up and now she's waiting for Louis so that they can go on their 'adventure'. The rain from yesterday is long gone, but there's still a brisk chill to the air that has Harry wrapping her coat tighter around her body as she nods in greeting at a girl named Sophia that's in her Chem 2 class.

"Harry?" she jumps when she hears someone from behind her call her name. "What're you doing here?"

"Pixie," Harry breathes. "Hey."

"Nick told me that you're celibate, is that true?" Pixie says instead of an introduction, she taps her manicured hand against her pocket before getting out her phone. "I mean, no judgement if you are. But I thought for sure that you was a total slut for the boys on the footie team."

Harry slouches a bit, "The only thing that I'm a slut for is cookies."

Pixie laughs, "Right. Nick told me that you were probably just lying to him because you have herpies and didn't want it to spread."

"What? No. I just told Nick that I didn't want to fuck him because I don't want to fuck him. Why is that so hard to believe?"

Pixie shrugs, "I'm just telling you what I heard."

"Well what you heard is wrong," Louis' voice sounds in Harry's ear suddenly and she feels like this raging ocean in her heart has just subsided into a calm waterfall. "So you can go tell Nick and his minuscule penis that I've met dildos that are more impressive than he'll ever be and I wouldn't mind to loan one to him so that he can go fuck himself."

Harry barks out a laugh and Pixie stares at them with a gaping mouth and wide eyes.

"Well.. Bye." Harry waves at Pixie and turns towards Louis' car and opens up the passenger side door.

Louis joins her and shoves the key into the ignition of her car, giving it a few vain tries before the engine purrs to life. Harry watches Louis, who has her mouth set in a straight line in annoyance and is mumbling cuss words at her car.

"Lou?" Harry asks, trying not to laugh.

"Okay I know that what I said was weird as fuck but it's not my fault. I hate people. I hate people that walk around like they're too good for everyone else and I hate people that just talk shit about everyone. I especially hate people that are mean to you. Because you're a fucking flower and you're not mean to anyone."

"If I'm a flower then you're a petal," Harry says. "And that's not true. I totally talk shit about people in my head all of the time."

"But you're not like Pixie, you're not like me. You're sweet and you care for everyone and you're Harry. And people like Grimmy deserve to be kicked in the balls so hard."

"There's nothing we can do about that, though," Harry points out.

"That's where you're wrong, H." Louis says as she backs out of your parking spot. "Something can always be done when there's a douchebag involved."

And that's how Harry ends up in Sainsbury's holding up a carton of eggs so that Louis can't reach them.

"Harry."

"We are not egging Grimmy's mo-ped."

"Har-ry."

"No," Louis jumps and tries to make a grab for the eggs, Harry just keeps holding it of her reach. She doesn't even have her arm fully extended and Louis can't get it. "Do you know that the chemicals in eggs can seriously damage the paint of a motor vehicle? I understand that he's a dick but that doesn't mean that we should ruin Nick's only mode of transportation."

Louis continues to try to reach for it, her crop top slowly raising higher over her stomach with every jump and Harry's not quite complaining about the view that she gets. Holy shit, I'm totally attracted to her. She stops and tilts her head up to pout properly at Harry. Her hair is in her face and her eyes are sparkling with mischief and Harry can't quite do anything other than want to be next to her and basking in her presence for the rest of her life.

"But I really want to make him cry," Louis whines adorably.

Harry sighs and lowers her arm, "Fine. But we're doing it my way."

She puts up the eggs and leads Louis by the hand away from the grocery section. She stops at the clearance aisle and holds up a package to Louis smiling broadly when she takes it out of her hand and looks at it closer.

"Water balloons?" Louis says aloud. "Are we going to hunt him down and pelt him with water balloons?"

"No, we're going to go to his house and pelt his mo-ped with water balloons. It's like your idea, but with no property damage."

"Can we at least do a little property damage -- please?" Louis pouts.

Harry shakes her head and takes the balloons from Louis before walking back towards the front of the store.

"Haz, slow down. Your legs are so long that you're practically running away." Louis whines. Harry grins when she hears Louis' footsteps sprinting after her. "This isn't fair. You never let me win."

"That's because I am naturally more superior than you, Lou," Harry shrugs.

"Hey," Louis whines in a genuinely wounded voice.

Harry turns around and practically melts at the sight of Louis pouting. She walks forward and before she truly even thinks about it she's hugging Louis and rubbing her hand through her soft, soft hair.

"I'm sorry love I didn't mean it," Harry murmurs. "You're totally superior."

Louis giggles and hugs Harry back. Platonically. In the middle of a bloody Sainsbury's. Because they're on a mission to terrorize Harry's (kind of) ex. What has Harry's life even came to? Why does everything with Louis just come so naturally?

"This old lady is staring at us like we are the love forms of Lucifer," Louis mumbles into Harry's neck and she barks out a quick laugh. "Also, we have an adventure to get to. So maybe we should save this Love Fest for later?"

Harry clears her throat and pats Louis' back awkwardly before retracting from the hug. "Right, we should get on with that.. bro."

Louis laughs at her and heads towards the only cash register that's open. Harry watches her, her heartbeat thudding in ears and feeling like she has swallowed a million stars and is shining with the force of the sparks that Louis makes her feel.

She swallows and walks after her, thinking about how she shouldn't be that surprised that she's having a sexuality crisis over this beautiful being.

;;

"We're totally lost," Louis announces forty minutes later. "Fuck."

"I told you that you missed your turn, Lou." Harry says, voice melding with the sounds of Oh Wonder singing about their plans.

Louis huffs and flicks on her turn signal before parking her car on the shoulder of the road. They definitely are lost, massive trees are surrounding the thin road on both sides and they haven't passed another car for miles. The sun is beating down on Harry's legs that she has perched on Louis' dash and Harry lost phone signal ages ago. Louis puts the car in park and Harry turns down the music. Louis' hair is gathered at one side and her mouth is settled in a goofy smile as she stares back at Harry, who is staring intently at her.

"I --" Louis trails off, her blue eyes slightly hooded before she clears her throat. Harry leans in closer and nods for her to go on. "I.. I'm not good with words. I'm not very --"

"Articulate," Harry whispers.

"Yeah, that. I'm not very articulate when I am looking right at you, you know? I'm just not." Louis sighs and looks down, her eyelashes casting shadows on her prominent cheekbones. Harry wants to take a picture of her like this, all soft yet rugged in her sweater and choker. She wants to keep this private version of Louis forever. "But, like. I guess I just wanted to say that you're like.. a poem. You're like a living poem. With the flowers in your hair and the way your big eyes practically sparkle when you're happy. And I really love spending time with you."

Harry feels her heart explode in her chest and she's immediately so happy but she also feels so at a loss for what to say. So she says the first thing that comes to her mind.

"You're cool."

Louis' face drops immediately and she looks like she has just been told that Twenty One Pilots has decided to take a whirl at becoming a country-music band.

"I did not mean that," Harry wheezes and grabs Louis' hand. "Well, I do mean that you're cool. But I didn't mean to say you're cool. I'm just so happy right now that I can't breathe because you're so cool."

"Thank you?" Louis says after a beat of silence, a slow smile slowly forming on her face. "I think you're trying to compliment me, am I right?"

Harry nods, "I mean, like. Ditto. To what you said. About the poems. Amongst other things."

Louis smiles at her and Harry smiles back. When she looks at Louis' smile she can't help but feel all of her worries about who she is or what label she falls under slowly fade away.

"You're the weirdest person in existence," Louis shakes her head and shifts to face forward in her seat. "What do you want to do now?"

Harry moves her feet off of the dashboard and shrugs, "Anything."

Louis nods and looks out the window for a while, staying quiet until she turns back to Harry.

"We're not done with our adventure yet," Louis tells her and then puts the car in drive and continues down the road.

Harry leans back against the seat and watches Louis, basking in the sunshine that practically emanates from her body and deciding that she really loves spending time with Louis, too.

;;

"Whose house is this?" Harry asks twenty minutes later when Louis parks in the driveway.

It's a house that's massive in size but deplorable in upkeep. The yellow paint of the two-story house is slowly peeling and one of the windows is busted open. The wind is slowly filtering through the trees that surround the house, moving leaves with it's soft fingers and painting a reminiscent picture of someone's past, one that Harry can't quite connect to.

"Mine, formerly." Louis says. "I haven't seen it since I was six."

Harry watches as Louis unbuckles her seatbelt and opens the door before following suit. She walks beside Louis, smiling when she feels the soft brush of her fingers against her hand. She holds Louis' hand, cheeks flushing when Louis makes a small, happy sound in the back of her throat.

"You asked for my story," Louis says when they stop at the front door, staring down at the mosaic of glass that decorates it. "And I guess it kind of starts here."

Louis opens the door that is shockingly unlocked and leads Harry into the house. It's empty. Not a single trace of furniture is present except for a picture frame that lies cracked on the floor. Louis sighs and picks it up, looking at it before gently putting it on the floor again. Harry looks at the picture to see a woman that she recognizes as Louis' mum and a man with a forced smile.

Louis leads her up the stairs and to a room that has a white door and a smiley face sketched just over the knob. She opens it to reveal and empty room that is painted a light blue.

"Come on," Louis whispers, leading Harry to the window before dropping her hand. "I have to show you something."

Louis struggles to get the old wooden frame of the window to unstick, so Harry helps her. Once it is opened, Louis slips through the window and sits on the roof, and Harry joins her.

The wind is still blowing, but it's just a gentle breeze that slowly lifts their hair from around their shoulders. Louis leans back against the wall and sighs quietly before putting a gentle hand on Harry's knee. Harry reaches down and slowly traces patterns of the sun and it's beloved moon on the palm of her small hand.

"My sister's father isn't my own father," Louis says quietly. "My real father divorced my Mum when I was six, and it was probably one of the most difficult times in my life."

Harry looks over at Louis, who has the sunset reflecting in her eyes and the normal, disinterested mask that she keeps planted on her face has fallen. She looks vulnerable.

"They fought a lot, and I was so young. I didn't understand. But it didn't get truly awful until my dad missed my first footie game. My mum was pissed, she yelled at him for never being there for me until her voice was gone, and my dad would just sit there and say nothing." Louis inhales shakily and keeps on speaking. "And I thought it was my fault for so long. I didn't know that their marital problems were their's, I thought that they hated each other because I existed and I was just so upset."

"Lou," Harry murmurs, "you don't have to tell me this if you don't want to."

"I want to. I trust you." Louis nods and Harry smiles at her. "Every night, when they thought I was asleep, is when they would really go at it. My dad would throw stuff at my mum and I could always hear her cry and it just broke my heart. My mum was the best person on the planet, she is the best person on the planet and I could feel her world slowly falling apart and it killed me.

"So, every night, when the yelling got to loud for me to handle. I would sit right here and cry. And when the divorce was becoming more real, I started to yell. I would stand here and yell to the endless abyss of stars about how confused and hurt I felt and it actually helped. It helped to release how angry I was even though I was just a little girl. It just made me feel a bit more valid, and that's what I needed then."

"I'm so sorry, Lou. I'm sorry that you had to go through that."

"Hey," Louis shrugs and forced a wobbly smile to grace her pink lips. "It's all of the pain from the past that makes me who I am today."

"That's beautiful," Harry says. She feels one of the petals from her flower crown break loose, and watches as Louis captures it in the air. "You're beautiful."

Louis smiles and Harry watches as she stares into her eyes, the joy on her face looks so gentle that she appears to be drowning in Harry and it's exciting and all-too-soon but Harry doesn't want this rush of admiration to ever stop.

"I brought you up here because you're valid," Louis says after moments of glorious silence. "And I wanted to see if you wanted to yell with me? You don't have to, I know it's cliche and dumb and everything. But. Do you want to?"

Harry smiles at Louis with the force of a thousand stars, "Of course I do."

They both stand and Harry can't help but feel like she's in some teenage romance movie where the music is swelling with some indie song and the sun is making them look like Goddesses. But, this isn't a teenage romance movie because they're just two girls that have somehow found their way to be together via a broken iPhone and had to jump through messy, very non-Hollywood-esque problems to get where they are today. But that doesn't mean that she wants to let this moment that is worthy of cinematic productions with Louis go to waste.

"Go on," Louis whispers. "Yell whatever you're thinking."

Harry nods and clears her throat, "My name is Harry Styles and I don't need to be labelled."

"The point of this is to yell, love."

Harry nods and closes her eyes, thinking of Pixie, of Nick's face when she told him the truth about how she felt, of all of the jokes that her family had said innocently enough but it still hurt her because she felt abnormal for not wanting to have sex. She thinks of all of the confusion, of googling until the wee hours of the night just to find a place where she belonged, and still coming up empty. And it hurts, it hurts to not know where you fit in in life when everyone else seems to just know. It's scary to have to worry that you'll hurt someone else because you're not attracted to them even though you shouldn't be expected to have sex with anyone. She feels like she's been running around her whole entire life trying to put a label on everything, but these past few months have showed her that she doesn't need to do that. People, people like her can be undefined and still valid. Harry is valid, and so is everyone else that feels the way that she does.

"My name is Harry Styles," she yells at the sunset. "and I don't have to be labeled just to be valid."

She inhales the universe and exhales the stars as she stares into the bleeding sunset and feels all of the stress and worry slowly lift from her veins. She turns to Louis, who is smiling at her with a fire in her blue eyes. This girl saved me
from myself, she thinks.

"That felt like nirvana," Harry tells her, voice cracking.

Louis smiles even harder, "You're like nirvana."

And then Harry leans down and kisses Louis, and fireworks explode in her chest. Her lips are a tad chapped but still perfect nonetheless. They fit together like puzzle pieces, Harry slotting her fingers in Louis' hair while Louis presses her closer by the hips. They're standing on a roof with the sun sinking low behind the horizon and nothing can be more perfect.

I won't miss the sun tonight, she thinks. I have my own sun right here.

FIN.