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Louis hated early classes. He was not a morning person by any definition, so he always carefully negotiated his class schedule to ensure he never had to get out of bed before 10.
Unfortunately for Louis, this term the only available time for his Shakespearean Literature class was at 8am. He consoled himself with the fact that it was only once a week. If it weren’t his last year, he might not have gone at all, but he could see graduation lingering tantalizingly in the distance, and so on the first Tuesday morning of the new term he dragged himself out of bed at 7:15.
It would take him fifteen minutes to walk to uni from the small flat he shared with his friend Niall, so Louis went without a shower, opting instead to spray himself with deodorant and quickly pick out a random outfit from the stack of clean laundry sitting optimistically on the floor next to his wardrobe.
When he went out into the kitchen to make himself a quick bowl of cereal, he found Niall passed out on the couch, inexplicably wearing only sunglasses and a pair of green pants. He didn’t wake up, even when Louis accidentally knocked over a stack of books on their messy kitchen table on his way out.
Five minutes into his walk, Louis realised that there was no way that he was going to make it through this class without caffeine, so stopped in at his favourite coffee shop on his way to pick up a cup of tea. The advantage of being up so early was that the shop was empty, meaning that he escaped the usual line. His drink was handed to him by a barista he had never seen before, which was another disconcerting reminder of the early hour.
Louis made it to his classroom by 7:50, so he lingered outside and finished off his tea, throwing the empty paper cup into a nearby bin before he entered the room.
The lecturer hadn’t arrived yet, but there was a smattering of students in various states of wakefulness spread around the room, including one boy in the front row who appeared to be napping on the shoulder of his neighbour.
Louis headed over to sit at his desk, the one over on the right side of the room by the window. Well, it wasn’t his desk, not officially anyway, but it may as well have been. It even had a small “L” carved into the bottom right hand corner, the product of a particularly boring History lecture Louis had endured last year. The desk literally had his name on it.
That was why it was such a surprise when he realised that there was already someone sitting there. Louis froze in his tracks, staring at the occupied desk in shock. He always sat in that chair, everyone knew that. Well, everyone except this guy apparently.
The desk intruder hadn’t seemed to notice that Louis was standing by him; he was too occupied with rummaging through his backpack, curly hair obscuring Louis’ view of his face.
Louis wasn’t really sure what to do in this situation. He knew that the polite, rational action would be to just sit somewhere else, as there were plenty of open seats still in the classroom, but that was his desk. It was the only one that had the table on the left-hand side, not the right, and therefore the only one that let Louis, a left-handed person, write comfortably.
He really didn’t want to have to sit at a right handed table just because some stranger thought he could sit at Louis’ desk. Seriously, it was bad enough hurting his wrist every time he tried to write notes in his spiral bound notebook, he didn’t want to have the extra discomfort of having to twist his body in order to reach the table when it wasn’t necessary.
He walked over to the desk stealer and tapped him on the shoulder, watching as the boy jumped in surprise and paused in his search for whatever he was trying to find inside his backpack, bringing one hand up to comb his hair back off his face and – oh no.
Louis felt all the angry indignation that he had summoned up start to fade away as he looked into the wide green eyes of this boy – angel?
Of course he would meet the most attractive boy he’d ever seen when he looked like he had just rolled out of bed (because he had). If that wasn’t bad enough, now he was going to make a really awesome first impression by demanding his seat back. He wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve this.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Louis said apologetically.
“Oh that’s okay, I startle easily. I’m Harry.”
“Louis,” he replied with a smile, which dropped when he remembered why he was there.
He felt bad, but not bad enough to stop himself.
“I don’t mean to be rude or anything…” (he definitely meant to be rude) “…but this is my desk.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise that we had assigned seating in this class?”
“No, we don’t,” Louis said, which caused Harry to raise a single eyebrow questioningly.
“What I mean,” Louis continued, “is that this is where I always sit because it’s the only left handed desk in the room.” He lifted his left hand up and waved it around.
“I know,” said Harry slowly.
“Okay,” said Louis confusedly, “so if you’d just like to move…?”
“No,” said Harry.
“No?” repeated Louis.
“Yes,” said Harry.
“Wait, yes?”
“I mean that yes I said no.”
“Okay, it’s way too early for this. Will you or will you not pretty please vacate my desk so I can sit down and get ready for class?” Louis said, not bothering to hide his exasperation now.
“I will not,” Harry said confidently.
“And why not?”
“Because I’m left handed too,” Harry replied, raising his left hand and waving it around in an approximation of Louis’ earlier action.
And, wait, was he mocking him? Louis Tomlinson would not stand for being mocked by this awful desk stealer, even if he was cute. Just as he opened his mouth to tell Harry exactly that, their professor walked in the door, tossing her briefcase down by the lectern at the front of the room.
“Okay everyone, take a seat, let’s get started,” she said, pulling up the PowerPoint presentation for the class.
With Harry refusing to budge, Louis had no choice. He narrowed his eyes at his newly sworn enemy and fell heavily into the first empty desk he saw.
This was not over.
*
“…my brain more busy than the labouring spider weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies…” - Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Scene 1
*
Louis’ annoyance about the desk had lasted long after the twinge in his back from twisting to reach his notebook had faded. Niall had gotten so sick of hearing Louis complain about it that by Wednesday he’d taken to immediately leaving the room whenever Louis brought up “the injustice of it, Niall!”
On the bright side, his week of complaining had given him plenty of time to think of the best way to attack his problem.
This week, Louis had pulled himself out of bed at the horrific time of 6:30am, every fibre of his being protesting as he picked up his phone to turn off his alarm, but the sacrifice had been worth it.
Arriving at the classroom ridiculously early had meant that Louis had his choice of seats, and he had arranged his notebook and pens on his rightful spot at the left handed desk with a satisfied grin. His mood only improved when he saw Harry walk through the door ten minutes later, and watched the shock on his face when he saw Louis at the desk.
Feeling very pleased with himself, Louis waggled his fingers at Harry in a cheeky wave. Yes, he thought, he had reasserted his dominance and shown him who was the boss around here. Unfortunately, Harry seemed to take Louis’ wave as an invitation, and he sauntered over on his long (oh, so long) legs, making his way through the maze of empty desks to sit right next to Louis.
“Hiya,” Harry said, pulling out his books and starting to arrange them on his desk.
Louis just frowned at him in response, opening his own copy of Macbeth and pulling it up to cover his face.
He figured the best way to deal with this was just to ignore him, so Louis made a great show of pretending to read intently until their professor arrived and class began.
He tried to pay attention to the lecture, but he couldn’t help himself from taking sneaky glances at Harry, watching the awkward way he was sitting in his right handed desk so he could take notes.
The thing was, Louis knew exactly how annoying that was. If he wasn’t so bloody stubborn, maybe he would have tried to work out some kind of shared custody arrangement or something with Harry for the desk, but he knew that he would never be the one to back down from the self-declared bitter feud, not when he had been the one in the first place to make an enemy out of this cute boy.
Watching Harry stretch out his back again, Louis sighed and turned his attention back to his own notes. There was no point in getting his favourite desk and having all these conflicting feelings if he wasn’t even going to get good grades in this class. He underlined another passage in Macbeth that the professor was talking about, and resolutely ignored Harry for the rest of the lesson.
*
“…heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself…” - Henry VIII, Act 1, Scene 1
*
For the third week in a row, Louis found himself rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he walked to class. It hadn’t gotten any easier to get out of bed so early, but when his alarm started blaring at 6:30am again, Louis gritted his teeth and reminded himself of how vindicated he would feel when he got to sit at his desk again.
Last night he and Niall had stayed up late playing FIFA, which had seemed like an excellent idea at the time, especially after Louis had won, but now, in the cold harsh reality of morning he wasn’t so sure. He was so tired that he didn’t even remember the walk from his flat to uni, operating on autopilot to make it to the classroom.
He pushed open the door with his shoulder and walked over to his desk, not noticing that there was already somebody sitting at it until he tried to sit down and came into contact with a warm body instead of cold seat. Suddenly wide awake, Louis flailed and ended up sprawled on the floor, staring straight at a pair of sparkly gold boots.
Harry.
How on earth had he gotten here before him?
“How on earth did you get here before me?” Louis demanded.
“Aww, you look so cute when you’re angry,” Harry said. “You look like a prickly baby hedgehog.”
“I do not look - ” Louis started indignantly, cutting himself off when he realised he was still on the floor. Cute, cute, cute was echoing in his head. He scrambled to his feet, dusting off his black jeans. “Why are you here so early?”
“Oh, I did an early yoga class this morning, and then when I was done I figured I may as well come straight here,” Harry said breezily.
“Of course you did.”
Of course Harry would be a morning person. Louis didn’t understand morning people, in the same way that he didn’t understand people who kept their bottles of tomato sauce in the fridge. Who would want to live their lives like that? Not Louis, that was for sure. He was perfectly happy with his room temperature sauce and frequent lie-ins - frequent until Harry came along, that is.
Louis sighed, and slumped down into the desk next to Harry’s. He told himself that it was only because he was too sleepy to walk all the way across the room. He would never voluntarily sit next to his sworn enemy, even if he did smell really good this morning.
“Muffin?” Harry asked cheerfully, lifting up a brown paper bag, which Louis suddenly realised must have been what he had smelled.
He was just about to tell Harry exactly where he could stick his muffin, when Harry opened the bag and he got a look at the contents. The two muffins inside were huge, covered in chocolate chips that still looked melty, as if they’d just come out of the oven. Louis liked to think that he had strong willpower, but his resolve crumbled to pieces in the face of chocolate.
“Thank you,” Louis said meekly, accepting the muffin Harry was holding out to him.
“You’re welcome,” said Harry. “Us left handers have to stick together.” He squinted his eyes in what Louis thought was meant to be a conspiratorial wink.
Louis felt a few butterflies fluttering around in his tummy. No. No, he tried to convince himself, it was just his stomach grumbling, telling him to eat the muffin already. This was war, Louis wasn’t allowed to be going around getting butterflies from watching his sworn enemy make ridiculous faces. Even if he was unfairly attractive.
Louis squashed that thought down by taking a big bite of his muffin.
“I have tea too,” Harry said, producing two steaming paper cups sitting in a cardboard tray. He handed one to Louis, who took a sip and was surprised to see that Harry had somehow gotten his specific tea order right.
“Thanks, Harry,” he said, and he actually meant it. This whole morning had been disconcerting.
They ate their food in silence, but this time the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Instead, it felt companionable, much to Louis’ surprise. He had eaten three quarters of his muffin before Harry broke the silence.
“You know, we can’t keep doing this.”
“What do you mean?” Louis asked cautiously.
“Trying to beat each other to the desk. One week, you get here half an hour early, the next I get up at 6 just so I can be here 45 minutes early…”
“I thought you had a yoga class?”
“Semantics,” Harry said. “My point is that eventually we’ll be getting here so early trying to one-up each other that we’ll never actually leave.”
“So what do you suggest we do, then?” Louis was probably up for anything if it would mean that he didn’t have to get up so early anymore. If Harry had brought him breakfast this morning to butter him up, it was definitely working.
“We get another left handed desk,” Harry stated, like it was obvious. And it probably should have been, really, but the idea had never even crossed Louis’ mind. Huh. Another desk. Could they do that?
“Can we do that?” Louis asked.
“Why not?” said Harry, turning to face Louis completely. “We have a valid complaint. Statistically, left handed people make up about ten percent of the population, but that’s not even reflected here. There must be over thirty desks in this room, but only one left handed desk? That’s not fair.”
That wasn’t fair. Louis still felt outraged, but now instead of feeling angry with Harry, he was feeling angry with the university administration. They were being discriminated against, and they shouldn’t have to put up with it. If the uni had just put in a decent amount of left handed desks in the classroom in the first place, then they would never have had this problem.
This whole battle with Harry had proven his commitment to a cause when he was feeling wronged, and now he was going to put his stubborn energy into a productive cause.
“You’re right,” Louis said adamantly.
“I am?” said Harry, looking surprised.
“Yes,” Louis said. “Just think, I spent all this time annoyed at you, when we could have been working together this whole time against the real enemy.”
Louis felt disoriented. He had spent weeks now fighting a war against Harry for the desk, and a war against himself because of his conflicting feelings for the curly-hared boy, and now Harry was turning all of this on its head with a chocolate chip muffin and a reasonable and logical plan.
This was game-changing. Now that he didn’t have to constantly remind himself that Harry was his enemy, it was like a weight had been taken off his whole body, and all of his badly-suppressed feelings were rushing in at once.
He wanted to be friends with Harry. No, scratch that, he wanted to be more than friends with Harry. He wanted to take him out to dinner and be able to sit next to each other and not have to worry about bumping elbows because they were both left-handed. He wanted to buy him left handed scissors and to have ten left handed babies with him.
But first, he had to solve the desk problem.
Louis suddenly realised that his internal romantic crisis had caused him to zone out, missing everything Harry had been saying, and now he was staring at him like he was waiting for an answer.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” Louis asked sheepishly.
Further proving that he was the nicest person, Harry just laughed.
“I was saying we should write a letter to the administration, demanding that they give us another desk. Do you want to maybe work on it together after class?”
“Yes,” Louis said quickly. “Um, yeah, that sounds good.”
“Great,” said Harry, looking just as pleased as Louis felt. “Did you want to do it in the library?”
“Or,” Louis said, thinking quickly, “there’s this really cute cafe a few block away, they do amazing toasties. Maybe we could go and write it there, and I could buy you lunch?”
Louis really wanted to get to know Harry better, but he wasn’t sure that a vicious battle over the sole left-handed desk in their classroom was the best way to start a new relationship. Although, he thought distantly, it would be a great story to tell at parties. Or to their future grandchildren.
Ridiculous daydreaming aside, Louis vowed to himself that he was going to treat Harry right, and to make up for the awful way they met.
Sensing Harry was about to protest, Louis continued quickly, “It’s the least I could do, honestly, after the way I’ve treated you over the past few weeks.”
“I wasn’t nice to you either though! I stole your desk - twice!” Harry tried.
“Harry,” Louis said flatly, “you always sat next to me even when I ignored you, and then you brought me breakfast this morning.”
Harry blushed.
“So will you let me take you out to lunch after this then?”
“Okay,” Harry agreed. “It’s a date.”
A date.
Louis hid his grin in his shoulder.
He picked up his half-empty abandoned tea and raised it towards Harry.
“Harry,” he announced grandly, “I think this is the start of something great!”
“To the dream team,” Harry cheered back, clinking their paper cups together.
Their celebrations were cut short when a large group of students and their frazzled-looking professor suddenly poured through the classroom door, but when Louis looked at Harry and saw him still smiling back at him, he didn’t even mind the interruption. He had a lunch date with a cute boy to look forward to and a kick-ass letter to write, and even an 8am Shakespeare class wasn’t going to get him down.
*
“…who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make love known?…” - Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3
*
One week later, Harry and Louis were sitting side by side in the classroom at matching left handed desks.
Five years later, Harry and Louis were sitting side by side in their house, matching rings on their left hands.
*