how fun.

Y/N considered, for a long moment, whether she shouldn’t just play the rest of her hand and break Harry Styles’ pretty, well formed face with a solid punch.  She could tell by his shocked expression that he had heard everything she and her mother had said, and there was a something in his eyes akin to pity that made her even angrier than she’d been before.  Y/N was opening her mouth to pull up the meanest thing that was simmering in the line of what she wanted to say when he beat her out the gates.

“I’m sorry.”

A small and reasonable voice in the back of her head insisted that his intentions were good, but the urge to punch him grew wildly stronger.

“I do not need your pity,” she spit back.  The statement was somewhat undercut by the waver in her voice and the fact that her tears had yet to stop rolling down her cheeks.  

“No, I -- I’ve been a dick.  And yeah, I heard that -- no point in lyin’ about it -- but.  I’ve been havin’ my own problems and I took ‘em out on you because you seemed strong enough to take it.  ‘N you are.  But I shouldn’t have.  And I’m sorry.”

Y/N felt wrong footed.  She had expected him to be sorry about her circumstances, or the other guests, or about things he wouldn’t specify.  A sincere acknowledgement of his actions, given in a hesitant, painfully sincere stutter was.... a lot for her to take in.

“I -- I suppose I’m sorry too,” she mumbled, watching as his face became more shocked, if that was possible.  “I mean, I responded.  And I don’t think most people are mean like that unless something else is going on.  Especially here.”

There was a beat of deeply uncomfortable silence, and then Harry held up the bottle of what she recognized as Helena’s husband’s ouzo and two of the blown glass shot glasses that her grandmother had sent from Sicily.

“Wanna have a drink?” he offered, voice hilariously awkward.

“Yeah.  After today, I need it,” she laughed, feeling the tension simmer off.

“I really am sorry about that--”

“Not you, shut up.  I was lying when I-- well, when I shouted at you that you were worse than those university boys, they really are awful.  Y’know one of them asked Georgie if she was gonna become ‘one of those immigrants’ and tried to hit on her in the same breath?”

“Oh god.”

“Yeah.  So bring that ouzo and I’ll show you the best view on Apollo’s Steps.”

Harry blinked at her.

“I named them that.  The sun rises on them in the morning and the muses had a tie to Apollo.  It works, okay?”

He grinned and nodded.

---

Harry was officially a massive dick, because it turned out that Y/N was the best.  And not just because she  had snuck into the cellars to grab some sardines and cheese and the crackers that she special ordered for herself from the UK when they started feeling like a snack.

“Harry, I’m serious,” she gasped around a fit of giggles, leaning her body against his.  “How could you not care about the statue of David?  I’d give my legs just to see it!”

“Okay, that was a throwaway line that I’m honestly shocked y’ remember, first of all.  But the Medici’s are way more interesting, at least in the context of the history of Florence and Italy and probably even parts of European culture, and they’re in that museum too.  There’s even a replica in the Piazza della Signoria,” he exclaimed, waving his arms around.  He was gratified when she giggled even harder.

“You’re crazy.  If I ever get to Florence,” --and Harry’s heart clenched, because Florence was comparatively so close to where they sat at that moment-- “if I ever get to Florence, I’ll cover every inch of that city with a fine tooth comb.”

She took a small sip of ouzo, and Harry couldn’t help but stare at her mouth.  He was fiercely glad that she was looking at the moon reflected on the water instead of him.

“Y’know, some people think you live in the kind of place that would always be a vacation, like Florence.”

Y/N looked down at her hands.

“I get that.  And I am thankful.  But do you know the farthest I’ve ever gotten from here is an hour inland?  My mom was born and raised in Massachusetts and then went to school in England and did all this traveling, and... I can’t help but be her daughter.  I can’t help but want to get out of here.  See what else there is.”  There was a soft little bleed to all of her words, the kind of slur that came with a gentle sort of tipsiness, but her face was remarkably sober.

“I mean, how old’re you?” Harry murmured, twisting the bottle in his hands.

“I’m twenty one.  And I know I should just go if I want to that badly, I know that but -- she’s given me everything, y’know?  I can’t just look that in the face.”

Harry nodded.  That had been hard for him, just up and leaving his mum after she’d given him so much, and he’d had a job attached then.  He wanted to say something, or make her feel better, but she looked so gorgeous staring out at the water that his words stopped somewhere near his tonsils.  The moonlight was so bright that he could see an extra little fleck of color in her eyes, and for the life of him he didn’t know what he’d planned to say.

“Besides, I’ve seen a lot,” she said.  Harry blinked.  His brain was a bit fuzzy from all the alcohol, but he was pretty sure the whole point of the last hour of him telling stories was that she hadn’t seen that much of the world at all.  She smiled at the way he had furrowed his brow and stuck out his lower lip, and he tried half heartedly to shake out the lingering, childish expression.

“I know, I know.  It’s more like, I’ve seen everything this island has.  I know what the lemon flowers look like in every part of their bloom, and I could tell you the exact time based on the way the sun reflects off the sea.  And my mom’s stories, travel books and all that -- most days they can be enough.”

Harry looked at her as she swirled the shot’s dregs.  “It isn’t though, is it?  Enough, I mean.”  She bit her lip.

“Not lately.”

For a while, they sat there in a silence that was only interrupted by the noises of little sips or bigger waves.  There was more Harry wanted to say, a vulnerability that was waiting to bubble up through layers of liquorice flavored courage, and he took a deep breath.

“I can’t write anymore,” he blurted out to the trees and the stairs and the unnervingly pretty girl who was finishing her sip of ouzo.  She blinked sidelong at him.

“You just published a book,” she told him, a question in her tone.  He smiled at her, though he had a feeling it looked more like a grimace, and flexed his hands.

“I did, and every sentence in it felt like pulling teeth.  And I came here to write somethin’ else -- originally it was gonna be my novel but now I would settle for just about anything, if I’m honest.  Nothin’ comes out.”

“Well, you must’ve made the muses mad,” Y/N said to him in the kind of tone that indicated the solution was obvious.  “Mom always says they hate people who are trying too hard.  Next time you light a candle, light it for them.  And when you go out around the island, don’t think about how doing it will make you write more later.  Just be there and do it.”

“How did you know that’s what I think of?” he couldn’t help but ask.  Y/N was back to looking at the water.

“I always figured when I was reading your books that part of what made them so special was the fact that there was a lot of you in them.  It’s not a far stretch to assume that you’ve lost yourself to the writing, instead of in it,” she shrugged.

Harry blinked.

“What else do I think about, though?  How do I not spend my days on that?”

Y/N snorted at that.

“Clearly, you haven’t really seen Kalokairi.  Listen, tomorrow is Friday and I have the day off.  Let me show you the island, and I promise you won’t even think of that writer’s block,” she told him.  Harry thought it was rather cocky of her to think that would be all it took -- he’d been there two weeks after all -- but there was something about her that he couldn’t deny.

“Alright.”

---

The next morning, Y/N woke up with a pounding at the front of her skull and a general feeling of something having been resolved.  For a moment, she blinked out at her little room from beneath her blankets, trying in vain to remember what had led her to her current mild hangover.  She just about fell out of bed when it all came back.

“Oh my god.  I’m showing Harry Styles around Kalokairi,” she mumbled to the wardrobe next to her door.  The wardrobe stared back.  “You better give me something good.”

A million things were racing through her brain-- plans for the day and places she should show him that she thought he might like.  There was also a small part of her that was worried about her hair, what she would wear, whether or not she was breaking out-- the kind of stuff you couldn’t help but think of when one of “England’s Sexiest Bachelors” was planning to spend the day exploring an the island with you.  Y/N took a deep breath.

“Black one piece, jean shorts, easy lightweight button down.  That’s cute, right?” she murmured to herself, pulling out the pieces.  It seemed alright, went well with the sandals she had grabbed, and if the day followed her plan then she’d mostly be in the water anyhow.  She stared at herself for a moment in the mirror.

“Fuck, this is for real happening,” she said, almost as though she was giving up, and then she turned and headed towards the staff kitchen.  The courtyard was fairly empty, though she could hear the hum of people sitting out on the balcony, and she was relieved to reach the stairs down to where her breakfast would be without anyone asking her for anything.  Though she wasn’t working, she couldn’t really say no if someone asked and she was not about to be sidetracked.

“Good morning little rose.  You are much earlier than your normal days off,” Helena noted with a wry tone.  Y/N smiled.  

“We’ve had something of a breakthrough.  Has Mr. Styles already taken his breakfast?”

“Yes he has,” said a voice from behind her, and Y/N turned to see Georgie.  “In fact, he said he would meet you on the steps.  Are you planning to push him off once and for all?

“Not exactly,” Y/N said carefully, trying not to grin too widely.  “Len, do you have anything that got sent back from the tables that I could grab for breakfast?  I’m in a bit of a rush.”

Georgie set the tray down with a bit of a clatter.  She knew Y/N far too well.

“Alright Y/L/N, what exactly is going on here?”

Y/N bit her lip.

“You know how Stavros’s ouzo brings the world together?”  Georgie nodded, and Helena made the face of a person well versed with just exactly what his booze would do.  “Turns out Styles and I have more in common than I thought.  I’m showing him some of the island.”

Len lit up.

“Oh, I’ll make a picnic!  A loaf of bread, olives of course, yes, dolmades in case you need a snack...” she murmured to herself, puttering away to find their seldom used wicker basket.  Y/N laughed.

“Thank you Lena!” she called.  Georgie was still staring at her, brow raised.

“You change your feeling like the tides, you do,” she sighed, shaking her head.

“Rich coming from you and your Anne of Green Gables romance.  Hated Nik until you didn’t, didn’t you?”  Y/N snorted.  Georgie spluttered.

“Nik and I-- that is to say-- Y/N!  That is not a romance!”

“Oh child, you still deny this?  Really, even the gods laugh at this obstinance,” Helena sighed, handing Y/N her basket.  Georgie buried her face in her hands.

“We were talking about Y/N, and her oncoming summer affair!” Georgie exclaimed from behind her palms.  

“Oncoming nothing!  I’m just going to show him the island, that is it!”  

“Kids these days,” Helena muttered.  “Beers for you as well, dear.  There are some pies that those damnable young men won’t eat, take those and get out of my sight, the both of you.”

“Love you, Lena!” Y/N called as Georgie scampered away from the scene.

Five minutes later saw Y/N swinging her legs over the wall that made up the stairs’ railing and munching on bougatsa with a five pound picnic basket next to her.  She was writing the stories of ships passing by to kill time when Harry finally showed up.

“What’d’ya reckon?”  she asked, jerking her chin toward a fishing trawler a ways out.  When Harry didn’t respond, she pushed forward.  “I think that there’s a young man on that boat, saving his money up to marry the man he loves so they can get a proper house even when the economy is doing the way it is, but the twist of it all is that he gags at the smell of fish.  It’s quite the labor of love, you see.”

The silence lingered, and Y/N turned herself on the rough stone.  Harry was standing there, watching her with the sort of bemused enjoyment that she thought might become typical between the two of them.

“Got a picnic,” she offered, patting the basket.

“Are you always this chipper early mornin’ and I’ve just been missin’ it under all my literary angst?” Harry asked.  At that, Y/N couldn’t help but laugh so hard she nearly fell down the cliffside.

“Oh, come off it.  ‘Literary angst’, alright Edgar Allan,” she chuckled to herself, picking up their basket and starting down the steps.  Harry rushed to follow.

“Here, lemme,” he offered, reaching to grab the handle.  He grunted, sagged under its weight as Y/N let some of it go, and she laughed again.

“Service job.  Used to the lifting.  As a frail and fragile writer, I’m sure you wouldn’t understand,” Y/N said sagely.  Harry made an offended noise.

“Where’re we even going?” he asked sullenly, and she turned to grin at his pout.

“Well first, here,” Y/N said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into a thicket of trees.  It was about halfway down the steps off a landing, and the leaves showed that they must make olives once August rolled around.  The sun was diluted almost immediately by the explosion of leaves, and after a few minutes of hiking, they happened upon a perfectly circular break in the foliage.

“Welcome to the forest from a Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she said, and there was an unexpected anxiety roiling in her chest as she turned to him.  It was the first chance she had taken to really absorb what he was wearing and she found that all at once she felt severely underdressed.  Though he was only standing there in a plain white tee shirt and a pair of yellow swim shorts, the shirt looked so soft and finely made that she could only just resist the urge to run her hands down it.  She blinked stupidly for a moment or two and was mortified to realize that he’d said her name a few times.  She shook her head.

“I-- yes, sorry?”

“Midsummer Night’s Dream?” Harry asked.  Y/N flushed.

“Well, I read it when I was really little -- for a long time there we didn’t get a ton of shipments besides the absolute necessities onto the island, and it was one of the books my mom packed when he first washed up here.  I didn’t really get it, I’ll admit, but I liked the fairies.  When I found this place I was about six, and it had that big ol’ rock there, so I figured it must be Titania's throne.  I’ve called it that ever since,” she explained, running her fingers along the trunks of the surrounding trees as she strolled along the perimeter.

When she turned back to Harry, still feeling largely unprepared for his whole deal, he was grinning softly, eyes distinctly fond.  Y/N took a deep breath.

“That’s fantastic,” he laughed, and he plopped straight down onto the rock.  “Find me some flowers and I’ll make m’self a crown.  I think I’d make a proper nice fairy queen, don’t you?”

“Just beautiful.  I’m happy to leave you to the throne all day long, but this really was just a little sidebar,” she deferred.  Her heart was at roughly a thousand bpm, and all at once she really needed to get away from how gently he was looking at her.  “There’s some cool historical stuff visible from the water, and I figured you might like to check out some of the waterfront, hear some stories.  We like to say Kalokairi is the island of the gods, and there quite a few places with their own histories to them.”

“I’m sure you’re sick enough of all that.  You must tell those stories all the time.”

Y/N smiled despite herself and shook her head.

“Actually, no one’s ever much interested.”

“Then I’d love to hear them.”

Y/N took a moment to consider that a kind, sincerely interested Harry might be more difficult to handle than his previously prickly self.  The way he’d responded was so sincere that Y/N didn’t doubt even slightly that he wanted to know every detail.  She coughed, shifting the picnic basket up her arm.

“Well then, let’s get to the boat.”

---

Harry wondered, from his seat in Y/N’s little dinghy, how many of the Muse’s guests fell in love with her.  Looking at the way she gesticulated while she told stories, the strong pull of her arms as she rowed the boat, the glow of her skin under the high summer sun, he couldn’t help but think it might be rather often.  There was just no way someone could smile like that and not make every person in a twenty foot radius swoon.

“...and so a lot of the LGBT community that’s lived on the island through the ages insist that Erato and Aphrodite had this really passionate affair and Ares got mad and tattled to Zeus, who threw down a lightning bolt as a warning.  That’s why they say the rock splits like that.  It’s all very romantic,” she sighed, eyes lingering on the craggy boulder that they were slowly floating past.

“D’ya ever have a love like that?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth Harry wanted to throw himself into the sea.  If only it was thrashing more violently, or the waves had more splash, just so he and his embarrassment would be swallowed without a trace.  He could feel his face turning bright pink, his stomach turning sour as her face shuttered closed.

“I -- people don’t really stay long enough,” she said, so quietly he could only barely hear it above to the gentle clap of the waves against the wood of the boat.  Harry didn’t know what to say to that.

“So you’ve never...?”  He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence, because none of the completions felt good.  Y/N snorted.

“No, I’ve had my chance at the whole run.  You’d be surprised how easy it is to sneak out of that creaky old house, even from the attic.  But it’s nothing big, a summer at most.  They always want me to follow them, and if I could leave this island I’d never tie myself right back down by trailing after someone like a lost puppy.  If anything, they’d follow me.  And at any rate-- well,” she answered.  Harry noticed that the boat was moving faster, almost as if her anxiety was propelling them forward (actually, judging by the rate her arms were moving, that might be it).  He knew telling her that she could leave if she really wanted would probably not be the move, no matter how it tickled at the tip of his tongue.

“I can respect that.  Although it can be nice.  To have a home base, I mean.”  Harry felt naked when she looked up and scanned him over.

“I’d have to be a satellite to have a base,” she responded.  Her tone was kind, but her eyes were still guarded, and she turned so abruptly back to the sea that the boat rocked gently.  “C’mon, let’s go to the beach.  Those uni kids are finally gone.”

“Okay, are we going to row--”  he didn’t even finish his sentence before was stripping out of her shirt and shorts (which made his heart stop for several beats) and jumping over the side.  He wasn’t entirely sure if he was clinging to the sides of the boat because it was swaying or because he thought he was.  She resurface with hair clinging wet to her scalp, blinking up at him through saltwater coated lashes.

“You row it in.  I’ll swim alongside and pull it onto the beach.  Last time we didn’t swim along it, Nik accidentally let it go out to sea and we had to run to the docks to get his uncle’s speedboat.  Better safe than sorry.”  

Harry blinked at her for a moment, and then reached for the oars.  He’d seen people do this plenty of times, so he could too.  His first stroke, he realized, was in the wrong direction when he went careening backwards.  Harry strongly considered doing it again as she laughed, bright and loud.

“Other way, otherwise you’ll push it all the way to Lirios.  And I can’t swim that far.”

She gave him a big grin and then began to slowly swim backwards.  Harry though dizzily of sirens as he soaked up the glittering feeling of being the focus of her smile, seemingly compounded by the way the water sparkled around her.  This time his movements were strong and sure in the right direction.

“Much better.”

After only ten minutes of his subpar rowing and her guiding hand, the boat was comfortably nestled in the sand.  Y/N had brought a soft, woven blanket to protect them from the baking heat of the beach and a basket so full of food that Harry wondered if it hadn’t previously belonged to Mary Poppins.

“How did the boat not sink under that thing?” he said incredulously as she pulled out a loaf of bread, vegetables, cheese, cold cuts, dip, two big bottles of beer, dainty little glasses -- that tore it, there was definitely a secret portal to another world in there.

“I know, massively overkill.  Len shows her love through food though, and I think she’s warmed up to you.  She packed the nice mizithra,” Y/N replied appreciatively.  Harry made grabby hands.

“I had that in Crete on a layover and I have craved it every bloody day since then.  Pass it here.”

Once again and to his continual delight, she laughed.

“You’re a demanding thing, aren’t you?” she grinned, handing him a knife and a slice of bread.  He beamed back, cutting off a slice to pile under pickled vegetables and a bit of louza.

“I’ll cop to that.  Sometimes I feel like if I’m not demanding, then I’ll fade right into the walls.  S’like I spend so much time on the wind that they don’t know what to do with me when I’m finally there.”

The way her smile slowly melted was lovely and non-judgmental, but he could feel the charge behind it.  

“Y’know it’s funny isn’t it?” she asked after a moment, taking a small sip of her beer.

“Wha’?”

“A lot of people think I live on this permanent vacation because I’m on this island, and I mean, to everyone else’s eyes you have the jetsetting dream life.  Or I suppose I thought you did, and I feel like I might be something close to your average reader.”

“Don’t think anything about you is average love,” Harry admitted, which he knew was a nakedly telling statement.  It was worth it for the way her face morphed into a pleased and bashful quirk of her lips, only barely big enough that he might call it a smile.  He felt his heart sigh fondly.

“Well, that’s awfully kind of you.  I just meant that there are probably a lot of people who thought like me.  Anyway, I don’t think many people think like you--  sometimes I feel like I’m melting into the bougainvillea.  ‘Specially when we get the nastier guests.”

“I’m sorry about that again, jus’--”  she went to interrupt him, to tell him it was okay as she had earlier, but he barreled forward.  “No, really.  I came into your house and treated you like shit, just because I payed a bit of money to stay there too so I thought I was entitled.”

“I’m not upset at you anymore, Harry,” she said, placing a hand on his as if trying to will her forgiveness into him.

“Well, I’m upset at me.  I mean I can’t even imagine how often it happens, and you can’t just leave, can you?  N’ I could tell you were mad as a hornets nest, but you were still so civil to me.  You must have to be like tha’ with everyone who decides to be in a snit.  I don’t know how I’d deal with it.”

“Give me some credit,” she said, tone humorous in a way Harry had a hard time understanding.  “I don’t let every bad guest get to me that badly.  You were a bit special.”

“So you’re saying you’ve never needed to get away from here, even if it’s only in your head?”

Her eyes were still smiling as she shook her head at him.

“No, you’re right.  I have.”

“So what do you do?”

“I make places to go.  I used to go out to the mainland every weekend and see if I could find little curios I liked to add to the little museum I made in my cupboards, with cards and everything.  I’ve only ever really seen the one in town, so I’d google pictures of the ones in big metropolises to make it really chic and whatever.”

This, Harry thought, had to be one of the best things he’d heard lately (except, maybe, for when she’d called him special-- but he was trying not to think too hard about that).  Between the swimming they had done in the salty sea, the way the summer sun had stretched his skin tan and tight across his cheeks, and the fierce grin that he couldn’t fight, he thought his face might just split in two.  

“You’re a real trip Miss Y/N,” he answered her warmly.  “Tell me more.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then two, seeming to be contemplating something.  Finally she said, “why don’t I show you.”

---

By the way Harry’s eyes widened and his cheeks had flushed when she said that, Y/N feared that he’d thought she was going to take her suit off.  Instead of lingering on that thought, or the anticipation that she swore she saw somewhere in his eyes, Y/N stood up and took off down the beach.

“We’ll be in the water, so leave your shirt.”

“Wha-- hey, slow down!”  Y/N could hear the noise of him scrambling to stand and pull his shirt off.

“Bring the beer too, Harry!”

She could hear him swearing behind her, and picked up her speed, disappearing into the trees.  She had decided that she would hide from him, and a giddy anxiety bubbled through her chest that felt remarkably like a childhood game of hide and seek.  As she peeked around the trunk of a cypress, she could see him turning in the direction she’d gone, the second bottle of beer hanging loosely in his hand.

“Where’d ya go pet?” he called, taking a few steps forward.  Y/N had to press her hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles, willing down the flush of heat that the pet name brought along.

“C’mon love, this isn’t fair,” he groused.  He’d followed her footsteps up to the treeline, and now he was peering around trees cautiously.  Y/N waited with bated breath.

“Hi,” she said calmly as he finally came face to face with her.  He shrieked, sounding remarkably like one of Hitchcock’s blondes, and she reached out and plucked the bottle from his hands.

“Bloody-- you’re a cruel thing,” he panted.

“Aw, live a little.  Just wanted to give you a good surprise before we kept going.  Don’t want you getting complacent, after all.”  He frowned at her, but followed nonetheless as she pushed forward through the sandy forest.

“Swear, if you’re about to scare me again,” he grumbled lowly.

“You are the biggest baby.  Duck here,” she directed, bowing her own back to push through a low growth of branches.

“Y’know, we left all that food back there.  And it was sunny and gorgeous, and did I mention the food?”

Y/N laughed.

“No one will take our food, I’ve already checked mum’s schedule and everyone is sightseeing.  Bit of a tight squeeze here.”  She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled forward, through a low hole in the wall that boxed in the far north side of the cove.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna be sacrificed,” Harry grumbled to himself.  Y/N couldn’t help but laugh, and all but heard his head snap up as it echoed.

“Wha--  Is this a cave?  This is a cave.  What is this place?”

“This is Euterpe’s Grotto,” Y/N said in a nakedly fond voice.  “There’s a river that turns into the island, and some underwater holes that I would guess head out to the Aegean, because the water is salty.”

“It’s... Y/N, this place is incredible.”

Didn’t Y/N know it.  Kalokairi could get old some days, but the Grotto never did.  The massive opening in the roof, surrounded on all sides by trees and open to the crystal blue sky, lit the whole area up with a soft glow.  The water within the cave was stunningly clear, deep enough to have a proper swim without getting frightening, with a gentle circulation from it’s outer channels.  Moss grew up the walls, as well as some adaptive creeping vines, and little fish could be seen hiding at the bottom of the well of water.

“Rumor has it you can sing,” Y/N said conspiratorially.  Harry flushed.

“I mean-- that is I’ve been known to hum a tune or two.  But sing might be something of an exaggeration, y’know Nick was jus’ takin’ the piss--”

Y/N cut him off, pushing his shoulder.

“C’mon Harry, give it a go.”

He stared at her, and she stared back.  Then he cleared his throat-- which was startlingly loud in the almost hallowed silence that had settled around them-- and hummed a few bars.  The sound curled gently along the walls, seeming to transform in depth and sound as it went.  She could see the awe growing on his face.

“I suppose the name is fitting,” he murmured after a moment.  Y/N nodded.

“I suppose so.”  Y/N couldn’t help but stare at the line of his nose, the little curl of his lips.  He really was awfully handsome.

“Tell me, do you find places like this, or attract them?”  Harry asked.  Y/N didn’t know what he meant by that, so she shrugged helplessly.

“Swim with me?”

She grabbed his wrist to pull him along and sunk into the water.  He made a small, surprised noise and the walls grabbed it, snaking it up to sing out of the hole in the top, but Y/N swore she felt it curl around her toes, too.

“Cooler in here than on the beach,” he hummed as he dipped in further.  Y/N nodded.  She couldn’t help but stare at the way the water lapped around his collarbones as he moved forward, the way the transparent line of the surface turned around his shoulders like a friend.  The warmth in her belly was jealous of the way it got to slide so smoothly along him.

“I usually come here when the hotel gets too hot in the day,” she heard herself saying, but she was focused in her own head on little else besides the way a drop of water was travelling languidly down a tendon in his neck.  He smiled at her and leaned himself back to float.  Y/N found herself following, and they laid for some time on their backs, heads touching and gazing out of the opening in the cavern.   Y/N felt herself dozing, time seeming to move slower as she and Harry soaked in the moment.

It came as a great surprise when two arms locked around her waist and suddenly she was very much underwater.  For a moment there was a muted rushing, the almost silence of still water, and then she was resurfacing to flutter for air.

“Got you back,” said a beaming Harry from where he tread a few feet away.  His curls were hardly tamed by water, already starting to pop up as drips rolled away, and his eyes were childish and mischievous.  If she wasn’t still feeling a bit like a wet cat, Y/N would have taken the time to admire how light he looked.

“Oh, you’re going to pay for that one,” Y/N responded.  She lunged towards him, years of swimming in the sea helping her to cut easily through the water, and grappled for a hold.  The only thing on her mind was dunking him so properly that he saw Poseidon himself.  Their wrestling went on for several minutes, splashes and watery laughter smacking echos across the walls.  It was only when Harry managed to wrap her in a bear hug and pin her arms behind her back that Y/N gave in.

All at once, Y/N realized that she could feel Harry’s breathless giggles brushing across her face.  Two blinks brought him properly into focus, so close to his face that she could practically taste his grin.  She took a slightly shaky breath as she watched his eyes hone in on a drop of water that had clung to her eyelashes.  As he was about to say something, eyes still razor sharp on her, there was a rough clatter.  Someone was hiking on the trail higher up the cliff, and had knocked a rock down the hillside and into the opening in the roof.

Y/N and Harry bounced apart.

“I-- my mum, I promised I’d FaceTime her at two,” he said quickly, treading back towards the edge of the water.

“I told Georgie would help her hang the lines, we should probably head back,” Y/N agreed, following him.  Though the air was still casual and warm, a nervous tension was sparking in the space between them, so strong that Y/N felt it power her arms once they had gotten into the boat and she began to row back.  The walk up to the hotel was a quiet one, and Y/N fully expected Harry to scamper away when they reached the top of the stairs.  Instead, Harry turned to her and grabbed her arm.

“I haven’t actually felt like I was on a vacation in a long time,” he said quietly, staring very intensely at her.  She blinked.  “I did today.  I felt like I got away from it all.  Thank you.”

Y/N couldn’t help but beam.  A small, smug part of her was very proud indeed that she’d shown him a good time, and a much larger part of her was deeply relieved by the fact that his shoulders were less slumped than they had been the past two weeks.

“If you really want to get away from it all, you could meet me and Georgie on the docks at nine.  And wear something nice.”

Harry didn’t hesitate to nod.

“Nine it is.”

Y/N got to sleep in the next day by just a bit.  Her Big Ben alarm clock, a gift her grandmother had picked up in a thrift store somewhere in Cheshire, rang furiously as soon as eight o’clock rolled around.  The day was to begin.

“Good morning dear.  Mr. Styles has asked for breakfast at 9 o’clock -- a pot of tea with the fixings, some toast, and a bit of fruit, if you please -- so you’ve got a bit of time to get ready and have your shower before I need you going,” her mother said, opening the creaky, light blue door to her room.  Y/N paused, frozen in her morning stretch, to stare at her mother.

“Mr. Styles?  You mean Harry Styles?  The travel writer?”

Dee sighed, and suddenly Y/N understood why this information had been so carefully hidden from her.  Harry Styles was her favorite author.  He’d been around half the world and had quite a knack for colorful descriptions and vivid storytelling alongside a cutting humor.  Though she’d never gone farther than a bit into the mainland, his work made her feel like a proper globetrotter.

“Yes, that Mr. Styles.  And you are absolutely forbidden from badgering him about his travels.  He’s come here for a respite from all that, and I won’t have you stressing him out and running him off the island,” Dee said warningly, shaking one beringed finger.  Y/N tried not to pout.

“Okay, heard.  Toast, tea, and fruit, and absolutely no mention of the fact that he’s been to every place I’ve always wanted to go.”

“Exactly.  Now, up!”

Y/N watched her mother go, and then rolled out of bed.  Today wouldn’t be too much of a day, overall -- a few check-ins who would probably fall straight into bed from jetlag and Harry fucking Styles were her only priority.  She might even have time to read on the stairs or make it down to the beach in the slow moments.  A pair of old cutoffs and one of her tee shirts should do the day.  One quick shower later, and her neroli scented soap had her feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day.

“Gooood morning, Helena!” she sang, throwing herself around the doorframe into the kitchen of their main guest building.  At the stove, the lady who did the cooking for the Muse turned to grant her a smile.

“Can you believe this new guest, huh?  Toast and fruit!  Is he a traveler or a hummingbird?” she said, half to Y/N and half to herself.  Helena believed strongly in meals that would stick to the ribs, and clearly their new guest was already not quite up to snuff.

“We’re only here to provide what they ask, Len.”

“Well he had better start asking for a proper breakfast before he wastes right away.”

Y/N laughed and picked up the tray of food.  Helena had been careful to set out cream and sugar alongside the teapot, and they’d even gotten out the nice jadeite tea set that grandma had sent her mom from Myanmar (it had still been Burma at the time).  She’d also sliced apricots nectarines and thrown a few cherries onto the plate, even added a little pot of lemons in case that was how he preferred his tea.  A few slices of Mr. Alexandrou’s local whole grain bread had been toasted to a perfect golden brown and were placed delicately to the side with a small pot of local butter.  Despite it not being Helena’s preferred fare, it really seemed to represent the best of Kalokairi and her environs.

“You’re an artist Len.  I’ll be back for my coffee!”

Y/N trotted away as quickly as she could with a tray full of food (and alright, so maybe it was a bit more of a slow walk), headed to the stairs that carried the kitchen up to the dining balcony.

The dining balcony.  That was number two out of Y/N’s eleven favorite spots on the island, with a view that could almost rival the staircase.  Though it was just a little rectangle sticking out from the second level of the cliffside building, it had always made Y/N feel like a princess staring over her ocean kingdom.  The far left side of the building, facing the north of the island, peeked out upon Calliope’s Beach where this side of the island went to swim.  If you faced the building on that side, you could see just past into the citrus orchards where Y/N had spent her childhood munching on oranges and reading fantasy books, and even further in, the houses of some of the locals.  Though almost no one who ate up there knew it, the entrance to Euterpe’s Grotto was hidden at the very end of the beach where the island curved northeast.  The west view, looking straight off the cliffside, was more of the dazzling blue of the Aegean Sea, and the east peeked into the docks and the little markets that sat behind them.  It felt as though all of Kalokairi was encapsulated in a single turn.

“Good morning Mr. Styles,” she said cheerfully as she came up upon the curls she had seen the night before.

He looked up, eyes even greener than they had looked on his book jackets and framed by angirly furrowed brows and purple bags.

“I was told my privacy would be respected when I came here,” he all but snarled.

Y/N tried not to visibly recoil as she set his tray down, though she heard the clink as the tea set jerked slightly.

“Well of course, I mean-- we’re not going to go about on social media screaming that you’re here.  But all the same, I’m the daughter of the woman who checked you in last night, and we make a point of greeting our guests by name.”

He stared at her a moment more, gaze both analytical and totally disinterested, and she wondered for a moment if she was actually a ghost. She took a deep breath.  He grunted dismissively.

“I did want to ask, Mr. Styles, if you had any questions about the island or what we have to offer here.  If you don’t mind me saying so --”

“I do mind, actually,” he started, cutting her off.  “Can’t a bloke get some bloody peace around here?”

Y/N’s jaw snapped shut so hard that the canals of her ears hurt faintly.

“Of course.”

She was not ashamed to say that she fled the space after that, taking the stairs in a sprint with cheeks burning like the cherry of a cigarette from sheer fury.  It was only the telltale cadence of Georgie’s footfalls at the bottom of the stairs that kept Y/N from running face first into her.

“Who pissed in your coffee?” Georgie asked, grabbing her by the elbows to steady her.  Y/N rolled her neck.

“Haven’t had it yet.  Did you know we have Harry Styles gracing our humble establishment?” Y/N laughed, clenching her fist.

“You mean your favorite author?  The guy whose books I’ve bought you for the past three out of five Christmases?”  Georgie asked.  Y/N could tell she was confused.

“The guy’s an asshole.  Steer carefully around him,” Y/N scoffed.  Georgie was frowning at her, face clearly sympathetic, and Y/N wanted to scream.

“I’m so sorry rosie,” Georgie said, stroking her hand softly down Y/N’s arm.  Y/N frowned.

“I’m only warning you George.  We’ve got him for three months, and whatever his books were like, he is not.”

There was more Georgie wanted to say, that was certainly visible on her face, but she nodded instead.

“Wanna talk about this over coffee?” she asked softly.  Y/N didn’t, not really, but it might be easier if she did, so she turned to the worn wooden table and chairs for employees set up in the kitchen.  A steaming cup of coffee was set in her usual  place, alongside a plate of Helena’s breakfast hash.

“So Harry Styles sucks?” Georgie prompted, taking a mouthful of potatoes.  Y/N took a bracing drink.

“Of course he does.  He’s massively rich and has met a million interesting people and seen half the world.  What time does he has for us small folk?”  

Georgie’s eyebrows raised high.

“Not that she’s bitter.”

Y/N glared.

“For the past six years I have lived the rest of the world through him and how funny he is.  Now he’s here to stay with us and I find out it’s all an act.  Forgive me for my sour grapes.”

Georgie waited for the next shoe to fall.

“It just feels like...” Y/N scrubbed her hands through her hair.  “I don’t know.  It just feels like everything happens outside of Kalokairi.  And when it happens here, it can never be the same.”

“Oh c’mon Y/N.  I’d bet you half my paycheck that he’s like that everywhere.  You know how rich people are, they forget what it’s like to be ordinary like us.  The ants can’t help but bother him,” Georgie pointed out.  She poked Y/N’s plate, trying to remind her to eat for the rest of the day, and Y/N managed a morose forkful.

“It’s to be expected.  Here I am working my ass off just to keep the walls of this place upright and he’s too high on the fumes of a few euros to be nice to people around him.”

“Never meet your heroes.  By the way, he’s already sent down some laundry to be done,” Georgie replied.  Y/N groaned and laid her head next to the plate on the table.

---

So Harry may have been a little mean to the cute girl who brought round his brekkie.  In his defense, he certainly felt bad about it.  He was just feeling so rotten between how tired he was and the start of the morning.  There’d been this stunning sunrise he saw lighting up his balcony, and when he went out to watch it he felt so young and inspired and ready again.  He’d grabbed his typewriter (which was a bitch to lug around, but always worth it) and set up on the little wrought iron table, and-- nothing.

It was like a million different words were pounding on his chest, begging to be let out of a door that his fingers could no longer be.  It was infuriating.

So he’d gone to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling again, and by the time he’d marked down for breakfast, he was properly full to the brim with ire.  And then the girl had known his name and he was just so bloody sick of being Harry Styles, Travel Writer that he’d snapped at her.  He’d been even angrier when she’d had a reason for knowing it and he realized how rude he’d been.

He rather wished he’d let her speak too, because he didn’t know a stitch of Greek or where he ought to go now the day had begun, and he was a bit too afraid to risk running across her in the registration house.  For now, he thought, he’d explore the resort.

It was a precious place, he had to say.  The hotel complex itself was basically a square of buildings around a divided courtyard.  The structures themselves were all very Greek, covered over with a pale stucco and roofed in with terracotta tiles.  All of the doors were a soft shade of blue that matched the walls of the rooms.  He was in the building to the north, the longest one, which connected to a dining balcony with one of the most breathtaking sea views he’d ever seen -- and he’d seen a few.  The north building turned an L, so that it covered a half of the east side.  There was a wide gate heading out of the courtyard that led onto a small, red dust lot, and that was where he’d entered the night before.  The other east building on the lot had a spillover of more rooms (the least expensive ones, he assumed, since they looked out on trees and the road down to the markets and the docks).  What must have at one time been a goat house was now a bit of storage for food and miscellany, according to the owner, Dee.  

Beautiful though the buildings were, Harry could see the wear.  In some places the stucco was chipped, and it was more of an off white than the pure, bright white that most Greek tourism brochures tended to picture.   On the registration house he’d started in the evening before, on the very south side of the square of buildings, he could see tiles missing in the roof and how nearly all of the blue paint had peeled off the attic window shutters.  Nevertheless, every worn patch had a cheerful flower to match it, and the food and comfort of his surroundings was undeniable.

Harry had already gone to inspect the flowers crawling the walls (he was almost fitfully delighted to see that it was an old, lovingly cared for bougainvillea plant), and noted with joy that the little box under the attic window was decorated with a carving of all of the muses and bursting with brightly colored blooms.  

The courtyard had a slope to it, and it split like a step in the middle.  Dee had explained to him in the ride up to the place that people had kept tripping over the damn thing, so she’d built a wall to make it safer because she wasn’t about to be liable.  Then she’d found out that if you closed the gate and it made a suitable dance floor that went well with the courtyard’s outdoor bar, and it had kind of gone from there.

Though there was something almost magical about sitting under the clotheslines heavy with laundry on the east side of the gate, he’d seen stairs on the cliffside as the ferry came sailing in, and he thought that the gate on the southwest side of the courtyard may lead to it.  It’d been closed all day, but he didn’t think that meant it would be locked.  Those stairs, he thought, would probably be a good place to crack open the book of Ginsberg poems he’d grabbed as he was leaving New York.

To his surprise, the door of the gate he had seen was now open.  His hunch had been totally right, he saw.  There were the stone steps, and he could smell the faint aroma of cypress on the otherwise salty sea breeze.  

He started down them, already thrilled by the view expanding in front of him, but froze when he noticed a head of familiar hair.  It was the girl.  She had a book in her lap and another stack to her side, and he noticed with a start that one of his was atop the stack.  

It was a paperback version of Haggled History: Viewing Europe’s Past on a Budget, one of his prouder works.  It was rather dense since it covered quite a few countries, chapter by by chapter, and how best to learn their histories with only a few euros in pocket.  It was also less trendy, he supposed, than much of his other work.  Apparently, his usual reader wasn’t much for history reference based jokes.  He very rarely found himself signing it on his book tours-- and yet there was her version, tattered and well loved.  Pages were marked with washi tape, seemingly in the place of a dog ear, and just about a whole pad of post it notes had found their way into the four hundred odd pages.  As the gentle wind coming off the water blew her copy open, he could see it was highlighted and marked with a heart next to whatever city it was open to, margins crammed with notes.

Feeling suddenly vaguely ill, Harry turned around and decided that maybe sleeping off his jetlag would be the best use of his afternoon.

---

Georgie, the traitor, had told Dee how Y/N’s meeting with Mr. Styles had gone.  Y/N tried not to be too irritated by the fact that her mother was largely unsympathetic -- “he’s just another guest, my rose, and his euros have the same value as anyone else’s.  I don’t care what his personality is like.”  Still, Dee knew how much his books meant to her (even now, having met the asshole), and Y/N would have liked a smidgen of understanding.  Unfortunately, her mother was right.  Harry Styles’ money was metaphorically green and all that, and he was giving them quite a bit of it.  So Y/N could be nice.  Or polite, at the very least.

Alright, she could prevent herself from being openly hostile.  Y/N really thought, though, that that should count for something!  It wasn’t as though he was being a peach.  He’d been here two weeks, and the entire time he’d been surly and frowning.  He’d even had the audacity to ask Dee to switch his mattress, as though that was the reason he was sleeping poorly.  It hadn’t helped, either, because every time Y/N brought his breakfast (or any other meal.  Or an extra pillow.  Or had the nerve to even look in his direction), he was still as nasty and short as he’d been that first day.

The worst part though, easily, was the fact that she seemed to be the only person gifted with his special attentions.  Her mother had insisted that he’d been a total sweetheart about asking about his bed, Helena declared that she liked him, despite whatever his breakfast choices might be, and even Georgie said that he really wasn’t all that bad.

Y/N was reeling with enough betrayal that this Thursday already felt pretty sour.  But then the morning had started unpleasantly, moreso than usual.  Big Ben had decided to take a day off (looked like she would have to bring it round to Mr. Hatzidakis to fix, again), so she’d awoken to her mother yelling through her door that she had 15 minutes before Mr. Clark would like his breakfast at 7:30.  The food had been ready since Helena worked like an atomic clock, but Y/N’s hastily dealt with hair and puffy eyes were still a dead give to her own tardiness, and Mr. Clark was kind enough to let her know as much as she set down his cuppa and two eggs, scrambled, with sliced tomato and cottage cheese to the side.  From there she’d been dashing up and down the service stairs to fill every ridiculous request from the latest batch of uni kids (and who on earth could drink three frappe’s in the space of an hour without their heart beating itself out?), never having time to eat or even get a sip of coffee in, until suddenly it was nine.  The worst part of her day.

“Good morning Mr. Styles,” she said breathlessly, setting down his usual plate in front of him.  She didn’t have his paper yet (they tended to get a variety of english options sent in for the guests, but this morning’s ferry was running late), but it would be on the way just as soon as she got that damn uni student his fucking Lucky Charms.

Styles grunted in response.  “You forget I asked for the Guardian?” he asked mulishly, picking up the container of cream.  Y/N sighed, feeling the simmer of anger in her chest roar to a boil.

“No, I-”

“Oi!  Miss Waitress!  I asked for that cereal,” called one of the Chads from the next table over.  His friends snickered, and Y/N felt her fingers twitch at her side.

“-have to do that.  I’ll bring the paper with his cereal,” she ground out, wiping an errant piece of hair from her forehead.

“Don’t see why it would have been so hard to do now, but alright,” Harry muttered, and Y/N felt the angry blood in her stomach crawl up her neck.  She turned and left.  Georgie grabbed her on the stairs.

“Listen, I know you don’t like Styles, but if you’re going to push any of them over the cliffside, pick the frat boys.  They keep talking to me as if I don’t know english, and they say it’s because I ‘have an accent’.  So do they!  It’s just one of those English ones!”

“Duly noted.  Have the papers come in yet?”

“Nik is running them up now, should be within five minutes,” Georgie answered as she jogged away.  Well, Mr. Styles wasn’t going to love that.  Now that the school groups were coming and going, Y/N found that he made a concerted effort not to linger over his breakfast.  Helena, with her usual artful arrangement, had set out the cereal and milk alongside a bowl on a tray for Y/N to take, but Nik was nowhere in sight.  Unfortunately, the food really couldn’t wait.  The university boys seemed to get a kick out of complaining to her about every little thing, so the less room the better.  Y/N turned and hauled herself back up the stairs.

“Cereal for you boys,” she said, voice distinctly more cheerful than she was feeling.  She set the tray down and was ready to head back to see if Nik was around, but one of them grabbed her wrist.

“Pour the milk, won’t you?” he said, grinning, and Y/N heard her own knuckles crack.

“Of course.”

She poured the milk, trying to ignore the fact that her hands were now literally shaking with suppressed rage, and was once again ready to leave the balcony and maybe punch a wall, when she heard her name being called.  It wa by Mr. Styles, who had a face like a thundercloud.

“Thought you said you were bringing my bloody newspaper up.  I’ve been waiting all morning, and I understand that you might be busy flirting with England’s finest over there, but I would think you’d still be able to do your job,” he hissed as she drew up near him.  

Oh, that was it.

“Listen.  I know that in your tenure as one of the unnecessarily rich and stupidly famous airheads that wander this earth of ours, you’ve forgotten that the sun does not, in fact, revolve around your inflated head.  Let me remind you though, that you are a guest here, just as they are -- in fact, very much like them since you’re in the running for ‘who treats the service workers worst’ -- and I am only one person running about to help just under eleven of you, all making rapid fire requests.  So you’ll forgive me for not pulling the newspaper out of my own asshole just because you request it, but I’d just like to let you know that even if I could, I wouldn’t, because I’ve never had a guest who was less pleasant to be around and a greater disappointment of a person.”

By the end of her monologue, she knew, she was yelling.  She just couldn’t help it.  Two weeks of berating at the hands of someone she’d admired, someone who was regularly listed as one of the kindest celebrities in his tax bracket, and three days of those fucking university students (which, frankly, was enough).  She was just so sick of being kind and amiable and patient with people who treated her like shit.  From behind her, a throat cleared.

“Brought the paper up, Y/N.  Nik rushed it since the boat was late, but I that didn’t really help,” Georgie said, voice torn between laughter and concern.  Y/N turned around, snatched the paper out of her hands, and slapped it in front of Harry Styles so hard that the table shook.

“The Guardian, as per your request,” she snarled, and then she was gone.

---

Harry may have deserved it.  “It” being the dressing down he got in front of two amused couples, four first year frat boys, and two lone guests at full volume at 9:10 in the morning.  He knew he’d been pushing her, he supposed.  But wow, had she gone off.  Harry couldn’t help but be angry that she even looked good when she was screaming at him.

Still, it was a pretty shit way to start the day.  He’d been unfair to her the entire time he was here, but again, Y/N could have let him know the ferry was running let.  She didn’t have to make an ass of him.  Although he supposed, again, that he hadn’t really given her the room to let him know.  Whatever.  Whatever, it had happened, and he planned to relax on the beach to soak it all off, since writing seemed as though it still wasn’t an option.  (It was possible, he thought, that the persistent writer’s block was probably a big part of his shit attitude.)

It was only much later that evening, as Harry went to sit on the steps in the dying summer sun and read with ouzo and two small glasses (Helena had insisted, saying it would keep him from looking like an alcoholic), that he realized how different Y/N’s life really was.

There was a little landing in the stairs, just a storey below the resort itself, that had a pathway to the cellars.  Harry knew from the chats he’d had with Helena in the courtyard that the little door on the side was rarely used thanks to the stairs from the kitchen, but now he could hear voices from where it was hanging ajar.

“... cannot believe you would ever speak to a customer that way!  As a hotelier, you know better than that!”  was the first thing Harry heard, Dee’s voice angrier than he had ever heard it.  There were muffled sniffles in the background, and not for the first time, Harry felt like a proper asshole.

“I’m not a hotelier mom.  I live in a hotel and I help, but I’m not a hotelier.  That’s what you do.  I’m just here.  And I’m sick of being treated like it.”  That was Y/N talking, so lowly that he could only barely hear it above the sound of the waves on the rocks below.

“Well while you’re here, a hotelier is what you will act like,” Dee responded, tone unforgiving.

“And how long is that mom?” Y/N was yelling back now, and Harry realized quietly that she had quite the temper on her.  “How long am I here?  Because I have begged until I was blue in the face to go to college, or Italy, or even Athens, and you’ve never let me!  How long do I have to pretend like Kalokairi is all I’ll ever want when we both know it’s not?”

Harry held his breath.  There was a long moment of silence.

“Y/N, you know that I don’t have the money for that --”

“I will take out loans for school.  I will hitchhike, I will stay in hostels or camp illegally, I will sell everything I own, I don’t care.  I just want to see -- fuck, something!” Y/N gasped, begging now.  Another long moment.

“Y/N, I need you here.  And I need you to do your job, the way I know you can.  I’ve told you so many stories, dear.  It’s not that much different out there compared to those,” Dee tried to be light in telling her story, but the tone was obviously clipped.

“Mom, I want to explore.  I want to meet people, and see things.  I want to make my own stories,” Y/N pleaded.  Dee sighed.

“And you’ll have them, my rose.  One day.”

“When?”

This time Dee didn’t respond.  After another long period of quiet, Harry heard the sound of steps walking away, followed by harsh sobs.