harry styles

iii.

Y/N’s body aches. 

She knows this feeling all too well; despite being beneath layers and layers of blankets and bedding, with Ferret warm against the back of her neck, her window being closed tightly, and her space heater rattling in the corner of the room – she shivers. Her brain feels filled with tufts of cotton, and her mouth and throat are so dry that she wants to shove her head beneath the faucet and let it run between her lips. Her head hurts, her nose is stuffed, and racking her eyes open feels like a chore. 

How she got sick, she wasn’t sure, because she’s barely been around anyone for the last couple of days. After the pool party, she more or less shut herself away in her flat, and when she went back to work, she kept quiet and did her business. Eloise offers her ear whenever she’s ready for it, Niall brings her snacks because, for him, the way to the heart is through a satiated stomach. The others at work see the heavy grey cloud looming over her so they don’t make an effort to speak much, though she does hear whispers, some people theorizing if she and Harry are fighting or not. 

It had been a little over a week since she found out about Harry getting his mark and a little over a week since she’d last spoken to him. The whole thing was just so fucked, she wasn’t sure what they would even say to each other when they did speak again – if he even wanted to speak to her again. For all she knew, he could have found his soulmate by now and was living blissfully in the afterglow of their time together. Y/N was but a sad little memory in his now perfect, beautiful life, and she could just hope and pray that she didn’t have to see them in public together or something. 

The thing is, Y/N is always happy for the people she’s helped when they find the person they want to be with. Not only was her job done, but she’d been a key part of bringing more love into the world, and she had always thought that was pretty nice. No matter how draining it was to take on relationship after relationship, to learn everything about a person for it to be yanked away, to know deep down that she was being used – she still felt accomplished. Still smiled to herself when they said they found their person and could rest easy that night knowing that she was useful. That someone so sad and downtrodden, when it came to love, would find a new light in their life, made just from them, from the moment they were even a concept thought up in the universe. 

But with Harry. . .she didn’t know if it would feel like that. She is mad at him for keeping the mark a secret from her, don’t get her wrong, but even if he hadn’t – even if he called her that Tuesday morning and told her he woke up with it all pretty on his hip – she doesn’t know how she’d react. Happy for him? To a point. She wants nothing more than for Harry to be happy, but selfishly, she only wants Harry to be happy with her. The thought of him looking at someone else with those big, moony eyes he got when he was talking about the person he thinks his soulmate would be. . .she just couldn’t be settled with it. 

There was a yearning in her chest that had never been there before, something much crueler than anything she’d felt in the past. The longing for a soulmate had been replaced by an ache for Harry. For him to be hers, wholly, and truly hers. With there to be no agreement, no special “power”, no fake dating; just for there to be matching soulmate marks and meet-cutes, and looking him in the eyes and just knowing, deep, deep down that he’s the one. 

Because she did know that he was the one for her, but not by the star’s decision. In the stars, it’s someone completely different; someone who didn’t know that Harry was touchy yet. Someone who didn’t know his affinity for cats that look stinky despite having one that is pretty enough to place in competitions. Someone who didn’t know that the clean cotton scent soothes his mind, but a particular pomegranate scent reminded him of his hardest year in UNI so he couldn’t stand it. Someone who didn’t know that Harry’s art was beautiful yet, who didn’t know his brain was even more beautiful, who didn’t know that his eyes crinkle when he smiles, and his dimples dot his cheek like a moon crater, and he drools a little and snores when he sleeps but somehow still looks cute. 

Someone who didn’t even love him yet, is meant for him. 

And Y/N is left all alone. 

Like always. 

So who or what got her sick, she wasn’t sure. Maybe the stress of everything had weakened her immune system, at least enough that someone coughing into the air and her walking through it took her out. It doesn’t really matter though, does it? She’s sad, and she’s sick, and she thinks the universe actually has it out to get her. At first, she’d just been joking but this. . .this has just done her in. Maybe in a past life, she’d been a ruthless, cruel dick of a partner and this is her punishment for it; retribution for something she didn’t remember would feel better than this just being the lot she was given. 

There was no way she could go to work like this. Even lifting the upper half of her body from the bed felt like a test of endurance, so she didn’t even want to consider the fortitude it would take to manage to get ready and then get to work. Y/N knew how to pick her battles, so she called her floor manager to let him know first, then called scheduling. She even offered to do her editing from home, if they would just email her the documents, but her manager (his name is Charles) tells her not to worry about it and focus on resting. She’s thankful because she didn’t want to do shit today, she’d just been offering to be nice. 

After texting Eloise and Niall, Y/N forces herself to at least go wee in the bathroom. She’s a little dizzy when she stands but she makes it unscathed and even gathers enough energy to brush her teeth and splash some water on her face. That’s the extent of her abilities, however, because a headache tickles her sinuses she takes some medicine and rubs some cream on her chest to help suppress this awful cough that rattles through her chest. 

Y/N is feeling a little miserable, and petulantly wishing that someone was there taking care of her. If she and Harry hadn’t fallen out as they did, he probably would have – as soon as she would have messaged him that she was sick, he might have stopped by. Cooed and petted her, calling her a poor baby while he stroked the hair from her face and let her rest in his lap. He’d probably make her soup, and tea, and wake her up to take medicine and a bath, then let her cuddle back into his body to go back to sleep. 

She doesn’t get those things now, but she pretends, as horribly desperate and pathetic as it sounded. If Y/N closed her eyes, she could feel the warmth of his body beside her, and if she tried hard enough, she could imagine his voice. How he would click his tongue and pull the blankets over her body, “Now how did you catch a fever, silly?” He’d murmur, low and teasing, “You don’t need to catch an illness for me to take care of you, you know? You could just ask.” 

It’s easy to pretend, until Ferret starts walking over her body, pressing a claw right into the soft spot beside her belly button as if to say, “Snap out of it idiot, this is pitiful.” 

It’s storming outside, the rain battering against her window is loud and the thunder rumbles through the sky. If there was ever a day to stay inside, today would be it, so she guesses, at least she has that going for her. Feeling the medicine do its job, it’s easy to fade back into sleep, as she lets herself melt back into the mattress. She makes a mental note to take her temperature when she wakes up again if she can find her thermometer. 

Y/N is in and out of it for a while, never sure for how long she’s sleeping at a time. All she knows for sure is that around noon, her phone buzzes beside her head and for some reason, it yanks her from a dream. She blinks several times, still feeling like garbage but slightly better garbage as she crawls her fingers over to her phone. There are a couple of messages, some from Niall, telling her to get better, her mum with a recipe for the soup she used to make when she was little with a fever, and then one from Eloise that sticks out. 

Niall’s a dumbass btw 

He told Harry you have a fever 

He’s in a tizzy 

Her brain is mush as she reads the message after that, sent only three minutes ago from Harry. 

I know we aren’t talking right now 

but I hate that you are alone and don’t feel good

So I ran to the store during my lunch break and got some things 

For you 

Cold medicine and stuff 

I’m just letting you know so you don’t let it sit outside

Some of it's perishable!! 

I’ll just drop it off I won’t bother you 

Feel better

I’m  always thinking about you

Miss you. 

The weather is still treacherous outside, so the thought that Harry is just out in it right now drives her crazy. She huffs a breath, forcing herself out of the bed. Her limbs feel heavy as lead but she trudges through it, getting to the living room, and then to the door. The idiot! Why would he come all this way in such awful weather just to drop things off? She didn’t need him risking his safety on these flooded roads just because she was out of sorts, whether she was pissed at him or not. 

Her original goal had been to call him and yell at him for being so stupid, but then she hears the rustling of bags outside of her door and she realizes that he’s already there. 

Maybe it's the medicine, or maybe the fever is higher than she thought and making her make decisions that she would normally second guess a thousand times over. Whatever it is, she walks to the front door and yanks it open, huffing and puffing because the short trip had taken all of her stamina and snuffed it out like a flame between her fingers. Harry stands like a deer in headlights, staring at her all doe-eyed at first, before his brows furrowed and his face drops into a frown, “What are you doing out of bed?” 

“It’s storming,” she said, matching his disapproving gaze, “Why are you out in such a bad storm?” 

“I was just –” 

“Being stupid,” her voice sounded like there was gravel in her throat, and Harry grimaced, then his frown deepened. 

“It’s not being stupid if it might help you,” he countered, standing up from where he’d still been hovering, “I know you don’t want to see me, that’s why I warned you, so you wouldn’t open the door or something like you’re doing now.” 

Y/N stared at him hard – since when did she say she didn’t want to see him? She wanted nothing more than to see him, she just knew that she shouldn’t. She couldn’t, right now, that she needed to take some time to process this so that when she did see him, she wouldn’t do something stupid, or say something stupid. It wasn’t a matter of her not wanting to – not at all. 

“Get inside,” she pushed the door further open, ignoring how her heart squeezed when Ferret chirped brightly at the sight of Harry. 

“But –”

“You aren’t going back in that,” she cut him off, “Get inside.”  

Harry does well to listen. He leans down to gather all the bags he’d just set on the mat outside of her door, and warily steps through the threshold into her house. She hates it, not because she doesn’t want him in there, but because of how hesitant he seemed; not even three weeks ago he was barging in like he owned it. Now it feels like he’s a stranger entering through the door, unsure of where to take off his shoes, if he should take them off if he’s allowed to get comfortable here.  

She rolled her eyes, “You know there are no outside shoes in here,” she grumbled, shifting her gaze from Ferret who was slithering between his ankles like he couldn’t have been happier to see him. It felt too much like she was keeping her child from his visiting rights with his father, “Take them off, the storm isn’t letting up any time soon.” 

Y/N doesn’t know what to do with herself – it would be a little crazy to slink back into her room and shut the door after more or less demanding that he stay until the weather clears. But to sit with him seemed like a lot to work through with her brain feeling heavy and her sinuses full of tar. Still, she forces her feet to move her to the couch, where she drops herself down and yanks her blanket over her shivering body. Y/N closes her eyes, tilting her head back against the cushions; she feels weak, even from the little movement that she’s done. 

“Oh,” his voice is quiet, and there’s the gentle rustling of his bags, “Have you taken your temperature yet?” 

She shook her head, “Was going to, but fell back asleep.” Y/N coughed, an ugly sound barking from her throat and her eyes don’t have to be open to see Harry grimace at the sound. 

“I’m –” he started, then paused, she could visualize his pinched expression as he sorted through what to say, “Listen, I won’t just stay here and watch you feel bad, yeah? If I stay, then I’m going to take care of you. You don’t have to talk to me, or look at me, or any of that but I can’t – I can’t just see you like this and do nothing.” 

Y/N feels a frown form on her mouth for multiple reasons. One of which is she doesn’t like the tone of his voice – it isn’t rude, or snappy, but it. . .he sounds desperate and sad in a way he has never sounded with her before. He’s resolute in his statement, but the words leave him like his heart is in the middle of cracking and she doesn’t like that she’s the cause of it. The second reason is that it feels wrong for her to ignore him for a week and then accept his groceries and his care. It would feel like she was using him, even though she knew it wasn’t the case – she knew that Harry thrives off caring for people. That it would make him feel good, to take care of her, even if she was mad at him. But that’s the issue, isn’t it? Y/N’s mad at him. Why should she care what makes him feel good and what doesn’t? Plus, was it a threat? He won’t just stay with her and watch her feel bad, so the alternative if she doesn’t let him take care of her is going back out in that storm, isn’t it?  And she just won’t allow that – 

“Do whatever you want.” She settled for, which was as good a response as she could come up with, given the turmoil in her head. 

Y/N hears Harry move into the kitchen, and distantly she can make out him opening cabinets and closing the refrigerator’s drawers. She falls quickly into that space that’s halfway between consciousness and dreaming, where her head starts to dip, too heavy for her shoulders but she jerks herself awake before she can get too loose. She isn’t sure how long Harry is in there, but it feels like hours have passed and no time at all, when his hand settles gently on her knee. 

“Hey,” he murmured, “I made you some soup, yeah? When was the last time you took medicine? Think you may be due for some more.” 

“This morning,” her throat is gravelly, full of rocks and pebbles as she swallows dryly, “It’s in the –” 

“Bathroom cabinet, I know. I grabbed that and the thermometer,” he placed everything out on the table in front of her, and Y/N’s left to wonder how he’d carried so much in his hands, “Open your mouth for me, I’ll check your temp.” 

This is wholly too domestic for their current situation but she feels so poorly, she really doesn’t care. Her jaw drops open for him and he dips the tip of the thermometer beneath her tongue, but not without pressing the cool, back of his hand to her forehead. Y/N leans into it without much thought, welcoming the soothing touch. 

The thermometer beeps and Harry clicks his tongue, “You’ve got a fever, Sweetheart,” he presses the hair out of her face, strands that had fallen out from where she had it pulled back, “You were just g’na stay here, and suffer all alone? You can barely move.” 

She frowned, “There’s not much else I can do,” she reminded him, “I don’t have someone to look over me. I only have myself.” 

Harry shook his head, “You always have me,” he set the thermometer down on the table, then grabbed for the medicine, “Even. . .even if you hate me, you always have me.” 

Y/N wondered if the heat in her chest was from Harry or her fever. 

                                                                    .                          .                           .

Once Y/N had taken the medicine, and gotten a little bit of soup (and water) in her, she felt a little better. She wasn’t sure what kind of soup it was, but it was light and tasted good, and she was sure it could give her body enough energy to fight whatever cold she picked up. In truth, she hadn’t been eating very well lately, and whenever she was eating it was of very little substance; sweetbreads, packs of chips, finger foods that didn’t take any thought or effort, or maybe whatever she could find at a convenience store. The closest she’d gotten to anything real was the little bowls of ramen that she could heat in the microwave, but she doubted the freeze-dried vegetables offered much substance. 

Harry brought a pillow and blanket out from her hall closet, setting her up in the living room, “I’ll wash your sheets,” he told her, “Try to rest.” 

She nodded, and with the telly turned on something (the volume set low) she drifted off into a dreamless, cold medicine-induced sleep. It’s heavy and hard, and every time she starts to wake up a little bit, a sleep demon of some kind takes her by the shoulders and plunges her deeper into it. She isn’t sure how long she’s asleep, she only knows that she rouses for a moment when Harry is tidying up in the living room, tip-toeing around. 

A grunt leaves her to grab his attention, and he giggles a little when he looks at her, “Hi there,” he murmurs. 

“Get over here.” 

“Hm?” His head tilted slightly, and Y/N’s chest ached – she’d missed him so much. 

Y/N frowned, because – well, she wasn’t positive if she was asleep, or if this was a dream, or if this whole day had been a dream and he wasn’t actually here with her. Still, she wanted something badly – something that she’d been pathetic in pretending was her reality just a couple of hours ago, and Harry would. He would do it because he’s sweet, and he’s gentle, and his hands have been twitching and itching to touch her. Even in the state she’s in, Y/N could tell, because he wears every thought, emotion, and desire on his sleeve.  

“Let me lay my head on your lap.” 

Harry doesn’t waste a second. He grabbed his phone out of his back pocket and set it on the arm of the sofa, waiting until Y/N moved her head up further so he could steal the pillows from beneath it. He finds his spot in the corner, where his bum always sat if they weren’t snuggled up in the center of the couch together, and Y/N drops her head onto his thigh. The medicine had been working long enough that she could breathe a little bit through her nose, the smell of him soothing the tension that had lingered between her bones since their fight. Lamely, earlier in the week she’d wondered if she should invest in the laundry detergent he uses for the comfort the scent alone brought her; she was trying to find alternatives to having him around all of the time when he inevitably found his person. As pitiful as it was, if she missed cuddling him all she would need to do was hug her pillows and the case would be a stand-in. It was just so mortifying she would have to keep that between her and the universe. 

His hands aren’t as hesitant as they had been before when his fingers weave through the locks of hair on her head. Her face twisted up, “You don’t –” she started, then took a second to clear her throat, as crunchy as her voice sounded, “You don’t have to. My hair feels gross right now.” Today had been her wash day, so she knew it was not in its best state. 

Harry doesn’t stop though, massaging his fingertips into her scalp, “I don’t mind,” he cooed, using his other hand to press the hair from her face, then thumbs over her eyebrows, smoothing them out, “It feels good to be petted on, when you feel poorly.” 

Especially by you, “Especially by you.” 

Oh wait, those words were supposed to fizzle out on her tongue, but they don’t – they escape, like a rabid badger trapped in a cage made of sticks and twigs. Harry only chuckled, using one hand to stroke through her hair and the other to caress light patterns on her face, “You with no filter is kind of nice,” he admitted, and Y/N huffed out a breath (a risky game through her nose, because she could have shot out snot with it, but thankfully that doesn’t happen). 

“Don’t get used to it. These thoughts are under lock and key.” 

Ferret jumps up, using her body like a balance beam on unsteady feet, before sinking in the space between Y/N’s shoulder and the couch, his warm little body close to Harry. He purrs like a motor, rumbling low as he burrows in. 

“Don’t I know it,” Harry replied wistfully, “I never know what’s going on in that pretty head.” His fingers don’t stop, they’re gentle, tender, and insistent – just like him, “I. . .you don’t have to respond to this, but I just wanted to apologize again. I know words are just words, but I’m – I don’t know,” he traces the slope of her nose, “I just miss you.” 

Y/N’s heart is sore from all the clenching and aching and yearning it’d been doing for the last week. She knew she wasn’t necessarily ready, to just open the door back up – to let him in, and push it all to the side, because the problem wasn’t just the secret. And the way that Harry is apologizing to her, she thinks he may realize it. 

She was in love with him. 

And he was destined to be with someone else – someone who wasn’t her. 

It’s the worst pain, she thinks; worse than stubbing her pinky toe, or when Ferret scrambles out of her arms with his claws out, or slamming her elbow into the corner of a table at work. This is full-bodied, hollowed, and gnawing. Unlike a sharp pain, which she thinks would be preferable, to this chronic soreness that lingered through her muscles, her joints, and her thoughts. 

Her fingers dug into the soft, linen fabric of his bottoms, and she tilted her cheek even further into the warmth of his broad thigh. It hurts already, and she doesn’t even think he’s found his soulmate yet. But it’s like sea salt in an open wound, the thought of it, she’d rather think of anything else. 

Y/N doesn’t have to say the words I miss you too because she thinks it’s more than implied, the way she desperately clings to him. 

Instead, she replied, “Tell me what you’re drawing for work.” 

A soft, breathless laugh leaves his throat, “Ah, you would hate it,” he began, “It’s one of those romance novels where the bloke is clearly the douchiest prick in the world, so –” 

Y/N listened to his voice, melted into his body, and let herself fall back asleep. 

                                                         .                          .                               .

They don’t talk about it. 

They should, definitely – Harry stayed overnight with her, ran her a bath, made her dinner, and then readied her bed for the night. He kept the window open, the cool night air filtering through the screen, turning her curtains to waves as they cleared out the fever in the room. Y/N is already feeling much better, with a constant rotation of medication and whatever healthy, superfoods Harry had been concocting in her kitchen, her fever has been brought down significantly. Her head feels full, but in the way that she’s cozy and calm, her mind melty and warm. He made a pallet on the floor beside the bed, and Ferret – the class one traitor – abandoned her to snuggle up in his throat. 

“Dolly would never do this to me,” she accused, much to Harry’s delight, who giggled and snuggled down with the blankets pulled to his throat. 

Y/N fell asleep easier than she had since all of this started, then woke up in the middle of the night for a brief moment. Her arm was hanging off the bed, and Harry’s fingers were interlaced with hers, propped up on his pillow. The smile that overwhelmed her mouth was too big, and she doesn’t think she’s smiled this way in a while, because her cheeks hurt with it. 

The next time she wakes, the sky is bright and dazzling, the pallet on the floor is made up and there’s cold medicine sitting, waiting for her on the nightstand. There’s a Post-it beside it, the same one Harry always left her little notes with. 

I had to go to work today :((( 

Breakfast is in the kitchen! I hope you have a good day today, please don’t hesitate to call or text me. I’m always here if you need me. 

There’s a hollow left in her heart again, especially when she realizes that Ferret has already been fed, probably with the sole intent that he would let her sleep instead of stomping all over her head, and the sense of longing is immense. 

But she does nothing with it. 

The thing is, she can’t do anything with it at all. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them, for Y/N to start seeing Harry again, or to let things go back to normal. If she was more selfish she would; if her greed for him and his time were greater than her morals, then she would in a heartbeat. But it was wrong to want someone else’s soulmate so vehemently and it would hurt triple the amount after the pain of leaving him and his friendship behind, then the subsequent relief of having him back in her life. The second time he would pull from her would be worse than the initial, only because she’d spend every day waiting, anticipating, and dreading the moment he showed up with someone at his side. All shy smiles, introducing Y/N to his person, his destined person, that wasn’t her. 

Y/N couldn’t be a permanent figure in Harry’s life again until she sorted through all these fucked up feelings. Unless she was mentally prepared to see Harry with someone who wasn’t her, loving someone who wasn’t her, then it wouldn’t be fair to torture herself seeing it. And it wouldn’t be fair to Harry either, to reintroduce herself into his life only to yank herself back out of it as soon as his mark was matched. Not that he would care at that point – he’d probably be so overcome with joy and happiness over finding his person that he would have no time to think about where she was. Still, she holds onto the glimmer of hope that maybe she wouldn’t be forgotten, at least by him. That maybe it would be different than all of the other times. 

She expresses this, in her own way, to Eloise. Try as she might not to sound overly pathetic, it is pretty difficult to avoid given the subject matter and her placement in the situation. Still, at least El pitied her enough not to bring up how depressing it all sounded, instead nodding almost overenthusiastically in agreement. 

“It’s so important to take care of you first,” she told her, tucking her dessert fork underneath the slice of cake she’d been eating – they went to a new patisserie a short, eight-minute walk from their work building, and Y/N divulged everything. It’d been two days since he’d come to take care of her, so it was weighing pretty heavily in her mind – and by weighing heavily she meant it was all she could possibly think about. Eloise just seemed ecstatic that Y/N was finally talking about it, rather than internalizing every emotion that happened to flitter through her head. “Have you guys spoken since?” 

She shook her head, “No, I was. . .trying to figure out how to say it without, you know. . .exposing all my inner turmoil. I don’t want him to feel worse than he already does.” 

Eloise plucked at her bottom lip, worrying the flesh between her index finger and thumb, “Hm, maybe you can just keep it sort of simple? Don’t go into anything specifically, just say that you appreciate his help the other day, but you aren’t necessarily ready to see each other regularly yet.” She shrugged her shoulders, “For someone else that might not work, but he’s like an overeager puppy with you, I think he’ll accept any explanation you give him, even if it was ‘just because’.” 

So Y/N took her advice, right there, hoping that maybe Harry would be busy with work so he wouldn’t see it immediately. 

Thank you for taking care of me the other day. 

I’m not ready to start seeing each other too much yet, so I hope you understand. 

I just wanted to thank you. 

Eloise didn’t notice it, but Y/N noted that in her time spent messaging Harry back and forth, she’d adopted his horrible habit of sending multiple messages when it could just be one large paragraph. She isn’t sure when she started doing it, but it makes something twinge in her brain. 

Her phone buzzed before she could set it back down on the table, and Eloise's brows raised. She swiped the notification, leaning in so that Eloise could read her screen too. 

You never have to thank me for anything. 

I’m just happy to be able to help you, you know? 

And don’t worry about that at all. Take your time, I understand. 

I’ll always wait for you. 

“Jesus Christ,” Eloise carded her fingers through her hair, “It’s like he was built in a lab.” 

Y/N. . .didn’t know how to feel and she still doesn’t.. Her heart was too tender to consider feeling much of anything, and at the time, she could only nod her head and hope she didn’t spend the rest of the week thinking about it, which wasn’t too hard, all things considered. Usually, there’s something like a raffle to randomly disperse the harder, more wordy pieces to look through and edit but Y/N had volunteered herself to take them. If she was distracted then she wasn’t thinking about it, she’d just hope that the piece wasn’t a romance of some kind. Or if it was, then the situation was like – completely separate from what she was going through. 

So why did she end up crying reading a vampiric romance? Well. . .it isn’t the first time someone has cried in the middle of editing, so nobody paid much attention to it, but it was pretty embarrassing. It’s like – she doesn’t know, the main character is in some angst-filled star-crossed lovers scenario, because vampires and humans can’t be together. This should be a tired trope, but it gets Y/N every time, and a particular line cranks at her chest in the worst way. 

I’ve been waiting for you for 800 years. I can wait for a couple more. 

And maybe she wouldn’t care about it had Harry not just promised to wait for her earlier this week, and then all of a sudden she’s comparing the two of them to a vampire and a princess betrothed to someone in a faraway land, and what the fuck is she even doing? 

Y/N sees Niall’s blurred hand before his voice sounds above her, “Okay, so I know you like a vampire book, but usually you don’t cry to them,” he plopped down on the stool that she and Eloise took turns propping their legs up on, “Are you still on your Harry ban?” 

Flustered, she wiped at her eyes with her knuckles, “That has nothing to do with it.” 

“Yeah, sure,” he replied in a noncommittal tone, leaning on his elbow and twisting back and forth with his hips, “I think it’s time to throw you head first into the dating pool.” 

“That sounds like an awful idea –” 

“Only if you’re going into it expecting love,” he plucked the stuffed animal Harry had bought her to decorate her desk with – actually, there was a lot of stuff littered around her desk that was Harry-related, but she didn’t have the heart to get rid of them. She had to pinch her fingernail into the meat of her palm so she didn’t snatch it out of his hand and place it back where it should be. It wasn’t the most expensive thing, but it was a soft, cute little bunny that usually sat propped against a framed photo of Ferret. “You wouldn’t be going out to date or find love, you’d be going out to fuck.” 

She squinted at him, “Excuse me?” 

“It’ll make you feel better,” he smiled, “Anytime I’m sad, a one-night stand kind of just – y’know, gives me something else to think about. Maybe you’ll find a regular fuck buddy!” 

Y/N huffed, “Ni, that sounds. . .” stupid, the worst, stressful because Y/N could not think about the last time she slept with someone and she thought she would probably agonize over the whole thing. But. . .maybe she could live outside of her head for a little while. If she went out with Niall, then she surely would find someone she could at least have fun with – people are drawn to Niall in a way similar to how they are drawn to Harry, only for much less. . .wholesome reasons. Niall kind of just walks around like someone who knows how to fuck, so when you’re out with him loads of people come in droves. If they aren’t trying to fuck Niall, then they set their sights on Eloise and Y/N, but typically they wave them off and just spend time with each other. 

It would be nice, wouldn’t it? Maybe she could find someone cute – she wouldn’t mind who, a man or a woman, she thinks that anyone would be nice. If they took care of her, made her comfortable enough that she didn’t mind stripping down for them a couple of drinks in. At that moment, to be so hyper-fixated on the person above her and a little stressed about whether it was going to be good or not, that she wouldn’t be thinking about Harry at all. Hopefully. 

“. . .like, not your worst idea.” She lulled her neck to one side, stretching out a crick in his neck, “When?” 

Niall grinned, “Let’s go Friday, Babe.” 

                                                                 .                      .                    .

Honestly, the night had started okay. 

Niall came around to get her at 8 PM, with Eloise sat pretty in the passenger side with sparkly eyeshadow. Eloise turned in her seat to face Y/N as she crawled into the back, “Alright, for the record, I don’t think this is a smart idea but I also get it a thousand percent, so I’ll bite my tongue.” 

“You look hot, Babe,” Niall is also twisted around to see her, “We’ll find you someone at least half as cute.” 

Y/N shivered in one of her skimpier dresses, that rucked up as soon as she sat down. The fabric twinkled and sparkled, and Eloise offered to add glitter on her cheeks that she brought in her purse. Niall begged to try the lip oil she had lustered over her mouth, and Y/N finally relented when they parked outside. Still, as Y/N tried to stroke it over his mouth, he kept talking, “S’all about you t’night,” he told her, but it came out a bit distorted, his lips in a dramatic pucker, “I won’t drink a lick, so I can make sure you aren’t going home with a douchebag or a killer or someone.” 

“That’s very comforting, thanks Ni.” 

They ease into the night. Truthfully, just as she’d told Harry on their first date, she hates bars, clubs, and the atmosphere of waiting at the bar trying desperately to catch the bartender’s gaze to order an overpriced cocktail. It rarely seemed worth it, it’s why she dipped out before she could get drunk enough for it to be worth it, but she’s trying to stick it out. Even if all she wanted was to sit inside her room, have Ferret stomp all over her thighs, and Dolly be a sweetheart snuggled into her hip. Sweet little Dolly, who she hopes isn’t as confused as Ferret. 

Y/N gets a Tequila Sunrise and tucks the little straw into the corner of her mouth; they’ll sit and drink for a little while first, that’s how this usually goes until Y/N and Eloise are tipsy enough to want to dance. Being a lightweight means Y/N only needs to get halfway through a second drink before she’s ready to, but Eloise needs at least the full two, and Niall’s rearing to go at any moment. This is one of the more popular spots in town, so there were a lot of bodies, and their luck in finding a table did not go unrecognized by the three of them. 

Still, spots in bars were not meant to be kept. Especially when a Black Eyed Peas song Y/N distinctly remembers creating choreography for when she was in primary school, starts to play. So she’s easily bewitched onto the dance floor by Fergie in an act of early 2000s nostalgia, as she laced her fingers with Niall who is somehow remembering every single word in perfect rhythm and timing. 

Dancing is fun, and when she’s slurping down the rest of her drink, it’s easy not to let memories of her and Harry dancing at Finn’s boyfriend’s party suffocate her. She is by no means dancing in any sort of way that would lure anyone like a siren, but she’s having fun, and she’s laughing, and sometimes that’s enough – at least it is for the people she would want to approach her. 

There’s a pretty woman, who departs from her friend group to start bumping her hips with Y/N and Y/N squeals out of excitement. Maybe she would take her home? Y/N wouldn’t mind – she’s pretty, and her hair looks really soft even in the matching, intricately braided buns on either side of her head. Her eyes are piercing, even in the low lighting of the club, big and brown. She wears something Y/N could only ever dream of having the confidence to pull off, but for that reason, she sees the soul mark that sparkles with her body glitter along her ribcage. 

She must follow Y/N’s eyes, how they widen, and she slipped her fingers between Y/N’s, matching them up palm to palm – her hands were a little smaller and very soft, and just different enough from Harry’s that she didn’t get sad, “Have you ever had a threesome?” 

Y/N blinked at her, shaking her head, her body still moving to the music but noticeably subdued so she could focus, “Oh, no I – never have,” she admitted, “It feels like it’d be kind of hectic.” 

The woman laughs, and squeezes her hand, “It’s fun,” she replies, “My soulmate and I met each other pretty young, so we like to explore sometimes. If you’re interested,” she squeezes her hand again, “If not, that’s okay, we can just dance.” 

Y/N’s eyes flit behind her, searching for who could be her soulmate and she spots a guy staring at them from a couple of meters away. Which, it could have just been some random creep leering at them, but she could feel in her gut that it wasn’t. There’s a certain way that soulmates regard their other half; it’s something tender, no matter the situation they’re in. A softened gaze, just like the ones described in books, their eyes full of fondness and respect in equal parts. That’s their person, they know it and the world knows it, whether the mark they wear on their body is visible or not. 

“You both want to? With me?” 

She smiled, nodding, “Yeah, you’re gorgeous,” Y/N’s face felt hot, and she giggled lamely, “We live close by. I want you to meet him first though, before we go, so you’re comfortable.” 

Y/N lets herself be pulled away, and the guy she’s brought to is just as striking as the girl. She’s confused as to why either of them would have chosen her out of everyone, but maybe the dancing was more alluring than she’d first thought. Or maybe, Niall was right about body glitter attracting potential mates like pheromones in the wild, or whatever the hell he’d said that should be a drunk comment but somehow came from him completely sober. 

Whatever the reasoning, they’re both nice, and hot, and when they press up against her on either side while they dance her mind is reeling. So Y/N hadn’t had much hope that she would be able to go home with one person, much less two, and even much less two people who were already soulmates. But things can happen like that sometimes – she tries to go with the flow. 

Eloise gapes and Niall high-fives her, and they both remind her to send her location as soon as she makes it to their flat. One minute Niall is slipping a condom into her hand like a loving and overbearing guardian, and the next she’s sandwiched between the two taking her home. Kai and Emi were their names, she had finally learned, and they match together well; they play off one another with the practiced ease of two people who’ve been together most of their lives, but there’s no lingering spite or jealousy, or anything negative. 

No, the experience is actually wholly positive. They compliment her, and their touches and caresses are flirty without being too forward, and Y/N feels relatively safe for only having just meant them. Emi keeps their fingers slotted together and squeezes her every so often like she’s checking in if Y/N doesn’t say anything for a little bit, but it only happens a couple of times. Kai, at most, had given Emi what Y/N presumed to be his jacket and Emi gave Y/N what must have been her jacket. The night wasn’t bitterly cold, but it was still chilly, and her dress just barely covered the top of her thighs so there was a lot of exposed skin. 

The walk is only around 10 minutes. Y/N sends her location as they step into the elevator, and Emi nods her head, “Oh, good girl, I do that too,” she grinned, “Kai didn’t understand why women felt the need to do that, we had a pretty intense lesson on it.” 

“She’s not kidding,” Kai agreed, “We talked about it for like 3 hours that night, I’m pretty sure. I’m glad we did though, shits horrible for women, isn’t it?” 

Emi clicked her tongue, “It sure is,” she pressed herself closer to Y/N, pushing the hair the wind had swept into her face from it, “We can do this a couple of different ways, Sweetheart, I’m good with any of them, yeah? I don’t mind if it’s just you and me and Kai watches – he doesn’t mind that either. Or if you want him to play too, we can do that.” 

“I’m – I’m good with whatever,” Y/N nodded, “I’ll just go with the flow, yeah? ‘Cos I’m not sure what I’d like or not in this situation.” 

“That’s good by us,” Kai grinned, and Emi matched it, and it was cute. . .Y/N thinks they’re really cute. 

So everything should be fine. 

And it was! At the start, it totally was, because they kissed in front of her after leading her to their room, and then Emi detached from him to kiss Y/N and her tongue was soft and tasted like whatever fruity drink she’d had in her hand when they met. Her lips are soft, and her hands are gentle when they slide over her thighs, then she breaks away and Y/N’s head automatically turns in search of someone else, so Kai meets her mouth, and it’s a little different. His lips are soft too, and a little fuller, and his hand feels bigger when it cradles her jaw and the other one feels just as big as it strokes up her side. 

It’s good, Y/N’s getting into it, arousal burns in her belly, and she isn’t thinking about anything at all except how they were going to go about fucking and if she would be able to taste both of them or not. 

Then their heads knocked together while they were trying to change who was kissing her, Emi and Kai, a little thunk, followed by a gasp and a fit of giggles. They really are so cute together, both of their hands reach toward the other’s affected side, gentle in their cradling and petting, “Ah, sorry baby,” the way they look at each other, that softened you’re my person, my only person gaze that Y/N had been thinking about before, it set a bubble in her chest. 

One big – too big, situated between the pleural space, pressing up against her lungs and making it difficult to breathe.

They were cute, really cute, and how nice it must feel to just know – to just have the person you love with you and to share sweet, intimate moments like these, even in front of a stranger. Just knowing that they’re yours and you’re theirs, and it’s happy and lovely. 

And then all of a sudden images of Harry flash in her head like an obnoxiously bright marquee. Harry all teary-eyed and pouting after the sad ending of a movie, the fairy lights above their head twinkle in his irises when he begs her to cuddle him because he’s so upset. The way the world seemed soaked in glitter and ten times more vibrant when they had picnics together, with a sky blue enough and grass green enough to belong in a painting and the way the sun bathed him. A hazy glow of him sitting arm to arm with her, pressed too tight in her cubicle because his floor manager loves him enough just to let him go where he wants to work on his covers, and he’d choose right beside her. His arm knocked into her body, his whine when she’d shove him over, how he’d only let them work for an hour and a half at most before begging for a break, or a snack, or for her to come with him to the vending machine. 

The way her heart always felt so big that it might be choking her, sitting in her throat, begging her to just confess her stupid fucking feelings like it might alleviate some of the pain sitting there, unmoving. 

“Oh?” Emi’s voice slices through her head, yanking her back into the moment, “Oh, Darling, what’s wrong?” 

Y/N is confused at first until she opens her mouth to question it and feels the tell-tale stiffness of her cheeks when her tears have dried. Her hand lifts to her face, fingers ghosting beneath her eyes and coming back wet, “Oh,” she repeated, blinking at them, “I didn’t. . .I didn’t realize.” 

They had been working on undressing, but both seemed to realize that the moment was as good as gone. Y/N had unintentionally ruined it, now all bleary-eyed and feeling fucking mortified that she’d started crying during a hook-up. They aren’t mean about it at all, no, they back off but not so far that Y/N feels like a pariah. A careful hand strokes at her bicep, “I’m sorry,” she sniffled pitifully, blinking hard, forcing her tears to abate, “I – um – am kind of going through something right now.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kai is the one to inquire, head tilted, and his dark hair is long enough to shift over his forehead but he pushes it out of the way. 

Normally Y/N would shake her head, say nothing was wrong, that she was okay, she would be, or whatever, she was just two drinks in and emotional for some reason. 

But it felt easy to just. . say it. To two strangers, sure, but somehow that made it better, made it easier, because there were zero pretenses to keep up. She omits nothing, from her weird, freaky power to help people get their soulmates, to Harry, to falling in love with him so incontestably, to him getting his mark, to him lying about it, to her finding out, to him taking care of her when she had a fever, to now. She says it all fast, and kind of all over the place; she doubts they were able to completely follow the story but they both nod along, gasp at some parts, and give appreciatively sad hums and murmurs at others. This must be fucking crazy to them, some random woman they had been keen on fucking divulging her whole, depressing romantic life on their bed. They were probably regretting inviting her over – she’d probably be someone they talked about later, with their friends, how this stupid, hopeless girl gave them blue balls or whatever. 

They take care of her though. Kai gets her water and Emi stays with her, frowning sympathetically, “That sounds like a lot to go through,” she murmured, and Y/N wondered if she was a therapist of some sort, “I mean, I can’t even imagine, it sounds very painful. Does he know how you feel?” 

Y/N shrugged, “I don’t know,” she answered, “I always thought I was being so obvious about it but my friends say I have a relatively good poker face, so he. . .he might not think it was real? When I’d flirt back and stuff.” 

“Well, to me it sounds like he cares a lot about you,” she continued, “I know it seems like. . .unheard of, but I have friends who have ignored their soulmate bond to pursue other relationships. For some people the whole “destined” to be together thing isn’t for them, you know? Maybe that could be you two?” 

She shook her head sadly, and Kai returned with the water at that point, handing it to her, “I couldn’t do that to him,” she replied, trying not to sound so despondent but there wasn’t much hope not to, “He loves the idea of soulmates so much if I. . .if I kept him from his person, it would feel selfish, you know? And then he’s like. . .walking around, missing a piece of himself, feeling too guilty to do anything about it because I’ll be a big baby.” 

Kai rests his hand on her shoulder and squeezes familiarly, and wow – if they aren’t therapists, they should probably go into the field, “Don’t you think, maybe he should be able to make that decision for himself?” 

Y/N worried her lip between her teeth. No, she’d never considered letting him decide for himself, because she knew he would follow his heart and not his brain. Harry is a lover, through and through, his heart yearns and yells and demands, and his brain, soft and sweet, lets it with little fuss. He wouldn’t consider how it would impact him in the long run, if he never found his soulmate, and never received that deep connection he’d been seeking for so long. And if he did find his soulmate while they were together? Well, it would hurt Y/N – it would be excruciating, of course, she doesn’t even want to think about it – but the turmoil Harry would go through. The heartache and guilt and panic. . .it isn’t worth it, right? To see him with his face all screwed up and tears caking his cheeks, and – she just doesn’t want to see him look like he did the night of the pool party. His face was wrought with guilt, his words heavy with his stress. The imagery of it makes her heart squeeze uncomfortably tight in her chest, and all she wants to do is sink her face into his neck and hold him. 

But wasn’t she being a little selfish too? She was thinking everything she’s thinking about with both her and Harry in mind; keeping them separate would make it better in the long run, right? Though, now that she thinks about it, she’d only been considering her own feelings in the present moment. It hurts too much to see him, knowing what could happen in the future, so she avoids it. But for Harry, maybe it hurts too much not to see her. And then she really isn’t just doing it for them, how she’d told herself, right? She’s doing it for herself. . she’s avoiding him to ease her sadness over the situation. 

Sitting here, on this couple’s bed, Y/N realized that she really hadn’t explained her reasoning to Harry at all. He probably just thinks she’s still pissed off about him not telling her about the mark, but she doesn’t even care about it anymore. She understood why he hid it, she couldn’t say that she wouldn’t be the same had the roles been reversed. 

Her head throbs; all of this is too much to think about, too much to consider, and too much to sort through in this unfamiliar bed. Y/N starts to crawl out of it, “I need to go,” she told them, “Thank you – thank you for everything, I’m sorry for ruining your night.” 

“You didn’t ruin it,” Emi smiled gently, and with a delicate, manicured hand, she squeezed her bicep, “Are you calling for a ride? Please don’t wait outside, you can stay here until they come.” 

Y/N nodded – staying in here, instead of loitering outside their flat building in an area she’s never been sounds much better – so she grabbed for her purse that she’d dropped at the side of their bed. 

She didn’t give herself a chance to overthink it when she scrolled to Harry’s contact. 

                                                            .                              .                                .

There are very few people who call Harry at 11 PM. 

That’s mostly because everyone knows he goes to bed early. On an average day, he’s probably tucked away in bed by 9 PM and moments from sleep thirty minutes after, so people know to contact him with important things around 8-ish, or else he might not get back to them until morning. He rarely wakes up to his phone ringing too, unless it’s right by his ear, and even then he thinks Dolly goes out of her way to amble on over and lay on top of it to muffle the noise. 

Lately, Harry hasn’t been able to sleep very well. He doesn’t fall asleep as quickly or as hard as he usually does; his legs feel restless and his skin is itchy, and the spot on his hip brings discomfort in a way that he wants to press his thumb hard on it – like a toothache. Where he used to be a heavy sleeper, even the lightest sounds and movements jolt him awake; Dolly moving from one position to the next, the air conditioner kicking on, his next-door neighbors coming home and shutting the door. Each sound drags him into consciousness, he’s roused for at least a couple of minutes before he can find sleep again. 

As a result of this, his eyes have been puffy and swollen, and more often than not he had dark circles that persisted no matter the cream he swiped beneath them. His muscles ache from tossing and turning all night, his hair and skin have lost any sort of glow they might have possessed before, and his brain moves at a snail's pace all of the time. Niall pouted when he saw him the other day, flicking his shoulder, inquiring where all his luster went. 

“You know where it went,” Harry whined quietly, and they left it at that. 

He doesn’t blame her for the state he’s in. This is a problem of his creation, he knows that, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. How Harry had seen it at the time, is that if he kept it a secret, then he’d get to keep Y/N longer. Instead, his time with her was cut shorter than he thinks it would have been otherwise, and now he’s here, in this awful in-between. 

Seeing her had made it no better; when she was ill, she’d opened the door to what he had thought was a crafty venture leaving groceries outside her door – he’d never expected her to scold him and then invite him in. She thought maybe she’d opened the door, seen the bags, tell him to fuck off and slam it in his face, but she hadn’t. No, Y/N was mad at him for driving in the weather and ordered him inside to wait the storm out. Then, in an even more surprising turn of events, she let him take care of her, even wanted to lay her head in his lap, and. . .after so long of not having anything – not even getting to look at her, really, this was more than he could have hoped for. He hated that she felt poorly, but he was on cloud nine; his heart was full and bursting with so much love it was jittering out through his vessels. He was almost shaky with it, the intensity of it – he’d missed her so much. To simply comb his fingers through her sweaty hair, and let her sleep in his lap was paradise to him, as sad as that was. 

When he had to leave though, it felt like his heart was cracking all over again. When she messaged him to say she was grateful but not particularly ready for things to go back to normal, he understood, but it felt like someone put a pillow over his face. It felt suffocating, not to have her at his side – it was the worst kind of torment. 

That’s why Harry feels it – he knows it, deep in his gut, that she’s his soulmate. 

When his ex Josie had come to him, all bleary eyes and apologizing, Harry hadn’t wanted to hear it. He was hurting, his brain felt waterlogged by his tears and his capacity for understanding had been resolutely diminished. Just as it had been when his ex-boyfriend had tried reasoning with him after he met his soulmate, and his ex before that. . .and his ex before that. They all said the same thing, but Harry didn’t want to listen to how happy they were going to be without him. 

“It’s not something you can ignore, H, you just you know. Deep down, in the pit of yourself, you know and it’s hard to stay away. To keep this going, when I know I’d just be stringing you along.” 

And this, what he feels with Y/N, seems a whole lot like knowing. 

He gets it now when they say that without your soulmate once you’ve met them, it feels like a gaping hole in your center. Harry is all too aware of the emptied, hollow feeling he walked around with ever since she’d stormed off at the party. And how that missing piece patched up at the sight of her, even if she was mad at him, scowling, her hair a mess on her head, her face puffy, and her nose clogged with snot. As soon as she’d opened the door, it brought a comfort he’d never known (or at least had never realized until then). Like peeling off cold, rainy clothes and sitting in front of a fire to warm up – something cozy and warm. 

It would make sense that they were meant to be together, even if Y/N never does get her mark. Harry had never realized how similar their situations were until recently; both of them were dating people who found their soulmates, only while Harry had some time in between his, Y/N’s were rapid fire. And while Harry broke up with them, moped about it, and then carried on in his pursuit of love – Y/N had accidentally made a legacy of it, was used for it, was abandoned, was found again, was used again. It was hopeless, for both of them; and then they found each other. And Harry wanted to use her just how everyone else had – the thought of it now makes him shudder. 

Harry wondered what the likeliness of meeting your soulmate before receiving your mark is, and the exact progression of events if this were to happen, but there was little to know information on it. Anything that was said about it, was offhanded, fighting comments on online forums that didn’t extend far past, My wife and I met before our marks and we’re just as happy as anyone else, so you can take your fucked comments and – 

All he’d gathered for sure, was that it was rare. And what he knew was that Y/N was rare too, whatever unique power she had. It wouldn’t make sense that the way she found her soulmate was unique too. 

So Harry thinks being away from her has been affecting his sleep, and if it wasn’t something odd connected to their bond together, then Harry would say it's the stress of being away from his soulmate. Either or, he isn’t sleeping as well, so he jolts awake at the first ring of his phone, despite the time. He doesn’t know if he’d been asleep for a while, or if he’d just fallen asleep, or if he’d even been asleep at all – but his ringtone sounds out through his otherwise quiet room and the way his limbs jerk makes Dolly irately leave the bed. 

A sleepy pout forms on his lips as he bats around for his phone in his sheets, his eyes squinted as he looks at the caller ID. 

His thumb swipes to answer before his brain can even truly comprehend that it’s Y/N. 

“Lo’?” His voice is heavy with sleep, thick and groggy so he must have been at least a little bit unconscious – or maybe it’s just because he hadn’t used it in a while. 

“Hiiii,” she answered shyly, and the slight inflection in her tone suggested right away that she’d been drinking; she didn’t sound trashed, by any means, but he could tell. Plus, she was calling him at 11 PM, and she hadn’t properly spoken to him since she had her fever. He hardly thought this would be the time she called him sober. 

Harry cleared his throat and sat up in bed, “Are you okay?” He inquired immediately, and Y/N gave a soft (albeit sad) little laugh. 

“Ah, yeah, just. . .” she trailed off, then sighed, “No, not really, but not like an “I’m in danger” kind of way. You were asleep weren’t you?” 

He shook his head, though she couldn’t see him, “No, not really,” he mimicked her response, and was he really lying? He hadn’t been sleeping well at all. “Do you need me to come get you, Sweetheart? Are you stuck somewhere?” 

“I – yes, I was wondering if you would get me? I went home with someone,” his blood runs cold, “Or, well, two someones,” his heart speeds up horrifically fast, “Um, and I just – they helped me realize some things. I want to see you if you’ll see me, but I understand if you don’t –” 

“Send me your location,” he’s already kicking his feet over the side of the bed, snatching his jacket off the back of the chair, and throwing his arms inside of it, “I’ll be there in a little bit, I’m leaving now.” 

When they get off the phone, something thick and sticky settles in his chest, dripping down to his stomach. Harry has felt jealous before but never to this degree; this soul-stopping caliber. It clogs his pores, forcing itself deeper inside his body to such a grand magnitude, that he has to grit his teeth and bear it. They weren’t together – they weren’t even speaking to each other, but it hurt all the same. Honestly, it hurt, even more, knowing he’d run her into their (plural!) arms. 

The flat building she sends him is close enough – just a ten-minute drive, and he cuts it in half because this deep into the night there’s barely any traffic. She, Niall, and Eloise must have gone out – he’d seen Niall’s story this evening and had wondered at the time if she was with them. Maybe she had already left with whoever it was she was with now by the time they had taken those photos in the club bathroom and his brow twitched at the thought.  

It didn’t matter though. What mattered was that Y/N had called him, she wanted to see him – he knew he wasn’t her only option for a ride. She had plenty of people she could call, or, worst came to worst, she could have ordered an Uber or a Lyft. But she didn’t, she called him, because she wanted to see him, and that made him happier than he thought words could allow him to describe. Pulling up in front of the building, he leaves his car idle as he waits for her to come out, the engine a gentle thrum that completely contrasts with the roaring of his heart.  

From the time Harry messaged her to let her know he was there, it took about five minutes for her to appear at the door. He swallowed thickly – her dress was a little short, and kind of disheveled, along with her hair that looked mussed, like someone had run their fingers through it and she hastily patted it down afterward. Harry hates it – hates the thought of someone’s hands on her, of their lips on her skin, her mouth. 

But Y/N isn’t shrouded in the afterglow of someone who just had a beautiful threesome. She looks sad – her mouth is pouted, and her brows are furrowed, and he’s worried that something happened. She’d said she wasn’t in danger though – so maybe she was just unhappy to see him. Maybe this was her coming to meet with him to tell him that she hated him and never wanted to see him again. He feels dizzy with the new onset of panic, but he puts on a brave face for her. 

Y/N opens the door and climbs in, a smile on her mouth when she sees him, “Thank you,” she murmured, “I – you really didn’t have to come, I didn’t realize it was late.” 

“S’alright,” he waited for her to buckle before putting the car in drive, “I was awake.” 

Both of them know he’s lying through his teeth but neither mention it. Instead, Y/N sighed gently and settled into the seat that was already adjusted to her liking – nobody had ridden in the passenger side since she had last, and Harry had no reason to move it anyway. She turned to look at him, and she didn’t look like she’d drank too much; as light of a weight as she was, she probably was pretty toasted for a little while but hadn’t had another in long enough that it was simmering out. 

“If it isn’t too much – could we go to your place? I wanna see Dolly.” 

How could Harry ever say no to her? 

The drive is quiet, besides the radio that Y/N clicks on. They pull in front of Harry’s flat, and they’re quiet on the way up as well. Harry doesn’t hear her voice again until he unlocks the door and Dolly is sitting beside it like an irate wife left alone in the middle of the night. At least she was irate until she saw who Harry brought, and she chirped before lunging into Y/N’s arms from the floor. This is something she’s only ever done with Harry, and only in particular circumstances, like if she was starving (hadn’t eaten in four hours) and Harry wasn’t working fast enough to feed her. 

Y/N squeals but accommodates her readily, and Dolly is a motor of purrs, rubbing her cheeks against Y/N’s face and kneading over the part of Y/N’s chest that’s showing, “Aish, okay, okay!” Y/N giggled and it was so sweet to Harry’s ears, he could scream, “I missed you too, baby! I’m sorry for leaving – has he been starving you, why do you feel lighter?” 

“Don’t let her fool you,” Harry clicked his tongue, dumping his keys into the bowl on the table beside the door and toeing his shoes off at the heel, “She’s actually been eating more since you saw her last.” 

“That’s not what she’s telling me,” Y/N grinned, keeping Dolly tight in her arms before walking further into his flat. 

Harry followed after her, adjusting the sleeves of his jacket – he was never uncomfortable around her, but he felt nervous about what she was about to say. For what she might do. What if she’d come just to take all of her things that had accumulated here during the last few months? Or what if she was stopping by to cuddle with Dolly one more time before telling Harry she was out of his life for good? 

Sweat beads on the back of his neck and his heart thumps too hard against his sternum, enough to rattle his ribcage and threaten to crack it. His eyes threatened to water, but he blinked hard to avoid it, biting hard on the inside of his bottom lip. What was he going to do? Now was his chance to plead with her – to convince her to keep him – but all the words escaped his throat and snuffed out on his tongue. Wither like a petal under too much sun. His nails pinch into his palms as he wills something – anything out of his throat. 

I love you – he wants to say, I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you so much that it hurts me to be away from you. That I want you with me all of the time, that everything I see and do reminds me of you somehow. That the thought of being without you makes me want to dig a hole in the ground and live there. That I feel my insides twist and coil and shiver and quake with so much want for you that I don’t know what to do with it. That, even if for some reason you weren’t my soulmate, I would rather leave them alone to find their own path, because I want to be selfish, and I want to be with you, and only you, because you’re my person – even if the stars don’t think so, I know it. 

“I’m bad at this,” Y/N started before Harry could spill every single thought that has crossed his mind in the last couple of weeks, “Um, at like – being awkward with someone that I care about, I hate that. So I don’t want to be awkward.” 

Harry nodded, “Of course, of course, I – I’ll never feel awkward with you,” he scratched his arm, lifting his sleeve with it, “But I am nervous, I’ll be honest.” 

Y/N frowned, plopping down on the sofa with Dolly still in her arms, “Why?” 

“Um, I guess –” he stepped closer to her, his veins feeling empty, absent of blood and thrumming with needles and pins,  “I just. . .am worried that you’re coming to say goodbye to me?” 

What Harry is waiting for, is for Y/N to regard him solemnly, to admit that this is exactly why she was coming over, and to give him the talk that she’d been preparing. Again, he feels tears crawl up his cheeks in preparation for it – he’d try to hold it together at least a little bit, but he wouldn’t be void of all emotion. He’s human, after all. 

Instead, Y/N’s eyes go wide, “What? No! God, no!” She shook her head so fast he thought the earrings she was wearing might fly out, “Was I being too cryptic? I wasn’t trying to be, I – no, that’s not what this is at all,” her arms let go of Dolly as she motioned him over, though Dolly merely settled in the cradle of her lap. Harry felt relief flood through him like an ice-cold wave, and a tear that had been preparing itself still made the descent down his cheek. He walked to her briskly, looping around the coffee table and almost throwing himself down beside her. Y/N twisted her whole body to face him, holding her hands out for him to take, “I was actually coming over to apologize for keeping you waiting for so long!” 

“You never have to apologize for anything,” he took her hands quickly, lacing their fingers together and he’d missed the feeling of her smooth palms so much, “Nothing, ever, I should be the one apologizing for everything.” 

“That’s no – you’ve apologized, and I’ve finally accepted it, yeah? No more apologies out of you,” she rested their hands between them, and Dolly came over to rub her face and gums all over their knuckles, “So I’m not sure where to start, and I don’t want this to be long-winded, so I’ll paraphrase some of my revelations here, kind of.” She squeezed his hands again, tighter than before, “I know it’s not a huge surprise, probably, but I think I’ve had feelings for you for a while, which was shitty on my part, to let it happen. You needed my help to find your soulmate, and not only was it taking forever, but I was growing so fond and so attached to you that I knew it was going to hurt when you did find your person. I’ve known that for a while,” Harry swallowed hard, blinking at her – how long had she known she had feelings for him? Was it as long as he’d known about his for her? 

He’d been set on letting her speak before intervening at all, but he couldn’t help it, “Developing feelings isn’t shitty, you’re – you’re human. To expect yourself to be in this situation time and time again and feel nothing is too much.” He held her tighter, “I – what does it say about me, that I was trying to court you the whole time, and didn’t make my intentions clear?” 

Y/N scrunched her nose up, but her gaze was soft and fond in a way he only sees it get for him, and he melted,  “Let me finish baby,” Then Harry melted some more because she called him baby. He nodded, closed his mouth, and let her continue. 

 “And, through some retrospection, I’ve realized that even if you had told me when you got your mark, the same day, the same hour, the very same second that you realized – my reaction probably would have been close to the same. Maybe a little less theatrical, but I would have withdrawn thinking that I was making things easier for us when really I was making it all worse. And, really, I was making things easier for me, not you. I wanted it to be as easy as possible when you left me for something better. I was protecting my heart and disregarding yours, and for that, I wanted to say I’m sorry.” 

Harry is such a crybaby, when it comes to things like this, and when someone is mutually wearing their heart on their sleeve with him. His eyes bead up with tears, and he raises his hand to wipe them away but ends up taking her hand with him. Y/N smiled softly, unlaced their fingers, and wiped his cheeks with her knuckles, her caress tender, “You’re such a baby,” she murmured fondly, and Harry smiled, his cheeks feeling warm, “I do want to point out, even though I’m apologizing, I value open communication above all else, so don’t ever keep a big secret from me again, or I’ll do something drastic.” 

He laughs, and sniffles, and there’s such a weight lifted off of him he can do nothing but melt into the sofa, “Okay,” he murmured, eyes fluttering shut as she kept petting his face, “I won’t, I promise I won’t.” 

“Have you found them?” Y/N inquired, “Your soulmate?” 

It’s you, it’s always been you. 

“Not. . .not officially, not. Nobody’s spotted me with the same mark or anything.” 

Y/N regarded him thoughtfully, still petting at his face, now mindless in her movements like she didn’t even realize she was doing it, “Then, if you want. . .until you find them, I was wondering if we could date. Not pretend to date, of course – like, we’d properly date.” 

Harry cups his hand over hers, pressing it closer to his face. 

“I haven’t been pretending for a while.” He admitted. 

                                                                .                      .                         .

Harry is still all jitters and static energy buzzing through his body while he waits in his room. Y/N wanted to take a shower, and wash herself of the alcohol sweat, the club atmosphere, and the body glitter that she’d had all over her. All of her extra stuff was still there, but she told him she was going to use his body wash anyway and Harry would never tell her no to anything. He made his bed from where it had been rumpled from him tossing and turning before this, then sat gingerly in the center, waiting for her. 

He’d wondered if he was dreaming a couple of times; worried that he would be startled awake to his alarm and Y/N nowhere to be found, but he dug his nails into his thighs and the bite of pain grounded him. He was very much awake and after thirty minutes, Y/N re-emerged in his room, wearing his clothes, smelling like his soap, and he felt so relieved, he thought he could probably float away. She’d have to grab him by the ankle and yank him back down. 

Y/N crawled into his bed, “Your toothpaste tastes better than mine,” she whined, and she didn’t plop down in the spot beside him as he expected. Instead, Y/N climbed into his lap, straddling his waist and looping her arms around his neck. She hugs him tighter, closer to her, tucking her face into his throat and rocking all of her weight down so that Harry falls backward into his bed. His hands set on her hips at first, and then his arms slide around her waist and he’s holding her tight. 

“I missed you,” he could hear the pout in her voice, her arms pinned between the back of his neck and the bed and her face stuffed in the curve of his throat, “Too much, like – being without you was fucking awful.” 

“I know,” he held her tighter, “I know, I missed you so much, it felt – it felt like it was hard to breathe.” 

Y/N murmured her agreement, pulling away too soon. 

“Can I see it?” 

His brows pull inward, “What?” 

“Your mark,” she looked down between them, “Can I see it again?” 

Harry stares at her, searching her face for. . .something. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but whatever it is, it's difficult to find. Y/N looks relaxed – sobered and musing, reflective. It didn’t seem like something she was doing to torture herself, just something she was interested in, her fingers mindlessly thumbing at the fabric sitting over it. Harry doesn’t speak, but he moves his head just a little, the barest nod, and Y/N scoots down so she sits more on his thighs. He stayed still as she hovered over him – maybe he’d imagined this in a completely different scenario, where they were about to make each other feel good, rather than her regarding his soulmark. 

But the universe has tossed them into something so confusing and so different, that it felt silly to question anything anymore. So he watched with bated breath as Y/N lifted the hem of his shirt, pushing the fabric midway up his torso, her eyes fixed on his lower right hip. Harry had looked at it every now and then, but he hadn’t stared at it how he’d imagined he would – hadn’t stroked his thumb over it and daydreamed about his person as he might have even just half a year ago. He kind of avoided looking at it all together, because in the lines all he could visualize was the hurt on Y/N’s face when she found out he hadn’t told her immediately. 

The way Y/N looks at it though – she looks at it like it’s something beautiful. The way Harry thought he would look at it. 

Her eyes are wide and soft, her fingers tentatively stroking over the skin, “I’ve never seen one up close,” she murmured, tracing over the lines, “I never really wanted to, I don’t think. I always told myself I wasn’t bitter about not having one, but I think refusing to look at someone’s soulmark for more than three seconds is a little bitter.” 

One of Harry’s hands rests on her thigh, and the other uselessly holds his shirt up, though it would have stayed still no matter what. He’s worried about speaking like he’d break whatever this trance was that she was in. It felt. . .different, to have her not only looking but caressing the skin there. Like something was shifting, clicking into space, filling something empty. 

He breathes in slowly, and gently, his chest and belly rising and falling with the movement but Y/N seemed unbothered by it. With her thumb, she presses down into the center of the circle and he nibbles at his bottom lip – it’s tender there. More sensitive than he’d care to admit, but Y/N could do anything to him. He’d let her do anything she wanted, even if it brought him pain. 

“It’s pretty,” she murmured, like a secret just between the two of them, “Just like a birthmark, right, like – the skin doesn’t even welt or anything.” 

“Yeah, it – it’s kind of cool,” Harry replied, lulling his tongue over his dry mouth. 

Y/N’s eyes meet his and hers are shining but not with tears, or anything sad. Just something sweet, and warm. . .something nice. 

“Really cool,” she agreed, then flattened out on top of him again, “Were you jealous when I said I was with someone else tonight?” 

And Y/N said she wanted open communication, so – “Yes,” he replied, dipping his face back into her body, hiding himself, “I hated it so much.” 

“I’m sorry,” her voice is muffled into his shoulder, “While I was waiting, I thought about how I would feel had the call been reversed, and I – would not have been able to handle it.” 

His arms curled around her shoulders, pressing her closer, “S’fine,” he wanted to stay like this, wrapped up in her, consumed by her; he’d missed her so much, even if it was only a few weeks. It felt like an eternity, he would require at least 600 hours of cuddling to feel even partially satisfied with making up for the lost time, “I’m just so happy to have you here with me now, I don’t care.” 

Y/N melted into his body, all boneless, and it pressed him further into the bed. 

For the first time in a long time, Harry falls asleep hard. 

It’s perfect. 

                                                            .                          .                           .

Y/N has been happy lately. 

Not that she was like – the most miserable person ever before, but this feeling was different. . .better. It feels like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, or like her body had converted all the bitterness and sadness and general upset over her situation into something light and fluffy. Like the marshmallow you scoop out of a jar, or what clouds should feel like. It’s nice. She isn’t sure if it was making up with Harry that did it, or finally appreciating the outcome of her ability – touching and caressing the mark that will forever stay on his skin – but it felt. . .like something had clicked. Something made sense, that night, and it alleviated a pain that Y/N had been lugging around with her for so long. 

She isn’t sure what though. 

But, at that moment, she thought maybe it was okay if she never had a soulmate. It wasn’t such a scary thought as it used to be – maybe Y/N was destined to fall in love with Harry, and even if she wasn’t his soulmate, maybe they were destined to be together for now. And that’s okay! Why not revel in this love before he meets his soulmate? Experience it and look back on it fondly, instead of feeling heartbroken and weak. Hell, maybe Harry’s soulmate will feel like Kai and Emi do – maybe they could be a polyamorous couple or something. Surely, whoever Harry’s soulmate is must be as amazing as he is, right? She could love them like she loves Harry, and honestly, she would make the effort no matter what, if it meant making Harry happy. 

So it’s like a breath of fresh air. The rest of the weekend they spent a tangled mess of cuddled limbs in his bed, on the couch, on the floor, or in the kitchen – like noodles entangled in each other, fluid in their movements. They don’t leave the flat much at all really, except to go retrieve Ferret, who has a lot to say about her sudden sleepover without notifying him. Otherwise, they order in, they snuggle, they talk, and talk, and talk so much, you’d wonder how there was anything left to discuss. 

It’s good – Y/N missed him so much, she can’t imagine being without him again. 

Eloise and Niall both know, after a couple of frantic messages from them that she didn’t see until the following morning, she let them know that she was okay, that Harry picked her up, and that they’d talked things through. 

Niall messages promptly (Eloise was sleeping off a hangover, so her reply came much later). 

Omg yay!! 

But if you EVER AGAIN IN YOUR LIFE disappear off the face of the earth after going home with two strangers i will SMOTHER YOU 

“You know what, it shows he cares,” Harry had defended him, pulling her closer to his body by the shoulder, “If you did that to me, I’d have called in a SWAT team or summat.” 

Monday morning they met for coffee, both pouty that they would have to spend a portion of their day apart. Harry reminded her he was still allotted a little under 600 hours of cuddle time that she had to make up, and she could deliver on them whenever she felt like it. Y/N suggested she start chipping away at the debt Tuesday night, when the cinema prices drop down, so they can finally watch the movie both of them had wanted to but it felt wrong seeing it without each other. The seats recline and warm, and the middle bar between them lifts so they wouldn’t miss even a second of pressing into the other’s body. 

“It’s a date,” Y/N smiled, “A real one.” 

“Baby, how many times will I have to say it? They’ve been real for me for like – the last month.” 

She pinched his bum, laughing when he squawked, “Well, it would’ve been nice if I’d gotten the memo.” 

Spring was in full swing, finally. The nights and early mornings weren’t as chilly as they once were, and the morning dew was starting to smell more and more like the world waking up after a long rest. The grass was lush and plants thrived in the hours and hours of sunlight, and wind chimes clinked together with each warm breeze. Renewed and refreshed, the sky was just as bright and blue as it was in childhood; the world was technicolored. 

Harry cradled her heart in two careful hands like it was something precious. Something that needed to be tended to and cared for with the utmost precision, beating in his open palms, that he soon cups to protect from the outside world. He demonstrates it in the way he treats her softly, how he navigates through the world with her, the way he looks at her, the way he speaks to her, and the way he holds her. 

It’s in the way he turned to her, facing each other on the picnic blanket, lounging in the sun. It’s in the way their fingers are laced together because they always are now, if Harry has anything to do with it, he holds onto her like she’ll float away if he doesn’t. It’s in the way he somehow presses closer to her, and she feels and smells him all around her. 

It’s in the way he says, “I love you,” and it’s in the way Y/N’s heart feels swollen in her chest, “I love you so much it kind of feels like it’s hard to breathe, but it’s good. A good breathless, like after running a marathon or something.” 

She understands all too well what he means. 

Harry leaned over, his lips grazing against hers for a few seconds like he was giving her the chance to push him away. She hadn’t pushed him off for the first hundred kisses he’d dotted on her mouth and skin once they started seeing each other again, so she didn’t know why he would think this was any different. Maybe because of his confession? But it wasn’t something shocking to her. What they felt for one another, this happiness and glimmer that brews between them when they were together, that paints the world in glitter and makes her insides hum warm and fuzzy. . .it could only be love. 

So she threads her fingers into the hair at his nape, draws him the rest of the way, and their mouths push together. It’s different this time – this kiss says so much without having to say anything at all. 

I love you with all the air that I breathe. 

I love you so much it hurts me. 

I love you more than I could ever put into words. 

I love you more than words could ever allow. 

You’re my soulmate, even if it’s not written in the stars. 

Harry’s lips are soft, and they taste like the strawberry lip mask that he swears by. The top half of his body is stretched across her, their chests pressing together, she thinks she can feel his heartbeat and wonders if it has started to sync up with her own. It’s a chaste kiss, nothing gaudy or provocative (they’re in public, after all), but it’s good – it’s so good. Something Y/N would replay in her head over and over again. Something she’d never get tired of. 

When they part, Harry kisses the tips of their nose together in something so sentimental it’s almost disgusting. 

“Ooh,” Harry pushed himself up a little higher, “You’ve got an eyelash baby!” 

“I think I have a couple of them. Unless something changed last time I looked in the mirror –” 

Harry huffed out through his nose, “Smartass,” the pad of his index finger swipes against her cheek, and Y/N goes cross-eyed trying to look at it, resting there, threatening to blow away with a shiest breeze, “Make a wish, yeah? And make it count!” 

She can’t remember the last time she’d wished on an eyelash. To do it again feels innocent and new, so she closes her eyes tight, and she wishes for something good. She doesn’t necessarily know what that good thing is, she just knew that it was a good thing. Maybe she’d get a treat later today, maybe Harry would play with her hair, maybe she’d make him laugh one of those loud, obnoxious ones where his nose scrunches up and his eyes crinkle and he claps a hand over his mouth all embarrassed. 

Whatever is, she doesn’t mind. 

Y/N tugs him down, even though he drops and almost knocks the wind out of her. 

“I love you too,” she tells him earnestly, nosing at his cheek how Dolly’s been doing with her lately, taking him in, “So much.” 

Y/N thinks, that maybe the ‘something good’, is how wide his smile is after she says it. 

                                                                 .                       .                           .

“Oh my god.” 

It was blistering hot out – a random spring day where the weather spiked to about 28°C (82°F) out of nowhere, subsequently on the day that Harry had planned for them to take a hike. One thing about Y/N is, for as adventurous as she likes to make herself out to be, she is not the nature kind of adventurer. She likes to try new places to eat, or weird places to shop, or maybe go to the town over and see what their drive-in theater is like. Not the, let’s climb up the side of a small mountain and hope we don’t cross the path of a cougar and feel sweat cake her skin. 

But it was important to Harry because for some reason the man she loved could be that horrible nature type of adventurer. So she sucked it up, woke up at an ungodly hour to get ready, packed a bag for the day and kissed Ferrett all over his stinky little face, and told him his favorite person is a maniac. “A nature-loving maniac,” she muttered before her phone buzzed in her pocket, alerting her that said maniac had pulled up at a quarter till 5 AM.

The goal was to watch the sunrise; it wasn’t a horrible hike, just about 20 minutes up a mountain. The drive was the longest part, but she could sleep a little if she wanted to on the way back and get a good nap in, so that made it a little better. Plus, when she got in the car, Harry patted her head, missing her hair, and scratching his fingers at her scalp, “Hi, pretty baby,” he greeted, “Did you eat breakfast?” 

“Mhm,” she murmured, eyes closed and she felt a whole lot like one of the cats when they’re petting between her ears, “I wanna eat again at the top.”

“I already have a lunch packed, Sweetheart,” he puckered his lips, smooching sounds at her, “Hungry thing, like a baby bird, starving without me.”

“Enough!”

It goes well! Y/N keeps her whining and complaining to a minimum, during the steep bits he gets behind her and presses his hands on her bum. It takes them only 20 minutes to get to the top, and the cliff top they’re on overlooks the city. She couldn’t tell you what buildings are, they’re pretty far away, but it is kind of gorgeous. The distance they are at mutes most of the noise, so it’s quiet, apart from morning birds chirping and a couple of insects buzzing. Harry doesn’t mention how he found this spot, but it doesn’t seem like his first time up here. He does seem excited to share this moment with her, absolutely buzzing and if he had a tail it would be wagging. 

The start is fine, absolutely beautiful, and then the sun creeps up over the horizon and it’s gorgeous in a way Y/N hasn’t seen before – she’d never actually watched the sunrise, now that she thought about it. They eat their lunch (or was it brunch, technically?) and loiter for a little while, maybe too long, because by the time they’re leaving, there is little to no shade and the sun is baking through her clothes, and she’s regretting wearing more than a sliver of fabric over her crotch because she’s sweating. Still, Harry is silly and sweet and makes it bearable because he seems so happy, it just reverberates off of her. 

She does fall asleep on the way home, she wakes up five minutes from her flat and she’s a little groggy and grouchy and in desperate fucking need of a shower. But she has Harry shower first, because. . .well, she doesn’t know, she’s feeling sweet and his showers are quick, and she won’t have to worry about taking up all the hot water before him. And, true to it, Harry does shower relatively fast, maybe within ten minutes he’s finished. Y/N gawks at his body when he comes out in just a towel, and presses her fingers into the tender spot where his soulmark lays across his hip. 

“Ah!” He squawks but doesn’t tell her to stop, because she’s pretty sure he secretly likes it. 

By the time she’d had her shower, she was more awake, though she knew herself and knew her body, and as soon as she sat beside Harry on the couch she’d melt into him and fall asleep. She walks into the living room where he’s already sitting, Ferret curling around his lap, while Y/N pulls her hair off her neck and into her bun. She’d forgotten a hair tie on their hike so the thought of her hair touching her nape for any amount of time for the rest of the day, just seemed awful. 

First, Y/N sat down, relaxed into him, and settled, lulling into that pleasant calm that she knew would eventually send her to sleep (Harry accepted it happily, wrapping his arm around her and holding her close)  – then she remembered that there was a merch drop for one of her favorite artists and jolted back awake, “Shit! Harry, the t-shirts!” She leaned forward to grab her phone off the table. 

“Baby what t-shirt. . .” he trailed off, his voice leaving, and Y/N was too busy with her phone, hunched over it and trying to login to her account to notice, “Oh my god.” 

Y/N’s brows furrowed, turned to face him, “Listen, don’t be jealous, yes I think they’re beautiful, but I just like the band.” When their gazes locked, his face was almost blank, like he was registering something for the first time, and it took her aback. She’d told him about the t-shirts the night before in a series of panicked messages because they always sell out fast, especially now that they come with a signed album. He sent multiple emojis and a message that said, “You got this baby!!!!!!!” 

He’d playfully mentioned being jealous before because multiple of the band members were beautiful and he said she was going to run off with one of them if he ever took her to their show. Still, the face he’s making right now doesn’t seem the least bit playful. This isn’t even the face he makes when he’s jealous. 

It’s blank, and then it isn’t – his lips twitch like he wants to say something, and his face goes pink, his ears are red, and when he blinks tears bead up in his eyes, “Harry?” She lowered her phone back to the table, turning her body now so she faced him more, “Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?”

“Your mark.” He says it almost as quietly as a whisper, breathless. 

Y/N’s brows furrowed deeper,  “My what?” 

Harry’s hands are careful, approaching her like he would a wounded animal in the woods, tentative and a little hesitant. His fingers touch the back of her neck, where her skin is a little sore; she kept waking up on her belly with Ferret lying on her back, sometimes kneading at her nape, so she could only imagine how many little kitten claw abrasions she had littering the skin. She can’t really visualize them, so she just slathered Neosporin over it and hoped for the best. The pain was only intense once, a couple of weeks ago, but her shoulder had been sore too so she’s pretty sure she’d been sleeping in a weird position. Y/N had a nasty habit of doing that, her head, body, and arms all twisted in various directions. 

Still, Harry wouldn’t act that way about cat scratches, would he? Unless they looked absolutely horrible. 

Her hand lifts to meet him, where he strokes over the skin, “Oh, yeah I guess Ferret got me pretty good. Does it look bad?” 

He blinks at her, “I knew it.” 

“Harry, what? C’mon, you’re not making sense!” 

His gaze finally meets hers again, tearing away from her neck, and a smile grows over his face, “It’s not a cat scratch, it’s your mark.” He finally answered, and the joy that outstretched his features was all-encompassing. 

Y/N blinked at him. 

“Oh.” She tilted her head, her hands hovering over the spot but Harry gripped her fingers and brought them down, running them over it, “That’s – it’s mine? I have one?” 

Her voice doesn’t feel like her own. Her body doesn’t feel like her own. 

Y/N had finally accepted that maybe not getting one was okay. She’d spent years of her life yearning for it, wanting it desperately, wondering why she didn’t have it – what she had done to deserve such a fate. And then she finally just lets it go, accepts that maybe it wasn’t her reality, and finally has made peace with it. 

But Harry is saying she has one. 

Whoa. 

“Whoa,” her skin doesn’t feel any different – it’s just smooth, the back of her neck, the little bump of her spine, but Harry keeps guiding her to trace the skin like there’s something magical there. His eyes can barely look away from it, “Does it –” she’s nervous to ask, nervous to know, but she has to know, “Is it similar to yours?”

Harry shook his head, but before Y/N’s heart could drop to her stomach, he opened his mouth, “Not just similar,” he told her gently, “It’s an exact match.” 

Y/N thinks this is what floating must feel like. This calm, easy feeling that washes over her; warm and bright, like resting on your back in water, hovering over the surface without the water sloshing in your ear. Just floating, a couple of meters above ground, over a field of flowers so happy from rain and sun. In a world that smells like something sweet and light, where the colors are vivid, where the birds sing, where she merely floats around, satiated, and satisfied. 

All this drama. All this heartache and stress and worry that they put themselves through, and they’d been soulmates all along. 

“Can you take a picture of it?” 

Harry nodded, taking her phone off the table and using his hand to brush the baby hairs completely out of the way before she heard the shutter click a few times. When Harry flipped the camera around, she saw exactly what he’d said – it felt a little more real now that she was looking at it, just a few shades darker than her skin, a circle that turned into a swirl, dots that could be little stars, three lines that reminded her of Ferret’s whiskers. Y/N had spent so much time looking and pressing at Harry’s lately that she didn’t need to compare it, but she did anyway. She presses at his chest so his back meets the sofa, and pushes his shirt up above his belly button, pulling his briefs further down. Y/N held the phone screen beside him, her heart feeling heavy, too big for her chest, shifting her lungs and threatening to crack her ribs with the growth. 

“I knew it,” Harry whispers again, “I knew it, baby, I knew it this whole time, it had to be you.” 

Y/N thinks it's her who kisses him first. All but lunges at him, actually, like a new vampire at the first sight of blood, if she weren’t already leaning back then the force she’d exerted would have pushed him there. Their chests knock together and their mouths do what she can only describe as smush together, in something a little sloppy, a little desperate, and uncoordinated. It is nothing like the sweet, chaste little kiss they shared on the picnic blanket two weeks ago. This is something different, something primal and needy. 

They part for a second, to suck in a tiny breath and then dip back in only this time Y/N’s licking into his mouth. She’s tasting his tongue, she’s feeling his scalp beneath her fingers as she runs them through his hair, she’s feeling his body radiate warmth, the softness of his skin. 

She’s feeling her soulmate. 

Her soulmate. 

Their tongues curl around each other, Y/N tries to press impossibly closer to his body, her thighs trapping his hips in a hold she thinks would rival a wrestler. Harry’s hand doesn’t leave her nape, stroking over it, and with each caress, she can hear his voice repeating, “I knew it,” like a mantra. Pleased with himself for never doubting this, even when it took too long. Even when she thought one day he was going to leave her for bigger, better things, someone created just for him. 

And she’d been that person all along. 

She isn’t sure if her cheeks are sticky with her tears or with his, but it doesn’t matter. Their kiss starts to taste salty when the dewy drops slip down their nose and over the curve of their mouths. Y/N bites at his bottom lip then suck it back into her mouth, then presses her lips hot into his again. This feeling is overwhelming, but so good, so, so, so good. Her brain feels dizzy with it, her insides flutter, and she doesn’t know if she’s trembling or if every one of her cells is vibrating and cheering and telling her told you so! Because her body knew from the very moment they touched that he was her person. 

“Sweetheart,” he finally panted, when they take a long break, though he does push kisses along her tear-speckled cheeks between breaths, “I’m – you might need to get off my lap, baby.” 

Harry’s hard under her, she had felt that a little while ago and made no move to get off of him before. Honestly, it only encouraged her to keep kissing him, subtly rolling her hips into his body, making sure he only grew stiffer and stiffer beneath her. Y/N wanted him wholly. They hadn’t slept with each other yet, and she wasn’t sure why – it had never felt like the right time before, she guessed, but it certainly felt like the right time now. Y/N wanted to wrap around him, she wanted their bodies to merge, to sink into him, for him to melt into her. 

“I want you,” she answered, then shifted in his lap, pressing tighter to the bulge for good measure, “I need you.” 

That’s all she has to say. 

Harry stands up with her, his arms supporting her bum as he guides them to her bedroom. Y/N would have been just fine on the couch, but Harry is a romantic after all; he would never let their first time be anywhere but a bed. He carefully lays her down on the mattress, then crawls over the top of her, his lips smearing over her mouth once again. It’s hot again – she’s warm all over, and everywhere his hands touch sends searing waves through the rest of her body. They don’t stay in one place for long like he’s mapping her out like he hasn’t spent so much time already stroking, massaging, squeezing, and tracing all over her hands, her arms, her legs. 

Her skin pebbles with goosebumps when his hands fix around the bottom of her shirt, peeling it up, over her head and helping her wiggle out from the collar. Y/N hadn’t bothered with a bra after her shower, so her breasts were free just as soon as the fabric left them. He stares down at them, marveling, one of his hands on either side of her waist smooths up so the swell of her boobs rest in the curve of his index finger and thumb. Harry squeezes experimentally, his eyes on her face as he lulls his tongue over his lips, “Anything you don’t like, you tell me, okay?” 

Normally when someone says that, the ensuing action is something that might be an acquired taste, but Y/N wondered how anyone could not want Harry’s mouth all over their body. He lowered himself, hand full of her breast, before he lulled his tongue over the nipple. Laved it over with his spit then blew cool air on it, watching as it hardened beneath the stream of his breath. He smiled, almost like he found it cute how responsive her body was to him before he closed the gap and pulled it between his lips. 

Y/N gasps, her hips jerk and she drags her covered pussy over the stiffened bulge in his bottoms. Harry moans around but he doesn’t detach himself, busy rolling her nipple around his soft tongue in circles and then sucking it hard into his mouth. She’d be surprised if she didn’t have love bites around her nipples in a few hours, the way he bites down, just barely indenting his teeth before soothing it back over again. 

When he removes himself from that nipple, he kisses all around her breast, sucking patches of skin into his mouth, just pecking over others, bridging the gap with wet presses and open-mouth kisses to her other nipple. Y/N makes a reedy sound in her throat, her legs wrapping around his hips loosely when she tries to rock her hips into him again.  Harry uses the hand that was still thumbing and rubbing over the nipple he had been sucking on, to move to her hips. He pressed down, pulling away with a click of his tongue, “Be patient,” he chided gently, and she would be annoyed if she didn’t love the sound of his voice, “I want to take my time with you.” 

“I’ve been patient,” she mewled, her chest heaving with an exasperated breath, “Take your time with me later, I want you now.” 

Y/N didn’t care how desperate or pathetic she sounded. Harry didn’t seem to mind either, when he pushed his mouth back to hers, letting his tongue flutter between her lips but as soon as the tip of hers met the tip of his, he withdrew, teasingly, “Okay, you impatient thing,” he reached behind himself, grabbing the top of his shirt and pulling it over the top of his head, Y/N drinks in the sight of his body like she hadn’t seen it like twenty minutes ago after his shower. Like she hadn’t seen it hours ago when he got too hot on their way down the small mountain and pulled his workout top off. Then his fingers curl into the elastic of her bottoms, “I at least need to stretch you a little, hm? Will you allow that?” 

She frowned at him but raised her hips for him, helping him work the shorts and panties off of her legs. Y/N is going to say that he just wants to be a pervert and stare at her since he’d seen how wet she could get the night that they sexted each other, but her words are stolen from her throat when he lets a glob of spit drool over the top of her. She twitches when it meets her pussy, sliding over the swell of her clit before Harry’s fingers delicately rub over her slit. Y/N feels herself throb, her walls contracting like they’re trying to beguile him inside. 

Harry coos, “You’re so pretty for me,” he rubs his thumb over her clit, biting on his bottom lip while he smiled, rolling it in circles, and it’s already so swollen that it stiffly moves beneath the pad, “So beautiful. I can’t believe you’re all mine.” 

A single finger dips inside, right down to the knuckle, he eases in and visibly has to steel himself as her walls suck him inside. Y/N can’t even pretend like her pussy is acting with a mind of its own, Y/N is just as greedy for him. Harry feels around for a little while, petting and stroking like he has to map the inside of her as well, and he moves around so much that he eventually pushes right against the bundle of nerves tucked away inside of her. The reaction is immediate and full-bodied, her thighs try to close around him, but with one hand he has his palm flat against the inside of her thigh, holding her open. 

“I love you,” Harry murmured as he eased another finger inside of her, scooting down the bed. In his path, he kisses along her torso, over her ribcage, dotting pecks over her belly button and sucking quick little marks in the area around her hip bones. Down to his ending goal, so his face was sitting between her legs, and now he leaves wet presses to the tender flesh of her thighs, “I love you so much. Knew from so early on that it could only be you – that nobody else would fit me like you do.” 

Y/N whines, overcome with love, her chest tender, “I love you too,” she whispered as Harry kissed down her thigh, until he was hovering over her cunt. His warm breath washes over Y/N’s weeping center, the way she drips around his fingers is probably a little wild. Y/N gets pretty wet under normal circumstances, sure, but now she’s in love, and happy, and it feels like all those feelings have culminated into an absolute wave between her thighs. 

“I’ve been thinking about tasting you since I went on my trip,” he confessed, not pausing the movement of his fingers inside of her, though his voice does little to drown out the embarrassing squelch, “And as I recall you said you would let me taste you.” 

There’s no more preamble than that. His tongue is soft and wet, lacing between her lips and petting over her swollen clit. Harry moans in tandem with her, as she spreads her legs further, her head tilting back, “God,” she whines, “You’re too – you’re too good at this, it’s not fair.” He laughed as he slid his tongue up and down her folds, spreading and stretching the two fingers inside of her, slowly working her up to take a third. Which wouldn’t be much on a smaller hand, but Harry’s hands are quite big, and even just two fingers kind of feel like the width of one of her smaller toys. Smaller but not small, so she’s already feeling quite full. 

It’s a good feeling, to be full of him, to have him inside of her in any capacity. Now that she’s had a taste of it, she isn’t sure how she’s going to ever go without it. He might just have to carry her around sitting on his cock all day, drawing a book cover while she edited a chapter, stretched out and warm on his prick. 

Harry pulls her clit into between his lips, sucking small, short little actions that threaten to make her eyes roll back. Arousal burns white hot in her belly, and she feels herself leak a little more, her juices dribbling down to her bum. Then the soft suckles get harder, and harder until she can see his lips pucker around it and his cheeks suck in, and he’s sliding a third finger in somehow, even though she thinks she’s clamping down on him. Y/N feels close, all love-struck and needy, she thinks he could probably make her cum by walking by her if she’s honest. 

Her hand buries in his hair, pulling, “I’m g’na cum,” she warned him, the telltale signs of it burning up her spine, slithering out through the rest of her body, as the orgasm dances through every single nerve she has, “Ah, fuck, please don’t stop, please don’t stop.” Harry groans into her like he’s close too, and her thighs start to shake, the vibrations of his noises tripping her over the edge, as her hips buck and rock into his face without any say-so from her. Her body moves off impulse, pushing him further into her, and Harry accepts it graciously, working her through her orgasm, slathering his tongue back up and down her slit, around his fingers, fluttering the tip of it at her rapidly pulsing and twitching hole. 

He stays there until she shoves him away, her palm pressed against his forehead, and Harry laughs. His lips are swollen and wet, a bright pink that rivals a lot of lip products on the market. He dots kisses on the tops of her thighs as she settles, jumping and jerking, her body sensitive to the touch all over. 

“We can stop here,” he murmured, “I just wanted to make you feel good.” 

Y/N mustered the best glare she could, with all of the muscles in her whole body, including her face, feeling liquified, “If you don’t get inside of me, I’ll scream.” 

Harry laughs, something so sweet in such a filthy situation as he sits back up. He’d only put on briefs after his shower so there was only one last layer to shed, and Y/N’s eyes were glued to him as pulled them down his thighs, off his legs. His cock bobs, heavy and full, precum dribbling down the tip already and she wondered if maybe, they were just a leaky duo. When he finally sits, his dick settles right up against his belly, with a slight preference toward his right, directed toward his soulmark. He settled between her thighs, took hold of himself by the base, and squeezed for a second, sucking in a slow, deep breath before tapping the tip against her messy slit. 

The sound of them colliding is soft and wet, a little ‘thwick, thwick, thwick,’ that makes Harry smile, “What a cute noise,” he started to rub himself against her, painting the head up and down, early pushing inside of her then taking it back and sliding back up her slit. Harry can only stand it about four times before he has to give in, tipping the head of his cock inside of her, and pushing his hips forward. 

He collects her thighs, guiding them around his waist as Y/N keens at the stretch. Harry’s just as big as he looked in the picture, it had not been the magic of angles at all, so her toes curl as the burn gives way to pleasure the further he dips in. It’s too fucking good, how he fills her up, stuffs any gap inside of her. For the most part, he glides inside, aided by her previous orgasm loosening her up and making her even wetter, but toward the end he has to rock his hips a little, pushing past the last little bit. 

Then his balls are snug against her bum, and he’s dropping down on top of her, their mouths meeting again. This kiss is a little sweeter, despite their position, it feels like a gentle reminder. He finds her hand, takes her wrist, and moves it above her head. He slips his fingers between the spaces of hers, holding her tight as he carefully starts to roll his hips. Just a little bit at a time, getting her used to the feeling, getting him used to it. She feels like puddy, moldable in his capable, tender hands. 

“I love you,” he murmured, and he says it so often, every night before they go to bed, every morning when they wake up when he kisses her cheek before they go to their separate floors at work, but he says it now like he just likes the taste of it on his tongue. His lips skim across her cheek, stiffened and sticky from the dried tears from earlier, “My pretty baby, my soulmate,” his teeth drag against her ear, “You’re perfect. Feel so fucking good inside.” 

Y/N’s body reacts accordingly, squeezing around him even tighter, and she’d never thought she was one for this mushy, lovey-dovey kind of dirty talk but it’s doing things to her that she’s never felt before. Harry fucks her slowly and tenderly to start, just gentle rolls of his hips, and when he’s done kissing her cheek and nipping at her ear, his forehead rests against hers. His eyes bore into her own, his mouth fell open, mirroring Y/N’s and they breathed each other's air and moaned into each other’s mouths. When he picks up the pace of it, Harry slides his forearm under the pit of her knee, keeping her spread open and wide for him. 

“I love you,” Y/N finally reciprocates, because she can be honest and admit that she’s feeling a little cock dumb right now, her brain barely keeping up with anything other than, Harry, and big, big, big, and feels so good, love him, love him. So formulating words is a triumphant task, one she’s proud of herself for being able to accomplish. 

“Can I see it, baby?” Harry asks her, pushing the hair from her face, “Do you mind if I flip you onto your tummy? Wanna see it again.” 

Y/N mustered all her strength to help him as she nodded, agreeing – she wanted him to see it. She’d gotten to play and touch and press into his so much already, she thought it was only fair. So he slides out of her, helps her flip over, stuffs a pillow beneath her hips, pushes her legs out just a little, and then slips himself right back in like he was made to fit just there. The new angle knocks the breath out of her, along with the new, reinvigorated thrusts from Harry as he guides her head. Her cheek is pressed to a pillow, and Harry pushes her hair out of his way (it had somehow fallen from the bun at some point, Y/N isn’t sure when), and he thumbs over the spot again. 

“Fuck,” he breathes out, and his thrusts pick up, faster than before, harder, and Y/N’s whole body feels it. Harry stretches across her back, his chest against sweaty skin as his lips push against the mark that matches his, suddenly on her skin, like it was always meant to be there, “God, fuck, you’re mine. I’m yours, and you’re mine, and this is. . .this is perfect, we’re perfect,” he fucks her harder, the hand that was squeezing her hip tight enough to leave bruises now slides between her body and the pillow, two fingers finding her clit. 

Y/N cums again, even harder than the first time. Her mouth falls open to moan but it gets caught in her throat, as she shakes, and trembles through it, squeezing Harry and sucking him further and further inside. She can hear her blood roaring in her ears, her vision blurs and her muscles jerk and tighten, loosen then tighten up again as her orgasm trapezes through her. It had built up so fast and so suddenly that it completely blindsided her, and Harry for that matter, who finishes fucking her through it before he has to slip out, sliding himself in between her cheeks, her bum sandwiching him. Harry finishes shortly after her, “G’na cum, baby, g’na cum for you,” and, his cum hot and wet meets her lower back, all over her bum, and there’s so much of it she can feel it dripping down her thighs. 

They’re wet and sticky again, the showers they had both taken were completely a moot point now but Y/N didn’t care. She sank into the bed beneath her, Harry’s body on top of her like a weighted blanket, and for the first time, she understood how those could be comforting rather than suffocating. She feels each heavy, deep breath that Harry takes, how his lungs expand, and the way his heart thuds. Her eyes are closed, and she thinks, if he let her, she’d fall asleep in seconds. 

His cum cools between them, and the insides of her thighs are a sticky mess of her arousal, but the moment feels intimate and innocent in a way Y/N can’t describe. He stretched out on top of her, rousing enough to give giddy kisses to the back of her neck again, still in such awe and wonder by the affirmation of something he knew deep down. Y/N wished she had been as confident as him in the universe’s plan this entire time. Maybe she could have saved them some of the trouble that they went through. 

But that doesn’t matter now.

 Not when they have matching marks. 

Not when this is perfect. 

“Can’t believe you thought this beautiful mark was a cat scratch,” he murmured against her nape, “I can still taste the antibiotic ointment on it, Sweetheart, you should really investigate harder when you think something’s harmed you.” 

Y/N wiggled beneath him, “I’m telling Ferret that you think his cat scratches aren’t beautiful,” she threatened, “I’ll tell him you called him stinky too.” 

Harry gasped, “Don’t you dare,” he squeezed her sides, and she could hear the smile in his voice when she squealed and jumped, “I won’t have you letting Ferret believe that I abide by any of your usual Ferret slander.” He flipped her around, enough that he could see her face and they could look at each other, “I’m serious!” He exclaimed when she smiled. 

“I am too, he’s a stinky little fiend. So stinky and so fiendish that I believed he was continuously scratching me in the same spot before I believed that I got a soulmate mark.” She sighed, shaking her head, “I reckon we need to go pick up Dolly, so she can teach him a thing or two about keeping his claws in his paws. . .and I miss her.” Y/N shrugged, “It feels weird not to have her with us on such a monumental day.” 

A dimple pops onto his cheek. 

 “You’re right,” he grinned. 

                                                         .                                .                               .

Later that night, Y/N and Harry are lying in her bed watching the telly. His hand presses against the nape of her neck, and her fingers trace over his lower right hip. Ferret is tucked against Harry’s side, Dolly is stretched out over Y/N’s thighs, and Harry and Y/N are so close together they might as well be one body. 

“If I was stinky as Ferret, would you still love me?” She inquired idly, and Harry laughed quietly, his chest rumbling with it. 

“Honestly, it might make me love you more.” He replied. 

She grabs all the utensils and then carefully sits sideways on his lap. Harry shakes his head and grabs her waist, twisting her over so her legs wrap around his torso. 

“You’ll fall over,” she protests. 

“I won’t.” He spreads his legs wider to balance himself. His hands don’t move from her waist. If anything, they grip tighter. 

She froths the cream a little bit more before shifting closer, raising his chin. “Your lips.”

He pulls them between his teeth, eyes alight with excitement, and perhaps something else. She starts over his mouth, and then down his cheeks and jaw. Then his neck. He shudders at the cold cream, but lets her swirl the brush over his stubble until nicely coated. 

“Do you remember the first time we did this and I nicked your neck?”

Harry restores his lips to normal and chuckles softly. “I bled for ten minutes. You ran to get me a bandaid if I recall correctly.”

“And Thea asked how you could have cut yourself when you’ve never done so before.”

“It was fun, wasn’t it? Keeping us a secret.”

“Fun for you, maybe. I didn’t like lying to my best friend.”

“Lying?” Harry rubs her hip with his thumb. “I don’t think it was lying. Just hiding.”

“I had to tell her I wasn’t interested in anyone for, like, six months!”

“The horror,” Harry murmurs, turning his head as Annaliese flips open the razor. “Carefully, yes?”

“Yes, yes. I know.”

She starts at his sideburns, slowly dragging down. His eyes flutter shut at the contact, just briefly, before opening, staring past her shoulder. Harry never lets his stubble grow out much, so the hair are already short. She stretches the skin with one her left hand and shaves with her right. When the razor is coated, she pulls back and leans over to the sink to dip it into the already filled warm basin. Harry’s hands hold her tightly to make sure she doesn’t fall.

“Good?” she asks.

Harry nods. “So far no casualties.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Cannot be more dramatic than you.”

She uses the towel slung over his shoulder to wipe down the blade and then goes back to stretching his skin. As she gets the hang of it, he relaxes his tense shoulders and wanders his eyes over to her. 

She can see him watching her from the corner of her vision. When she glances over at him, Harry only stares back until his left eye drops in a wink.

Annaliese, despite being married to this man for several years, blushes. Harry laughs, rubbing her back as if to comfort her.

Once she gets to his mouth, he dutifully bites down on lips to hide them as she glides the razor over his mustache and down his jaw. She makes sure to get the corner of his mouth, and one one side of his face is down, she cleans the blade and leans forward to kiss his soft cheek a few times. The cream he uses smells divine. There must be some science behind how the smell drives her insane.

This, of course, Harry knows. He gives his knees a little bounce to send her bumping into him.

“You’ll fall!” she says again. 

“Won’t.”

Annaliese sighs and continues with the other side of his face. When she’s done, he tilts his head back so she can get his neck, visibly tense again as she goes over his Adam’s apple. He grabs her waist again as she washes away the froth. 

“Done,” she announces, extremely proud of herself. “Now I’ll go over it again–”

“No,” Harry says quickly, grabbing the razor from her. “I’ll do that.”

She frowns. “You said I could.”

“Yes, but I’ve changed my mind. Going against the hair is, er, too advanced. I can do it. But you can watch.”

He pats her thigh firmly and goes to stand up, taking her with him. Her feet land against the floor and he walks her backwards until her back hits the sink, trapping her there. He takes the cream and rubs it over his face once more, cleaning the blade again as well.

Annaliese stops her complaining right away as Harry looks over her head at himself in the mirror, quickly shaving his jaw and neck. He does it at such a speed, it’s so fun to watch. A smile plays on his lips because he knows exactly how she feels as she watches him. Her hands grab his shirt, mouth ajar, waiting for him to finish his neck to press her lips to his pulse point, kissing it repeatedly.

Harry laughs softly, continuing to shave over his mustache. All she can hear is the scratch of the blade against the short hair. She pulls away once he’s finished, stepping back to let him wash the rest of the lather away. She takes the towel away from his shoulder and pats his face dry.

“So handsome,” she whispers. “You are so handsome. It's so unfair. I should keep you locked up. Nobody should be allowed to look at you.”

Harry wraps his arms around her when she leans up to kiss him, urgency laced into her lips. She kisses him and kisses him until the air runs out, her back digging into the sink. She has to press her thighs together to get some relief, which Harry, as the attentive man he is, notices right away.

“If you keep kissing me like this,” he murmurs heavily against her mouth, “we’ll never make it to dinner.”

His hands slide down her sides suggestively.

“We don’t need to go to dinner,” she says.

“I made these reservations four months ago, my love.” He pulls back to hold her face, squishing her cheeks together. “We will be going to dinner.”

Annaliese attempts to pout, which earns her another heavy kiss from her husband. “Fine,” she sighs, seeking out one more kiss. “But after that, I get to have my way with you.”

She grins, reaching out and plucking the pen out of his hands. “How long do you think you’ll take on this? Will you be done by 7?” 

“Did you need me for something?”

“Yes. You know how we’ve got the women’s town hall meeting? So we kind of need some security while we’re actually having the meeting so ensure people don’t come barging in and all that.”

Harry’s eyebrows pull together. “Barge in?”

“Yeah, and all my friends are trying to convince their husbands to form a little troop and hang by the entrance to make all the weird people go away, and I thought I’d ask you.”

He leans back in his chair. “Whoa, whoa. Has it happened before? Like, the weird people hanging out by the front.”

“Yeah, I mean, women talking about having rights isn’t exactly what most men want to hear. They kind of just show up and linger. But that’s not thepoint. The point is–”

“Has that happened at the meetings you’ve gone to in the past? Like the one last week?”

Annaliese laughs fleetingly. “Yes, but it’s nothing severe. A few hurls here and there, some taunts. Really. We have thicker skin. But I think it would help us women feel a lot better if you and some of the other husbands and brothers stood by the entrance of the hall.”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek. Her hair is in neat finger waves, a pin holding her bangs back. She’s in trousers (which has been a lot to take in already), and a shirt that’s tucked into her waistband. Her boots make a loud noise against the hard floor. 

“Annaliese,” Harry says quietly after much thought, “I’m not sure I feel comfortable letting you go to this meeting now.”

Annaliese crosses her arms. “Nothing ever happens. You know the nice husbands would never let the weird men actually harm the women, no matter what they’re meeting about.”

“That doesn't mean I’m okay with some asshole yelling and mocking my wife,” Harry says incredulously. “No. I won’t allow it.”

Her eyes narrow. “You can’t stop me from going.”

This he knows. He can’t stop her from doing anything. He doesn't want to stop her. 

The meetings at town hall happen every week, sometimes every two weeks. It’s not in the main chamber of course, but a small adjacent room. Housewives and working women meet there to discuss their prospects of gaining more rights. The overarching organization is country wide, and this is a smaller division in New York. Recently, they’ve been organizing a protest. Two weeks ago, they completed their campaign of sending 2000 letters to the mayor, hand written by women about the urgency of the matter of letting women vote in community level elections.

Harry doesn't mind her attending these meetings. In fact, he thinks Annaliese’s understanding and eagerness of her fundamental rights exceed the expectations of her neighbors. Though he’s never been at any meeting, he’s positive that his outspoken and fierce wife has instilled some morale in the other women.

But despite her ability to take care of herself, he feel reluctant.

Harry sighs. “I’ll go with you then.”

She immediately smiles. “Great! So be done by 6:30 so we can catch a bus, okay?” She leans and kisses his cheek. “Wear a warm jacket!”

***

As they approach the building, Harry’s fidgeting. “What if I’m the only man standing guard? What could I even do anyways? I'm good with a rifle, not my fists."

Annaliese fixes her burgundy gloves. “Other women told me their husbands will be there too!”

When they get to the entrance, Annaliese is shivering with excitement. “Oh, I wish you could sit in with us. The things we discuss and plan – it’s all so fun!” She holds his arm all the way until they get to the right room. 

Thankfully other men are there. They nod politely at Harry. Annaliese is already fluttering into the room when Harry grabs her waist and tugs her back. “One hour, right?”

“Yes,” she says, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him quickly. 

(One of the men by the doors whistles. Harry ignores it.)

“Okay,” Harry murmurs.

“Bye!” She closes the door behind her.

He walks to the other side of the door and stands by the wall, hands tucked into his pockets. One man holds out a cigarette for him, but Harry shakes his head. “I’m good.”

It’s quiet after that. Harry makes conversation with the men, telling about his service in France (to which one of the younger men, who must be someone’s brother, salutes him, and Harry turns red with embarrassment), and speculates what they could be talking about in there.

“My wife said they’re planning to storm our workplaces as a protest next week,” one man chuckles, turning his head to blow out smoke. “I’m pretty sure she’s messing with me, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“No? Why?” Harry asks curiously.

Just then, there’s a loud roar in the room. Someone starts banging on the desk, yelling, “Order! Order!” and the man who offered Harry the cigarette chuckles and says, “That’ll be my wife.”

The chaos happens for a very long time, and when the hour is up, women begin to quietly leave as if none of that ruckus ever happened. Annaliese is bright eyed with flushed cheeks when she shows up, looping her arm through Harry’s. 

He’s very interested in the organization now. They will definitely be talking about this later at home. He’ll want to know more about the plans they have, including the protests. He’ll want to make sure she’s staying safe. Maybe he’ll buy her those cool brass knuckle things they saw once at a medieval convention downtown. That’ll work.

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close when they walk out into the cold air.

“It’s going to be great,” Annaliese whispers excitedly. “Revolutionary, even.”

“It’s all right,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “I wasn’t supposed to sleep anyways. I’ll barely get a few hours at night if I nap now.” He brings his phone back to his bed and sits down. “What’s up?”

“Um, well I just finished rehearsals.”

“Yeah? That’s good. Got out early?”

“Yes, it’s snowing pretty bad now.”

“Mm, is it?” He forces himself to get back up and take a peek out his curtains. She’s right; the snow lays on the roads, flurries all around still. “You wanna stay on the phone with me until you get home?”

“That’s kind of the thing. I’ve been at this bus stop for 15 minutes and my app keeps saying the bus is about to come, but the roads aren’t properly cleared so I don’t think it’s coming.”

Harry frowns. “You’re outside?”

“Yeah. I walked to the stop, but it’s like a ghost town here. Nobody’s out driving. The buses may have all been canceled.”

“Oh shit. Are you wearing warm clothes? Gloves and all?”

“Yup.”

“Good. Which stop are you at today? I’ll come get you.”

There’s instant relief in her voice. “Thank you.” She tells him which stop and then sighs softly. “It’s not that cold which is good. I suppose I should sit down on the bench but there’s ice on it and I already slipped while walking here. My butt still hurts.”

Harry groans as he tugs his jacket on and grabs an extra beanie. He shoves his feet into his shoes and grabs his keys. “Don’t tell me that,” he says. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Faye laughs. “I’m okay.”

“Think you can hold on for 15 minutes?”

“Yes, but Harry you have to drive safely, okay? The inner roads aren’t cleared at all.”

Harry sticks a piece of gum in his mouth. “Yeah, love, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.”

“Wanna stay on the phone with me?”

“Um, I would, but I can barely feel my fingers.”

Harry has to groan again. He’s outside now and thankfully his car isn’t looking too bad. He’ll still need to defrost it a bit. “Faye, you just told me you had gloves!”

“Whoops.”

“Okay, I’m going to hang up, but please try to get warm. Go into one of those shops nearby.”

“The only shop open near me is the chicken shop.”

“Go in there.”

“I don’t like the smell of chicken.”

“I must say that you are insanely difficult today.”

Faye giggles. “I’m not.” She must hear him turn his ignition on. “Okay, bye now. Drive safe.”

“I will.”

She hangs up. Harry has to step out of the car with his snow brush, pushing his way over to clean his windshields. He’s blasting the heat on the inside, and within ten minutes, he’s ready to go. When he gets back in his car, he’s muttering swears, trembling with the cold. “Not that cold, my ass.”

And Faye’s right. The inner roads are horrendous. He drives so below the speed limit, he may as well walk to get her. 15 minutes turn into 20 and by the time he’s pulling up to her bus stop, he’s very worried Faye may be a frozen block of ice. 

Faye wobbles her way over to the car, yanking the door open and all but throwing herself inside. She’s shivering so bad, Harry puts the car in park and reaches over the console to hug her tightly.

“For fuck’s sake, Faye,” he mutters, suppressing a shiver at her cold face pressed into his neck. “I told you to go into the shop!”

“If y-you made me wait any longer, I would have!”

“I drove as fast as I could.”

Harry turns the heat up higher and rubs her arms firmly, trying to get her tight muscles to relax. She’s wearing a winter jacket, yes, but her head is uncovered and she doesn’t even have a scarf. He pulls back to look at her, hoping there’s disappointment on his face. But Faye’s eyes just light up and then she’s lifting her head to get a kiss.

He can’t say no.

He cups her face and softly kisses her. Her lips are cold, but he can still taste the cherry chapstick as if she kept reapplying it every few minutes. She kisses him several more times, but when she places her frozen hands on his neck, he pulls away sharply.

“Faye!” He holds his neck as if wounded. “That’s so cold!”

Faye’s knees bounce. “Sorry!"

She doesn’t look sorry.

He grabs the beanie he’s brought her and throws it onto her head. Her bangs get caught on her forehead, momentarily blinding her, and she laughs, fixing the hat. Her black hair frames her cheeks. She reaches in for another kiss, but Harry stops her with a shake of his head.

“Get warm first. Or else you’ll get hypothermia and then I’ll have nobody to kiss.”

Faye says, “Wow you sound a lot like me.” She holds her trembling hands by the vents, shivering so bad, she’s compelled to make audible noises to show how cold she is, her jaw quivering. Harry starts driving the car again, and once he gets off the main street, he reaches for her hand and holds it in his lap.

“How were rehearsals?”

“Okay,” she says, shoulders shaking. “Maybe people couldn’t come in today because of the snow. I had to do, like, three roles.”

“Opening night is next month, right?”

“Yup. I got you your tickets.”

Harry kisses the back of her hand, squeezing her pale fingertips hard. She's painted her nails dark blue, he notices. “Thank you. Are you hungry?”

“Mhm.”

“Let’s get something to eat then. I don’t have anything at home. Didn’t cook today.”

“Oh. Are we going to yours?”

“Yes.”

“Can I stay over?”

Harry smiles. “Yes.”

“Is Timmy home?”

“Nope.”

“Can we play that video game again?”

Harry sends her a look. “I thought you’d want to watch a movie or something.”

“Well, if you want to. But I had a lot of fun playing that game.”

“Yes, you were so good at it.”

She was not. Harry spent the entire night trying to save her, getting himself killed, and then yelling and begging her to stay alive until he could be revived. Faye had a lot of fun it seems, though Harry wouldn’t say it was a very productive night.

But, if she wants to do it, then they will.

“I feel like I’ll be better tonight,” Faye says, leaning forward to put her face against the air vent. Her eyes flutter shut. “We’ll get to the next level.”

“You mean level two.”

She laughs.

Harry’s pulling up to the take out shop they’ve agreed on when his phone goes off. He answers it on the car’s speakerphone.

“Yeah, mate?”

“Hey,” Timothée’s voice rings out. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m with Faye picking up food.”

“Oh cool. Hey, can you pick me up from the shop, man? My car’s fucking buried.”

Harry sighs. “Yeah, that’s fine. When are you off work?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, I’ll get you.”

“Cool, and hey–”

“Yeah?”

“Can you grab me some food? I’ll pay you back.”

Harry says, “I’ll think about it.”

There’s silence on the other line until Timmy says, “Faye?”

She leans in. “Yeah?”

“Can you make sure he gets me food? I’ll Venmo you right now.”

“Will do.”

“Thanks. Bye!” And then he hangs up.

Harry rubs his eye and then unbuckles his seat belt. Faye goes to do the same, but he stops her, shaking his head. “No, you need to stay warm.”

“I’m fine!”

“Nope.” He locks the car after opening his door and gives her a meaningful look. She watches him disappear into the shop.

When he comes back, he thinks she’s looking a lot better. The red in her cheeks has returned and she’s reapplying her chapstick without shaking fingers. He leans over and kisses her, pleased that her lips aren’t frozen anymore. Unexpectedly, she holds onto his collar and kisses him harder, and she doesn’t let him go until he’s chuckling against her lips and trying to pry away.

“What’s gotten into you?” he murmurs, peppering kisses down to her jaw. She shivers, but not from the cold this time.

“Just missed you.”

“Mm.” He kisses her cheek. “I missed you too.”

It’s a lot harder to drive after that, especially because Harry’s hand rests on Faye’s thigh, and she keeps playing with his fingers, occasionally pulling his hand up to kiss his palm. 

When they get to the shop, Timmy rushes into the car and slaps a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Thank you, man. This is great. Thanks. Hey, Faye.”

“Hi.”

“You’re coming over?”

“Yup.”

“Cool. Did you get me any food?”

“Yes we did.” She hands him the aux cord when he asks for it. They listen to his odd taste in music for the ride home.

Harry takes Faye up to his room when they get home. Timmy’s nearly falling asleep so he eats his food quietly and then heads to his own room with a reminder through the walls that he’d appreciate it if Harry and Faye kept it down.

Faye says, “I don’t know why he always says that,” as she’s climbing into Harry’s lap on his bed in his shirt only. He looks up at her, eyes shining, his hands resting just below her butt. She wraps her arms around his neck. “We’ve never been that loud.”

“I mean I certainly haven’t,” Harry teases, pulling her down onto his thighs.

“Me neither!”

“Sure.”

Faye can’t come up with a response, so she kisses him, and then turns around in his lap, back pressed to his warm, strong chest. He places his hand on her thigh, holding her to him. As he’s setting up the game, she reaches over and grabs his iPad, turning it on to see his latest sketch.

It’s a very daunting looking dragon with detailed wings and scales. She zooms in to see all of it, thoroughly impressed. “This is so cool, Harry!”

“Yeah? Thanks, baby. Had a client say she wanted a big dragon piece so I’ve been brainstorming.”

“Where does she want it?”

“Around her bicep.”

“It must hurt like crazy.”

Harry hooks his chin over her shoulder and hugs her tight to him. “Yeah, but as long as they’re happy with it, right?”

She turns her head to look at him with her devastatingly pretty eyes. “Have you done any cool ones this week?”

He makes a show of thinking really hard. “Did a decent snake two days ago.”

“Ooh. Will you post the pictures?”

“Yeah. Haven’t had the time to.”

Faye cradles his face and kisses his cheek. “I’ll be the first person to like it.”

“You always are,” he murmurs, tilting his head back so she can continue her kisses down his neck.

His eyes flutter shut as Faye’s hands run over his arms, gently pressing herself back against him. He feels her breath hitch.

“Faye,” he softly admonishes. “You said you wanted to play the game.” 

“It’s still loading,” she whispers back, shaking him off to be able to turn in his arms again. The force she kisses him with throws him off. He’s pushed back, hands flying out to steady himself against his mattress. She wraps her legs around him and kisses him breathless, her fingers trailing up the sides of his head and then burying themselves into his curls. She presses herself against him again, and then she gently licks at him. Harry welcomes her tongue when he parts his lips.

She kisses him like she hasn’t been kissed properly in years – which is simply untrue because he kisses her until she forgets her name on a routined basis. Faye presses herself even closer, and when the first whine leaves her throat, Harry’s arms are around her, dragging her hips against his. She sighs as if that small contact between them has caused her such release.

The TV makes a noise to tell them the game has finished loading. Faye’s mouth shows no signs of letting him up. Harry pulls up for a second to breathe, and then kisses her again, leaning into her with his hands spread out against her back. They stay there until he’s sliding his fingers under his shirt that she wears, slowly pushing her until she’s laying on her back and Harry’s hovering over her.

“The game,” he whispers.

“Hm?” she manages, rolling her hips against his again, her eyes both innocent and flirty.

He breathes out a swear and then works on pulling the shirt off of her. Faye shivers immediately, but he kisses down her neck and collarbones to warm her up, letting her adjust when she catches onto what he wants to do. She slides back and lets him move further down her body.

“Harry–”

“Yes, baby?”

She changes her mind when Harry’s fingers hook into her underwear. “Oh. Oh, nothing.”

“Tell me,” he says, dragging them down. 

“Well, it’s only that I thought I’d do this for you. Because you, um, picked me up and I wanted to thank you.”

Harry chuckles. “You can do that after this, but right now I have a feeling you’re going to explode if I don’t touch you. Care to tell me what’s got you so worked up? I fucked you so well just two days ago.”

Faye throws a hand over her eyes and Harry doesn’t know if it’s because she’s forced to answer his question while unclothed or if it’s his words that embarrass her. Possibly both.

“It’s because you came to get me and your voice was so deep and raspy and tired and your hand on my thigh and–”

Harry situates himself between her legs and lets her knees come up besides his head. He kisses her soft inner thighs and wraps his arms around them. Faye lifts her head to glance down at him and then moans softly when he licks into her. Slowly. Teasingly.

Her black hair is fanned out around her, her breath coming hard and fast. Her lips are parted, pink and swollen from their kisses. She looks ruined already. Harry will never get used to the sight. He never wants to.

“Fuck,” she whimpers, throwing her head down. Her eyes flutter shut as Harry leans in and takes over completely, his skilled mouth ruthless against her. His fingers dig into her hips, holding her down though she desperately raises herself to meet his mouth.

“Oh, I love you,” she whispers, threading her fingers into his hair. “So much.”

He sucks and licks and laps diligently until her back is gently arching off his mattress and she has to bite down on her knuckles to keep her noises in. Seeing her like this turns Harry on, his body on alert. He feels like every cell of his body has been electrified, but despite his arousal, all he wants is for Faye to fall apart against him.

It doesn’t take her long. Her thighs tremble. She cries out and yanks his hair. The pain is distant to him. Harry lets her use his tongue to ride out her high, and when she’s done, she’s whimpering from sensitivity. Harry only pulls away when she’s whining, “Ah, okay, okay, that’s it, please. No more.”

He grins at her, gently wiping the corners of his mouth. “Always so good for me.”

Faye covers her face. Harry helps her back into her clothes and then lays beside her until she’s ready to turn to him and kiss him. He kisses her hair. “My darling girl,” he whispers. “My baby. So perfect."

She’s straddling him before five minutes are up, her hands resting on his chest, hair falling like curtains around her flushed face. The strands hit Harry’s cheek. His hands are on her thighs again, and he’s smiling lazily at her.

“I love you too,” he murmurs, running his hand up to her waist. 

Faye swallows and grinds down on his length through his sweatpants. “My turn?”

“We can take a break if you w–”

“No,” she says immediately, fingers already pulling Harry’s shirt up. Her eyes hungrily take in every tattoo she slowly reveals. Harry lifts his head to pull the shirt off.

Faye seems to have something in mind already. So Harry just lets her undress him, enjoying the kisses she trails after her hands. She has plenty of energy, preferring to stay on top of him instead of switching back over. 

She works herself over him until she’s throwing her head back and nearly sobbing with relief. Harry watches the pleasure roll over her, her hands in tight fists against his chest. 

“I love you,” she says again, taking deep breaths when it’s over. Her face is a gentle pink, her chest flushed. “I love you so bad, Harry.”

Once he’s pulled out of her, he’s grabbing her waist and pulling her down to him, wrapping his arms around her tight. “I love you,” he says, kissing all over her face, wiping the corners of her eyes. “My pretty girl, I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Spent, Faye lets him cuddle her, her face pressed against his neck. His body is warm and as comforting as always. He mutters how much he loves her several more times.

Some time later again, Faye raises her head from his chest and says in her scratchy voice, “Should we play now?”

Harry is a very structured person. Gets out of bed at a certain time, has lunch at a fixed time. Dinner as well. He considers himself a pretty laid back guy too. He’ll skip cooking some days to order takeout – or swap his laundry days with his bedsheet changing days just to switch things up. Yasmine calls him a relentless Aquarius. He's not supposed to be offended, right?

He’s always known that Yasmine is… less serious about all that. So, really, he always knew what he was getting himself into. Especially when it’s nearly 11 on a Sunday and Yasmine’s still buried in the sheets, gripping him tight to keep him from slipping out of bed despite his groaning about how he just wants to take a shower and eat something. (Probably the worst habit of Yasmine’s is skipping breakfast nearly every morning and that’s just not something he’s going to stand by.)

After graduation, Yasmine and Harry are employed at different universities, and the first few months are filled with settling into their new jobs. Their work hours are very similar, with the exception of Wednesdays where Harry has a later recitation class to teach. Regardless, Harry went into the new job with the mindset that he’d always get all his work done on time so that he and Yasmine could focus on figuring out the layout of their place still. Not to mention, Harry’s dedication to at least 2 dates a week (and going grocery shopping is NOT a date no matter how much Yasmine insists it is). 

He has a calendar in his office above his desk that tells him what days he needs to get his deadlines done so that he and Yasmine can have some time for themselves. He crosses out all the things he gets finished and circles the days he’s free.

Yasmine is the opposite. She always gets everything done, but it’s never as planned as Harry. She has the ability to sit down and bang everything out in one day … and also the ability to procrastinate until the night before.

It’s baffling to Harry. Harry’s routine is annoying to Yasmine. Really – where’s the fun in all that planning? And what if something suddenly comes up and there’s no wiggle room to fit in a doctor’s visit or something just because you’ve meticulously scheduled all your work to be back to back on weekdays.

This comes up one day when she’s working and he’s bringing her dinner to her study.

Harry pulls up a chair on the other side of her desk with his own plate. “Yasmine.”

“Mhmm.”

“If you’d gotten this done yesterday, we could have gone to the shop you wanted to visit.”

“We can go during the weekend. I can’t just align everything with your schedule to free up some time.”

Harry smiles, but it’s clearly tense. “We get home at the same time, Yas. If we can just finish all our stuff for the next day of class before, say, 5pm, we have the rest of the day to be together. Doesn’t that sound great?”

Yasmine glances up at him over her glasses. “I don’t want to do more work as soon as I get home though. I want to relax.”

From Harry’s face, she knows he’s thinking about the hour-long nap she took on their couch as soon as she came home. 

“Right, but. Now it’s almost 8 and we won’t make it to the store on time.”

“We’ve got weekends for that.”

His mouth twists into something that’s very much not a smile. “We’ve got other stuff to do over the weekend, remember? We agreed on two dates a week–”

“No. You decided that.” 

Harry stops. He tilts his head back to look at the ceiling in an attempt to calm himself down. When he looks back at her, he reaches across, shuts her laptop in a not-so-nice way and says, “What?”

Yasmine crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in her chair. “Well, you said the two dates thing. I think going to the shop counts as a date.”

“Going shopping isn’t a date. Having a romantic time out is a date.”

“Any time I get to spend with you is a date, Harry. It's about being with you, not where we go.”

“Have you maybe considered that I want to take you to restaurants and little getaways simply because I enjoy them too? That I like to see you have fun with me?”

Yasmine sighs and takes her glasses off. She rubs her eyes tiredly. “You clearly have a certain work ethic. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t. I get my work done when it gets done and I don’t want this structured, super formal scheduling of our time together. We live together, Harry. I see you all the time. Isn’t that enough?”

He doesn’t say anything for some time, but it’s clear he’s taken aback.

“It’s not enough,” he says, anger in his voice. “It’s not nearly enough. We’re dating, Yasmine. We’re not roommates.”

Yasmine blinks. “We technically are roommates.”

He runs a hand through his hair. Yasmine knows she's pushing him more than necessary. "Don't do that."

“All I’m saying is that I don’t want to schedule times with you. Won’t that be boring? Like, oh! It’s 6pm! Gotta go watch a movie with my boyfriend. It’s 7. Gotta have dinner. It’s 8, we should probably have sex before we get too tired. I’ve never had that type of schedule and I don’t want to.”

“It’s efficient.”

“I’m not having sex with you at 8pm every night just because it’s efficient. What -- are you going to break up that time too? 15 minutes for foreplay, 10 minutes for--"

He looks really mad now, his eyes alight. “That’s not what I mean! I’m saying that if we’re on the same wavelength – if we’re getting all our work done on time, then we can spend time together. That’s all! You're being way too difficult just for the sake of disagreeing with me.”

Yasmine frowns deeply. “Why don’t you adapt to my schedule then? I get all my work done too. I’ve got Saturday and Sunday’s open too – just like you.” From Harry’s expression, she exclaims, “See? It’s not about our time together. It’s about us sticking to your routine.”

Harry pinches the bridge of his nose. “We live together now. Don’t you think we should have some sort of rhythm? Be in sync?”

“That’s boring Harry!”

“It’s–”

“Don’t you dare say efficient!”

“It is!” Harry stands, putting distance between them. “This is ridiculous, Yasmine. And you have no right to say that I’m only making you adapt to my way of living.”

“Why can’t we live my way?”

“Because you don’t have a way! You get up and you just make things up! I can’t do that. I want to have breakfast together, lunch together and dinner together. I don’t want to be eating alone while you’re working just because you didn’t want to finish everything before 6. This past week alone, we’ve yet to do anything but ask about each other’s day because when I’m working, you're not, and when you’re working, I’m done with everything. You see the problem?”

Now, Yasmine can handle Harry when he gets like this. She’s put up with him before – and she’d be lying if she said she doesn’t see his point. He wants to spend time together as a couple. And he’s figured out a great way to clear up time for himself. Now he wants her to follow his regimen.

But the thing that makes Yasmine get angry is his volume. He’s got no right to yell at her.

And, okay. He’s not really yelling. He’s just annoyed and getting his point across loudly. But, it’s too late.

“Clearly we’re not going to do anything together tonight so why don’t you just let me finish my work and then we’ll talk about this later.”

Harry grabs his dinner and starts to leave her office. “No, we won’t be talking about this because by the time you’re done, I’m going to be asleep!”

“Well maybe don’t sleep so early?” she snaps back.

“Why should I change my schedule to match yours?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you!”

“You don’t have a schedule!” Harry says, visibly trying to keep his head from exploding. “You do things whenever you feel like doing them. So whenever you realize you’re more than a roommate to me, find me.”

He shuts the door behind him, leaving Yasmine alone in the room.

***

Harry can hold a grudge.

Yasmine, as fiery as she can get, has harsh anger hangovers. Once her anger at Harry is gone, she goes to find him. Sure enough, it’s late and Harry’s already in bed.

So she gets ready for bed too. And when she slides in, she waits for Harry to say something. He must still be angry because he doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t even turn to give her a kiss.

Yasmine sighs to herself. He’s the one who never likes to go to sleep angry, so she inches closer to him and rests her head on his shoulder. “Harry.”

No answer.

“Harry?”

Nothing.

He’s not wrong, but she’s not either. So she sits up and pokes his biceps hard to wake up just in case he’s already out. When he offers her nothing, she huffs and rolls her over him, looking at him sideways with half her body draped over his arm. 

“Hey.” She goes back to poking, this time on his face. “Hellooooooo.”

“What are you doing?” he grumbles, turning his face away. Yasmine finishes rolling over so she’s now on his side, looking up at him. She nearly tumbles off the side of the bed, but Harry’s quick arm on her waist prevents that.

"Yasmine," he hisses.

“Let’s talk about it.”

“I don’t want to. Go back to your side."

“Oh come on. No going to sleep angry, remember?”

“I’m not angry. I’m annoyed. We can definitely go to sleep annoyed. In fact, I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing."

“Hmm, no we can’t.” She tangles her legs with his. “Harry. Look. I understand what you’re saying. But I’m not going to apologize. I don’t think we’re that type of couple that needs to do everything together.”

“Not what I was saying but thanks for showing me you were listening."

She rolls her eyes. “I get that you want to spend time together, but don’t you think blocking out certain hours of the day is kind of ridiculous? It's so military."

"Military?"

"You get what I mean."

“Yasmine, if you had a 9 to 5 job, what time would we have to be together?”

“That’s not fair considering we don’t have 9 to 5s.”

“Say we did.”

“We’d have time after 5 and weekends.”

“Wouldn’t that be a schedule?”

“Well I don’t imagine we’d do something every day. I love you, but I do need to be away from you sometimes.”

Harry’s jaw tenses. He closes his eyes again. “Goodnight.”

“Hey wait, I didn’t mean it like that!” Yasmine laughs, throwing her arms around his neck. “I only mean that we’d get sick of each other.”

“I’d never get sick of you.”

“You’re saying that now but if we’re attached at the hip, then I’m totally sure–”

Harry’s eyes open and he grabs Yasmine’s face, tugging her close. “Never,” he says, voice deathly quiet. “I’d never get sick of you.”

She stops laughing, eyes wide. Something flutters in her chest. And…elsewhere too.

"Fine," she says, all breathily. "It would be a schedule, but only because we'd have no other option. We have flexibility as professors. We have more time, but more work load we bring home. It's not the same thing."

The hand on her waist tightens and suddenly she’s beneath him, his entire body hovering over hers. He lets go of her face, but leans down to kiss her instead. She holds him tight, her fingers tangled in his long curls that keep falling into their faces and tickling them.

“Harry,” she murmurs against his mouth. “Why are you so worried about us spending time together, hm?”

“I haven’t had a single meal with you all week, and I just remembered that you spent Sunday catching up on work, which is unfair because I forced myself to finish all my work so that I could have time for you. I don’t want to be the only one doing that.”

Yasmine sighs. “Harry, I’m not working just to avoid you.”

“I know that. And I know that us living together is enough for you. That sleeping and waking besides me is good, but it's not nearly enough for me.” Then, quietly, “I’m being petty about how you get your work done. But Yasmine, I didn't ask you to move together with me just so I could see you every day. I want a life with you." He traces her cheek gently, kissing the corner of her mouth. “And you’re right – we don’t have a 9 to 5 but is it so wrong for wanting to cut out a part of my day just for us? No talking about work. Just you and me, with a lot of this, preferably.” He kisses her again.

She's getting all mushy inside again. “It’s not wrong,” she whispers. “It’s not.” She wraps her legs around him, making him lean all her wait onto him. He holds his out against the mattress to stop himself.

“Don’t wanna hurt you.”

“No. Lay on me."

Harry does so, just for a total of five seconds until she’s gasping for air. Satisfied, she rolls out from under him and lets him lay comfortably. She straddles him then, bracing her hands on his chest. “Okay, let’s come to an agreement.”

Harry runs his hands up and down her thighs. “Let’s.”

“How about this: no talk of work after 7.”

“6.”

“Done.”

“And I will try my best to finish all my work by then also, but in the event I cannot due to circumstances overlooked in your calendar, you have to leave me to finish up so that I can come back to you as quickly as possible.”

“Done. And on weekends, nobody works. Don't bring any of it home on Friday. Not even a mere word about it.”

“Unless absolutely necessary.”

He pins her with a stern look. “I’ll be the judge of those conditions.”

“Anything else, professor?” Yasmine grins knowingly down at him, drumming her fingers against his chest.

Harry pinches her side. “And I will be a little less annoying about the whole two date thing.”

“And I’m sorry that I’ve kind of neglected you all week.”

“Thank you.”

Yasmine blinks expectantly at him.

He says, “Oh, are you waiting for an apology from me?”

“That would be nice.”

“Is that right?” 

She feels a thrill rush up her spine. “I’d appreciate it.”

“Yeah? Would you, baby? Good to know.”

“Or you can make it up to me in a different way.”

He shrugs. “Sorry. It’s almost 10. I’m strictly a no-love-making-past-eight-pm kinda guy.”

Yasmine sighs. “What a shame. And to think I went through all this effort coming to bed without a bra or underwear on in hopes I’d get to–”

Harry immediately stands and rounds the table to get to her. “Hey.” He sits beside her, cradling her head. “Yasmine. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She cries softly as Harry pulls her into an embrace. Despite her moodiness and frustration, it’s rare to actually see her cry. And if she does end up crying it’s out of pain. That is something Harry can handle – it’s fixable. This? This is still new territory.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, kissing her hair. “Whatever it is. We’ll do something about it.”

When she finally starts mumbling what’s bothering her, it takes him a while to piece everything together. He understands that she’s upset at herself for canceling a dinner with her friends and that it’s not the first time. And because she’s done it so many times, she thinks her friend hates her. It’s also that friend’s birthday, which makes it all the worse.

He holds her tighter, bringing his chair so close, she’s practically in his lap. “It’s not your fault,” he murmurs, resting his cheek on her head. “Oh, Yasmine. You can’t control that.”

“It’s just that she always reschedules the dinner for a weekday. If she did it on a weekend, I’d have enough time to feel better between therapy and all, but first she chose a Wednesday.” Yasmine suddenly raises her head. Harry’s heart breaks at the sight of her red eyes. “Wednesday! I need Wednesday to relax! I already hate going to work Wednesday morning, you know?”

“Yes, baby, I know,” Harry murmurs. He runs the heels of his palms over her eyes. She sniffles. "Take a breath, please."

“And then she picked Tuesday. Which is when I go to therapy.”

“Yes.”

“And then last Friday but…” she trails off.

“You went out with me that night,” he recalls.

“And she probably thinks I hate her. And this is how I lost all my other friends. I never saw them. And all my excuses were so stupid and I didn’t want to tell them what was really happening because then people treat me differently and you know I hate when people do that.”

“I know.” He cups her face, tilting it upwards. He presses a few kisses to her cheek. “But, Yasmine, like I said, this isn’t something you can control.”

“I can control it if I take like 5 Advils before I go out.”

“Which I don’t want you to do.”

“I don’t want to either but now it’s been three weeks since her birthday and I haven’t seen her and I’ve only given her excuses, and–”

Harry shakes his head. “That’s okay. You come first.”

“It’s her birthday!” Yasmine argues, tears spilling down her face again. Harry never sees her like this. It’s so difficult to look at her face. “She comes first!”

“I understand it’s her birthday,” he soothes. “But I’m also sure she wouldn’t like it if you had to leave the dinner early because you weren’t feeling well. Wouldn’t it be worse that way?”

Yasmine’s brown eyes remain glossy and utterly devastated. Her eyelashes stick to each other. “If she reschedules, Harry, I don’t think she’ll invite me.”

“Then that’s completely on her.”

She doesn't say anything, letting Harry pull her back into his chest. She wraps her arms around him and cries softly into his shoulder, Harry’s hand rubbing her back gently. 

“I hate it so much,” she says between breaths. “I hate this. I hate it all. I want to be normal and have friends again. I don't want to hurt anymore."

Harry’s jaw tightens and he closes his eyes, fearing they’ll begin to tear up as well. Her voice breaks, long hair unraveling from her usual bun, sticking to her face. He holds her tight as if he’s the glue keeping her together from breaking. She trembles in his arms, and Harry decides that he hates this feeling the most in the world. It’s as if he’s being torn apart from the inside, a brief twinge in his chest.

“Yasmine,” he whispers, pushing her hair off her face. “It won’t always be like this.” He forces himself to look down at her wet face. “Just this morning you were telling me about how much stronger you feel. How usually you get tired by 4, but recently you’ve been making it until 6. That’s progress.”

“I can’t wait for it to get better,” she says, a desperate whimper emerging from her throat. “It’s been years. I can’t take more years of this. Harry. Before you…before you it was so–” She balls her hands into fists. “I can’t do that again.”

“You can,” Harry says. He wipes her face again, his entire palm drenches with the residue. “And when you look back, you’ll see how brave you were. How strong. I tell you all the time, don’t I? You are the strongest woman I’ve ever met.” He gives her a small shake. “I can only dream of being half as strong as you.”

To his horror, Yasmine only cries harder, hiding her face again. He swears under his breath and holds her wrists, trying to see her face again.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–! Fuck!” He pulls her back into a hug. “I’m the worst at this. I’m sorry!”

Yasmine only shakes her head, throwing her arms around his shoulders. “I love you,” she says into his neck. “And I hate you for that.”

“For what?” He clutches her so tight, she squeaks. “For loving you so bad? Unfortunately I can’t regret that. You’ll have to suffer for it, it seems.”

“For making me cry again!”

“I was trying to comfort you!”

“You did!” She sniffles, taking several deep breaths to calm herself down. Harry could stay here for days, just holding her – minus the crying of course. He could do the rest of his life without seeing a single tear shed by his baby. He wants her to laugh at him. He’ll happily take her brooding over this. He’ll even take her anger. Anything over this.

So to fix it, Harry does the only thing he knows that will make her stop crying. He dramatically clears his throat. “I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new–”

Yasmine groans, melting into his chest. “Please no.”

Their dinner has gone cold. Harry reaches for her plate, about to tell her that he’ll go reheat it for her.

Her phone on the table suddenly begins to ring. Slowly, she unwinds herself from around Harry and reaches for her phone. She returns back to him, crawling into his lap. He loves her weight on him.

“It’s her,” she whispers, panic in her eyes. “Should I pick up?”

“Yes.” Harry tucks her hair behind her ear. “Let’s hear her out.”

Yasmine nods several times, swallowing. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” She answers it, putting it on speaker. “Hi.”

Yasmine’s friend says, “Hi Yas! Good news. I was able to reschedule the dinner plans without being charged so how’s Friday for you? I thought before I made the new reservation that I should ask you.”

Yasmine glances up at Harry. “This Friday?”

“Yup!”

Harry smiles encouragingly and nods. He takes her hand and kisses her palm.

“Give me one second, I’m going to check my schedule.” She scrambles to put the phone on hold. Harry raises his eyebrows mid kiss.

“We made a plan to go out with your family on Friday,” Yasmine whispers, worrying her lower lip. “I can’t go to this dinner. I’d rather–”

“Baby,” Harry laughs softly, holding her chin. “Tell the bloody woman you’ll come.”

“But I promised you–”

“It doesn’t matter. I see you every day and I can’t take you away from your friends.” He runs his knuckles over her cheek. “Go on. It’s okay.”

“Will you be upset with me?”

“Not even in the slightest.”

“Will your parents?”

“No, baby, they’ll be fine.”

She swallows. Then nods. Takes a few breaths. “Hi,” she says when she unmutes the call, “that sounds great. I promise I’ll be there.”

“Great!” her friend chirps. “And hey. You can talk to me about anything, you know?”

Tears form in Yasmine’s eyes again. She pulls the phone away from her to sniffle. “Yeah.”

“I’m just assuming you’re going through something, and I want you to know that even if I can’t help you, I’ll always listen.”

Yasmine’s lower lip begins to wobble again. “Thank you.”

Harry leans in and kisses the corner of her mouth. She then softly says goodbye and ends the call. She shifts her head down and kisses Harry properly. His lips are warm, his kiss the sweetest it can be, and his arms are around her, making her the safest person in the world.

“Thank you,” she whispers against his mouth. The tears slide down her cheeks. “Thank you so much.”