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

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

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

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

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

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

“Exactly.  Now, up!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Georgie’s eyebrows raised high.

“Not that she’s bitter.”

Y/N glared.

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

Georgie waited for the next shoe to fall.

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, I-”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course.”

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

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

Oh, that was it.

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When?”

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

There were days when Y/N really hated summer.  The effusion of flowers, running under bowers heavy with lemons, lying out in the sway of the tides under a full moon -- none of it felt worth it as she, her mother, and Georgie ran about The Muse.  It was the last day before the summer travel season truly began, and their little hotel was battening down the hatches for their first batch of tourists.

“Y/N, have you put the linens out on the line?  And Georgie, has Nikolas called about bringing in the week’s groceries yet?  I told you both that our first guest comes in at midnight tonight, and I’d like to have a cheese plate out to greet him!”

Because she was a good daughter, Y/N steadfastly resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  This was the third time Dee had reminded of her of the sheets that were quite visibly fluttering in the wind -- Y/N had even remembered the duvet and pillow covers that her mother always forgot.  Whoever this mystery guest was (listed only in the guestbook as “Rick Steves”), he had her mother in quite the tizzy.

“Yes mom.  And Georgie’s already told you that Nik was on the way, given that they never seem to manage two minutes without texting each other.”

To her right, two wide, brown doe eyes glared her down underneath a mop of riotous dark curls.

“He is my friend,” Georgie sniffed, flopping her mane of hair over her shoulder as she went to grab the stock book out of the front office.  Even Dee snorted at that one.

“Good friend, dear.  You oughta make a move.”

Beneath her sun burnished olive skin, Georgie turned bright red.  Y/N marveled at how perfectly in sync it was to the buzz of her phone.

“The food has come in from the mainland.  And just for that, Y/N, you can get it.”

“I’ll make sure to bring Nik with me,” Y/N called as she skipped towards the stairway down to the docks.

The stairway was tied without about 10 other places on the island for Y/N’s favorite view.  It had a sweeping panorama of the Aegean Sea as you clattered down the worn stone that made the staircase, and was lined on one side by a solemn row of cypress trees that she always rubbed for good luck (and for perfume).  As you got further down the winding cliffside, The Muse disappeared from view, and Y/N personally thought the surprise of coming up to B&B really added to value.  It was seldom enjoyed, as most guests either preferred or required the car ride up to their little villa, but that just meant it was Y/N’s secret in plain sight.  Sometimes she could sit halfway down, out of sight of both the hotel and the docks, and imagine what life was like beyond the Aegean, leagues past the limits of the towns in Greece she had seen.  Others she would follow her little northward path down the other side of the hill to Calliope’s Beach and float in the shallows until her fingers pruned and her hair was fairly coated with salt.  

The stairs themselves continued on down to a path that lead to the docks, where she had to go now.  The hotel’s ‘88 Range Rover, which was 60% blue paint and another 40% rust, was waiting at the top of the docks to carry the groceries back up the winding hill.  Y/N jogged down the steps, resisting the call of the beach as she went to run her errands.

Nik was tied off to the northmost piling in the docks like always, already busy stacking the hotel’s orders onto the dock beside him.  Crates of fresh veggies, pungent cheeses, and the first few days of seafood had made their way onto the wooden boards, and no doubt the specifically requested order of teas was the last to come.  Y/N’s eyebrows had about hit her hairline when she’d seen the list of some regional, some clearly British brews that had been added in almost hilarious quantity to their usual roster.  

“Got a bit of an herbalist coming, hm?” Nik asked as he hefted the last chest out onto the docks.  Y/N nodded slowly.

“Apparently.  D’you know Georgie told me that whoever requested these also called ahead to see if we’d allow his candles?”

Nik laughed, though Y/N knew for a fact that it was information Georgie had given him the week before when the call came in.  Ever the good sport.

“Well, at least you know he’ll be careful enough not to burn the Muse down.  Probably, anyway.  Do you know anything else about whoever requested all of this?”  Y/N couldn’t help but sigh, because she didn’t, and it was bugging her.  Usually her mother was something of an open book regarding who would be coming in to see them, but she was abnormally tight lipped regarding this specific guest.  Wouldn’t even give vague details, like age or nationality, or if Mr. Steves was even a Mr. at all.  

“Not a thing Nik,” she responded over the clunk of their crates being loaded into the trunk.  “I can hardly wait for tonight.”

---

Kalokairi, Harry thought, had better be bloody beautiful for all the hassle it was to get out to it.  He had only just finished the rounds for his latest book (Couch Surfing In Copenhagen: Scandinavia for Twenty Somethings), finalizing the last leg of his work in the bustle that was New York, and he was already well drained by the time he’d hit JFK.  He was just beginning hour three of his car ride from Athens to Lirios, one that had begun immediately after a ten hour nonstop flight, and he was well and truly out of energy.  He still had a half hour ferry to go to get to the island itself after they’d made it to the docks.  There was a headache growing behind his eyes, though whether it was from the extended travel, the amount of time he’d been awake, or the itch he had for one of the cigarettes his driver had been periodically smoking, he wasn’t sure.

Safe to say his relaxing, restorative three month break was starting as anything but.  As he watched the Greek highway roll by, he couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholy.

There was a time in his life when no matter how jetlagged he was, no matter how many hours he spent in transit, the thrill of travel kept him feeling fresh.  There was an image he had in his mind then, of a seed on the wind, ready to plant himself wherever the breeze helped him land.  That was how his writing career had started.  He had been eighteen, going on small trips from England to the continent and writing little blogs about it to get some practice in for his dream magnum opus.  It had felt like a dream when one of the UK’s biggest publishers had approached him about a travel novel.  One novel had turned into two had turned into five, and now at the ripe old age of twenty four, Harry had officially had his midlife crisis.

Where had his plans gone for a more serious novel?  Alright-- well.  He would defend his travel work to the grave, so he didn’t want the impression going about that he was ashamed of it, because he never would be.  He knew he’d helped people, whether it was to find where to go or to enjoy a long plane ride of their own.  But since fourteen he’d envisioned a proper zeitgeist novel; funny but honest, reflective but not obvious, the kind of thing that could represent a generation.  Crashing in Cairo: An Englishman’s Journey Through North Africa certainly wasn’t his most contemplative work.  And besides that, he wondered what travel meant to him anymore besides a few months work and a paycheck.  There was a love he’d had once, and he felt an ache in his chest knowing that that was gone.

All of this he had explained through heaving, shuddery breaths on a long distance connection to Gem, who had responded with a deep sigh.

“Frankly, H, I think you need a sabbatical,” she’d said knowingly.  “Just get away from it all, take a break.  Stay somewhere for longer than a month.”  Harry had laughed somewhat hysterically.

“Getting away from it all’s my job, Gem.  The usual solutions are a bit out of my grasp.”

“I mean it Harry.  Find a tiny island somewhere and just take time for yourself.  No travel writing, no deadlines, no talking to your agent about where in the world they’re dropping you off next.”

“I can’t even look at a map of the world without getting nauseous,” he moaned and hey, that may have been an exaggeration, but Harry was feeling awfully grim.

“Then you’ll take my recommendation with no questions.  There’s this little place called Kalokairi.  It’s a Greek island in the Aegean, that’s practically made of sun, blue water, and good food.  I stayed there with my friends a year or two ago, and they have the most wonderful little hotel there that I know you’ll love.  How does three months this summer sound?”

A rock in the middle of the ocean had sounded pretty damn good, and so here he was hurtling down the road to what was likely little more than a dinghy out to an island he hadn’t even googled.

Truly, what had his life become?  Curling his shaking fingers into his palm, he leaned forward to his driver.

“Say, could I bother you for a cigarette?”

---

Y/N was fairly wrecked by the time she made it to her bed in the room above the registration desk.  As her mother aged she did more heavy lifting, and she felt as though she had run a marathon or two.  At the very least Dee had taken pity and sent her up for bed instead of asking her to wait for the mysterious Mr. Steves.

She’d heard nothing of him before his check in, and the radio silence had her absolutely itching to see what all the fuss was about.  Though she never told her mother it, the guests were her way of living vicariously outside of their microcosm of the world.  Being denied any information about their international man (or woman) of mystery had her head spinning with scenarios.  Maybe it was some high up government boss bitch here on a rest and recovery, someone who’d have stories of Moscow and Sao Paulo and Jakarta.  Could be that it was some creaky old man who’d lived in Berlin during the Cold War and had stories about sneaking across the wall and the underground scene.  Maybe (and this was quite the hopeful maybe) it was someone her age who’d gotten to see just a bit of the world, someone who would want to talk to her and be a new friend (the first in twenty years).  Or even more.

That was why, though it was just about midnight and creeping ever closer to her nineteenth hour of being awake this day, she was huddled close to her window and sipping from one of the teas she was allowed to have.  She’d heard the ferry come in (the ancient catamaran was something of a screamer after a long day of travel), and had forced herself upright to wait for her mother to return with their first of the season.

Across the dimly lit courtyard, she saw the gate into the villa’s main environs swing open.  There was her mother, the unmistakable silhouette of her hair and sprinkle of her laugh indicative even from a ways away.  Next to her, was what looked like a man, and probably a young one.  He dwarfed her mother, all willowy limbs and long frame, and she could make out some duck fluff soft curls.  He was carrying quite a few bags and her mother had a few more.  This was no doubt the three month stay.  Though she couldn’t make out much of him, there was something about the line of his shoulders and his skinny little ankles that made her hope he might be rather cute.

“Jus’ a bit tired is all.  Last year or two have been rather long, I s’pose.”  His voice was rich and low, and his accent was easily pegged as British, though she hardly knew which region.  It made something curl in her stomach.  Her curiosity was well and truly piqued.

“Well, we hope you’ll be able to relax here.  I’m excited for you to see the island in the morning.  I remember the first time I saw it-- it was dawn then, and it just about took my breath away.  And my daughter will be around with your breakfast for whenever you list it.  You have us at your disposal, given you’re our first arrival.”

“Styles.  And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company this fine morning?” Y/N sighed, not faltering in step.  She’d gotten up late, only managed to get halfway ready, and she didn’t much feel like lingering in front of campus in her “I’m only barely trying” outfit.

“Can’t I have a chat with my favorite girl fo’ no particular reason?” Harry purred, throwing one long arm around her shoulders and pulling her to a stop in front circle.  He was wearing a royal blue tee shirt over black jeans with those stupid boots that made him even taller than he already was, hair tousled just so and draped lovingly over an ear, long fingers glittering under the weight of his ever present jewelry.  Across the grass, a boy was so caught up in staring that he didn’t notice the frisbee headed his way until it made contact with his temple.  There were at least two girls that Y/N recognized glaring at her fixedly.

“No,” she said, summoning all of her patience and resuming her walk.  “But you can cut the cutesy shit and tell me what you want.  I have class in ten minutes, didn’t have time to get coffee, and don’t have the tether to deal with you right now.”

“I’ve got fifty dollars for a bottle of Johnnie, black label, and no time to go buy myself b‘fore tonigh’.  Ginny told me yer goin’ to the J&J, n’ I know she’s draggin’ yeh to this little shindig,” he said.  The fifty dollar bill that fluttered in the wind seemed to mock Y/N as she looked from it to his face and back again.  Harry was pouting a bit, but his eyes were teasing.  She wanted to poke them out.

“Fine,” she said, plucking the money from his hand.  “Consider this a debt.”

“I gave you the money!”

“And I’m giving you the legwork.  You owe me one, Styles.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m dangerously close to being late for Semantics.”

One would have thought that walking away would be enough, but when dealing with a gnat with legs the approximate length of the Eiffel Tower, it never was.

“Would y’accept sexual favors?  Given that yeh haven’t gotten any in a hot minute, I mean.”

“I told Ginny that in confidence!” Y/N snapped, stopping fully to glare at Harry as her face turned a hot and angry pink.

“And she didn’t tell me at all, that’s the magic of it.”

“God, I’m so considering pocketing this fifty and watching you try to get drunk off of frat beer.  You really, really owe me now,” Y/N answered.  Harry pulled a face at her back as she turned and stalked away to class.

That night saw Y/N at the latest campus bash- this time a kegger at Phi Kappa Tau to celebrate some minor holiday.  The beer was warm, the freshman were dressed to the nines, and Y/N was laden down with Harry’s Johnnie and her own booze.  It definitely wasn’t a night she was ready for.  In fact she was only here because Ginny, her enabler/best friend/roommate, had determined that “Y/N, you study too much!  Steve invited us, both of us, and besides, you know you want another chance to flirt with Harry!” which- okay, no.  First of all, her major was challenging, alright, and the amount she studied was in perfect proportion.  Secondly, Steve would have invited the Dean of Students if it meant he had a shot at Ginny (who wasn’t even single anyway and had never acted otherwise).   And the Harry comment?  Well, Y/N could barely justify that with a response.  Whatever it was that she and Harry did-- and she was certain that psychologists had any number of names for it-- that was not flirting.  But anyhow, Y/N was there in black jeans and a cute enough top, forced into her most comfortable heels because Ginny wouldn’t have anything else.

“Y/N, doll, I can hear you blaming me for your being here all the way across the room,” Ginny chirped, throwing her arms around Y/N’s neck. “You know what that means?”

“It means you’re gonna make me drink.”

“That’s right babes! Get boozin’,” she cheered.  From somewhere, using the kind of party magic that the campus had become used to associating with her, Ginny had produced jello shots, which she forced towards Y/N’s hands.  In shades of blue and red, (was it only Labor Day?) they wiggled ominously.  Y/N sighed, hefted her bag into an easier position, and sucked down one, then the other.

“Only you could keep tha’ sour face in the middle of a party,” said a low voice from her left.  Her eyes rolled as she swallowed a mouthful of blue, sugary booze.  There was Harry, wearing the same jeans and boots but changed on top into a button down likely stolen out of Minnie Mouse’s closet.  He looked stupidly, unfairly good for such a ridiculous pattern.

“Only you could forget that I have your alcohol,” Y/N answered, turning to face him fully with a pleased smirk.  There was the ghost of a smug expression playing on his face, but she could see the cogs turning in his head as his eyes caught on the whiskey peeking out of her purse.  In an instant the charm was on, beaming as hot as though Y/N was standing next to a bonfire.

“Gorgeous.  Doll.  Flower.  Have I told you how delicious you look in that outfit?” he purred, settling arm over her head and curling in towards her.  Y/N threw him a glittering grin, already feeling the warm hum of a beer and the shots curling up through her veins.

“Mmmm, not lately but please, tell me more.”

Harry pulled a face, but her bag was behind her back and he knew from experience that reaching around her sans permission would result in pain on his end.

“Every man in this room is starin’ at those legs of yours in those tight jeans, babe.  I’ve heard at least three people tryna figure out how to chat you up.”  His voice was husky and soft as he leaned in to murmur in Y/N’s ear, and she couldn’t help the heat that flared low in her stomach as she looked up through her eyelashes into jade eyes.  If it wasn’t for the insistent press of the bottle of Johnnie in her back she’d lean in, close the distance, act on all the want that that look inspired in her.  But it was for whiskey, and they hated each other as often as they were friends.

“Well now you’re speakin’ to my ego, baby.”

Another cocky smile thrown his way, and Y/N could pretend for a minute that he paused, that his eyes lingered slow and sweet on her lips, but then she was pulling the whiskey from behind her back and he was throwing himself into the pulsing crowd without so much as a thank you.  She blinked once after him, face falling into a small, unconscious frown.  God, but she needed more alcohol.  Y/N wasn’t into him, she wasn’t.  He was awful, swinging from moody and angry to charming and sweet in seconds, always getting her hoping and then throwing her down.  It seemed he’d hated her from the word go, and she tried to only give as good as she got, but sometimes he could be so honestly, truly mean.  But when Y/N hoped, boy did she hope.  When she was what he was focusing his attention on, even when it was nasty and teasing and cruel, she felt like the only person in the world.  Somehow, there was always a part of her that thought-- well.  It hardly mattered.

“You know if you two wanted to fuck, may I suggest some place less public?” Ginny laughed, but the look Y/N gave her had her thinking twice.  “More jello shots, got it.”

Ginny pulled her through the hallway, grimacing slightly as her shoes stuck to the alcohol soaked wood, towards the blindingly bright kitchen.  Inside of it was Todd, floppy black hair falling into his eyes as he held court with some of his frat brothers, arm braced next to a tray of booze.

“That’s a Harry face,” he sighed, eyes scanning Y/N’s raised eyebrows and defensive stance.  “Take the red ones, they’re higher alcohol content, and I’ll tell the DJ to make it sexier.”

It was easy to forget when she was sober just how much booze made Y/N dance.  And not a boxstep, oh no- alcohol, vodka especially, got her down and dirty, jeans lovingly following every move as she got low, thrumming music dancing up her spine and through the swing of her hips.  The eyes that she could feel on herself were almost as intoxicating as the ethanol, a comparison Ginny had made once that both could vibe with in the swirl of colored lights that house parties provided.  Ginny and Y/N were dynamos together with just a little bit of liquid courage, unstoppable force meets immovable object, courting the attentions of a wash of partygoers with a tag team act of twisting bodies.  Vodka and a dancefloor were all they came to these parties for.

It was an hour later, under the thrum of a particularly good bassline, that Y/N began to scan the crowd.  The persistent fire of a sea of eyes had finally forced her to take a look, only to catch the bright glare of whiskey fueled green.  Harry was staring at her, the bastard, gaze positively molten as he looked low over the rim of his cup, but eye contact was enough to make him look away coolly, as though she’d just happened to be in his line of sight.  The encounter alone made fierce, itching fire lick up under her skin, made her want to shake him and strangle him and ride him ‘til he broke.  

“Jesus, wish Clark looked at me like that,” Ginny whispered in her roommate’s ear, throwing her fiery head back to rest in the dip of Y/N’s shoulder.  All she could give in response was a slow sway of her hips, all for the benefit of her voyeur, and she watched in selfish satisfaction as his eyes swung back, tracked the movement before hers slid closed once more.  Ginny was as excitable drunk as she was sober, whirling at top speed through an evening, but Y/N always felt slower and warmer, more attuned to the things around her and the way she moved.

“You know Gin, given how he treats me, I’ll trade you for Clark.”

“You’re such a cynic, Y/N.  Haven’t you heard of pigtail pulling?” she giggled, turning about in a hurricane of sheet straight hair.  This was an argument they’d both had too many times to count.  Ginny was dating one of Harry’s friends- a nice boy named Clark who lived in the same building as Harry, Todd, and a few of their other friends, which Y/N and Ginny called Cellblock Mate- and for some reason this made her feel that she had insider information as to how Harry felt about Y/N.  Y/N, for her part, found this argument patently ridiculous.  Ginny knew this, but she couldn’t help being convinced that if Harry and Y/N just ended up together the whole thing would be horribly romantic.

“Haven’t you heard of people just not liking each other?” Y/N shot back as Ginny pulled her hips forward to sway in sync to the beat.  Across her shoulder, Y/N once again saw the glint of bright green eyes.  He was talking to a girl that Y/N remembered being nice enough, but his eyes were on her, pinning her down completely but saying nothing besides.  It made her hot in ways she couldn’t even begin to explain.  When the girl he was talking to leaned in to kiss him, once, hot and insistent and with a bit too much tongue, they didn’t move, didn’t even twitch away. It was all Y/N could do to suck in a breath and spin Ginny so that she didn’t have to face him any longer.  “Let’s just dance.”

The rest of the weekend was spent bouncing back from a truly spectacular hangover, the kind that wiggly blue alcoholic treats in inadvisable quantities engendered, and by Monday Y/N could just about stand sunlight again.  It was a good thing too, because the day dawned harsh in the bright autumn sunlight on her ten A.M., the one she shared with the menace.  The course was Introduction to Classical Studies, a course that in the past had been a bird.  Unfortunately, Professor Morrow was not much of a bird sort of professor, and for the vast majority of the class they were suffering for it.  Y/N had taken it out of general interest, something to cover a breadth requirement, and she’d always been a hard worker.  Harry was that jerk who breezed through the toughest of classes without a hair ever falling out of place, and while he whined to Y/N often about helping him with the subject matter, his grades never showed any need of aid.

“Miss Y/L/N, you’re looking fresh as a daisy this morning,” her professor offered as greeting.  She tended to show up early (and besides had sniffed Morrow out for the slave driver he would be the second she’d stepped through the door) and so she had come to know him as comfortably as a professional relationship would allow.

“You know me Professor Morrow, as soon as I see alcohol I consider how it would affect my Classics course.”

“Yes, and the amount of times you’ve come into our Thursday class with your eyes barely open certainly reflects that.”

Harry walked in at the comment, rolling his eyes at Y/N’s answering laughter.  He had clearly gone out a second time if the purple bags under his eyes were anything to go by.

“Morning Curly-Q,” she chirped as he threw himself into the chair beside her.  Classics always got Y/N in a good mood, something about the class she enjoyed, but the same couldn’t’ be said for Harry.  He liked Morrow well enough, but the material was denser than lead and he didn’t have the affinity for details that she did.  If Y/N had been paying more attention, hadn’t been coming off of a joke, she probably would have seen his sour mood coming.

“Do yeh think we could cut the Snow White act this mornin’?” he hissed.  Y/N clenched her jaw and turned to her bag, pulling out her sticker covered laptop.  So this was how the morning would go.  “Aw, what’s the matter pumpkin?  Me pointin’ out that y’aren’t a Disney princess got yeh poutin’?”

This was the Harry Y/N was used to, the one who found what made her upset and needled it, all biting words and nasty tone.

“If you’ve decided to be in a bad mood this morning then why don’t you keep to yourself,” she suggested coolly.  He snorted.

“‘N if it’s you that puts me in a bad mood?”

The class was beginning to trickle in, people filling the rows behind them- Y/N always sat front and center and for some reason, Harry always sat with her- and she heard distinctly a boy suck in a breath.  Obviously he found that to be a good comeback.   Well, if she was going to keep herself from committing homicide she thought, she might as well focus on refreshing herself on the readings.

In fact, the title in Greek can mean indifferently ‘constitution’, ‘state’, or ‘society’....

“Ah, ‘n now she’s ignorin’ me.  Tell me Y/N, how do all the boys resist yeh with all yer nonexistent charms?”

…only coming later to bear the narrower meaning of a particular kind of constitution, the meaning it now bears in the English transliteration.

“Yeh deaf, or jus’ ugly?”

Y/N’s head snapped up, fist clenching on the keyboard of her laptop hard enough to make the screen skip through tabs.  The students who weren’t used to Harry and Y/N’s particular song and dance were staring unashamedly.  All she wanted was a peaceful Monday morning.

“What about you, hm?  I told you to fuck off if you can’t keep your shitty attitude to your shitty self.  Veux-tu que je le dis en francais?”

This, in particular, got him riled up.  She had always been better in French, and whenever she spoke it a hot, patchy blush would inevitably crawl up his neck.  His face twisted into an irritated frown, and his mouth flapped up and down for a second before he managed a blustery “shut up,” and turned to face the board.  He was sulking, no doubt, in a truly spectacular shade of pink, and Y/N thought if he even tried speaking to her again she would tear him apart.  She could still feel the eyes of those who didn’t know them, waiting hopefully for a second bout of drama, and had half a mind to turn around and rip into them, too.  It was probably in the interest of everybody that class started then.

“I was thinking of the one centering around justice,” she said warily.  She might wanna kill him half the time, but when they weren’t at each other’s throats he was a pretty good study partner, and Plato was not a joke.  “Figured that I could expand on the definition by taking the classical ambiguity of it.”

“Tha’s not a bad idea.”

“Yeah.  Do me a solid and don’t steal it, will ya?”

Harry laughed as Y/N raised an eyebrow in a perfect arch.  A girl down the hall fumbled her books.  

“Now, now, didn’t say it was good, did I?” he quipped, tone remaining light.  Y/N could see this for what it was, the peace offering that followed every spat and kept them on careful even ground, but she was ready to accept it.  Their relationship had been like this for three years now, and she had learned how to prolong the amiable Harry that came between fights, and how much she preferred him.

“Fine then Plutarch, what’re you doing?”

“The use of fantastical arguments in philosophical debate.”

“Dense,” she said, surprised.  They only had about three thousand words, and he was certainly taking quite the bite.  It was a gentle reminder of how much was hiding in that thick skull of his.

“Behind this pretty face is quite th’ mind, Y/L/N,” Harry sighed dramatically, pushing the door open for them both.

“It’s behind a face anyway.”

“See I could get mad at tha’ comment, but because I’m a kind and gentle soul, I will instead do as Clark asked and pass along the message that everyon’s stoppin’ in Fleming and then settin’ up in Old Quad for lunch.”

Definitely offering the proverbial olive branch then.  Often Harry would skip letting her know when these plans would happen (and Ginny always forgot) and she’d make it halfway back to her apartment before she knew that her friends had snagged a coveted slice of lawn.  In return, Y/N offered him a careful smile and a thanks.  Harry quirked a corner of his mouth back, opened it to say something, but was interrupted before he could.

“Y/N!”

Turning about, she saw black hair, blue eyes, an unassuming smile.  It was Mitchell, from her Human Skeletal Biology course.  He was sweet, so sweet, but nice and naive had never much been her thing and as many times as she’d tried to let him down gently, he just kept coming back.

“Mitchell, hey,” she said, voice kind and decidedly lukewarm, turning back towards Fleming and a now farther ahead Harry as the new addition came to her pace.

“Hey!  I know you said you were busy last Thursday with schoolwork and all, but I thought new week, new schedule, right?”

Y/N bit her lower lip hard, frustration sparking in her gut.  No matter what she tried he wouldn’t take the hint, and she was inching ever closer to the cruelty of brutal honesty.  There were days where she just wanted to say yes, fine, let’s go!  But she knew how uncomfortable she would be saying yes, had been down that road before often enough to tell.  Sometimes people just weren’t compatible, and two conversations with this guy had told her that he didn’t have enough pushback to keep her interested.

“Listen, I-”

“”Oo’s this then?”

Y/N looked up at Harry, caught off guard by his sudden interest and the arm he’d thrown about her shoulder.  Casual physical contact wasn’t out of the question between them (they were in the same friend group after all) but the warm bicep pressing into the back of her neck was certainly more than usual.  She suppressed the urge to lean back into the touch.

“I- This is Mitchel.  We have ANT334 together,” she replied.

“Ah, Mitchell.  I remember hearin’ ‘bout this one.”

“This one?”  She could see Mitchell’s face turning, a sour expression creeping across his features as he repeated what Harry had said.

“Yeah mate, one of ‘er boys. What were yeh sayin’ though?”

Now Mitchell was positively frowning, mostly at Y/N.  “I- nevermind, actually.”  Though it was just the time for food he turned away, booking off down the hall towards the doors they had all just entered through and away from the student commons.  Y/N turned towards Harry, a confused look on her face.

“When did you ever hear me talk about him?”

“Y/L/N, yeh bitch about how he’s not gettin’ the message two t’ three times per hour every time he asks yeh out,”  he said, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, but I never thought you actually listened.  Looks like I won’t have to worry about him anymore, anyhow,” she said, thinking with some measure of relief of the displeasure on Mitchell’s face.

“And we won’ have t’ listen t’yeh anymore. Everyone wins!  Now hurry up ‘n get yer food, I wanna get a spot in th’ shade before Todd sprawls out and declares it all as his.”

Instead of getting annoyed, Y/N picked up a sandwich and some juice and paid in an example of decision making in record time.  Harry was right, Todd was an absolute slut for getting out of the sun, and she wasn’t much for the heat that seemed to ramp up as summer folded into early fall.  She and Harry both got irritable in the heat, so shade was probably the best idea.  Harry seemed pleased to have her agreeing, and they walked out to their friends in a warm and unexpected peace.

Old Quad was beautiful.  Lush, bright green grass (and props to the grounds crew for that, because it was pretty well trafficked) boxed in by the big, old founding buildings of their school, all dark stones and gothic arches.  The corners left spaces to get in and out but it felt like a universe inside the universe of the school, filled with cool breezes and big trees and the noises of college students taking a breath between classes.  The ever present crowd of students fanned out across the lawn for the peak noon lunch hour, but the blindingly pale hand of Ginny waving ecstatically from under her favorite oak tree showed that their friends had grabbed prime seating.

“This way,” Y/N mumbled, grabbing Harry’s hand distractedly as people flowed around them.  Their friends liked to call Y/N the gazelle because of her careful feet and how good she was at picking through a crowd- ironic when compared to her inability to walk over flat ground but then there you were.  Harry, on the other hand, had enormous feet, both of which were left.  Last week he’d fallen on a girl and squashed her sandwich, and the starry eyes she’d given him had inflated his ego to truly unbearable proportions.

“Holding hands?  My god, maybe world peace is realistic after all,” Clark laughed as they walked up to the group, Ginny staring with raised brows at their connected hands.  Y/N rolled her eyes and plopped onto the blanket laid across the grass, leaving Harry to take his hand back.

“More like keeping him from taking out half the quad.  I’m fairly sure the lovely young lady from last week is still thinking of ways to incorporate falling into a pickup line.  If he dazzles any more that way, we’ll never have another lunch in peace,” she replied, plastic crinkling as she unwrapped her lunch.  

“Not my fault tha’ these eyes make women fall in love, darlin’,” Harry replied smugly.  Y/N maintained eye contact with him as she took a large bite of her sandwich, chewing slowly.

“Nope, still wanna strangle you.  Who does that work on again?”

Todd sighed happily.  “God, Y/N, we need to bottle whatever keeps you from falling over sideways for this twat and vaccinate the rest of the campus with it.  You know that guy I’ve been trying to get closer to in physics, the cute tall one?  Came up to me and asked for Harry’s number this morning.”

“Well-” Ginny started, but Y/N was faster.

“Oh, not Andre, really?  I liked him, too.”

“I’m gonna ignore tha’,” Harry said breezily.  “Sorry though mate, ’s shit.”

“Yeah,” Todd shrugged.  “I gave it to him though.”

Idly, Y/N wondered what Harry might do.  Clark liked to say that Harry played with his food, never settling for long with one partner and keeping them on their toes if he ever took a brief landing, and she didn’t know if she could stand watching him flirt with the guy Todd had been on about for nearly a month now.  It seemed like the whole blanket agreed, breath held as they waited for Harry to reply.  Y/N could feel Ginny’s eyes on her.

“I’ll put in a good word for yeh then.”

Y/N’s phone buzzed in her pocket, undoubtedly from Ginny based on the elbow sneaking into her side, so she pulled it out to read.

>>babe u just visibly relaxed u have it SO BAD

>i was worried abt todd u absolute psycho

Ginny rolled her eyes, about to reply, when across the way Clark decided to ask “what’s so interesting there ladies?”  Her ginger head snapped up, almost hilariously conspicuous that they were discussing someone sitting on the blanket, and which meant assuredly that Y/N would have to save it.

“Your weak dick game, actually.”

Clark squeaked out a highly offended noise as Ginny dissolved into giggles, halfheartedly trying to convince him that that probably wasn’t what they were talking about, and Y/N was so amused by the overplayed outrage that she only barely noticed the boot nudging at her thigh.  It was Harry of course, poking at her with a delicately extended foot from where he was already draped in a long line on his side.  When she looked over, he beckoned, and since she was feeling generous she scootched over so they could talk.

“There’re free coffees for the next month of Classics with yer name on ‘em,” he said as she leaned down towards him, his breath blowing the ends of her hair like a light breeze.  Y/N gave him a doubtful look.

“That so?  What’s the catch then?”

“Yer notes.  Been readin’ em over your shoulder, ‘n they’re a damn sight more coherent than mine.  Jus’ lemme see ‘em to piece together my essay, that’s all I’m askin’.”  Y/N’s eyebrows stayed up, but she’d never been one to turn down caffeine and Harry didn’t skimp on good coffee.

“Make it coffee for the whole semester and I’ll keep letting you see them, how about that?”

Harry grinned, a certain amount of relief seeping through, and nodded enthusiastically.  From there it was easy to melt into a discussion about outlines, Y/N leaning down towards him to sketch out some tweaks on his main themes, Harry pushing up on an elbow to point at the book in her lap as he suggested the lines he thought would work best.  Neither saw it, but across the quad people were staring- here a sigh over Harry’s smile, there someone missing their mouth as Y/N brushed hair out of her face with a careless grace.

“I don’t mean to break up this weird, academic ménage à trois between you two and Plato, but Duncs just texted to plan next Monday Meal,” Todd called from across the blanket.  

Monday Meal was a longstanding tradition among the friend group, masterminded and orchestrated by the fourth roommate in the cellblock, Duncan.  He was a nutrition sciences major possessed of serious doubts as to his friends ability to care for themselves, and he’d decided about halfway through their first year that if they all died of scurvy he’d feel in some way responsible.  So once a week they all got together to eat (“vegetables, Todd, a human can’t subsist on mashed potatoes alone”) and have a beer after the gauntlet of a Monday.  It was where both Todd and Hil had come out to everyone, where Ginny and Clark were locked into a closet together so they would get together already, where hookups and Potential Serious Things™ got to be brutally scrutinized for a minimum two hours.  It also required everyone to bring something, on a rotational basis after they all realized that Hil would never learn to cook if they didn’t make her bring something besides beer.  It had been cancelled for the week (Duncs was out of town for his mother’s engagement party), but next week was on.

“Y/N and I already have a stuffed cabbage planned, so tell him that,” Ginny said, pushing herself up.  “But right now, we have some grocery shopping to do.  Up you go bubs!”

She grabbed Y/N’s hand, pulling her onto her feet.  Y/N quirked a brow, resisting the urge to sigh.

“I’ll see you all later,” she said flatly, nudging a goodbye to Harry with the toe of her boot.  He tapped her ankle before Ginny had her off.

“We went grocery shopping yesterday,” Y/N sighed as soon as they were out of earshot.  “What’s actually going on?”

“When are you going to accept that you have feelings for Harry?”

Oh, but Y/N didn’t like this.  Ginny was serious, dead serious, in a way that her bubbling smile almost never gave way to.  

“Ginny, I don’t,” Y/N groaned, rubbing at her temples.  Ginny grabbed her shoulders and pushed her into one of the archways.

“Y/N, I love you.  You’re one of my best friends, and we tell each other everything, which is why when I say this please know it’s because you’re important to me.  You like him, you’re in fucking denial about it, and it’s tearing you up.”

“Wh- I’m fine!  I am fine, and I’m not in denial about anything.”

“You fought this morning.  The two of you.”

This stopped Y/N, and she frowned slightly, tilting her head to stare at Ginny.

“How the fuck did you know that?”

“He’s always nicer to you and you’re always more careful talking to him.  Because you think it’s something you do to make him mad and you want to change it.  Because you like him.”

Y/N let her head drop. Sighed.  Rubbed her face.

“So what if I do Ginny?” she finally replied, voice noticeably weary to her own ears.  “It doesn’t-- it doesn’t matter, even a little bit.  He’s him and I’m me and we don’t get on and no amount of feeling whatever I feel or parsing out why is going to change it.”

This time it was Ginny’s turn to frown, and she reached forward to put her hands on Y/N’s shoulders, pull her closer with a soft little hum into a hug.

“Oh, peaches.  I know you hate to hear me say it-- and maybe that’s you protecting yourself, you are basically a pill bug-- but I don’t think he’s mean because he doesn’t like you.  I think you make him nervous honeybun, you know how strong you are.  It scares guys, especially ones like Harry, especially with what he was like when we met.”

Y/N rubbed her face into Ginny’s shoulder, mushing her lips together instead of replying.  The soft slide that her cherry chapstick produced was enough to ground her, let her whisper a soft “maybe.”

“What did you even fight about peaches?  It can’t have been much, usually it takes you two longer.”

Y/N had to breathe unhappily through her nose at the “usually”, no matter how fair it might be.  She took a moment before responding.

“I don’t really know Gin.  I was talking to the Professor, made a joke or somethin’, and as soon as Harry was in he was on my case.”

Ginny nodded, face thoughtful, then said, “Is this the classics prof, the one that half the campus wants on?”

Y/N had to roll her eyes at that.

“Yes, Professor Morrow is the one everyone else is drooling after.  What does that have to do with anything, you creep?”

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

“I’m sorry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I really am sorry about that--”

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

“Oh god.”

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

Harry blinked at her.

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

He grinned and nodded.

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N looked down at her hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not lately.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harry blinked.

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

Y/N snorted at that.

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

“Alright.”

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N bit her lip.

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

Len lit up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I-- yes, sorry?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N smiled despite herself and shook her head.

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

“Then I’d love to hear them.”

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

“Well then, let’s get to the boat.”

---

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

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

“D’ya ever have a love like that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Much better.”

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

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

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

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

Once again and to his continual delight, she laughed.

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

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

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

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

“Wha’?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, you’re right.  I have.”

“So what do you do?”

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

“Bring the beer too, Harry!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N cut him off, pushing his shoulder.

“C’mon Harry, give it a go.”

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

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

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

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

“Swim with me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N and Harry bounced apart.

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

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

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

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

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

Harry didn’t hesitate to nod.

“Nine it is.”