[it literally just occurred to me that you might not still ship this but you NAMED IT CAZHAZ so i'm gonna assume yes and if you don't ponify the names or tell me i'll DO A DIFFERENT THING why didn't i ask i'm a moron.
REGARDLESS, HAPPY (BELATED I'M SO SORRY) BIRTHDAY MY LOVE]
The thing about Art History, Harry has learnt this semester, is that it’s shit easy to pass if you’ve visited the Louvre and the D’Orsay and the Florentine Accademia as often as he has in his nineteen years, armed with nothing more than his father’s tickets to Europe as repentance for being virtually absent, tax-dodging in Monte Carlo like he was born to do it. Tickets to Europe, best guides in the city, and beautiful hotels – in addition to getting him a great tan every year, it also means that now, he can write a distinction-worthy paper hungover, drunk, the morning after an hour long walk of shame, sick with strep throat, or on a particularly turbulent plane ride home from Ibiza after mid-semester break.
So yeah, Art History is pretty easy to pass. It is made somewhat easier, however, due to the fact that he wakes up at least a few mornings a week next to his professor.
It’s kind of a long story, is his stock standard response when someone finds out about that particular fact. And it is kind of a long story, except for how it’s not. It is, simply, that Caroline is beautiful and so, so strikingly clever, and took a particular shining to him when he could order Michelangelo’s most famous works in chronological order first day of semester. (Pieta, David, ceiling, Judgement; couldn’t fresco so he fudged it. Harry had a weird upbringing.) It is, simply, that Harry fell utterly, wide-eyed in love with her about fifteen minutes into their first lecture while Louis groaned through a hangover on his left and Zayn texted him increasingly desperate variants on the sentiment Lou let’s get outta here I’m horny and bored and you look cute and distressed right now. It is, simply, that after four weeks of flirty eyes and flirtier exchanges in class, Harry had written a top ranked paper, was invited to discuss it with Caroline over coffee, and three hours later coffee had turned into drinks which had turned into tumbling into her apartment laughing and smelling of vodka tonic and anticipation.
And now, eight weeks later, Harry wakes up with his face nuzzled into her hair, leg thrown over her thighs and hand resting gently underneath her breast as the light glints off her maybe-not-quite-real tan. Which is, you know. A pretty good outcome, all round.
It is a relatively small group of people who know about this, is the thing. Despite how not classic student-and-professor-sleeping-together-for-an-A-grade this feels – Harry, somewhat ironically, is one of the only people in the course capable of getting that A by himself – it still looks bad and is highly Not Allowed at LSBU. So it’s under wraps, loosely, if under wraps includes Louis, Zayn, Niall, Liam, Perrie, Jade, Leigh Anne, Jesy, Lou, Tom and Caroline’s friends Nick and Olly, who Harry’s met a few times now. They’re perhaps doing a less than passable job keeping it strictly quiet, but Harry can’t really bring himself to care. He is, honestly, too head over to give much of a shit, and at the end of the day, it’s three more weeks. Three more weeks until he sits his final and Caroline’s no longer his professor and this becomes somewhat okay. So. He’s not fussed. He has more important things to worry about, like the fact he’s lying naked in his bed with quiet honestly the most overwhelmingly wonderful woman in the world and the sun and the soft haze of the morning. Things like that.
“I know you’re awake, you dick,” Caroline says into the silence without cracking an eyelid. Harry jumps a little, laughs into her shoulder and kisses her skin lazily, slowly.
“You’re weird,” he murmurs, voice still sleepy, “you’ve got like, a sixth sense.”
She just snorts, runs a hand over his leg; warm skin on warm skin, bodies pressed together in the aftermath of what was a mindblowingly amazing night. Always is, with Caroline – Harry had fucked substantially more than his fair share of girls and boys before Caroline, but he doesn’t think he really knew how good sex could be until her, doesn’t really think he really knew how good a lot of things could be until her; wine, food, sex, stealing kisses before class, skirts that end just above the knee, staying around until the next morning.
“Mm, maybe,” she relinquishes, voice husky and mind obviously too tired to argue, or maybe she’s just being kind, knows she’ll win anyway. She tugs at his shoulder at that until he rolls over and hovers above her on his elbows and forearms. He can see the clock from here, groans and buries his head in her neck. It’s eight already; he has class in half an hour, so does she. Not that she’d let him skip, anyway, one of her rules is that he doesn’t skip for her, and he’s stuck to his word. But eight thirty on a Tuesday morning, on any morning, really, is awfully early, so he takes to nipping at the shell of her ear instead of getting up and taking a shower.
“Morning to you too,” she says with a smile, nudging his face until he kisses her properly. She still tastes very faintly like the mint of his toothpaste, her small hand warm on his hip as she tugs him closer, gives a little mm as he slips his tongue into her mouth, smiles against her lips. She laughs a little, turns her head to the side and looks at him with that mildly amused derision that was a turn on during those first few weeks of classes and has only increased since.
“Do you ever wake up not hard?” she asks, and he drops his mouth open in mock offence, suddenly sheepishly aware of the little circles his hips were rocking in just now. Not that she wasn’t doing the exact same thing, he supposes, but whatever. He likes it when she teases him. He likes almost everything about her, actually.
“Nope,” he says, falsely proud, “s’a gift.”
“Yeah, alright, gifted one, we need to move it,” she says, sounding less than enthused, “I can’t be late, I have my honours class this morning. Can’t stay here with a second year, cute as you might be.”
Harry smiles, dimples popping up like prizes, comfortable in the knowledge that they’re a big part of why he’s here today. He raises an eyebrow, kisses her again, lets a hand trail down to the curve of her waist, the soft skin of her tummy, curl over her hip and swoop as low as he can go without being too unsubtle. The muscles in her stomach flutter, she sighs in a way that says we need to get up but also more, now, and he smiles until she slaps him gently.
“You look too smug,” she laments, “you know, it’d make my life a lot easier if you were less cute. I’d have time for like, showers and things before my day.”
He just laughs again, kisses the corner of her mouth before dropping down, pressing kisses over her neck, collarbones, chest, rounded breasts until he reaches her nipple and she arches up a little. She’s more turned on than he expected; something about the sun, the skin, the rush of it all before they really do have to get up. She’s like this when they oversleep, like she’s challenging him to make her come and get to class on time all in the same twenty minute window.
Harry’s more than willing to make a valiant attempt to meet that challenge.
“You look gorgeous,” he says without stopping to consider if the words should slip past his lips. She huffs out a laugh that turns to a breathless little ah as he bites her neck just right, kneads his thumb into her hip.
“Shut up,” she says back, but her eyes are sweet before they flutter shut again, and he grins into her neck.
When he drops his hand lower she’s already wet, and instantly the memory of the first time flashes through his brain. And sure, they were drunk, sure, it was warm and forbidden and all the rest of it, but she was into it, and that had completely taken him by surprise because she’s, well, her, and he’s nineteen-year-old-perpetually-exhausted-owner-of-too-many-flannel-shirts Harry Styles. The way she moans at him impatiently now leaves the same sort of overwhelming awe floating through his head until she hits out at him gently, connecting with his leg.
“C’mon,” she murmurs, and Harry doesn’t need to be told twice.
He considers using his mouth but they haven’t got time to make it long and drawn out and good until she’s swearing really quite admirably at him, and he doesn’t like doing things half-arsed. Instead, he leans back up and kisses her, pushes a finger into her simultaneously, and the way her face falls satisfyingly turned on, the way her moan drops low, are enough to have his head dizzy.
“Yeah,” she says, “more of that.”
He can’t help but let out a low, languid laugh, pushes in and out of her a few times before adding another, just before she’s quite ready, the way she likes it. His thumb is steady on her clit, rubbing her in time with his fingers, feels the way she moves when he diverts his attention for a second and runs along her folds instead. She’s impatient, though, wants this now, and reaches for his wrist wordlessly, guiding him back to what she wants him to be doing. Always knows what she wants, most of the time knows what he wants; add it to the list, he thinks, Things To Be In Awe Of: The Caroline Edition.
He goes for it now, pushes deeper and adds another finger, teases her clit harder until she’s biting her lip, rocking against him as though she can’t help it, lips on his panting rather than kissing. It doesn’t take too many more thrusts of his fingers – one, two, three, and then four – until she clenches around him, one last loud cry intermingled with a fuck, her movements erratic and uncontrolled, and then falls, spent, back to the mattress.
She lies, for a matter of seconds, breathing heavily underneath him, eyes closed and face blissed out, and Harry loves that look on her, it’s one of his favourites. He leans down to kiss her again, pressed into her side, completely and utterly taken over by how turned on he is right now, like there’s a blockage in his brain stopping anything else from getting through.
Caroline has other ideas, apparently.
“Off,” she says, pawing at his chest half-heartedly.
He pulls pack, rests up on his elbow a little quizzically. She just smiles, fists a hand in his hair and gives him a quick, chaste kiss before sitting up, shaking her hair out. Her back is smooth save for a crease here and there from the sheets, a silhouette against the sun pouring in from the window across the room.
“Seriously?” he asks, aware his voice is a little too high and desperate to be respectable. She notices, too, smiles that little smile that only makes him more unbearably turned on, and shrugs.
“S’quarter past,” she says gravely, although Harry suspects it’s false because she did actually come this morning, “sorry, babe, gotta up your game if you want it to be mutual.”
She pushes herself up off the bed, walks with a little stretch of her arms and sway of her hips, like she knows it’ll make him incapable of intelligent thought, because she does.
“Don’t come in,” she says airily as she reaches the bathroom, “I gotta wash my hair.”
“Now?” he squeaks – says, he says it, because he is not twelve years old and he can handle himself with more dignity than this, “at my place?”
She shrugs again, head peeking out the door before she closes it. “You have that nice strawberry stuff,” she says, “I like it.”
And with that, Harry is left head swimmingly dizzy and alone in his bed, while the sound of the shower starts up seconds later. He’s sort of dumbstruck, possibly on account of the fact that he’s not sure there’s enough blood in his body to service his brain when he’s this hard. He blinks, slowly, sits up, tries to think about something that isn’t I’m going to come imminently, but can only really muster looking around the room like it holds an answer to his malady.
Turns out, it does, because the bathroom door opens after a couple of minutes, Caroline leaning on the doorframe and laughing, eyes closed, into her arm.
“Oh my God,” she says, “Harry.”
“What!” he says, “I. I’m. I, I’m just—“
“I was kidding, oh my God, you look like a lost puppy.”
It takes Harry a second, or several, to catch on.
“I know you were,” he says, with a thoroughly unconvincing roll of his eyes, “I’m getting there, I just had to like…”
He trails off, is met with amusedly raised eyebrows and a look that says, nice try.
“Get in here,” she laughs, and Harry does, springs off the bed and follows her until he’s closing the door behind him in the already steamed up room.
He watches, just for a second, the way she collects her hair from where it falls across her shoulders and in one hand, holds it up in a ponytail for a moment before sweeping it to the side. She’s so…God, Harry doesn’t even know, doesn’t think he’s been taking ENG2004 long enough to know how to turn the swooping, melting feeling in his stomach into words, but that’s okay. He takes an odd sense of comfort in the fact that this is slow, that this is little jokes and little games and sun on skin and hair held up that add up to something more.
“Shit,” she murmurs, biting her lip, “I don’t have a shirt. Might have to pop home and get one.”
He smiles, walks over to her and hugs her from behind, drops a kiss behind her ear that makes her still, sort of press unwittingly back into him.
“Borrow one of mine,” he says, and she laughs, turns in his grip.
“Okay, well, one, you’re quite possibly giant spawn, while I’m 5’4”,” she says, standing up on her toes to prove it, “ and two, if you have a halfway respectable shirt in your college dorm I’ll be genuinely worried for you.”
Harry considers both those things with a shrug and a smile.
“Fair enough,” he says, hands on her waist, “won’t you be late, though?”
“I think we’re already running late,” she says with a grin. She takes his hand in hers, sort of profoundly smaller, and tugs him into through the glass doorway and into the shower. It’s small – it’s college, every room is small – but they don’t mind, not really, and Harry brings the door shut behind him.
“Caz?” he says, and his voice might be different but it’s not unsure.
“Yeah?”
He doesn’t know what he wants to say, really. Wants to say, you looked really beautiful when you woke up, wants to say, there’s a good chance I’m in love with you, wants to say, you’d look awfully cute in one of my collared shirts, if I owned one. But there’s time for that later. Three weeks, another three after that, and that, and that. And that’s kind of nice, so he takes a breath, smiles at her, at her hand in his.
“G’morning,” he says, and she laughs prettily, surprised, maybe just a little bit dazed too.
“You’re quite something, you know that?” she says, “and for the record, Harry Styles, you’re welcome into my shower any time.”
“Pretty sure it’s my shower,” he shoots back, water folding over them now, “but hey. Thanks.”
Harry sometimes looks at her and can’t quite believe he’s ended up here, because a semester ago he didn’t have a lot more going for him than C string football and the occasional pub gig with Niall of a lazy Saturday night. And now he’s got this, and sometimes that’s so, so much that he’s not really sure what to do with himself.
That being said, a shag in the shower doesn’t seem like a half bad next step.
hello friends!!! this is a place for us to all celebrate the birth of our friend zee rimmingniall, and will serve as a home for all of our gifts for her. if you did something nice for zee this year, please feel free to send a message here with a link or birthday wish!!!!!! i know there are many things in the works as you read this, enough that this may become an extended birth WEEK instead of birth DAY...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZAKIYA WE LOVE YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZEE @happyzday - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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