“You want verbal praise.” It didn’t necessarily sound like a question, but Y/N still nods anyway, “Why haven’t you said that before?”
Y/N is blinking at him again, confused, “Because you’re kind of scary? And I thought you’d. . .I thought you’d be annoyed with me.”
He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, taking it away with a soft popping sound. Y/N is worried that she accidentally offended him, but he only nods his head, his face twisted up in a way that tells her he’s considering what she said, “Alright,” he finally said, “I’ll do my best to give you verbal praise if you do your best not to lie to me. I don’t like liars,” he motioned toward the foil, “Now eat, I made that for you.”
or
Y/N wants to be a chef and Harry is her grumpy mentor
(16k+ words)
i.
Y/N is not going to cry.
She isn’t, she really isn’t. Tears burn up her cheeks but she has become seasoned enough in the last year and a half to blink them back even when the reprimand is brutal. She chokes them down, straightens the wobble in her voice, and bites the fleshy part of her bottom lip so it doesn’t quiver. Y/N takes all criticism, all admonishments, all the scoffs and disappointed glares in stride. She nods curtly, replies tersely, and fixes the problem.
Then once all that’s done, she finds a quiet corner and cries. If she can wait longer, she’ll go home, scream into her pillow, take a hot bath, and maybe let a tear or two slip out, but she gets over it quickly. She went into this knowing what it might be like, so she tried her best to let most of it brush off her shoulder, just as she’d been advised to. Take the (harshly put) advice, channel the anger and upset into making not even just the next meal better, but the next plate – and never let them see you cry about it.
So Y/N isn’t going to cry, she’ll make damn sure of it. Maybe it was harder today because she didn’t sleep well last night, but that was her own fault – the show she was binging was getting too good to stop and it was 1 AM before she realized. This morning she woke up seconds from chattering her teeth from the glacial-like cold the air in her room took on, only to find her furnace wasn’t working. The water from her shower greeted her in icy slaps to her skin so she found her water heater was just about as useful as her furnace currently was. And she was late this morning because she’d missed the subway, and she stepped in something sticky so her shoes kept squeaking with each step, and just before she walked in she checked her phone and saw a message from her ex that she promptly ignored, but in the middle of ignoring that she ran into Niall who spilled his lukewarm latte down the front of her shirt –
The day had just been pretty shitty already, is the problem. The last thing she needed was a rich prick complaining about the taste of his food when questioned about it. Don’t get her wrong, she typically takes complaints from customers as a learning experience to grow and nurture the outcome of future meals – but this particular dick does this with all the female staff, he’s noticed. Either the waitress was rude (because she didn’t answer his advances), or the hostess was unprofessional (because the flower tattoos on her forearm were somehow offensive to him), or the whole establishment was filthy (because there was a hair laid delicately on top of his beef wellington).
One look at the hair and Y/N knew for a fucking fact it wasn’t her own. It wasn’t the same color at all, or the same length – actually it looked quite similar to his date sitting across from him, who seemed. . .relatively put off by the show he was putting on. He can’t do things discreetly, thriving off the attention delivered from the spectacle he makes of himself in these situations. That’s why he announces it particularly loudly and demands to speak to the chef who made the meal, and when Y/N isn’t giving him the reaction that he wants (beyond a gentle apology and an offer to remake his plate), he demands to speak to a manager. Better yet, he demands to speak to Harry Styles himself.
Harry Styles isn’t a manager. Harry Styles, back in his early twenties, joined the group as one of the youngest chefs to receive two Michelin stars. Before his 30th birthday, he’d gained eight more, was on the cover of Time Magazine, had received critical acclaim and praise from some of the most refined chefs in the world, and quickly became the enemy of any restaurant on the same block as one of his seven locations across the globe. He was skilled beyond reason, a true culinary god born from a spark of heat on a carbon steel pan, someone to look up to, study beneath, attempt to emulate, and then fail because his mastery is something untouchable. He was almost perfect in every way.
Almost.
Harry didn’t have the best temperament, his personality was scored with bad-tempered moods, and his attitude left much to be desired. He wasn’t personable, rarely smiled, and the inflection in his voice was typically nonexistent if not for him scolding you. Y/N is unsure why he’s so serious – from what she’s read and heard his childhood was pretty decent, and his love life was nonexistent but he seemed relatively content about it, he was rich which – Y/N knows money doesn’t buy happiness but it surely allows you to live comfortably. She’s sure he must have faced hardships at some point, but he doesn’t talk about it.
So studying under him is a privilege just as much as it’s a thorn in the ass. It’s difficult to become his apprentice – he’s had a total of 10 apprenticeships in the past couple of years and only 3 of them made it past the 5-month mark, and only one of them actually finished out the three years. The fact that Harry is such a coveted culinary artist that the waitlist to apprentice under him stretches long before he’s even reached 35 is something to be noted. And every day Y/N is both endlessly confused and grateful that he chose to take her under her wing (she and another aspiring chef, Finley started together but Finley left pretty early on, after the first time Harry tasted a soup he made and told him it was shit and to start over).
Harry Styles isn’t the manager, but he runs his kitchen so precisely and so strictly that if someone’s asking to speak to the manager, you can bet your ass that he’ll be present at the table as well. Much to Y/N’s chagrin, that is, she stands there while the patron stirs a fuss holding up a hair that was the wrong color to be hers. If Y/N was apprenticing under Adam, the other chef in the kitchen (second in command and much less intense, but still really good) then she would have told him it seemed like the fucker just had his date pull a piece of her hair out and lay on his food. Harry has all of his staff wear their hair slick back, pulled tight into a bun if it is long enough to, with a black headband stretching over part of her scalp. Even those with short hair are expected to have hair nets on, and they’ve not had a problem with hair in the food. The whole thing was just hard to believe, especially with who it was coming from.
Alas, Adam was not Y/N’s mentor, Harry was and Harry doesn’t like excuses. So instead of defending herself when he nods at her toward a small alcove before they return to the kitchen, he remarks, “I’m not teaching you for you to embarrass me.” She merely dips her head and agrees, “People come here to enjoy their meals without the fear someone’s fucking hair is going to be mixed in. What’s next, huh? Your fingernail? A band-aid?” He clicked his tongue, “Never again. Quality control must be done on every single plate after we plate it and then again before we send it out to the floor. If this happens again, you can kiss the rest of this apprenticeship goodbye. Do you understand?” Y/N nodded again, “Now get out of my sight.”
In comparison to all the other lashings she’s received in the past, this was relatively light, but it affects her just as poorly. Maybe even worse than some of those times, because Y/N could admit that the times she’d been scolded before, those mistakes were her fault and she knew it was something to learn from. What the fuck could she learn from a prick messing with the food for the sake of being an asshole? It hurts worse because she knows she didn’t do anything wrong, but she’s still getting yelled at, and she’s exhausted, and the day has been long, and she thinks she’s a week off from her period which is when she feels the most emotionally frazzled.
Still, she waits to find her quiet corner – deeper into the restaurant, in the food supply closet there’s a space between two of the racks that forms a corner. She squeezes in there and lets the tears burn down her face quietly, scrolling through her phone for a second to try and get over it. It would help if she could get the disappointed glare from his face out of her head. His eyes are a light green but they always seem darker when they’re narrowed, and his manicured eyebrows seem more daunting when they’re furrowed. His hair is on the shorter side, neatly gelled and styled, and there’s a mole to the left of his lips that she’s never seen pulled into a smile except for a couple of photos from an interview a few years back.
Y/N’s there for about five minutes before she thinks she should get back. Niall finds her just as she’s easing her way out of her crying corner with a pitied expression on his face, pouting his lip out at her. “Don’t look at me like that,” she grumbles, knuckling at her eyes, “I’m fine.”
“You just look like the saddest small animal in the world when you cry. Like a pound puppy or summat,” he reaches into his back pocket and produces a pack of tissues, pressing them into her hands, “Why didn’t you tell Harry that dick planted the hair? That clearly wasn’t yours.”
She shrugs, taking a tissue from the plastic wrap and wiping her eyes with it, “It doesn’t matter,” she sighs, heavy and dejected, “Like he’ll believe me over a customer. It’s better to just let him fuss at me then get over it.”
Niall is still frowning as she blows her nose, taking the pack back and slipping it into his pocket, “Still, it’s fucked,” he checks his watch, “Only two more hours to go though, yeah? Do you wanna stop by that one burger place on the way home? We can eat our feelings, and maybe discuss how you’re going to learn how to do laser hair removal so you can zap away some of my pubes.”
Niall was learning under Adam, who was good enough to gain Harry’s respect but still managed to be lax and pretty easygoing. One time, when they first started (Niall started just a month before Y/N did), Niall had made the wrong dish entirely and sent it out to the table. When it was brought back, Adam shrugged, and told him to make the right one, “But do it quickly so that this one is still warm and you can eat it.” In comparison, if Y/N had done that, Harry might have had her hung, drawn, and quartered.
“I’m begging you to just learn how to wax,” Y/N straightened out her top and apron, rumpled her lips, and set toward the door, “And I’m begging you to learn how in a way that doesn’t involve me seeing your balls.”
“What do you have against my balls?” Niall presses the door open and almost mows someone down immediately. The squawk that echoed through the hall (drowned out by the neighboring clank of pots and pans) told them before they saw that it was Adam, who caught himself on the door and held a hand to his chest.
“I hope you weren’t in the food supply closet trying to show off your balls Ni,” Adam recovered quickly, shaking his head, “That’s bad for business. Hey, Y/N – oh my god, have you been crying?”
“What? No,” Y/N lies and she’s thankful she did because Harry rounds the corner in hot pursuit – she hopes for the salt inside the storage room and not his lowly apprentice, “I have bad allergies this time of year, sometimes they just act up. Itchy eyes and all that,” she waves him off, “I took some medicine though.”
Adam looks wary, but smiles goodnaturedly, “Ah, yeah, okay I get that. If you need anything just let me know, yeah?” Because Adam knows that his head chef is kind of a dick, and rough with his apprentices not only because he works with him, but because he learned right beside him, from the same man – Harry’s grandfather. They grew up together, which is why he’s the only person in the kitchen not tiptoeing around Harry. It’s also why Y/N could never let him know that Harry upset her, because he wouldn’t have a problem bringing it up to him.
(Which is what happened to Finley, who – after confiding in Adam that Harry was a big meanie – Harry found him, pulled him to the side, and asked, “Did you think tattling was going to make me go easier on you? Honestly, you just pissed me the hell off.”)
She smiles, nods her head, and when she inevitably makes eye contact with Harry (whose scowl has relaxed minutely) she gives a curter nod, before ducking away. Niall stays back with Adam and Harry doesn’t yank her back by the collar to yell at her some more, so she hurries off. It’s only a couple of more hours, just like Niall said, and hopefully, in that time, she could redeem herself even remotely.
It can be hard. Y/N signed up for this sure, but not directly – not really. The culinary school she’d been attending had many chefs come to speak to them, some from smaller establishments and some from bigger chain restaurants, offering them apprenticeships and speaking about life after they graduate. Nobody had expected Harry Styles to show up one of the days, closer to graduation, and nobody expected him to pick anyone to be his apprentice – least of all Y/N – but she remembered the day clearly. How he bit into her shepherd's pie (what Y/N had been embarrassed about making now that one of the most masterclass fine dining chefs was coming to taste their food), and his face pulled into one that Y/N had misinterpreted at the time as disgust. She found out soon after that when Harry enjoys a dish, he looks pissed off about it.
“Who made this?” He asked and Y/N felt her heart drop to her stomach when she raised her hand, blinking a million times a minute like her eyelids might help her fly away if she tried hard enough, “Come here.”
The room had been quiet; silent enough that you’d be able to hear a soap bubble pop as Y/N weaved through the tables to where he stood. He was at the space she prepared it at, his hand lying on the counter while his other hand held the fork. Harry sliced into it with the side of the utensil, motioned at the inside of it, how it falls out slowly, “Where’d you learn to make this?”
“Um – a cookbook, sir.” Y/N was lightheaded, and she kind of thought she might pass out in a second if he didn’t stop staring at her so hard.
Harry huffed a laugh through his nose, and at the time, it felt like humoring a god, “Yeah?” He must have been in a good mood, “What is your name?”
“Y/N, sir.”
“Y/N,” he repeated her name back to her, then brought another forkful to his mouth – it was the only time he’d gone back in for seconds, “This is good.”
“Oh, really?” Her eyes went wide, “Thank you, I – I mean, yeah. Thank you.”
It wasn’t some grandiose request for her to study under him. Actually, Y/N thought he’d just been in the mood to give at least one compliment, until her instructor emailed her that he was interested in having her as his apprentice.
Anytime he scolds her, or is mean to her, or kind of rough – she vividly remembers the moment. It brings her some comfort, on the days that she’s certain he hates her and her cooking and thinks she’s useless in the kitchen beside him. That, at the very least, the shepherd’s pie recipe she used to read out of her Nan’s cookbook from decades ago was enough to make him take a second bite.
“Y/N,” her name is called as soon as she steps foot in the kitchen, one of the waiters smiling at her, “An old bloke from table three legitimately said ‘send my compliments to the chef’ over your seared tuna.”
That soothes the sear over her heart for now at least.
. . .
Y/N and Harry do not speak to each other. Or, well – that’s a little dramatic. They do speak to each other, but it’s nothing beyond the matters of the restaurant and cooking. When Y/N sees Harry, bright and early for Mise en place, she is barely spared a ‘good morning’ before he discusses what the specials for today are and what needs to be prepared outside of the norm. Y/N’s there early enough some mornings that she’s helping him unload the trucks and of course, that’s something they’re doing in relative silence. And then he speaks to her to scold her for something, usually, or to tell her that she did well which can be few and far between and is – at most – a small nod when he tastes a sauce that she’s made or cuts into a fillet and checks the tenderness.
But they don’t talk about life. Harry has no idea what Y/N does when she leaves the restaurant and she has no idea if he even lives outside of this kitchen. He doesn’t know that she’s got a cat named Hazelnut or that her ex messaged her the other day asking for restaurant recommendations and she doesn’t know if he has any pets or if he’s ever dated someone in his life. While Adam and Niall knew the intimate details of one another’s scrotums, Y/N couldn’t even tell you what Harry’s favorite color was – but she guesses that’s okay. They don’t have to be best friends for Harry to teach her properly, and honestly, it’s probably for the best that he’s a dick. There’d be no way she’d be able to focus on anything if he was nice to her – because nice and attractive in the animal side of Y/N’s brain flashes alarm symbols that scream SUITABLE MATE!!!!! and that’d probably be a mess.
With all of this being noted, Y/N is well and truly shocked when she shows up at 5 AM to sharpen knives and chop vegetables, and Harry speaks to her beyond a perfunctory greeting.
“How are your allergies today?”
Y/N blinked at him, stilling where she was pulling off her coat like a bunny who’d just been spotted by a predator in the wild. She’s like, almost halfway certain that he isn’t speaking to her at all, but they’re the only two in here – Adam and Niall don’t turn up for another hour.
“My what?”
Harry has a clipboard in his left hand, his fingers around the base of his favorite ballpoint pen – he must’ve been doing inventory checks before she got here, “Your allergies,” he repeated, “Your eyes were red yesterday – you told Adam it was your allergies acting up.”
This honestly might have been the most words Harry has spoken to her without any food being involved. Y/N’s struggling not to seem like an idiot but she’s certain she’s staring at him like he’d grown a second head, and he might as well have. In the mornings, she gets orders and maybe a grunt of approval now and then if she fulfills them as he intended. She has never been asked how she slept, what her commute was like, if she’d eaten breakfast – none of those routine questions you ask someone to start the flow of social interaction.
Yet here Harry is, questioning her about allergies she lied about. Y/N does get seasonal allergies sometimes, but typically when one season is beginning to melt into the other. It was too far into winter for her to suddenly have itchy eyes, with all the pollen dormant, waiting to really destroy her come spring. Anyone who had allergies could kind of guess that and Y/N has the horrifying thought that Harry has allergies, and knows that she was lying. Even if he didn’t have allergies, he probably already knew she’d been lying – she was relatively certain that his eyes had a second setting that was programmed to see right through her.
“Oh, uh – better,” she swallowed thickly, praying that he only thought she was being awkward because they didn’t do casual conversation like. . .ever, “They’re better. I took medicine though.”
Harry eyed her quietly and Y/N shuffled beneath his gaze, wishing he would look away from her. Y/N had always thought she wanted a relationship akin to the one Niall and Adam had with each other, but she’s finding quickly that she wouldn’t be able to handle it well. At least not now, when they’d already established their dynamic as begrudging mentor and feeble mentee.
“Brunoise the carrots and celery, and tourné the potatoes. I already have them prepped.”
That’s. . .different. Not the order to start cutting but the fact that Harry had already washed and prepped the vegetables for her. That’s normally a job he leaves for her while he tends to more important matters like inventory checks, delegating tasks for the others when they come in, or even prepping some of the other ingredients for their plates that day (he prepares his meat very precisely and particularly, and he hasn’t shown her exactly how yet – Y/N knew it was going to be something that took her weeks or maybe months to master in his keen eye and she wasn’t looking forward to it at all).
So Y/N is kind of sketched out but she’s learned to not look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to Harry. If he was in a good mood, then she would accept it graciously and do everything in her power not to muck it up.
Being in the kitchen with only him is more peaceful than one might think – at least for her it was. Most of the time Y/N doesn’t even think what she’s done is enough to piss him off, but a collection of small things by multiple people. It’s just a matter of the wrong mistake at the wrong time when Y/N does something little and stupid that grates his nerves and sends him right over the edge, but had she been the first one to make a mistake, he probably wouldn’t have cared as much. Y/N’s only scientific backing for this hypothesis is that Harry seems to be more at ease in the morning. Maybe that’s just because the day had only just started. Y/N likes to pretend it’s because he feels more at ease when it’s only the two of them in the kitchen.
Niall and Adam arrive after an hour and a half of Y/N silently cutting vegetables, just in time for the meat prep which is admittedly her least favorite part. She likes to pawn off some of that job onto Niall who does it so long as she listens to his escapade and offers meaningful commentary, which she’d be doing anyway but he didn’t need to know that, necessarily. Harry had told her the ingredients he wanted in the marinade and went through the steps rather quickly but Y/N had scribbled it down (he’d slid her a notepad and let her have his pen. . another small grace that he typically didn’t offer).
“Fuck sake,” Adam shivered as he pulled off his winter coat, “Harry isn’t it a bit rude to have a woman come out in this weather this early? Reckon that’s like – a fuck you to chivalry or something.”
“You could take her place in prepping then,” Harry replied coolly, not raising his eyes from where they were fixed on his inventory sheet, “Be here by 5 AM.”
Adam grimaced, then looked at her, “Sorry Babe, I gave it a go. Don’t think he’s willing to budge.”
“I’d just like to state for the record that Y/N has never requested Adam to get her out of anything,” Niall said loud enough for Harry to hear across the kitchen, “He did this of his own free will without the consultation of my client.”
“What’re you, her lawyer?” Adam snorted.
Niall clicked his tongue, “I’ll have to be if you make damning statements like that.”
Y/N laughs though she does glance over at Harry, who mostly seems to be in his own world. He typically is, when Adam and Niall are going back and forth. However, today – and maybe she’s just hallucinating it – but he has the tiniest of smiles twitching at the corner of his mouth. Like. . .barely there. It was so invisible that nobody could tell he was smiling if she took a picture and held it up side-by-side with his normal face. So maybe he wasn’t smiling at all, but it was a fun thought to have at least. The idea that he might be even remotely interested in kitchen antics apart from business was always kind of fun to pretend now and then.
“Y/N,” Harry’s voice sliced through the kitchen, “Get back to work.”
She hadn’t realized she’d been idle with a potato in her hand since Adam and Niall walked in. Her eyes widened as she set it back down on the cutting board, “Oh, oops, sorry I will,” she replied before grabbing the knife again. Adam and Niall were headed to the hand-washing sink before they started their task. Y/N, once again (and she’ll do this several times throughout her shift), wondered what it would be like if she and Harry had that type of relationship. Where they came in together (Y/N thinks they honestly drive each other sometimes), relaxed and laughing. Comfortable in each other's presence whether that be in the kitchen, goofing off in the stock room, drinking after work. One time Y/N messaged Niall and his response was Sorry, Adam and I were bowling what do you need — like, it’s crazy! Y/N can’t imagine Harry doing a recreational activity with her without someone threatening him — and even then, he might still say no.
What would he be like outside of work? Does he laugh at things? Like – has this man ever had a belly laugh in his life? Does he watch movies? What genre does he like? Has he ever binge-watched a TV show? Does he cuss at the screen during footie games? And what color are his sheets? Does his house look like someone lives in it? Does he think about her outside of work? Does he remember why he chose her to apprentice under him in the first place?
She has to shake her head free of all the questions – she could ask a billion and go crazy with no real answers. Some days Y/N wishes he’d accidentally dropped a journal or something that she could dig through to get a better understanding of him, but it has yet to happen. And she thinks if she asked him any of these questions he’d glare at her and tell her to mind her fucking business and organize the seasonings on the rack by name and color.
Maybe one day she’d learn more about him.
. . .
“I’m just wondering like – has he ever made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” Niall inquired idly when he and Y/N were hiding in the break room for the 15 blissful minutes of peace they were afforded. They had to take their lunch, not actually around lunchtime – either a little bit before or a little while after since noon was a busy time of day. They’re smack in the middle of the business district, so plenty of workers – mostly the bigwigs who can afford the high prices of their meals without overthinking about it – come around for their 30 to 60 minutes allotted for lunch to have steak flambeed at table side.
Y/N was, funny enough, warming up a frozen meal to scarf down. For as much as she loves to cook, she rarely has time to do it for herself anymore. She can’t even remember the last time she ate a full meal that she prepared, now only able to take little sips and bites to make sure the sauce was to taste or that the meat was tender. Around holidays she can work her skills for potlucks and family gatherings, but otherwise, she’s eating cheap little meals to stave off hunger pains and keep her bank at least partially appeased.
There wasn’t a lot of time though – she had ten minutes before needing to go back out there while Niall chewed through his peanut butter and jelly, swiping at the grape jelly that stuck to the corner of his mouth, “S’like, I can’t imagine it. I feel like he was 4 years old eating coq au vin.”
She snorted, watching the time on the microwave, “Yeah, most likely,” she sighed, “If he made one though it’d somehow taste like it cost a hundred quid to make.”
“I agree,” Niall nodded curtly, “He could probably piss on the bread and it’d still taste like gold.”
“God, you’re so gross–”
“Y/N,” Harry peeks around the door. His voice always startles her, especially when he refers to her by name. He spends so much time catching her attention with a matter of grunts and staring until she makes eye contact, that she’s surprised he even remembers it sometimes. This would mark the second time this week that he’s referred to her by it though, and a part of her is reeling because of it. Even though he’s only saying her name to tell her, “Since we’re short today, I’ll need you to step in and run Freya’s station.”
Freya is their garnish chef, always plotting out the most perfect plates and adding them intricately. It’s a job that goes unnoticed by many, but Y/N has always been able to appreciate how beautiful she’s able to make even something as simple as a salad appear. Half of the restaurant experience is to appeal to a visual appetite, going hand-in-hand with how it tastes. Something could taste delicious but look like shit, and you’d lose one of these customers in a blink of an eye. Freya makes sure that this isn’t something to worry about.
Y/N actually spent a couple of weeks following Freya last month, and her plating game had been upped tenfold. She can only imagine this is why Harry wanted her to run her station, but still. . .it feels like a kiss on the cheek from a god. For him to show any amount of trust in her to run a station speaks to the growth in their relationship as apprentice and mentor; when she’d first started, Harry barely even let her hold a knife without him hovering.
“Oh! Oh my god, yeah, I’ll do that.” She agreed, taking her phone and sliding it into her pocket.
Harry gave a short nod, “Good. I need you there now,” his eyes flickered to where Niall sat, his hand frozen in a pack of pretzels, “Have you eaten?”
“Yes,” she lies, and when Harry pointedly looked at the microwave, now beeping, she motioned toward Niall (and made sure to step on Niall’s foot a bit to keep him quiet, though she’s certain he wouldn’t speak out of turn to Harry ever), “That’s his – he’s really hungry today.”
Harry eyed her for a moment, and she guesses he decided it was not worth investigating before turning on his heel and leaving. Niall looks at her, brows raised, “Holy fuck, he’s letting you run a station? That’s like next level.”
“Shut up, you’ve run stations before,” she replied, sneaking her hand in his bag of pretzels and grabbing a couple. Y/N probably shouldn’t have lied about eating but she was worried that he would find someone else to run it if she wasn’t quick enough. Plus, what if he thought less of her for trying to feed herself over the general public or something? She could hear him scolding her now, something like They eat then you can eat – your hierarchy of needs matters very little in comparison.
“Yeah, but that’s because Adam is Adam, but Harry is Harry,” he stressed, “Don’t mess it up, he’ll never trust you again.”
“Thanks for the upbeat pep talk, Ni.”
“I mean, you’re gonna do great! I’m proud of you!” He cheered, fist in the air to rally with her, “Um, but do you think he heard me say the thing about him pissing on a sandwich? Because he showed up like 5 seconds after that.”
Y/N doesn’t bother answering him more than a squeeze to his shoulder then sets off to go run the station. Her stomach growls at her but in her head, she chastises it and tells it to suck it up. She’d gone plenty of days skipping lunch to work, even before she was even a chef, so she was used to it – she wished she’d had a better breakfast in preparation, but she was praying that the two pieces of toast with peanut butter and her fiber infused yogurt would do her well. At least until her next break.
She’s got this though! She’s going to prove to Harry that he can rely on her, and their relationship will be better because of it. Maybe they could have even a sliver of the camaraderie that Adam and Niall share. Y/N has lofty hopes, she knows, but it’s what pushes her. She’ll do her best – no, she’ll do even better than her best.
That’s what Harry expects of her.
. . .
What Harry doesn’t expect from her, is for her to nearly pass out two hours into taking on the assigned role.
How the restaurant is set up is like this: they serve lunch and dinner. Every two weeks she and Niall alternate between working the lunch shift or the dinner shift, though somehow Y/N still gets stuck coming in early a lot of the time to do prep work – but after prepping she’s free to leave. Ideally, if Finley had stayed then he would be working the alternate shift of her and he’d be doing it but that didn’t happen. Y/N doesn’t think Harry flips – she imagines that he’s there all day every day, except Mondays and Tuesdays when they’re closed. Adam, who is a hard worker but not willing to break his back or sacrifice too much of his life, has another chef who works under him, and he garnered Harry’s approval. She is who runs his side of the kitchen during dinner if he’s on the lunch shift, and vice versa.
So this week, in particular, Niall and Y/N were on the lunch shift. Both shifts have their own complications and their own menus. Both can tend to be busy as well, though usually, lunch is a little slower than dinner, nowhere near as hectic as it gets from 5 PM to 8 PM. That being said, getting dishes out in an appropriately timed manner is imperative, because people need to get back to work after their lunch break is through. This means that if there is an influx of customers, it’s fucking brutal.
And today, when Y/N was finally trusted enough and given the task to take on Freya’s role, it was fucking brutal.
She did it though! Y/N was actually so good, if she was able to stroke her ego, she did much better than she thought. Everything looked pretty, it tasted nice, and things were plated and sent out in record time with the help of two other kitchen staff (Max and Gretal). Harry had come over to see how she was doing and didn’t say a word, which – for him – is the same as high praise. If he doesn’t speak sometimes it’s because there’s nothing to correct. He thought it looked good, even if he wasn’t saying it aloud, but Y/N knew he wouldn’t send out a plate that he didn’t approve of.
It was just – once the rush had settled, Y/N’s vision went spotty and she almost fell right into the stove.
Not a great look at all, and she’s horrifically embarrassed. She wasn’t sure who saved her from slamming into the boiling pot of soup until her vision righted itself, Adam looking at her with the same wide, panicked eyes he had when he caught her crying, “Jesus Christ!” He cried out, “What happened?”
“Sorry,” she replied sheepishly, “I just – um. . .I think I need to eat?”
So she was directed not to the breakroom, but to an abandoned little alcove far down a hallway. Nobody ever comes here, and Y/N needed a minute to lick her now very tender and mortified ego. There was something inherently embarrassing about people seeing her nearly fall and though she knew reasonably nobody was going to point and laugh at her, she still couldn’t shake it. She felt silly and the thought of people remembering this every time they saw her was enough for her to want to smother herself.
Adam had told her he would bring her something to eat, just to hold tight, and left her with a juice box. They don’t have kids come here often, but if they do, their limited kid menu does include apple juice. She slurps through the tiny straw and feels the threat of a headache tickling around her temples. She’s sure Harry isn’t even going to register how well she did today because there’s no way this wouldn’t completely overshadow it. At the very least, she’s thankful that she didn’t actually tumble into the stove – she probably would’ve ruined the soup boiling on it and Harry would have her head.
She wasn’t sure how long she was sitting there before the door leading into the hallway opened, the wind it created, and the subsequent clearing of the sounds in the kitchen that it’d been muffling giving it away. Y/N had prepared herself for a doting Adam, worried and fretting, making him promise not to fuss at Harry over this. She was ready to eat, get herself right, then return and finish the rest of her day.
What she wasn’t ready for, was Harry coming around the corner instead.
Y/N’s heart drops to her stomach – well, it first speeds up to a thousand beats per minute and then drops to her stomach. Maybe even lower than her stomach? Down to her ass, more like. The threat of sweat building at her nape was true to her fight or flight response because he doesn’t necessarily look pleased with her. Plus he’s holding something in his hand – probably a contract promising to never try and work under him again because even the sight of her name after today might disturb him.
Upon closer inspection, Y/N realizes instead that he’s holding something wrapped in foil. He comes up to her and surprisingly doesn’t immediately start yelling, instead staring down at her for a second. Y/N blinks at him, and he blinks at her, wordlessly.
“Um, Sir?” She held the juice box tightly in her hands, “Are you here to scold me?”
Harry rolled his eyes, lowering down until he was squatting in front of her. This position was way less menacing as he held out the foil-wrapped mystery item, “Why do you talk to me like I’m your headmaster in school?” Y/N took the foiled object tentatively, “And why did you lie?”
“Huh?”
“You lied about eating,” he nudged his head toward the kitchen, “And almost took out the chestnut soup.”
Y/N grimaced, struggling not to shrink in on herself, “I’m sorry,” she frowned, “I’m – I hope that the kitchen doesn’t suffer not having someone run Freya’s station, but the others should be able to take care of it.”
He sighed, annoyed, “I don’t give a shit about Freya’s station,” Y/N’s mouth fell open, “I care about why you lied.”
She shuffled, nervous, her heart still racing, “I just thought. . .I thought if I’d told you I hadn’t eaten yet it would annoy you,” she explained, swallowing thickly, “You’ve never offered me to run a station before so I wanted to jump on the opportunity and show you that I can do well.”
Harry stares at her hard, unrelenting, and Y/N feels like she’d rather have passed out into the soup. Anything to get away from this intense gaze he has, piercing right through her, like he’s trying to peek into her very core. She doesn’t think he’s ever looked at her for this long if he’s not chastising her for a mistake. Even when he’s teaching her something, he’s mostly staring at the food, at her hands, scrutinizing the deftness of her fingers and the techniques she uses.
“You should never sacrifice your health for the sake of someone else,” he finally replied, pointing his index finger at himself, “Not me,” and then he pointed where the dining area sat behind the walls, “And not them. You should always come first, no matter what the circumstances are.” He rested his hand on his knee, still squatting to her level, “I already know you can do well, you don’t have to prove that to me.”
Y/N frowns a little, “But I do,” she answered, and she would blame it on being lightheaded and dizzy later, her talking back to him instead of taking the compliment, “The only time you speak to me is to scold me, so how am I supposed to know you think I’m doing well? If I have an opportunity to make you acknowledge me, then I’ll take it.”
“You won’t survive this career if you’re only working for my acknowledgment.”
She groans because he’s missing the point, “That’s – not it,” she huffs, “People eating my food and finishing it is enough acknowledgment for me, sure, but you – you’re my mentor! And you’re one of the best chefs there is, if you tell me I’m doing well. . .it just feels good, is all. Sometimes validation is nice and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Harry takes some time to stare at her again. The scent of his cologne is slithering around her, something vanilla and warm which is a surprising choice for him but welcomed by her nares. His skin is clear up close, and she thinks the rumors about him getting laser hair removal on his face might be true because there’s not a speck of hair or even the hint of a shadow along his jaw or upper lip. He somehow doesn’t have frown marks for someone who looks pissed all of the time, but she guesses he’s always looked pissed with his lips pulled into a straight line. Their black button-up dress code is the same, but Harry always looks more expensive than everyone else, and he rarely wears the apron anymore, unless he knows he will be completely hands-on with a dish. His trousers were nice too, and she knew the shot of his bum from the back might be glorious, but now wasn’t the time to think about that.
“You want verbal praise.” It didn’t necessarily sound like a question, but Y/N still nods anyway, “Why haven’t you said that before?”
Y/N is blinking at him again, confused, “Because you’re kind of scary? And I thought you’d. . .I thought you’d be annoyed with me.”
He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, taking it away with a soft popping sound. Y/N is worried that she accidentally offended him, but he only nods his head, his face twisted up in a way that tells her he’s considering what she said, “Alright,” he finally said, “I’ll do my best to give you verbal praise if you do your best not to lie to me. I don’t like liars,” he motioned toward the foil, “Now eat, I made that for you.”
Her brows raised, peeling the foil back carefully to reveal a peanut butter and jelly, carefully constructed and sliced into two triangles. Her gaze flickers back to him, then back to the sandwich, “You made this for me?” He nods, and Y/N can’t help the little smile that pulls at her mouth, “Oh wow, thank you. It looks yummy.”
“I didn’t piss on it, but it should be good.”
Horror writes itself all over her face, the realization that he’d heard Niall say that. Then she wonders how many other things he’s heard when he just appears out of nowhere, and she gets a little nervous. Before she can say anything, he snorts, pats her knee, and then finally stands (she’s impressed by how long he’d been squatting in front of her), “Eat, and then when you feel less dizzy, head home, I’m giving you the rest of the day.”
“But –” Y/N tries but Harry clicks his tongue and interrupts her.
“If you get lightheaded again and actually take out the soup, I will be pissed. But I’m in a good mood right now, so take advantage of it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Y/N lets her shoulders relax, hovering the sandwich over her mouth, “Okay,” she replies, “Thank you, Sir.”
He sighs, heavily, “Please, enough with that. You’re making me feel like an old man. Just call me Harry for fuck sake.”
. . .
There are several cooking techniques that Y/N has started to get the hang of and several that she has still yet to master. Honestly, there were quite a few that she hadn’t tried yet, because her kitchen and supplies at her flat didn’t provide the best space for experimentation. Like, practicing flambe on her electric stove would set off her fire alarms and probably the sprinkler system, and since the wiring is so dodgy at her complex then her neighbor’s sprinkles would start raining down on them too. So it was just all around safer to keep that for a more open space with a more seasoned chef watching her do it.
Y/N is unsure if Harry goes by a schedule or if he just decides to teach her new techniques when he feels like it. It always seems a little random; sometimes the skills she’s learning aren’t even put to use until a month or two after she’s learned them. It might just be whatever day Harry wakes up and feels a little more patient than usual, he must decide that’s the best time to do it.
Now, considering that he’s running a business and there’s very little time during the work day for him to sit and train her on different cooking styles and techniques, he usually calls her in on an off day. If Y/N had a more active social life it would probably matter to her that he expects her to drop everything and come at his command when she gets a message on a Monday. Instead of having brunch with some friends, however, Y/N had gotten out of bed to shower and then went to her sofa to continue lying down.
Productivity on off days is something exclusively reserved for nice weather, or at least Y/N thinks so. As soon as it’s cold outside, she is exempt from having to leave home for anything short of getting food, and she doesn’t have to feel bad or lazy about it. Who wants to be out in the cold? Especially days like this, when the wind slices bone deep and the sky looks thick and heavy with the threat of snow. Y/N thinks she’s better off in here, within the confines of her flat that now has a working heater, and her cat Hazelnut snuggled on her lap.
When her phone buzzes in her hand, it yanks her attention from the show that she’d been going in between watching carefully and ignoring to scroll through Twitter. Y/N blinks once, twice – three times to make sure she isn’t hallucinating that the Harry Styles she’s seeing from her notification isn’t a hallucination.
Are you busy?
Y/N presses herself from where she’d been stretched out on the sofa, disturbing her cat just enough to side-eye her but not enough to get up and move.
Is everything okay?
She thinks it’s an appropriate question, actually, even though it isn’t responding to his question. The last time Harry messaged her was eight months ago and it was a simple You’re late – when she woke up after snoozing her alarm for 20 minutes then got caught in an intense morning thunderstorm. He doesn’t contact her often, since he sees her 5 out of the 7 days a week. So this makes her nervous, sweat dots against her palms while her teeth worry her lip between them.
There’s no response for three minutes, and Y/N is staring anxiously at her phone the entire time.
Come to the kitchen.
Y/N can only assume he means the one at his restaurant, and can only assume that he’s about to lay into her about something. She doesn’t know what would permit a house call other than him telling her she was useless and would never make it in the culinary world. That he couldn’t even find something to pretend to find praiseworthy, and that she would need to find another mentor, out of his sight, and nowhere within 100 kilometers of his kitchen.
There’s a frantic way in her movements as she throws the blanket off of her lap and stands up, Hazelnut grumbling a meow up at her, annoyed, “Sorry,” she murmured but ultimately tripped over herself grabbing for her purse and shoving her feet into her shoes. There was no time to get in different clothes, fear kicking her into gear – it’s not like she’s eager to get scolded and kicked to the curb, but she knew not knowing would drive her insane. It was better to face her fear head-on, which means facing Harry head-on, and praying that it’s something simple to be yelled at for. Like, maybe she didn’t clean a pot well enough? Or did she leave a burner on and burn half the kitchen down? No, no, hopefully, she just left the pantry unlocked and it irritated him. Or she left the freezer open and everything thawed and now they have no meat for the rest of the month.
From the time it took her to get into her car and drive to the restaurant, Y/N had conjured a thousand different scenarios as to why Harry would be contacting her. None of them were even remotely soothing to her brain and all of them left her in a state of slight panic, which she’s sure is showing all over her face when she stumbles inside. Harry is casually leaning against one of the counters, looking down at a piece of paper with a furrowed brow. It looks like the inventory sheet – had she used too much of the garnishes when she took over Freya’s station last week? She did feel like she was using an insane amount of parsley.
“Um, Sir?” Harry’s gaze flickered to her, and Y/N felt like she wanted to crawl underneath the counter, into a pot, and hide, “What – why did you – um, did I do something?” She is breathless, and it’s clear no matter how much she tries to control it. Her chest raises dramatically with each inhale and Harry blinks at her, head tilted.
“What?” His brows relaxed, “Did you run here?”
She cleared her throat, “I mean, I rushed here, yeah,” she explained, then motioned toward him, “I was worried because – you never contact me on off days.”
“So you automatically assumed you did something wrong?”
“You were being cryptic!”
Harry sighs, shaking his head, “No, you haven’t done anything,” he replies, “Though your immediate reaction screams guilty conscience to me. I wanted to teach you how to cook en papillote – have you heard of that before?”
Y/N’s shoulders sink, all the tension zipping from her bones at once and she’s just as relieved as she is irritated. He couldn’t have just told her that? She did all that panicking just to find out he wanted to teach her how to cook in parchment paper. God, if they had a closer relationship, she’d be tearing into him right now – if he were Adam, she’d be fussing and grumbling and telling him that he owed her a day off and a drink or maybe a shot of Ativan directly into her bloodstream.
Instead, she nods, “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never tried it.”
Harry hums, and finally Y/N looks down at the counter before him. There are vegetables prepped, lemons already sliced, and what looks to be a halibut already descaled and deboned. A medium-sized baking tin sits beside his drumming fingers, along with parchment paper, “It’s a blind cooking method,” Harry continued, saying, “The parchment paper traps the moisture and flavor that would otherwise evaporate while you’re baking it. It’s ideal for fish – it’s one of my preferred ways to prepare it.”
“I – yeah,” she swallows, “I’ve never tried it but I’ve heard good things about it. I think what makes me nervous is not being able to see it.”
He agrees with another hum, “You don’t cook fish often,” he says it as a statement rather than a question, “It’s a good thing to have in your repertoire; no matter the type of cooking you decide to venture into, from culture to culture, fish are always a big part of it.”
So, Harry shows her. By no means is he warm and fuzzy about it – when Harry teaches it is with a rigid sort of preciseness that leaves very little room for error. Harry shows her, step-by-step, piece by piece how to slice the vegetables, season them, and arrange them delicately around the fish. He shows her where to slice so the meat cooks thoroughly, how to wrap the parchment around it, what she should feel for, what it should smell like, and how she should know it was done cooking without being able to visualize it.
The scent is mouthwatering when he pulls it from the oven and as he peels back the folds of parchment, revealed is the cut of fish browned and the vegetables steaming. Harry slides the fork inside and it goes so smoothly that Y/N knows it must be tender, and slices off a small piece with the knife, making sure to soak it momentarily in the juices that had gathered at the bottom of the dish. He pulls it to his mouth and purses his lips to blow over it, the steam disperses from around it.
In a move that Y/N did not expect, he doesn’t bring the bite between his lips – he holds it out to her.
There are barricades between synapses as her neurons try to communicate, forcing them to dance and dip around each other. Something is misfiring as she stares between him and the fork, and it takes him raising an eyebrow at her before Y/N’s lips finally parted, her mouth opening for him. She doesn’t lean in to take the bite between her teeth, instead letting Harry guide the fork inside before she curls her lips around it.
It’s delicious because there’s never been something Harry has cooked that hasn’t been delicious – but she’s caught up in the process of him having her try it. In the past, Harry barely offered her a fork to try what he’d prepared when he was teaching her, but now he’s feeding her. Watching her with keen eyes as she chews, waiting patiently for her throat to bob with a swallow, “It’s good, yes?” He phrases it like a question but it sounds like he knows because of course he does – it’s always good.
Y/N doesn’t know why her heart is speeding up behind her ribcage, startling it to a rattle. Her insides felt like gossamer-winged butterflies were licking her insides with each flutter, knocking against each other and bouncing off her organs. For the first time since she’s shown up here, she realizes that Harry is dressed for his off day as well. With an off-white, linen long-sleeve, and brown linen slacks, he seems soft and well-rested, like he should have woken up in the French countryside during the early summer months. The gaze he held was still unrelenting and intense but somehow more gentle than she’d ever experienced before.
“It’s yummy,” she answered, finally, acting like she hadn’t just ogled him before responding.
Though no smile graces his mouth, he huffs a soft breath through his nose, and it’s as close to a laugh as she usually gets from him. “Yummy,” he repeats, amused, “Let’s see if you can make it yummy as well.”
So she does as he tells her. Harry watches and guides her through the steps he’d just given her, correcting her technique or adding more seasoning where he deemed fit. At some point when she’s slicing into the fish, he’s plucking at his bottom lip and she almost cuts her finger staring at his mouth before getting a grip. Y/N is a little ashamed of herself – he hasn’t even been that nice, but he’s being a whole lot more amicable than he’s ever been. He hadn’t scoffed or sighed in the face of her messing up, not even once; instead, he gently redirected her mistake. Y/N wonders what her experience would have been like so far if he’d always been like this with her – if she would be a better chef because of it.
When it’s time for them to try hers, Harry cuts two pieces off this time. One for him and one for her, only he offers her the fork first and once she takes her bite, he uses the same fork to place his bite in his mouth. Y/N is fully aware of the rudimentary nature of her thoughts, but like. . .wow, they used the same fork. That’s like. . .indirectly kissing, is what the 15-year-old in her brain reminds her.
“How does it taste?” Harry asks like he doesn’t have the same piece in his mouth. Y/N had been too focused on the whole fork-sharing thing to pay much attention to the taste, but he clues her in with just enough time for her to have something to say. It was alright – not as good as his, but she had never once thought she’d be able to imitate the taste of things he’s made. There’s a sneaking suspicion she and Niall share that Harry possesses some special cells on his fingers that make everything taste ten times better than the average person. All he’d have to do is peel and slice an orange and eating it would probably have the same effect that snorting cocaine has on the body.
Y/N shrugs, “It’s. . okay,” she tells him, maybe selling it a little short so he didn’t feel the need to humble her, “I think it could be better.”
Harry hums thoughtfully, she thinks to agree with her, but he slices into the halibut again and this time stabs his fork into a cherry tomato, roasted brown around the edges. Then he takes another bite. . .Y/N could have fallen over from the shock of it. Harry is notorious for one bite then dropping the fork and either grunting his approval or grunting his disgust (two different types of grunts that Y/N has grown expert in differentiating). There were silly rumors (started by Niall) that Harry sustains himself from the single bites he takes to test meals. It’s what had made him take a second bite of her shepherd’s pie so important when they first met.
“I think you sell yourself too short,” he says after swallowing, “Do you know why I chose you last year?” Her head barely moves when she shakes it, staring at him with wide, dumbfounded eyes. Harry had never alluded to a reason – he rips into her day in and day out, enough where Y/N herself couldn’t figure out why he would choose her over everyone in her class. Most days she thought it boiled down to him liking shepherd’s pie, “You are a good cook, that’s why. I wouldn’t have chosen someone bad at cooking to study beneath me,” he explained, “For your first try, this is good. Your next try will be better, and the time after that, I expect you to take your own spin on it. Do you follow?”
“Yes, Si–”
“Ah.” He cuts her off.
“Harry,” she corrects herself, “Yes, Harry.”
Y/N almost wanted to wipe her eyes to make sure her vision wasn’t blurry when she saw his lips pull into a small smile. She pinched the meat of her palm beneath her thumbnail to make sure she wasn’t dreaming though, and idly wondered if sudden onset hallucinations would warm someone’s permanent state of straight mouth into a smile. But she thinks it’s real – honest to god, a real smile, big enough that she doesn’t have to squint and wonder if a muscle in his cheek spasmed.
“Good,” he set the fork and knife down on the counter, “Are you busy today? Would you like to try again?”
. . .
There’s a shift so subtle in their dynamic that only two highly delusional people would notice it (her and Niall).
To the untrained eye, there had been no change at all, but Y/N and Niall, who maybe spent entirely too much time hyper fixating on his every move knew that something had changed. The crease in his brow gets just the slightest bit less crease-y when she does well, and the pitch to his hums and grunts are diminutively higher when he is pleased with what she’s done. Things that would have made him scold her harshly or fuss at her for being careless, his reaction is much milder. Now instead of a disapproving glare, it’s a disapproving glance that doesn’t last very long. He doesn’t pull her off to the side to tell her that she overcooked the pasta and how if she wanted to continue on she better learn how to manage her time better so things like this didn’t happen – he merely clicks his tongue, dials the flame down or maybe even pops it off the stove if she’s preoccupied with something else.
That’s not all though, because he’s always somewhere looming but his presence seems much lighter to her now. Much less oppressive and scary, where knowing that he was hovering behind her watching her like a hawk felt like being a rabbit stalked by a fox. The change is more like an instructor on standby in case their trainee needs them. . .closer to the way Adam hovers around Niall even when they aren’t discussing who footie teams are trading or comparing pube grooming techniques. Only instead of talking about sports and pubes, she and Harry don’t really speak but still. . .it’s nice not to be so worried around him all of the time.
At first, Y/N thought this was purely her brain deluding herself into thinking she and Harry were closer after several Mondays when he’d called her into the kitchen for teaching. But during break one day, when she and Niall had escaped the building to fight past blistering winds for this new hazelnut latte at a cafe down the street, Niall brought it up unprovoked.
“Has Harry been like. . .minutely nicer to you lately?” His cheeks, nose, and ears match the same bright red of someone who’d been trapped in an unforgiving snowstorm for an hour, but he’s hellbent on not seeming dramatic about the weather. Mostly because Y/N and Adam had both chastised him for going out without a scarf and hat but with a coat that barely did anything to shield him from the onslaught of wind (he had a date after work that night, and was convinced that he did not need to lug around all his winter gear because it would damage his “vibes” or whatever the hell excuse he made).
Y/N had whipped her head around so fast that she thinks it might have spun 360 degrees, “Oh my fuck, yes! Have you noticed?”
So they discuss at length the changes that both of them noticed, some things that Y/N didn’t know because she couldn’t have her eyes on Harry all of the time. Apparently, he is staring at her with much less discontent when she’s not looking and once, Niall had even seen Harry pluck a piece of fuzz off her shoulder. It must have been so delicate that Y/N didn't feel it because she sure as hell didn’t know this happened. Then Niall shares that Harry had asked Adam what Y/N and Niall get up to outside of work and her body is overrun by giddiness that he’s even remotely interested in her life.
“He wants to hit it,” Niall said, shoulders sagging with relief when they stepped into the cafe and heat was blaring, “And I think he fucks nasty too, like – I’ve heard some things.”
“Shut up, no he doesn’t – like, not with me,” she shook her head, “I think he’d rather put his hand in a boiling pot of water. What have you heard though? And why the hell haven’t you told me about it?”
Niall gasped, scandalized, “I just found out about him fucking nasty! I only started doing some investigating after I decided that he wanted to hit it raw with my bestie in mind,” Y/N’s face feels hot but she’ll blame the sudden warmth of the cafe on her previously cold face, “Anyway, you know Juni? So her sister married this girl, Laina, and Laina’s cousin knew a guy who –”
“Niall, this is a lot to follow.”
“--well be patient, dick, I’m getting there,” he clicked his tongue, “She knew a guy whose sister dated Harry like a while ago. 5 or 6 years? She showed me the photos and everything.” Niall’s eyes were wide, the gleam in them one he only gets when he’s so stupidly excited about something he can barely contain it, “Apparently his dick is huge and he’s a freak. Like dom shit, I’m pretty sure. They did loads of kinky stuff and played into the dynamics, apparently one time he’d edged her for three whole weeks once.”
Something curled inside her, stirring interest in her gut, “Holy shit.”
“Right? It adds up, he seems like the type.”
“I. . .literally can’t deny that at all, he definitely seems like he would fuck someone until they cried,” she can’t help that she almost said it wistfully, absently wondering if they were being too loud but the pop song bumping through the speakers and the typical sounds of a cafe drowns them out for the most part, “I don’t think with me though. I mean, I’m delusional, but not enough to think that him finally being relatively kind to me, means he wants to sleep with me.” They paused briefly to order their drinks, and Niall added on a scone for them to split at the last minute, but continued as they walked down toward the pick-up counter, “Whenever I almost passed out in the soup, remember how me and him had that conversation? I think he just feels bad.”
Niall pulled his sleeves down to cover his palms, “Do you have those hand warmers you’re always lugging around?” Y/N shook her head, “Ah shit – anyway, you know I can’t get over Adam going to make the sandwich for you before Harry demanding that he be the one to make it.”
“I think it’s because he wanted to corner me.”
“God, you talk about him like he’s hunting you down sometimes,” he retorted, then seemed to consider it for a moment, “Which. . .maybe he would want to, but in a bedroom instead of a restaurant and with less clothes.”
Face scrunched, Y/N slapped his shoulder, “Stop it! I’m like – don’t put that image in my head, I’ll go crazy.”
“I know we were pretending like you didn’t think he was hot for the sake of workplace humility, but I for one saw this coming from a mile away,” Niall stepped over to the side, letting an older woman shuffle by them for the straws at the end cap, “Your taste in men seems to be hot bullies.”
“You’re not wrong, but we can’t entertain this for longer than this break and then we have to squash it. It’s nonsensical and he’s definitely not looking at me in that way,” their drinks are set on the counter, along with the scone, “Besides, I think he sees me as an annoying kid he has to deal with.”
“Babe, he’s not that much older than us,” Niall reminded her, then flinched when the latte burns his tongue, “Ah, fuck – he does act like a grumpy old man though. I’d kill to see him at a club or something.”
Y/N would probably offer herself up as the one to kill if she saw Harry in whatever his version of going-out clothes is. If he wore pants that stretched over his thighs tight or a shirt that stretched across his chest and showed just how built he was underneath all of his clothes. How would he wear his hair? Would he slick it back or wear it unruly? And what kind of jewelry would he wear? In a few interviews she saw him sport rings, and she’s seen a necklace around his throat a couple of times. He doesn’t seem like the flashy type thought – god, she doesn’t know. She shouldn’t even be entertaining the thought.
The thing is – of course Y/N has had a big, fat, stupid crush on Harry. He’s her mentor, and he’s amazing at something that she loves, he always smells like vanilla and amber, plus he’s nice to look at. Y/N would have had to possess the mental fortitude of a monk to be able to completely deny it. Instead, she shoved the feelings down deep into the recesses of her mind to only be dabbled in every so often when she had a couple of drinks before she locked them back away.
Was it sad that all it took was for him to be even a minuscule amount nicer and she was ready to kiss him on the mouth? Yeah, it was, but it’s not like anything was going to come of it. She’d squeal about it in her bed later pretending that he was actually obsessed with her and thought about her nonstop and then she’d go to work the next day and pretend to be normal. This is light work – easy shit because she’s been living in slight delusion since secondary school and she finds it makes life ten times more bearable.
“Let’s make this walk count,” Niall looped his arm around her elbow, and to an onlooker, it might seem like a sweet gesture to be close as friends, but Y/N knew it was because he was so cold his bones were probably shivering, “How big do you think his dick is?”
“Like six inches soft, and eight when he’s hard.”
. . .
Whenever Niall and Adam go out for Korean barbecue, they always let Y/N tag along, especially if there were drinks to follow. Y/N personally loves going with them because Adam, without fail, always ends up doing all the grilling while Y/N and Niall get to pluck pieces of meat from the tongs and gorge on the sides. It’s fun because Y/N never gets the princess seat at any food establishments among her other friends and her family. Culinary school and then working in a restaurant have always equated to kitchen lackey at any events where food has to be prepared or served. It turns out that when you’re with other chefs, the older one typically takes responsibility for the cooking for some reason and Y/N is not about to question the dynamic (at least not until the day she is the older chef, then she’ll spout something about respecting your elders).
Tonight it was a Friday, and they had a rare weekend off thanks to one of the kitchen's boilers acting up. Harry has never been a “get it repaired and hope it lasts until next winter” kind of guy, he’s just going to replace the whole boiler, but last minute and over a weekend meant it would take some time. While it put their star chef in a sour mood, everyone else was quite happy about 4-5 days off paid, because it wasn’t their fault. So Niall invited her along for a celebratory dinner and drink and Y/N, of course, was going to oblige.
It was just them at dinner, but a couple of the other workers from the kitchen would show up for drinks. For now, Y/N is sitting beside Niall in the booth while Adam starts cracking his knuckles, prepared to slave away over the grill for his two subordinates. “Thank you boiler,” Niall says into the air, hands clasped together, “Proud of you for refusing to stick it out for a second longer, I appreciate you.”
“Is the boiler here with us?” Adam inquires, engaged.
“He's speaking to its spirit,” Niall reaches over for the dish holding the cucumbers, making an annoyed sound when Y/N stabs into one while the plate is midair on its way to him because he’d already eaten like six of them at that point.
He yanks it closer to himself, “Shit, relax, they’ll bring more!”
Adam clicked his tongue, “Then you ought to give her the whole plate of those, and make sure she’s fed.”
Ever since Y/N’s slight passing-out mishap, Adam has been very concerned about her eating habits. If she even looks like she might have dissociated for even a second too long, he’s at her side with a granola bar or a bowl of sliced fruit. He makes sure she’s out of the kitchen for lunch and doesn’t let her return even a minute before the allotted 30 minutes, no matter what the state of the kitchen is in at the moment. She would suspect that it was something that Harry might get pissed off about, but every time she comes back in, he levels her with a slight, scrutinizing gaze – like he’s trying to see through her when he asks, “What did you eat for lunch today?” To make sure she isn’t lying.
It’s sweet – Adam’s concern feels like a big brother’s caring love, while Harry’s concern kind of feels like a witch plumping up her protein for soup, but the sentiment is still kind. Plus, it has Niall rolling his eyes but pressing the braised potatoes over to her in exchange for the cucumbers. Y/N accepts it, “Your hand will remain forkless for another day.”
Adam’s phone buzzes on the table just as he’s laid the first strips of beef down on the grill, sizzling loudly, and he picks it up with the hand not gripping the tongs. A smile breaks out over his lips, “Perfect timing! Harry’s here,” he tells them gleefully, “He’ll take over the cooking, and for once I get to just eat.”
Y/N’s heart nearly stutters to a stop, “Harry’s here?” She repeated and Adam was still smiling.
“Yeah! You’re shocked, right? I didn’t think he’d want to come either, but when I mentioned going out with you two he said he’d try to stop by,” Y/N might pass out, “So fun, I’m excited for you two to see him outside of his restaurant-boss mode he’s always in.”
Before they could discuss it further, and before Niall could do anything other than pinch his nails into Y/N’s thigh, the bells hanging on the door chime over the music and the chatter of other patrons. Y/N looks over to see Harry scanning the area, finding them once he locks his eyes with her own. He’s casual in a very Harry way – he’s in maroon pleated trousers with a white t-shirt tucked in neatly, everything still looking particularly pressed and put together in a way Y/N could only hope to strive for. His hair isn’t gelled back like usual, but loose and soft, his curls threatening to sprout in little wisps around his head though the length of his hair doesn’t allow it to be too unruly.
“Hello,” he greets them, scooting in beside Adam, right across from her, “Sorry I’m a bit late, traffic was shit.”
“That’s fine, man,” Adam claps a hand on his shoulder, and holds out the tongs, “You can repay us by cooking some of this meat! Get some of the chicken bulgogi on there, that’s what Y/N’s most excited for.”
Y/N expected some pushback, a bit of grumbling, maybe a glare that shut the whole place into silence – but none of that happened. Instead, Harry takes the tongs and gets to work, laying the chicken around the edges of the grill and then flipping the strips of beef Adam initially laid down. Y/N is staring; she doesn’t mean to be, but it kind of feels like seeing a tiger walk along the side of a highway. Even if it’s still a food-related area, seeing Harry outside of his restaurant, participating in something that’s not technically the same realm of dishes he prepares – is crazy. Enough that Niall nudges her knee and holds out the cucumbers with raised brows as his nonverbal cue to stop staring before she starts drooling or something stupid.
“What’s the estimate on the boiler?” Adam asks, and because his hands are unable to stay idle for long, she finds him using the second set of tongs to pick up the beef and start cutting it with the scissors into smaller pieces, “And how long?”
Harry flips the chicken with one hand and eats some of the rice with his other – Y/N knew he could multitask, but not this well, “Enough that I wanted to scream over it,” he replied coolly, despite the context, “It should be here and installed by Wednesday, but we won’t be able to open up until Thursday or Friday.” He looked up between them, “By no means act disappointed on my account. It’ll be a nice little break.”
Niall sighs, plucking a piece of brisket from the grill and dropping it into the little dish of ssamjang, “Okay, thanks, I was not going to be able to act sad about it – a break will be pretty nice. I might like – read a book or something.”
“You’ll have to learn to read first Ni,” Y/N found her voice just for that remark, hoping to not seem too weird and off-putting by just eyeballing her boss and being awkward. Adam snorts, Niall steals a cucumber from in front of her, and Harry’s gaze shifts to her, smiling a little.
“So Niall will learn to read,” he reiterates, adding vegetables to the grill, “What will you do, hm?”
Y/N feels hot because they’re in front of a steaming grill, in an already warm establishment – for no reason would any of the warmth flooding her body have anything to do with Harry, and how nervous she was to be speaking casually with him, about her plans.
With a swallow, she answers, “I – uh – probably hang out with my cat?” Could she sound like more of a loser? “I’ll catch up on shows too, maybe – um, clean?”
“You have a cat?” Harry starts to tong the chicken onto her plate, “I didn’t know that.”
I didn’t think you even knew my name like seven months into working with you, so of course you didn’t know I had a cat.
Y/N doesn’t say that – she does nod instead, “Yeah, her name is Hazelnut. She’s really sweet.”
“Her name suits her then.” Harry replied, “Try the chicken.”
She scrambles for her utensils before realizing they are already in her hand and takes the piece into her mouth. Of course it’s cooked perfectly – the marinade she couldn’t credit Harry for, but how well it was cooked she could. Then he plucks a lettuce leaf from the plate and places some of the beef, a few of the vegetables, and the pieces of kimchi on top of it. Y/N thinks he’s constructing this for himself, while Adam is adding more to the grill (simultaneously feeding a whining Niall) but then he curls it up and stretches his arm across the table, “Now try this.”
During the duration of their meal, everyone chatters idly. Harry does eat, or at least Y/N thinks he does, but she’s so distracted by the fact he somehow took over as the one grilling for her. He’d choose the pieces of meat to give her, always the best-looking ones, and he’d construct little lettuce wraps and flagged down the waiter for more cucumbers saying that he wanted to try them (since she and Niall hoarded them all), but doesn’t eat but one of them and pushes the rest of the bowl over to her side of the table.
Harry is not a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, but he is making sure she’s well-fed. Up until Y/N is full and feeling entirely too sleepy to go out and get drinks. The rest of the night seemed much more suited for a bath and crawling into her bed, but she knew Niall was not letting her flake on drinks. Especially since, as Niall alleges, “Adam is a horrible wingman, and everyone just thinks we’re dating so they aren’t hitting on me.”
“Are you coming for drinks?” Niall asks Harry after they’ve finished and to Y/N’s absolute shock, he doesn’t roll his eyes and say shit like clubs and drinking until late are beneath him (which, if he had said that, he wouldn’t have been lying).
Harry’s eyes slide to her, and Y/N always feels so pinned to the spot under his gaze, that she doesn’t know what to do, “I suppose I could come for a little while,” he answers, “If you don’t mind drinking with one of your bosses.”
Adam scoffs, “Please, as if that’s ever been a problem for these two. They damn near drink me under the table each time.”
. . .
The drinks help but also make whatever turmoil trapezing through Y/N a little worse too.
After the bouncer hit on her while they were coming in – something that usually made her feel giddy and primed her for the night, felt slightly embarrassing with Harry there – she took two shots almost instantly. It helped to soothe her nerves just a bit, enough that when they find a table she doesn’t feel rigid and tense. One more shot after that and she’s loosey-goosey and knows that she’s in a sweet spot where only one more would get her tipsy, but right then she just had a nice buzz. Floaty and warm, tickling her veins with the promise of something sweet.
Another shot and she’s ready for Niall to take her to the dance floor. He and Adam are in a relatively heated debate over some footie league drama when a song off the BRAT album comes bumping through the speakers. If she and Harry were closer then maybe she would have dragged him out there and been silly, but she’d rather place both of her hands on a burner than drag Harry to the dance floor. Niall comes easily anyway, telling Adam that it isn’t his fault he’s so fucking wrong but his shoulders and hips are already moving to the music. Y/N briefly makes eye contact with Harry as she leads them off, but darts away just as fast.
“Adam is such a dumb dick, he knows they shouldn’t have traded Alfie,” he all but yells over the thumping bass, “By the way, Harry’s been looking at you like he’s starving all night. And why does it seem like he’s trying to fatten you up for a soup, Hansel and Gretel style?”
It’s easy enough to ignore him a little bit by grabbing his hands and making him move with her, especially when the song switches from bumping, cocaine, bass tones to something they can roll their bodies together to. They always do this when they’re out, usually with Adam nearby standing watch like a bodyguard ready to push any unwanted attention elsewhere. Or to encourage welcome attention – whichever the coin fell. Now Adam is with Harry, so they just vibe with each other – Y/N has no plans to go home with someone tonight, and Niall always says he does but puts forth 10% effort at the beginning and then abandons the idea for the rest of the duration.
All things considered, Y/N’s having fun. She feels loose and happy, she ate enough that she doesn’t feel like she needs to stuff her mouth with bread so she isn’t just surviving off vodka shots and vibes. Niall’s hands are all over her, smoothing up and down her sides, grabbing her hips, laughing when he accidentally hits her boob trying to fix her hair when it got mussed from an intense headbanging to a Rihanna song that probably didn’t warrant headbanging.
They did one more shot and Y/N knew she was good for the night. Her bones buzz and her vessels feel warm and they make their way back to Harry and Adam. Y/N can look Harry in the eye now, which is more than she can say for herself earlier, and she smiles at him, “Hi again,” it doesn’t feel as awkward as it would have been before, and Harry seems to take pity on her tipsy state. He returns the smile, his fingers wrapped around his glass – she doesn’t know what he’s drinking but it looks brown and more sophisticated than whatever she was drinking.
“Hi,” he replied, then nodded toward Niall, “You two are closer than I suspected.”
“The liquor drives them to be menaces,” Adam tells him like a warning, “One time they full-on made out, I’d never been more shocked.”
Y/N pouted, her face hot, “Hey, Niall kissed me to get some guy’s attention, that time wasn’t my fault!”
“The time before that?”
She huffs, rolling her eyes, “I wanted to kiss someone! Sue me,” then she looks at Harry again, and maybe she is a little bit tipsier than she thought, “They’ll make me sound like a whore, but it’s not me, it’s Niall. He’s the whore.”
“I mean I won’t deny it.”
At some point she and Niall are dancing again, and so is Adam this time but it’s just at the table and it’s all wild limbs and no coordination, barely any rhythm or beat. Harry has an amused glint in his eye the entire time which is better than an annoyed glare. Even when Adam almost knocked into Y/N, and to avoid getting elbowed in the face and ending up in the ER with a broken nose, she ducks out of the way.
Then hits Harry’s drink and sends it all over his nice shirt.
For a second, Y/N considers making a run for it. She has no idea where, or why even – it was an accident – but in her head, she imagines the night being ruined. Imagines any traces of amusement or joy leaving his face in one, drastic swoop before he stalks off into the night and vows to never give her a chance again. This was her one chance to make him like her, and maybe expand their relationship and dynamic to something even a centimeter closer to what Adam and Niall have.
But now he has brown liquor staining his nice white shirt and some of it drips down to his pants. Y/N wants to cry – honestly, she might, she thinks she could feel the tears burn in her eyes.
“Oh my god –” she starts but Harry raises his hand.
“It’s ok–”
“I’m so sorry!” She is so stressed, her face pulled into a deep frown, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m the – I’m the worst, I’m so clumsy, I can't believe I – was it expensive? I’ll pay for another one. I’ll – where’d you get it? I’ll buy one, or you can just take it right out of my pay! Or –”
Harry is pinching the fabric away from his torso, “Y/N, stop talking,” he finally cuts her off, raising his voice only to be heard over her panicked rambling, “It’s okay. It’s just a white shirt, I have a dozen others.”
Still, Y/N is frowning, and in a rare moment of courage purely from the mango-flavored shots (that didn’t taste like mango at all) and intense, immense guilt, she grabs the shirt too, keeping it peeled away from his skin, “I’ll get the stain out? I can get it out for you, I’m great at getting stains out.”
“Don’t worry about –”
“Mate, just let her,” Adam sighed, “For the sake of her psyche and enjoying this little break we have, let her get the stain out.”
Harry seems at a loss, for the first time she’s met him. He’s looking between all of them, Adam, Y/N, and Niall who is nodding in agreement that Y/N, even sober, would let this distress her the duration of their time off. And she guesses Harry isn’t an evil person, because he doesn’t mutter that he doesn’t give a fuck about how she feels over break when she screwed up his shirt. Instead, he seems to be debating something but something in Y/N’s heart that it isn’t just whether or not he should let her get the stain out. Theoretically, all he’d have to do is give Y/N his shirt and wear Adam’s jacket out of the club.
But a different idea is what struck him.
“How did you get here?” Harry inquired.
“Ni and I took the subway.” She explained, still holding his shirt from his body, and when she was this close to him she could see how the lights danced off his eyes.
“I’ll drive you home,” he decided, with a sharp nod of his head, “I’ll leave my shirt with you, and you can return it to me on a different day. Will this ease your psyche?”
Y/N agrees adamantly, “Yes, yes, yes, at least for now – when I wake up I’m g’na be a mess.”
“And I’ll be hearing about it for sure,” Niall agreed, then gave a wary sigh, “Adam, I guess you’ll have to take me home too since nobody is trying to see my shaving routine up close. I’m not riding the subway alone.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Adam patted him in the middle of the back, “I figured that.”
. . .
Y/N is very self-conscious about her flat right now.
Normally she isn’t. It’s definitely not the prettiest on the outside, and if not for her superior interior decorating skills, the inside would look just as bad but she does her best to keep it looking cute and whimsical. That’s fine for someone normal to see, of course, any of her friends she doesn’t mind coming over, and she’s never felt like they would judge her things.
But Harry is not someone normal. She’s pretty sure he lives in a high-rise flat with a view of the whole city from his living room, and the kind of windows that you click a button to close. Something modern chic and expensive, while she had to caulk her windows to keep bugs from getting inside and had to rent an industrial carpet cleaner to get the carpet in her bedroom a normal color. Plus her kitchen is small, and for some reason that is the thing she is most worried about him seeing – her itty bitty counters, and her cabinets that can fit maybe two pans each.
Though Harry seems to regard her place respectively, or at least he had so far from where he stood by the door. There’s no noticeable disgust or judgment when she watches his eyes dance along with what he can see, and he seems pleasantly surprised when Hazelnut greets him at the door. “Ooh,” he coos, “She’s friendly.”
“Maybe a little too friendly for her own good,” Y/N replies, “I think she’d leave with any stranger that had treats.”
Harry crouches to get closer to her and Y/N is feeling a little overwhelmed by the sight of her big, scary boss puckering his lips and clicking his tongue at a cat, so she heads to her bedroom. That was the plan – to get Harry one of her shirts so that he could switch out with the stained one he’s wearing. Then Y/N could start the process of de-staining it tonight because if there’s one thing that a heavy, irregular period taught her in her early teens, was that she could get a stain out of anything.
It takes her a couple of minutes to dig through her drawers, searching for something that he could wear comfortably but pickings are slim. Tonight was when she’d been planning on tackling the laundry in her hamper but since she went out instead, she didn’t have many options. She settles on a shirt she often sleeps in with a hedgehog on the front of it and decides it will have to do.
By the time she comes back out, Harry is fully sitting on the floor with a lap full of Hazelnut. It’s cute and does something weird to her chest that she decidedly ignores in favor of clearing her throat, grabbing his attention, and holding out the shirt for him to take. “Thank you,” he murmured politely, and Y/N was suddenly so happy that she left her telly on so there’s at least some noise in the background – especially when Harry politely removed Hazelnut from his lap, stood, then pulled his shirt over his head.
The gasp that leaves her isn’t really covered up by the telly, but it lessens the severity of it a little (she hopes). Y/N had just recently started witnessing Harry in casual-ish clothes, so to suddenly get an eyeful of his bare torso was a lot to swallow. He is covered in tattoos – she knew about the ones on his arms, but she knew nothing of what decorated his chest, his belly, his hips – she might scream. She might have to scream, or squeal, or both – preferably in her pillow after he’s left but the shots have made her lips loose.
“Holy fuck,” she marvels at him – his physique is nice too, and his pecs are like. . .mouthwatering. Y/N wonders how much she can fit into her mouth and bite down on – “That’s – you have loads!”
Harry looked down at himself like he was also surprised that there were so many. He huffed a laugh, opening up the shirt she gave him and finding the neck hole, “Yeah, I guess I do,” he stuffed his head inside of it, pulling the shirt over his body and covering all of the milky skin that he’d been hiding. Y/N wishes she could have taken a picture of it to stare at later or something – she doesn’t think she had nearly enough time to ogle him, “After my 22nd birthday, I think I might have been getting one each month at some point.”
“I – whoa –” she says lamely, “They look so cool.”
“Thank you,” he still has a glint in his eyes, all too amused, standing in his trainee’s flat, in a hedgehog shirt, watching her flounder for words, “You’re very easy to fluster, Y/N, did you know that?”
Her throat feels dry, suddenly, like no amount of water would be able to soothe it.
“I –”
“It’s cute,” he adds, and Y/N thinks she might explode or something, “The side of you I saw tonight was cute.”
Y/N is at a loss for words, her voice barely scratches out a, “Really?”
And then she sees something that makes her positive that she actually passed out in the club after the last shot, and Niall was dragging her halfway-conscious body through a subway while she actively hallucinated.
Harry Styles. . .her scary boss. . .the chef that has made people older than himself and in the industry for longer than him cry. . .the very man that she nearly chews through her lip waiting for his opinion on something she’s made out of pure worry and a state of panic. . .
. . .has a dimple.
He has fucking dimples!
“Rest well, Y/N,” he advises her, “Drink lots of water and enjoy your time off.”
With one more pat on Hazelnut’s bum, Harry opens the door and steps out of her flat.
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