Boiling Point
A/N + Request: harry styles meet cute! this is a really old request and i must have accidentally cleared it out between seeing it and half-drafting this fic. Don’t remember exact words but something about a cute run-in. Idk if this is the definition of cute necessarily but def a run-in and finally finished (:
Word Count: 3.6k
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If life followed cartoon rules, and steam really could hiss out from your ears, Harry suspected he’d out-smoke even his third cigarette.
He’s huddled under the small awning beside the restaurant he worked in. A few feet away sheets of rain come down in a sudden and chaotic curtain and it feels right watching it from there—like everything he was feeling inside breaking loose out there; his inner turmoil hitting the darkened pavement.
“Fuck,” he swears under his breath again. He knew this was one of those things that would stick—like his girlfriend bailing on him for Thailand last year, like his best friend eloping and never telling him until after the honeymoon, like in year 6 when he was always the last sorry fucker for any group activity.
Sometimes it felt like he carried so many moments like these around. Weighed down by all the ways people—and life, have betrayed him.
“Fuck them,” he says on his next exhale. And like a strange manifestation a woman suddenly appears in front of the building a few doors down and screams into the rain:
“Fuck!”
A flicker of a smile ghosts his face. Until she turns and lifts her flimsy jacket, actually stepping out into the downpour.
She’s still swearing as she crosses the next two buildings, and by the time she notices him tucked safely under the small awning she’s already hopping the concrete block beside him, taking shelter without asking.
They eye one another for a moment, it’s like she’s waiting for him to kick her out.
Her hair is plastered to her face, mascara leaving inky streaks down her face and her mouth is an angry pink streak against splotchy skin.
She looks away before he can take in any more
Harry continues smoking. She looks so much like how he was feeling it almost seemed to him the universe was telling him he was right to feel this way—offering up omens reflecting the state of his heart. He would let her stay here as long as she needed. She looked like she needed it.
Upon stubbing out his third cigarette and trying to light a fourth against the blowing wind, she turns sharply and glares at him. Her hair is pulled back now into a clip, face wiped but flecks of mascara still remain and her eyes are still tinged pink. Evidence of whatever happened before the rain.
Harry holds the pack out to her—he should have offered. But she looks offended that he would even do something like that.
He shrugs and puts it away, their eyes lock again and her anger and righteousness bleed out into a tired, haunted look.
Harry puts his cigarette offer down, tucks his 4th back into the box. Three was enough. He’d been trying to quit all month anyway.
“Rough night?” Harry asks, his voice raw from shouting earlier.
Her eyes flicker back to his face and she gives a short nod. Clears her throat. “Best night ever.”
Sarcasm, Harry notes. Of course she used sarcasm as a defence.
“Same here. Rain was just the cherry on top.”
“So that’s a celebratory chain smoke then?” She turns to him now rather than peering over her shoulder. Harry gets a full sense of her—under her green trench coat was a white jumper and animal-print jeans. She has an ipad tucked into the waistband of those jeans. What the hell?
She notices his eyes on it, pulling her coat over it.
“Uh,” Harry scratches his forehead. “Yeah. Yeah.”
She sighs and steps right up beside him, leaning against the remaining bit of wall. Harry shifts closer to the door to give her space.
“Fuckin’ hell.” She sighs. “Sorry.”
“No that’s alright.” Harry can’t help the smile tugging at his lips; he liked her sailor’s mouth.
“No I-I’m genuinely trying to stop swearing so much. My mum says it makes me crass and unladylike.”
“Yeah? I’m trying to quit too.“
“How’s that going?”
“Fucking great.”
She laughs and Harry feels a warmth break through in the centre of his chest. She was one of those people that laughed outwardly—throwing their head back without a care rather than lean inwards. Harry liked her laugh.
“So,” he says when she shakes her head and quiets down, leaning back to the wall. “What’s your story.”
“What’s my-“ she wipes under her eyes.
“Oh,” Harry grabs the apron hanging off his shoulder and offers it to her.
“Really?”
“Yeah, go on.”
She hesitates before patting her face down, her hair, down her neck. Harry looks away.
“Harry?” She says his name.
How did she—
Right, his name embroidered in white on the bottom of his apron. He watches her rubs her thumb across the stitching—his girlfriend used to do that for him on all his aprons. This must be one of his old ones.
His heart twists.
“That’s me.”
“YN.”
“YN,” Harry tests her name in his mouth.
“That’s me.” Her eyes flash as she echoes his words and this time he chuckles, surprised at how easy it comes.
“My ex lives in that building,” she points. “We broke up a few weeks ago. Pretty sure he was banging his coworker, the bitch.”
“Were you…picking your stuff up?” Harry glances down where the ipad is tucked away.
“Not really, that’s all dealt with. He wanted to talk? I feel like an idiot.”
They were strangers but Harry felt like he should offer a comforting hand to her shoulder or something. Maybe words. He doesn’t know what to do, so he waits. She fills the silence eventually.
“He’s been trying to get back with me. I-I don’t know why I came. One foot in that place and I could smell her. He must still be seeing her, her perfume was bloody everywhere. I exploded—confronted him about everything. I was right all along. I, god I feel like a tool.”
“You’re not.” The words come out of him fast, like flipping a burning steak off the heat without thinking. “He is.”
She looks up at him, nods. “He is. Yeah! He is.”
“Exactly.”
“I think…I just wanted to see him one last time. Make sure I made the right decision? We’d been dating for…god like 3 years? I figured out the whole affair thing but it took me a couple months to work up to breaking up with him.”
“It’s hard,” Harry’s hands itch for another cigarette but he shoves them into his armpits, crosses his arms. “They become your life, it’s all like…ingredients in a bowl. Hard to pick them out once they’re in.”
“Yeah,” she whispers.
“I mean I guess even if you manage to pick them out they’re not the same pure ingredients you put in in the first place. You’re changed no matter what…”
He trails off realizing he was getting too into it. She was just a stranger sharing a dry place, he didn’t need to dump his baggage on her.
“That’s very…”
“Stupid?” Harry offers. “Sorry-“
“No!” She stops him. “Not stupid at all. That’s actually a really good metaphor for it. I think I just feel changed, and think that means I need to go back to find the pure version of myself that began the whole relationship but…that’s not possible.”
“And you won’t find her there.” Harry motions with his chin to the building, obscured by the downpour.
“No.” She stands taller. “I won’t. Actually-“
What she was going to say is cut off when the door beside them creaks open and Harry moves out of the way. A head pokes out—one of the line chefs. His eyes widen when he sees Harry out here, they flicker to YN and back to Harry.
“Oh Harry you’re still here?”
“And what?” Harry doesn’t mean to sound so rude to Rick but he doesn’t want Rick going in and talking about seeing him out here.
“A-are you coming back in?”
“I don’t know.” Harry and him hold intense eye contact for a minute before Rick backs down.
“I’ll…okay.”
Rick rushes back inside.
Harry feels YN’s eyes on him.
“What were you celebrating again?”
Harry laughs but it’s not one of humour, he needs it to release some of the tensioned re-coiled after seeing Rick’s face. For a moment hearing YN’s problems he’d forgotten about his own baggage. A brief moment.
YN eyes him wearily.
“I guess I owe you that. Uhm, I’ve been a chef here for like, over 4 years now yeah? That’s, it’s a fucking lifetime.”
“Mhm,” she follows.
“And with the head chef leaving I was so sure—so fucking sure—his position was mine. The head chef and me we…we had a good relationship and he basically promised it to me before he left last week.”
“I get the feeling this story doesn’t end up with you getting head chef.” YN crosses her arms, a protectiveness bristling in her posture.
“Yeah. Bossman comes in today with some fucking prick too posh and skinny to belong in any kitchen. Wouldn’t last a fucking day. All of us are making fun of him right? Then we get told—we’re looking at the new head chef.”
“Well who the fuck’s he?” YN asks. Harry liked the way she seemed wholly invested in his story, her emotions rising to his own.
“His fucking nephew.”
“What the fuck?” Her eyebrows shoot up. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah!” Harry exhales long and slow, imagining it was cigarette smoke. “Yep! The whole kitchen’s fuming right now but I-I couldn’t hold it in. All these guys have shit on the line they can’t afford being fired but me? I didn’t care. Because I’m not sticking around here any longer if I got cheated out by a-by a fucking—“
“Nepo baby.” YN provides.
“Yes!” Harry remembers the word tucked into the back of his mind. “A fucking nepo baby! I have close to a decade’s worth of work on him!”
“I’d be seeing red if that happened to me.”
“Oh why do you think I’m out here.” Harry looks back at her. With the mascara off her cheeks he sees the faint flush either from the rain or from their swapping of stories. “I got sent out here to ‘cool off’.”
“Fuck cooling off, if that nepo baby can’t handle your heat what the fuck is he doing in the bloody kitchen?”
“Right!” Harry exclaims.
She feels so alive, he thinks. He can’t remember the last time he was this open. This unburdened.
For so long it was about keeping your head down and doing the work, be berated by whatever chef you worked under and doing the work. It got him to where he was—sous-chef. But he was tired of keeping it in for the sake of hope, the promise of making head chef. He loved the kitchen—personalities and the quirks of everyone, but he was tired of everything else. Tired of being betrayed and being last and carrying everything around.
“My advice?” YN turns so that she’s leaning on her shoulder. Harry mirrors her without realizing. Behind her the rain starts to let up a little, the clouds deciding they had raged enough and the tantrum could turn into a sulk.
“Would love to hear it stranger,” Harry’s mouth pulls up into a tired smile.
She narrows her eyes for a second like she was searching him for sarcasm but whatever she finds grants him a small crooked smile.
“Do not try to quit swearing now.”
He barks out a laugh, not expecting this piece of advice from her. But the warmth in him spreads, having nothing on the sulking winds.
“That’s solid advice actually.”
“Mhm,” she nods.
A ghost of a smile on both their faces, a second stretches into a few as they lock eyes and really see each other.
Harry felt like this whole time they were just waiting out the weather together. But now it was shifting into something different. After all, the rain’s gone soft enough that a jacket could get either of them back. But neither move.
“So are you deciding whether to go back in or quit?” YN asks him.
“Uhm,” Harry thinks. “I think I’ve made up my mind. But I have to go in either way, collect my stuff.”
“Do chefs not have to give 2 weeks or something?”
“Fuck that.”
“Yeah, fuck that.” YN smiles softly.
Harry’s so warm now he’s pretty sure if he wrapped his arms around this soaking woman in front of him he would dry her up in no time. She had somehow turned his nightmare of a day into a dream.
“Thank you,” Harry says—and he means it. There’s a lot he isn’t saying aloud, but somehow she seems to hear all of it anyway. Harry suspects she was good at that kind of thing, maybe unless it had to do with an ex.
YN nods in understanding. “Yeah. Thank you for sharing your shelter.”
“S’not much,” Harry replies. He reaches up, tall enough to do so, and flicks the centre of the vinyl awning. A little pool of rainwater tips over the side, splashing down. Both of them share a quiet laugh.
“My ex and I used to come here all the time,” YN says, rolling her eyes at herself. “It’s good you’re leaving—means the food will get worse. Then when he brings that bitch here, they can’t have a nice time.”
Harry doesn’t know whether to laugh or to offer comfort. He hesitates a second too long, so when she looks up at him through her lashes, something catches in his throat.
“Too much?” she asks.
“No. No, not too much,” he says quickly. “If you want actually I can stick around long enough to serve them a guaranteed shite meal and then quit.”
This gets another open laugh from her—so much more rewarding than her humoured smiles.
“That is actually…” YN’s cheeks take on some colour , softening her whole face. “Very kind of you, sir. But go on—make the break now.”
Harry huffs out a breath that’s half-laugh, “sort of mad all of this.”
“Yeah?”
“I was just at my boiling point—having the worst day I’ve had in a while. Gray storm clouds and all.”
“Same.” YN agrees. “Our moods combined must have manifested this weather.”
“Maybe.” Harry eyes her, unsure how his next line was going to go. “But you were like sunshine in streaky mascara to my rainclouds.”
Her back straightens and he would have laughed at the dirty side-eye she gives him if she wasn’t actually intimidating.
When she speaks next it’s the most random question: “Harry, what’s the stinkiest cheese you’ve ever worked with?”
“I dunno, uh…Taleggio maybe?” Harry crosses his arms.
“What you just said was cheesy as fuck, like Taleggio.”
And he’s barking out a laugh again, constantly surprised at the quiet and unexpected way YN was funny.
“I’ll take that as a compliment because when you eat it it’s actually quite-“
“No no,” she puts her hand up to shush him. “No chef expertise to twist that into something good.”
“So you’re saying I wasn’t a spot of sunshine to your day today?”
She sighs like it pains her to be this cheesy. “If sunshine had to like, really penetrate through secondhand smoke.”
“Ah right,” he grins catching her meaning. In a moment of giddiness, of feeling light as fuck, he takes his pack of cigarettes and chucks it across the small lot. It hits the brick wall of the building opposite.
“Fuck those.” He turns to her with a grin but she’s looking at the soggy box with a shocked expression.
“W-what-why’d you do that?!” She asks.
Harry shrugs, feeling like the warmth was definitely going to come bursting out of him. Like if somebody opened him like an oven all of his heat would burst out, scalding and warm.
“I’ve been trying to quit anyway.”
“God,” YN pinches her nose. “You’re…you’re crazy.”
“Crazy dedicated,” Harry feels his humoured nature seep back in. “To quitting.”
YN admits defeat with a sigh. She bumps her shoulder into his, “Well here’s to quitting.”
Harry nudges her shoulder back, his eyes on the side of her face. “Here’s to fucking quitting.”
He punctuates his words with the F-word on purpose because he knows YN will get it. She looks at him on cue and they share the smile of an inside joke.
For a second they just stand there, sharing the quiet like they’ve known each other longer than a rainstorm.
A car hisses past on the wet road and the only rain falling now is the leftover drops sloping down roofs and windowsills. The air smells like cold pavement and whatever prep was happening inside. For a moment Harry’s chest squeezes because he was outside of that place not just physically but emotionally now. He knew stepping back inside meant that for the last time, he wasn’t going to be part of this family anymore.
YN glances down while his mind reaches acceptance, lifting something between them.
His apron, bunched in her hands—he’d forgotten he gave it to her, forgotten it wasn’t on him.
“Should return this,” she says, offering it out with a little smile.
“Oh—right.” Harry takes it, fingers brushing hers for a moment that feels like it will last long in his mind. “Didn’t even notice you still had it.”
“I know,” her eyes flick up to his with that same reserved warmth. “But the rain’s finally stopped.”
As if on cue, the silence around them stretches open, no longer filled with the constant drum of water or car tires brushing through the rain.
She steps back a little, creating space like this moment was finally ending but she wasn’t ready to let it go entirely. It was weird because Harry didn’t want to let go either.
“Guess that means I should go,” YN says, tucking a loose still-wet strand of hair behind her ear. “Get on with life.”
But she doesn’t move.
Harry swallows, suddenly aware of how quiet it was without the roar of rain, how he can hear the low murmur of the kitchen coming from an open window somewhere. “Yeah. And I should go uhm, quit.”
Her smile is small but encouraging. “Go on then.”
He didn’t want to go if it meant leaving ber. Harry shifts his apron over his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll…see you around?”
“Yeah sure. If it’s meant to be,” she says, her lips curling into something coy.
“Meant to be?”
“London’s pretty big, is it not?”
“Feels small to me.”
“Then we’ll bump into each other a few times,” she says so smoothly, and there’s something so vulnerable about it he almost forgets to breathe. She covers it up with a joke, “you know. If I catch a whiff of Tagellio I’ll know how to find you.”
“Taleggio,” Harry grins as he corrects her. It was cute.
She wrinkles her nose like she’s smelled it, “Yeah that.”
“Probably shouldn’t though. A smell that bad…”
“In London…”
“Yeah,” both of them say with a crack of a smile. “Best not.”
“Wish me luck then.” Harry says finally.
And then because staying would mean doing something more reckless than quitting his job without another, Harry nods, turns, and heads inside. He hears the faint good luck behind.
The restaurant’s lobby feels colder. Voices echo from the kitchen, familiar voices and easy banter flowing as everyone preps for the opening hours. This was it, this was the end.
Harry walks further in, glimpsing the front window, and out of habit glances sideways.
YN. She walks down the wet pavement, hair still damp, adjusting her jacket around her while holding the iPad. He never did figure out why it was tucked into her jeans.
Then it hits him—he was a complete idiot.
If it’s meant to be.
London’s a big place.
Fuck! He was supposed to get her number!
Harry pivots so fast and rushes out, the hostess startles when he barrels past her. He hears her call his name but he’s already bursting through the front doors, nearly tripping on his way to her.
“YN!”
She pauses before turning with squinted eyes. They widen when they see him, “You already told them!?”
“No!” Harry pants, laughing and breathless as he walks up to her. “I just—I needed your number. Before you…were lost to London’s streets
Her shoulders relax, a grin breaking through; he had put her puzzle pieces in the right places. “Oh! Alright. Sure. You can have my number.”
“Perfect,” he steps closer into the rain-damp air between them and hands his phone over.
He watches her type it in, finding it hard to believe this was something that was going to happen. That this day didn’t end up shitty because of her.
“There’s a saying,” he says without thinking. Maybe because he wasn’t sure he would have the balls to call her later or tell her how much she’s helped him today. She looks up at him waiting for him to continue. “Uh. It goes something like, the same water that hardens the egg softens the pasta.”
She raises a brow.
“I thought today’s boiling water would’ve hardened the egg. But…”
Her eyebrow comes down, eyes softening as she understands what he’s not saying.
“Me too Harry. Now I’ve got a bowl of cooked pasta.” She smiles.
“Good. Pasta’s good.” Harry feels good that she got the same thing out of their conversation as he did.
She huffs a laugh as she hands his phone back.
“Wait actually, are you free right now?” Harry asks as he realizes he could do whatever he wanted. “Because I am quitting right now. And then I’m doing fuck-all. I-I’d like to buy you a drink. Or tea. Or anything—just don’t disappear yet. Please.”
Her cheeks warm, “I won’t. Disappear.”
Harry exhales out everything weighing on his chest, he feels exhilarated and knows it has nothing to do with quitting.
“Good. Grand. Give me a few minutes to throw my career in the bin and get my knives.”
“Everything a modern girl wants.” She says and it’s one of those unexpected jokes Harry pauses at.
He opens his mouth to respond but he doesn’t even know how, too many seconds passing for anything coming out of his mouth to even pass as returned banter.
“Go!!” She pushes him towards the door laughing, like she knows he’s trying to find words for something.
He walks backwards, trying to memorize the way everything looks in the moment. Feels. Right on the cusp: brave and confident, light and unburdened, a big question mark of a future but no fear…only excitement.
And for the first time all day, Harry walks inside the restaurant without the sinking dread. Without the weight that this would be another think that’ll stick forever.
Maybe the storm was a good omen. Maybe his boiling point had rearranged his molecules towards the right direction. Because now that the storm’s broke, he saw clearly that it had made room for a pretty promising fucking rainbow.
