i.
Harry was drunk.
It was Friday night, he'd scored the winning touchdown at the game, he came with plans of taking Sydney from behind and getting plastered and he'd only successfully completed the latter. He could've fucked Sydney but it was so hot and stuffy inside he could barely breathe or think, so he'd stumbled his way outside to the back deck for at least some sort of air. As much as he liked partying Harry could do without tons of sweaty bodies mashing into him, especially when his senses aren't exactly up to par at the moment.
The night is cold enough to turn the bird bath into crystals, but he doesn't mind it. It cools his heated skin, and brings some relief to his flushed cheeks, the sweat having felt caked on his body chilling away with each breeze. He holds the bottle he has by the nozzle, but he doesn't think he plans on drinking anymore. Harry is a few sips away before his emotional drunk self rears his ugly head and he starts crying to a stranger about god knows what (last time he'd let himself get like that he started getting teary eyed over how much he enjoyed apples and how they weren't nearly as appreciated as they should be and that's how he and Niall became friends).
Adrenaline is still surging through him – they'd played against their rivals tonight, ones who they've been neck and neck with since the beginning of the season. It felt good to wipe that cocky smirk off their faces along with their neon dressed student spirit sections; call him a sadist but seeing as they dropped their dumb bright green flags through the bodies of his teammates jumping and cheering for him, he'd been overjoyed. That school in itself needed to be taken down a few notches – their smug, holier-than-thou attitude despite the fact they've had more drug related busts at parties than any school in the county.
Winning the game got him a promised fuck from Sydney, this nicest vodka Meredith Crocker's parents owned, and a jubilated chant of his name when he'd walked into the party.
It was a damn good night, if you asked him.
"Oi, c'mon pup. Yeah, yeah, I know...that mean boy locked you in the laundry room huh? This things been goin' on for ages, can't imagine how long it's been since you've had a pee." A voice breaks the stillness of the night like a mellifluous symphony, dripping like honey into his ears as he turns around to see a girl coming around the side of the house with a dog (a corgi, Harry thinks) with the shortest legs waddling in the crunching, frosted over grass. There are white fairy lights on the deck he stands on, decorating it with glittery glints of light that glimmer in his eyelids and cast a warm glow over her face. From what he can see of her face, he can tell she's cute in anomalous way, he can't quite put his finger on it.
A thick forest green sweater shielded her from the onslaught of wind wisping around, and from the looks of it she doesn't look all too drunk at all. She was walking straight and was able to hold the dog without much trouble, and he knows its weird to stare at her but she's intriguing. Her voice, for one, is something he thinks he could listen to forever and the way she smiles at the dog makes his heart patter weirdly too, but maybe he'd been one sip closer to emotional than he thought.
"Okay is it here? You want to do it here? I heard you're shy so I'll turn this way while you do your business." She talks to the corgi seriously, pivoting on her heel and Harry doesn't know why he hides. Why he ducks down behind the bench just as she swings around and is staring in his general direction. If he didn't want to be caught staring at her now he just seems like a proper creep, but he didn't want her to stop talking to the dog. It was very pure, how she was having a conversation with it, and it made him feel happy in a way he wasn't able to describe.
"S'cold isn't it puppy?" She continues, and Harry finds himself smiling, "I'm freezing. I hope your fur is thick enough to – oh, you're done?" Harry watches as she scoops the dog into her arms, holding her close and turning towards the stairs of the deck...Harry's eyes widen. She can't catch him like this! It'll look suspicious as all get out. He very well can't just pop up either, that might scare her and he doesn't want to be the reason that she ends up in the hospital.
