#sanity would be leaving the chat muted for weeks or months

[jawllines]

Hi!! Just wondering if you ever had a chance to write that fake gf blurb!!! I know that was ages ago tho ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

i DID INDEED THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME! THIS IS VERY LONG AWAITED LIKE I WROTE THE FIC TWO YEARS AGO AND SAID I WOULD WRITE A FOLLOW UP THEN WAS THE DEVIL AND IM VERY SORRY THAT IM THE WORST IN THE WORLD.

Three solid weeks after their cabin expenditure, Harry was still stupidly head over heels for his fake girlfriend.

Y/N doesn’t leave like he had feared she would once they finished up and she’d bid him his favor. He’d expected that they would have gone home, she would throw in the towel and they’d become but passing friends again while Harry conjured up some story about their breakup. Figured that he might bump into her in another science lab and have to mute the twinge his heart gives at the sight of her soft features, lips pulling up into that smile he’d grown so fond over. Or even worse, he’d not see her at all, and while that would be good on his heart in time, the immediate thought of it sounds dreadful and abhorrent and just downright upsetting.

Yet none of those things happen. After that first night home, when she’d knocked on his door and told him she wasn’t ready to leave yet, offering up a cuddle and a horror film their fates had been set in stone. They see each other so frequently and go out and about either by themselves or with the others so often, that they might as well still be playing a couple. Hell, even when they’re at one of their flats without anyone else around they fall into calling each other pet names, climbing all over into each other’s laps, and -- if Y/N’s had a few bevvies in her -- will kiss pretty, splotchy purpled love bites to mottle the skin at his throat (but never would she venture to his mouth). It was easy as breathing for them. . .like they’d been together for as long as Harry had told his friends in the first place; maybe even longer.  

Neither of them speaks on it or seal the deal though. Harry’s not even sure if Y/N likes him back or not, because while he could twist and turn her actions into loving embraces, longing glances, and passion behind those hickeys -- he knows she’s just a touchy-feely, lovie dovie type of person. Maybe it’s selfish of him to soak in all of these gestures and pretend that they meant more than they were, but that doesn’t stop him from doing it. It keeps him sane, to some degree, because it went from liking Piper and her being his top tier, biggest all-time crush, to Y/N being his whole world it felt like.

And it’s not even like he can chat with anyone about it! He’d gone and lied to all of his friends about being with her already, so he’d look like a right tosser to tell them the truth. They would all be so pissed at him -- brows set in deep furrows frowns dragging the corner of their mouths down. Would they even talk to him after? He’d started with the lie in the first place so that he could spend time wallowing in his own self-pity and laziness, so how could he very well explain that without seeming like an absolute dick for not just letting them know?

The worst of it though? When he can’t talk to his friends about something, he would instead tell Y/N but this time that just wasn’t an option. “Hey, so remember how we lied and said we were dating? Turns out I actually really fucking like you and can’t go a goddamn minute of my free time not daydreaming about kissing you, so what should we do about that? Try it out or am I just a friend? Jus’ lemme know for my own sanity’s sake ‘cos I’m proper stressed about this yeah?”

The thought of it makes him shiver from embarrassment.

All of it weighs heavily on him, as he sits beside her on the couch, watching her mouth curl and shape around her words as she tells him the intricacies of her shopping experience today. She’d gone with a few of her friends to the mall and they had all decided on a select few places to go, all of which Y/N had a weird feeling about, and all of which something odd had occurred. And he was listening to each of her points -- how the cashiers in the Helzberg Diamonds nearly got into a proper fist fight, when they were in Victoria’s Secret she’s fairly sure she saw a polyamorous relationship of at the very least seven, or even when she went to go purchase him a soft looking sweater she’d figure he would like (because his AC unit makes his flat the absolute zero and he loved it, actually, he's cozied up into it as soon as she’d handed it to him), a woman tried to fight her friend for a size medium when there were several other mediums. And he realizes, as he soaks in every word and revels in the way she speaks with her hands, blinks harder and shakes her head when she’s confounded by something -- he really is in love with her.

He can feel it, from the depths of his chest, worming around his heart and hugging it tightly. There’s something he just can’t explain about it; such an immense warmth that overcomes him and the ever-present need to reach out and touch her was heavy and persistent at the forefront of his mind. He wanted to bring her to his chest and hold her close; tell her again and again that she was incredible and how much he liked her and how much he wanted to ravish her in sweet kisses that would leave the both of them feeling gooey and warm. How was he meant to focus on anything else in his life when all he could think about was cocooning Y/N in a fort of blankets and keep her all to himself?

Harry doesn’t realize he’s leaning forward until Y/N’s words have slowed to a stop and her eyes go wide some, looking from his mouth to his eyes and back before between each pupil like she could find the answer of what he was planning there, “Harry?” Her voice is inquisitive, yet soft -- gentle as a stroke of a feather, “Are we about to -- are we about to kiss?”

Had anyone else said something like that, it would’ve torn him from the moment and he would have drawn back and been at least a little pissy that they couldn’t have done it like a movie. However, it was Y/N who was looking at him with these big eyes, both trusting and wanting to some degree, and his heart hammered in his chest. Like two sticks at a tympani, it rumbled and rustled as he kept his gaze held to hers, “If you’d like to,” he had murmured carefully although his voice trembled just slightly around the corner of his words, “If you’d like to, I would really like to.”

If Toddy or Niall had seen this, they would’ve surely taken the piss. They’d always thought Harry to be some smooth talking lady killer but he would figure that’s the last thing he was. Maybe he’s got non-purposeful flirty eyes and he watches people’s mouths as they speak which has led one too many people on accidentally, but if he really likes someone. . .well, it isn’t as easy as complimenting their shirt. It’s something he mulls over so for days, weeks, months, and instead of being suave and calculated with how he pursued it he does it in a spur of the moment. He leans in as they tell a story because he’s so overcome with that feeling that it feels like he may burst.

“I want to,” she tells him and a wave of not only relief but sheer joy flutters through his body, “I’ve wanted to but I thought you liked Piper?”

“Liked, yeah but a sweet fake girlfriend of mine kind of pushed her way into my heart and planted her feet in my atria,” his lips quirk in a smile as her own do, “I -- one of the last night’s we had stayed there, Piper had come to our room. She wanted to hook up with me and. . .and well, hell, that had been my dream for how long? I used to get so upset that she’d never shown interest in me and then there she was, showing interest but I just -- God, all I could think about was you.” He scooted a little closer, his hand floating up to cradle her cheek and he sighed softly, “Then you came in all drunk and wanting a cuddle and it only cemented the fact that I like you far too much than someone should like their fake girlfriend.”

The smile that is stretching her cheeks, Harry only gets to see for a few moments, because after a second or two she’s leaned forward and smeared their lips together. It startles a squeak from his throat and a huffed laugh from his nose as he reciprocates the meshing of their mouths. Her hands skate against his forearm, gripping onto his bicep like she might be steadying herself before practically crawling her way into his lap and Harry accepts her more than willingly. He works with her, maneuvering his arms so that she was astride his thighs and he had one hand cradling her face as the other held onto the round of her hip tugging her impossibly closer to him.

It’s good -- fulfilling in a way he doesn’t exactly know how to describe apart from craving something for so long and finally having it. Her lips are warm and soft; they taste vaguely of the chocolate turtles she’d been eating earlier when she’d come over in the first place and he can’t help the way he suckles it into his mouth and nips at the plush skin. Their noses knock together and he can feel a puff of air warm his upper lip from her but she makes no move to part from him. If anything, she kisses deeper, using the tip of her tongue to gently flick at the seam of his mouth.

Harry parts his lips easily for her and Y/N wastes no time sliding her tongue against his own. He moans and it very clearly encourages her, her movements becoming even more confident than they had been previously. It’s in the way she moves so ardently that suggests to him that she has wanted to and as her hands reach to gently hold the side of his face with a few fingers splaying out across the skin of his throat, he wonders when it may have happened. Was it when they had first cuddled and he’d carried her up the stairs to their bedroom? Or was it when he’d given her that very first hickey? What if it even dated back to when they had met?

He knows when he’d wanted to kiss her the first time, though he doesn’t think past him knew at the moment. He would dare date it back as early as when she’d made him pancakes but that he’d often attributed to wanting to smooch her since she was acting so well. No, the first time he thinks he could have planted one on her and not felt one regret about it would be when she had bought those candles for him. Had gone out of her way to show genuine regard for him -- to do something so nice, just because he couldn’t sleep -- if he could have kissed her then, he’s sure he would have. He probably should have.

But that doesn’t matter, because here she’s sat, their tongues dancing and twirling around one another, heads tilting and the tips of their noses stroking together. It was playful and flirty and something Harry knows he’s going to think about long after they’d parted.

No matter how much he didn’t want to part, his lungs burned with the need to breathe and he eventually breaks away with a soft smack of their lips detaching. They’re both breathless, chests heaving, and when he looks down some he sees that her nipples had pebbled through the thin material of her shirt that beckons an interested twitch from his cock. Though the filthy thought that tries to slither into his brain is quickly muted by the way Y/N wraps her arms around him, hugging him close to her and nestling her face into the side of his neck, “I liked that.” She murmured, “Was getting tired of satiating my want to kiss you by giving you drunk hickies.”

Harry chuckles, moving his arms around her waist and stroking her back in soft, slow movements, “I hope those stay too though, I rather like them,” he admits and she giggles. Harry appreciates the comforting weight of her atop of him and he’s fairly sure he could nap like this, but he has to ask something before he can. Wouldn’t forgive himself if he didn’t take this moment to do so. “Y/N?” She hums in response, her face hidden still, “Would you do me the honors of being my real girlfriend? Not fake?”

She doesn’t miss a beat in her response.

“Of course I will, Dummy.”