I didn't have anything to do today so umm.... here is this!!! :) have a lovely weekend. I apologize for any errors I'll fix them tomorrow!

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Daisy's headphones were broken.

She had stashed them into her suitcase so carelessly the day she left that the wire had gotten all fucked up. So now she was sitting with her hot chocolate and warm bagel and a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray in her lap, and a pair of headphones she couldn't even use. She sighed, putting them over her ears anyway, because at least then she could pretend she had some music to listen to.

The other night had ended in her watching the boy she had mistakenly assaulted disappear into the rain. Luckily Nana hadn't waken up until Daisy had finished making dinner ("how long was I out for, bonita?"), and the incident was never mentioned between the two of them. Daisy went to sleep thinking of the image of him standing there in the kitchen, looking at the floor with his forehead wet and furrowed, and a bloody rag against his lip. She couldn't get it out of her head. She couldn't sleep, a familiar difficulty for her, and ended up just giving up on the whole thing and slipping on a big t-shirt as she slipped out of bed, grabbing her paintbrush and a blank canvas from her suitcase...

"Nana, do you have a boy who comes and gardens for you?"

Daisy finally asked about it a few mornings later while chewing on a piece of breakfast toast. She didn't know why she had taken so long to ask.

"You mean that Harry boy?" her grandmother was sipping on her coffee, not an ounce of suspicion on her wrinkled face.

"Harry?" Daisy swallowed and patted her mouth with a napkin.

"Yes, Harry. He's a good boy. He cuts the weeds around all the petunias and hydrangea. He used to live in the house next door when he was younger, so I gave him a bit of spending money one day to help me in the garden. He just sort of.. kept doing it after that. He doesn't even live there anymore."

That had been yesterday. Today, Daisy had decided to tuck any thoughts of Harry away for the time being, and instead dive into the words of Oscar Wilde while sitting in the small cafe she'd found. Except now her headphones were broken and her bagel was getting cold after how long she'd spent trying to fix the wire on them, and it seemed like the relaxing morning she had hoped for was slipping from her fingertips.

"Daisy?"

She blinked. Looking up from her book, she was met with a familiar warmth when she saw a pair of brown eyes. "Zayn!" she smiled, laughing, and her face lighting up. She probably seemed too excited to see someone she had only met once, but when you're living in a small town with no one you know, then you start to miss having actual friends.

"I told you this town is fucking small," he chuckled just as she slipped the broken headphones down from over her ears. "You're going to start running into people you know everywhere you go."

"Well, so far you're the only one I really know," she told him, and it wasn't far from the truth.

It was weird how when she was living with her family, she thought there was no way she wouldn't enjoy getting away from them. It had only been ten days now, and Daisy found herself not enjoying it as much as she'd hoped. She was starting to miss the way that her little sister would screech her name in that shrilly voice of hers and come sprinting down the stairs to show her whatever new thing she was fascinated in for the day. And she sort of maybe missed the way her mom would snap at her to take her boots off before coming in the house so not to bring in mud. And she could have possibly even missed her brother's burping in her face at the table because her mother insisted they sit next to each other no matter how many times Matthew decided to do something beyond gross.

That was all those things were now, though— things she would miss. Things she didn't appreciate enough when they were there.

"I'm here with some friends if you wanna join us," Zayn said, breaking her from her thoughts. He jutted a finger towards a table in the corner. He bit his lip as he waited for her answer, a self-destructive habit that the two of them seemed to share. He looked just as effortlessly good today as he had when she'd seen him wet inside that Tesco— his hair was flat this time, brushing over his forehead, and his neck was consumed in a loose turtleneck that made him look like he'd just walked out of an ad for Topshop. He had a face that any painter would have been pleased to see on their model.

"Sure," she finally shrugged, collecting her things and standing up. "Why not."

Zayn's friends were nice. They all seemed to be bound together by their similar tattoos and clothing. There was Lara and Lucas, who were together, and made it well-known by the way they leaned into each other so much that they seemed almost like one body with two heads. Then there was Astrid, who only said a simple hi as an introduction when Zayn first brought her over and introduced her. She seemed to be in a mood, staring down at her coffee and not saying much, so Daisy tried not to let it bother her. Social interactions were always a hate-love thing; she wanted the company of friends, but hated the overthinking that her brain did as she tried to make them. She was the same way in uni.

"You went to art school, then?" Lucas asked her. She was just finished telling them a little bit about life in London— how could she even describe it? It was a huge city that she had felt lost in her whole life. She instead said that it was a good scene for everyone, from artists to foodies to the city-lovers. It wasn't a total lie.

"Yeah," Daisy nodded, sipping the last of her cold hot cocoa. "I liked it, but it was hard to really be inspired, you know? Having deadlines and critics and prompts for art just seems so... wrong."

"Now you're free to make what you want, though," Lara pointed out. "You've graduated so you have no limits."

"Not if she wants to make any good money," Lucas snorted, earning him a nudge in the shoulder from the girl who was melted against him.

"Shut it, Luke. She can still make a good living making art that's not just for tourists or big companies and shit. Right, Daisy? Don't be a sell out like everyone else."

"Like you, you mean?" Astrid spoke up, a bitter yet teasing tone to her voice that Daisy couldn't read. It was clearly a sore spot, or something that the girls had talked about before, because it made Lara sink back into Lucas's side.

"Lara's a photographer," Zayn leaned over and whispered in Daisy's ear, noticing her confusion. He had an almost apologetic look on his face. He probably felt sorry for how honest his friends clearly could be sometimes. "She used to take like fashion pictures and post them on her instagram, you know. Astrid even used to model for her. She started working for this wedding company last summer, though, and so she deleted her old pictures to seem more professional."

Daisy nodded and whispered back, "Is that why Astrid's in a mood?"

"What?" Zayn couldn't help but chuckle. "Oh, no. She's just always in a fucking mood. I don't even know why."

As long as it's not because of me, Daisy thought while watching the two girls bicker back and forth in whispers. Zayn seemed to notice, too, because he rolled his eyes and cleared his throat loudly to interrupt them, drawing his friends' eyes back to their end of the table.

"Guys," he raised an eyebrow playfully, but also as a subtle warning. Then he flashed his gaze back at Daisy, staring at her with those beautiful brown eyes that helped her relax back into her chair, her hand still wrapped around her now empty mug. "Daisy why don't you tell us about your art. What do you like to paint? Not the shit that your professors liked you to paint, but the shit that you like."

"Yeah, what do you like to paint?" Lara turned her attention back to her, leaning in.

"Well," Daisy let out a breath that pushed up her bangs. She licked her lips thoughtfully. "Um, I guess I like to paint things that capture what a lot of people feel, but never talk about." She looked at all of them and blushed. "Like, um, do you ever think about how many people there are in the world? Like billions. Not only that but there are a bunch of dead people, too. And they all live completely different lives than you and in different places with different people around them— but yet we all sort of feel the same things, don't we? I think about that a lot. Love, grief, loss, confusion, hopelessness, happiness. We all feel those things and we sit there alone and think that we must be the only ones who have ever felt that way, but we're not. We're not even the first people to have felt that way."

She was staring down at her mug at this point and then looked up to see them all staring at her, silent. Daisy sucked in a breath then added, in a much softer voice now, "Well, anyway— that's what I like to paint. I just want to capture those feelings that we all feel no matter what walks of life we're from."

"Wow," Lara shook her head, "That sounds really cool, Daisy. I'd love to see it."

"Yeah," Lucas nodded in agreement, "Maybe you could show us your stuff sometime."

Daisy chewed at the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling at them, then looked over at Zayn who seemed to be staring her down intently. He gave her a nod of approval and smirked, not in a condescending way but in a way that made her stomach heat up. Then she tore her eyes away and moved them over to Astrid, the blonde who sat directly across from her. Her eyes were difficult to read, and she started to thoughtlessly play with the metal in her nose before speaking.

"I think art school must have really gotten to your head."

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Weekdays were always painfully slow. So slow, in fact, that Harry found himself grinning with relief whenever a customer walked in; whether it was a single mom trying to find a flashy animation that would get her kid to shut up for once, or an older bloke trying to find some outdated classic that he would then try to lecture Harry about how they don't make good films like this anymore. Harry agreed, of course— the film industry had basically become a circle jerk for rich people to make even more money— but that didn't mean he wanted to hear someone try to school him about it.

Today it was a middle-aged man with receding hair who seemed to think that he deserved a refund for renting a movie that turned out to be, well, the exact fucking movie that he picked out. Harry was half annoyed, half grateful that there was finally someone there to entertain him.

"I didn't pay for this," he barked out at Harry.

Harry fought a smile. "Sir, yes you did."

"You know what I mean, kid! This movie was garbage. I want my money back for it and I want to pick out another one for free," he seethed with such frustration one would have thought that they were discussing something that actually fucking mattered, not a three-pound movie rental. Harry wanted to roll his eyes. He knew exactly what kind of person this was. The kind of person who probably had everything handed to him whenever he wanted so that the biggest problem in his small, stupid life was watching a movie that sucked.

"It was garbage, right?" Harry raised a brow, feigning concern. He stood up from the stool he was perched on behind the register and reached for the movie. "I mean, how could a movie titled Love, Lust, and Snogging possibly end up being garbage? That's quite a head scratcher there. Maybe, and correct me if I'm wrong here, you were hoping to see some tits? Am I right? I bet your wife hasn't given you a good lay in ages so you thought this movie—" he waved the DVD in front of his face— "could give you what you've been missing. Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, sir, but some tits on a screen aren't going to make your marriage any better."

Harry set the disc back down on the counter and gave a pitiful smile, shaking his head. The man had completely been taken back, his mouth parted to probably throw out some entitled insults, but luckily it seemed he couldn't find his voice.

"Sorry, I can't give you a refund," Harry continued. "If you want to talk to my boss go ahead, he's down the hall. Now excuse me, I have to help the customer out behind you."

Harry nodded towards the girl who had walked in at some point during their conversation. He hadn't even heard the bell from the door chime out— it was like she just appeared out of nowhere behind the man. He would have to thank her for being the perfect scapegoat to get him away from this moron.

The guy grabbed the movie, jaw clenched. "I will," he said, and finally left Harry in peace, storming off towards the direction of his boss's office. If he worked for some typical bureaucracy then he probably would be worried about getting fired. Rick was pretty much a father to him by now, though; he would probably get as much of a kick of that guy as Harry did.

"Sorry about that, miss," Harry began, not even looking at who was stepping in front of him, "Just had some trouble with—"

His eyebrows shot up when he finally noticed the dark bangs, puffy lips, and round eyes staring back at him. "Oh, it's you."

"Me," the girl nodded, leaning up on her toes so they were closer in height. "That was pretty intense there." She arched a brow. "Is 'great at insulting customers' the first thing on your resume?"

Harry tilted his head innocently and put his hands up. "Hey now, if that's first on my resume then 'advanced skills in whacking people with pans' has to be on yours."

"Touché. I guess we're even now, though," she leaned back down and gave a sly smile that went right to his dick. Damn. He was only just one man, young and helpless and pathetic when it came to not imagining this girl in the most erotic way possible. "You were a dick to me, and I gave you a busted lip. We can both move on."

Harry let out a laugh, running a hand through his head of curls. He could still feel the painful throbbing in his mouth after she had hit him; he couldn't say he wasn't impressed with the strength in her swing, and maybe slightly turned on, but that wasn't what he was trying to think about right now. The fact that he even thought that getting hit in the face was remotely sexy just showed how in need of getting laid he was; it seemed like him and Mr. Love, Lust, and Snogging were in the same goddamn boat together.

It wasn't that Harry was bad with girls or anything. He just happened to have a hard time not saying exactly what was on his mind, even if it came out in a way he didn't intend (see: their first encounter). He also didn't meet too many girls in Kent who didn't already know something about him, so that made his situation even more difficult. It had been him and his hand and every film with Audrey Hepburn in it for awhile now, and he was just going to have to deal with that for the time being.

(Maybe he was just bad with girls, though.)

"So what brings you here?" Harry asked, thinking back to the last time he saw her only a few days ago. They had both been soaking wet and too scared to speak loud enough to awake her grandmother; now, they had dry clothes and no one was around except for the shelves and shelves of movies.

"Well, I was thinking about something you said about that movie."

"Pulp Fiction?"

"Yes," she licked her lips, "You said that it had some good stuff in it, but there were better. I wanted to know which movies you think are better."

Harry didn't say anything for a moment and instead took a moment to look at her. He had seen her two times now and this was the first time that she actually had neatly brushed hair rather than a damp and tangled mess cascading down her back. Her neck was on display with the black blouse she was wearing framing it, allowing for a deep v to be carved from her chest and shown to him if he would dare to let his eyes drift that far down. In a weird way, he thought she looked like a sketch of a person; sort of messy and barely thought out, but also like everything about her was intentional.

"I may have also wanted to say sorry again for hitting you," the girl added after he failed to respond. He mentally shook away his hormones and shrugged his shoulders loosely.

"Don't worry about it. I'm sorry, too. For the dumb shit I said," he muttered lowly, rubbing his jaw and feeling a smirk suddenly creep up the corners of his mouth, "So you came here because you want me to show you what movies I think are good?"

"Not just good," she scoffed and faked an offended look on her face, "The best."

It sounded like a challenge and Harry, as bored as he was, couldn't turn it down. He responded to her request by jumping onto the counter and swinging his legs over, heavy boots landing on the floor beside her. He didn't have to mutter a word in order for her to follow right behind him as he immediately guided her to a section of the store that he knew by heart now, he spent so much time there. The familiar giddiness was swarming in his stomach because movies just did that to him, and they had since before he was barely even able to form sentences.

"I feel like you should tell me your name if we're going to do this," he called back over his shoulder as they walked.

"It's Daisy," she replied with a laugh. "And you're Harry."

"How'd you know?"

"My Nana may have mentioned it," she replied lightly. "You're acting like we're about to have sex or something."

He was glad she was looking at his back and not his warning cheeks. "Oh, Daisy, trust me," he stopped in front of a small rack that was up against the back corner of the shop, filled with movies. He turned and looked down at her (the height difference was enough that he had to tilt his head down) and put on a serious face, lowering his voice to an octave he rarely used.

"A good film is even more intimate than sex."

His breath fanned over her face and awakened bumps under its hot caress, bumps that he couldn't see but Daisy could certainly feel. She swallowed thickly, causing her throat to bob and his eyes to quickly dart to the part of her neck that was visible to him. He wanted to bite it— instead, he lifted his eyes back up to hers and blindly grabbed for a movie from the rack, not having to look to know where it was.

"Let's start with this one."

Daisy looked down at the movie that was then plopped in her hands. "Good Will Hunting?" she read aloud, flipping it over and inspecting it like it was a slide under a microscope.

"A classic. It has everything in it; good acting, strong character development, romance, beautiful cinematography. Don't even get me started on Matt Damon."

"Ah, so you like Matt Damon then?"

"In Good Will Hunting? Yes. In pretty much everything else? Absolutely fucking not."

Daisy laughed under her breath, looking back up at him. She took a look around at all the movies, ordered by genre and alphabet and the year they were made. Then she looked down at his boots— they were the same thick, clunky ones that had residual mud dried onto the bottoms which he had been wearing the other day. They looked ridiculous.

"Tell me why this one is better than Pulp Fiction," Daisy challenged, and put the movie back in his hands.

"Easy. It doesn't try to be anything more than it is. Pulp Fiction—" he waved his hand and scrunched up his nose, "It's cool, yeah, but it is so blatantly trying to make some statement. It tries to make a point by being all confusing and artsy, but in Good Will Hunting it doesn't have to be anything at all. It doesn't try to put up a big flashing sign and say look at me! I have something cool to say! It's very gentle and human and real."

Daisy had a hard time focusing on what he was saying because the movement of his lips as he spoke was far too distracting. Gentle and human and real.

"Well what about this one?" she reached for another movie from the rack. "The Truman Show? Is this one human and real, too?"

"Hell yes," Harry nodded and grabbed the movie from her, beginning to go on and on about how it was art thinly veiled as just another comedy— or something like that. Daisy wasn't listening too well, not because what he saying wasn't interesting, but because watching him talk about movies was even more interesting. His whole face seemed to relax and become as expressive and excited as a child. She couldn't even choose which part of him to focus in on; his cheeks, his jaw, his full lips that were moving a mile a minute, the bob of his trachea as he spoke. She couldn't help but think of how he would look beneath her, with his hair astray and his cheeks flustered and red as she dug her nails into his chest. "What type of person do you think I am now?" she would smirk at him while she wrapped her hand around his throat and felt his hands cup her ass...

She had to shake the image of it away before it got any worse.

She didn't even know why she had come in the first place. Something had pulled her toward the familiar movie store as she had walked home from the cafe, after denying Zayn's offer to accompany her. It wasn't that she didn't want him around, but she felt like she had needed a moment to breathe after the tense judgement she'd received from his friend, Astrid. Maybe Daisy just wanted to find a good movie to watch, or maybe she just wanted to sit down on the crappy carpeting between the aisles, leaning against Harry's shoulder while he spoke to her about a handful of films he liked and she imagined fucking him.

Or maybe she just didn't want to feel alone for the rest of the day.

Somehow, to neither of their realization, her hand ended up on his jean-clad thigh and his leg had ended up nudged up right against her as they sat on the floor with a stack of movies next to them.

"Have you ever seen Blade Runner?"

"No," Daisy shook her head sheepishly, laughing into his shoulder. "I'm so clueless when it comes to movies, you're going to kill me."

"Might have to."

She looked up at him and, under the fluorescent light of the store, noticed a faint mark cutting down the middle of his lip. "Oh hey," she touched it with her thumb, unthinking. "It healed up pretty nice."

"Hm? Yeah, that. It did." His eyes drifted towards her thumb on his lip, suddenly all the blood rushing there. "Now it just looks like I got beat up or something."

"You clearly got mauled by a cult who was trying to make you join, but you refused, so they had to give you a lesson."

Harry smiled in amusement against her thumb. "Jesus. What kind of cult are we talking about here?"

"A sex cult," she replied simply, as if it was obvious. "They're into like the really weird shit, but you just.. well, you're too vanilla. They were trying to convert you into a freak but you just wanted to stick to your vanilla ways."

"Do I look vanilla to you?" Harry pursed his lips tightly and grabbed her hand, fingers wrapping firmly around her wrist as he tugged it down from his lip, leaving only a small breath of air between them now. Daisy flickered her gaze between his lips and darkened eyes, having a hard time deciding which one was more mesmerizing. Gone were the flecks of gold and blue, replaced with a deep green that looked dark enough to be an abyss for her to fall into. "So that's why they beat me up?"

"Yes," she murmured with a nod of her head. "They couldn't let you get away without a punishment."

"Do you want to know what really happened?" he rolled his eyes and shifted his foot so that it rested against hers— heavy boot against her white sneaker. He finally let himself peak at her chest, not able to help himself given their close proximity, and he had to fight back a literal moan from the sight of her breasts, just sitting right there, barely cupped by her bra as if they were going to spill out at any given moment. He looked back up at her face and smiled hazily. "I actually just got mauled by a pretty girl."

That was when Daisy seemed to come to her senses. Her neck and cheeks flared up from his words and she instantly tore her eyes away from him, standing up. What was she doing? Getting comfy with a boy she hardly knew who was a snob about movies and liked to judge people before getting to know them? Thinking about what it was like to have sex with him and choke him and smack him? That certainly wasn't what she had come to Kent for.

"I'm sorry I have to get going, it's late."

Harry stood up with her, coughing into his arm uncomfortably and nodding. "Yeah, okay. Er— want me to drive you home? My shift ends soon anyway."

"No, no." Daisy handed him the movie in her hand and frowned. "No it's okay. Thanks for the offer. I, uh.. I like to walk."

"Okay then. You can take these all with you," Harry scratched the back of his neck and nodded towards the pile of his movies that they'd just been going through together. He wasn't sure how the air between them had shifted so suddenly, but he wasn't going to question it. Clearly, opening up his mouth never ended well so it was best if he just shut the fuck up. "You don't have to pay or anything."

"What?"

"Yeah, just bring them back. It's cool, I trust you." He offered a weak smile, handing them to her. "Plus, I know where you live now so I can send my weird sex cult friends to your house if you don't return them."

"But—"

"It's fine," he cut her off firmly. "Say hi to Ms. Cecile for me."

And with that they parted ways once again, but not without both of them feeling unfulfilled. Harry didn't know what to think as he watched her scurry out of the store with the pile of movies hugged against her chest, her eyes not looking back at him as she disappeared into the darkened evening. He rubbed at his jaw and sighed. He could still smell the lingering scent of her, fresh like the flowers that he tended, and the feel of her body sided up against his as they had sat on the floor together. He reached up and felt the slight scar on his lip. All he knew was he at least didn't have to think of Audrey Hepburn tonight.

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