campfire chronicles

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in which harry and y/n are counselors at a sleepaway camp and he hates her from the very second he meets her. or, a classic enemies to lovers summer romance.

Harry Styles is the bane of Y/N's existence.

...Okay, so maybe she's being just a tad bit dramatic. But she has good reasoning for it — she swears! All she wanted to do was make some money this summer by working at Happy Campers, a sleepaway camp that was looking for counselors to work from early June to mid-August.

She'd initially seen the flier as she shlepped her canvases and painting supplies from the sculpture studio to the art building on the other side of campus (why it was designed that way, she'll never know — she thinks whichever builder or contractor did it had some sort of vendetta against art students). In a big, bold black font casted against a bright, borderline neon yellow background (seriously, it kind of hurt her eyes, actually), were the answers to her summer plans: COUNSELORS NEEDED FOR HAPPY CAMPERS SLEEPAWAY CAMP! EXPERIENCE WITH KIDS IS A MUST. $15/HOUR FROM JUNE TO AUGUST.

And yeah, maybe the only "experience" she had with children was babysitting her neighbor's daughter when she was in high school, but that was apparently enough for Happy Campers. Because within two days of her interviewing with the owner, a sweet, older woman named Linda who's been running the place for the past 30 years, she received word that she'd been hired.

From the end of the semester to the beginning of camp, she had about three weeks to learn everything she could about being a solid counselor. She assumed the basics — no cursing, keep an eye on them at all times, try her best not to lose her cool if one of them was particularly bratty — but did some research on the rest.

She wasn't sure what age group she'd be assigned to, but Linda told her she'd find that information out at training — a three day-long educational overhaul where the counselors were the only ones at camp, learning about everything from lifeguarding to CPR to mental health awareness.

Happy Campers was located only about an hour and a half from her college apartment so it made more sense for her to depart from there instead of her hometown. On the drive up in her shitty Honda Accord (a navy 2008 model she affectionately named Edith), she tried her best to calm her nerves. She thought it was silly for her to be so anxious over surrounding herself with kids all summer, and a small part of her hoped she would get assigned to an older group — 5th or 6th grades would be ideal since they were sufficient enough not to be too clingy.

As the small university city slowly melted away, tall buildings and chain restaurants were replaced by sturdy oak trees and an abundance of greenery. When her drive had officially shimmied down to just 20 minutes left, she rolled down her window and lowered her music, allowing herself to inhale the fresh air. Even at her 45 mile per hour speed (5 below the speed limit, just in case some ticket-happy police cars were hiding out somewhere), she found a spark of hope in the clean, crispy air that infiltrated the interior of her car.

Maybe this summer was exactly what she needed.

Perhaps the warm, summer air got to Y/N's head a bit too much.

The second she pulls into the faculty lot at Happy Campers, she's inundated with people everywhere. Some are hugging excitedly, greeting one another after what she assumes has been a year away, while others are pulling their hefty duffles from their trunks and throwing them in heaps on the ground. She nibbles on her bottom lip as she tries to find a parking space to pull into, her eyes twinkling some as she spots one. She flicks her right blinker on, prepared to make the turn when an older, much shitter car than hers pulls through.

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