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harry-writings · 4 years

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Drive Me Wild

- where Harry has a problem expressing emotions, and Y/n talks too much

Masterlist

A/N: mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, indications of depression, and a very mild form of smut (if we can really call it that)

Song mentioned: Invisible String by Taylor Swift

December 23, 2016

“Do you even have feelings for me?”

Celeste was sitting across the booth at their local diner, a half-empty mug of hot chocolate left stale at the table top, her eyes wet and cold just like the December she’d been trying so desperately to feel warm in.

Harry had his hands held together in front of him, his eyes void and stare blank as his mind played back to all the times he’d given his all to her. Sure, he didn’t always do it with a smile on his face or with lovestruck eyes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t happy.

And how could she not see it? How could she not feel it? He didn’t even bother spending his time with anybody else because he didn’t like anybody else. She was his only company, his only kiss, his only friend.

How was that not enough?

“What would make you think that I don’t?”

She laughed, right in his face, like it wasn’t enough to tear him apart.

“You’re kidding me, right?” She looked serious then, her face fallen and lips frowned. He felt stupid because he must have done something he couldn’t remember, or something to blindly hurt her feelings, yet he had no idea what it was. They were doing so good. “Do you even know how you look at me? Like I’m not even here. Like I’m boring you half to death. I can’t even tell what you’re feeling right now.”

Broken, sad, confused. He wanted to tell her that — he really did — but what would it have mattered? He’d still have that same meaningless stare and that same emptiness that had brought them to that very moment. She wouldn’t believe him even if she wanted to.

And it shouldn’t have broken him as much as it did, considering they weren’t even dating — just testing the waters, feeling each other out, wondering if their dreams could ever belong in their reality — but it hurt him just the same. She was the closest thing to a girlfriend Harry ever had, after all.

“Talking to you is like — it’s like talking to a wall. You’re just… there.”

She stopped to look at him more intentionally then — maybe she had missed something all along. Maybe, there was something he did to show the smallest of his emotions, like a shift in his eye, a pitch in his breath, a quiver of his lip.

But just like every other time, there was nothing. He was incurably empty.

“I think you’ve laughed at something I’ve said maybe, five times?” She let out a breathy chuckle because the tension was so thick she could hardly keep herself together, and she was so nervous, and he was so unpredictable. “And then you have this way with your words where, like you say certain things to beat around the bush about how you truly feel about me, and then it makes me wonder if it’s because you don’t even feel that way at all.”

He wanted to argue with her so bad. He wanted so badly to prove to her how wrong she was but how could he have, when she was so right?

Nobody had ever taught him how to do that — the relationships, the emotions, the vulnerability that came with being human. He couldn’t even recall a single time his parents had laughed at something he had said — couldn’t recall his parents ever having friends over, having date nights, even smiling at one another.

And to make matters worse, he was an only child. He was constantly around the voidance of his parents, the empty conversations, the pit of silences — really, that was all he had ever known. And later, that was what he grew into.

And if he could have changed it, he would have. But how does one go from keeping it all inside, to letting it all out?

He’s tried it all — emptying bottles of wine, smoking down blunts, shoving pills down his throat — and still couldn’t he laugh alongside himself, smile at memories that haven’t let him go, pour his heart out to strangers.

That wasn’t him. That wasn't who he was supposed to be, no matter how hard he tried to be that person for her.

But again, why wasn’t that enough?

“But I’m here, aren’t I?”

Celeste looked at him like it was the last time she was ever going to. And he knew.

“I don’t think you want to be.”

Y/n is utterly incapable of leaving Harry alone.

And Harry’s always alone, Y/n finds. Between every meeting and during every lunch hour, Harry always has a space beside him that’s just as empty and vacant as he is — well, just as empty and vacant as he comes off — and she assumes that’s why nobody’s ever been willing to take it.

But Y/n finds herself beside him more than she finds herself anywhere else.

Everyday when the clock hits twelve and lunch hour begins, Y/n sits in the chair right beside his and talks to him about anything and everything she can think of — the books she’s read, her childhood memories, the dreams she had the previous night — because he shouldn’t be left all alone the way he’s been so used to.

He doesn’t deserve it. He isn’t just a heartless, lifeless man passing through his days and night without feeling anything, he’s so much more than that — so much more than his blank stares, his vacant expressions, and his linear lips.

There’s something so unexplainably mesmerizing and compelling about him, she can’t help but wonder how nobody else has felt it. It’s magnetic, the way he tells the world everything it needs to know by the look and glimmer in his eye.

It’s all there, everything is there, yet nobody sees it except for her.

It’s as if the universe is telling her that right beside him is where she belongs. Nobody else has claimed that spot, after all, and it’s the only place that feels so right to her.

She feels as if it was always waiting for her, long before twelve o’clock, long before they had even met.

August 7, 2016

“Do you know how embarrassing it is?”

Y/n was sat on her kitchen counter in nothing but underwear and an oversized white t-shirt, sobbing and shaking upon the granet, her elbows on her bent knees so her arms were covering her mascara-run face — too ashamed to show herself to the world that’ll only find its way to break her down again.

Cooper was sitting on the barstool just three feet in front of her, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck, his tie loose to his collarbones, sleeves rolled up against his elbows, eyes defeated yet raging with resentment.

She had never seen him quite like that — so vengeful and so unforgiving. She was so unloved, she saw it in everything he did that night — from telling her to shut up in front of his friends, to making her take a taxi home because nobody could stand the sound of her voice anymore.

The love of her life didn’t even want to take her home, and that was all she needed to know that everything she had ever held onto was everything that needed to be let go of.

“Darling… it has got to stop at some point. I know it’s because you’re nervous but you don’t do anything to change it.”

But why does she have to have to?

That’s all she wanted to know — all she wanted to scream at him at that moment in time but god forbid she had anything to say to him anymore.

And how many more times did she have to keep wasting her breath trying to convince him that she couldn’t help it no matter how hard she tried — the constant talking, the rambling, the scrambling to tell stories, the muttering in awkward silences.

It was her way of calming down her nerves in new environments she could never seem to adapt to — her way of dealing with groups of unfamiliar faces, her way of coping with the rest of the world.

And it seemed as though no matter where she went, there was no place for her. She constantly felt stuck in someone’s way, felt like she was always blocking the entrance, and no matter how many times she tried to find a corner to shelter herself in, there were people still climbing over her to go their own way, and she was always left behind, beaten to the ground.

She just wanted to catch up so badly, but only did it make her fall backwards, time after time again. Yet she still did it, time after time again.

So, she just kept crying, too embarrassed to look at him, too afraid to speak, too hurt to know that she could never forgive him no matter how hard she tried.

“Your habits become a problem when they negatively affect everybody else around you. Y/n, you barely have friends, you can’t make friends with mine, all because you don’t let anybody else talk.”

And what an over-exaggeration. Of course she let other people have a chance to respond and have side conversations… just maybe not as often as they would have liked. But it wasn’t extreme enough where the only conversations she carried were one-sided — not that she had noticed.

“I used to love you for it but lately it’s just been — it’s been too much. I can hardly stand it anymore. Don’t know how to say it without making you cry.”

There was no way to.

The babbling, the rambling, the talking… it was all in her nature. If somebody didn’t like it, then they didn’t like her, and it was just as simple as that.

There was no way around it — there was no magic serum, no prescription drug, no cure for over-talking. And there were days, endless days, that she felt cursed, because why is the one thing that’s so wrong about her the one thing she can’t fix?

But again, why would she have to?

“So — so all the times you kissed me whenever I started going on tangents wasn’t because you loved me or because you wanted to, it was because you didn’t know how else to shut me up, right? You didn’t want to have to hear me anymore. Didn’t even want to hear me cry.”

He didn’t have to answer her because she already knew the answer herself. What she once thought was manifested from pure love and endearment was just as toxic and conniving as everything else she’d ever put her hands on.

Why couldn’t she just be enough?

She refuses to move her hands away from her face.

“You never loved me.” Y/n whispered beneath the sobs that shook through her already broken soul. “That’s the worst part.”

Harry doesn’t like being alone.

He never has, but he’d been able to tolerate it through the years. He didn’t have much of a choice — forced to shove the feeling down to the very depth of his core and carry it around with him until it faded to a subtle numbness that pricked against his chest with every move he made.

Loneliness now, though, has taken on an entirely different meaning that Harry can’t tolerate no matter how hard he tries. Because now, loneliness means Y/n isn’t beside him, and he despises being away from her.

There’s something about her that’s unexplainably addicting, like a drug he can’t get enough of even when it’s soaking in his veins and taking over every one of his senses — one that gives him withdrawals that make him so far gone he can barely stand on his own two feet.

She’s unlike anybody he’s ever met.

Because though she seems to put herself out for the world to see, there is so much she keeps hidden. He can see it in her eyes — all the darkness and pain that’s been seeped within them, and nobody else has ever seemed to notice, because nobody else seems to care.

But he does. God, how much does he care, how much does he want to curse every person in existence for not seeing how deserving she is to be happy. It’s all she deserves.

And he’s convinced that the universe created her solely for him, because everyday when the clock strikes twelve and lunch hour begins, he’s reminded that she doesn’t choose anybody else — it reminds him that she chooses him, every single day, in a room full of people that are so much more approachable.

She keeps choosing him because somewhere deep down, he makes her happy. And he’ll keep choosing her, too, long after twelve o’clock.

Harry’s having a bad day.

Since the moment he blinked his eyes open, every little thing has been driving him absolutely mad — from somebody honking their horn at another driver (that wasn’t even him), to the way Jeremy asked him to change one of the slides for his upcoming presentation (even though he told him as nicely as he possibly could), everything was getting under his skin and onto his nerves like a newborn leech.

And what’s even worse is that Y/n is aggravating him when normally, he dreads the final minutes of lunch hour because it means they’re going to have to part ways and only see each other at team meetings until it’s time for them to go home.

They’ve been friends for two years and not once has Y/n ever made his leg bounce with impatience, or had him fiddle with his glasses out of anxiousness, or made his jaw clench with annoyance, until today.

It’s only twenty minutes past twelve and Harry is begging for death.

“You see, I didn’t know it at the time, though! I was twelve and the chaperones weren’t around to watch what I was doing. I saw the duck come towards me and for some reason, I really wanted to know what its beak felt like. I didn’t think it would actually bite me, I wasn’t food!”

And normally, he’d nod his head or give her some sort of indication that he was paying attention to her because he always was, but he hasn’t even so much as lifted his head from above his food since she started talking.

“And it hurt! Proper cried and screamed because it was so much worse than I thought it would be. Ducks are evil little things. I remember one time me and my mum were at the park having a picnic when a duck came flying by and almost hitting her right in the —”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

Silence.

He shouldn’t be talking to her like this, he knows that, but right now, he can’t seem to dwell on the consequences that’ll surely come after this. This headspace he’s in is so unforgiving, it somehow convinces him that Y/n never talking to him again is exactly what he wants, when it’s so far from it.

This bitterness that’s consuming him is only swallowing him down for today, it’s temporary, he knows this because it’s happened to him before. It makes him act instinctively and selfishly, like he’d tear limb from limb if he doesn’t get what he wants in that very moment in time.

He doesn’t care who he hurts in the process, even if who he hurts is the only person he cares about.

“W — what?”

She knows what she heard, she’s heard it so many times before, she just can’t believe Harry was the one who said it.

Never, in a million years, would she have believed he would ever be the person to make her feel this way — so heartbroken, so lost, so confused. He’s always been so different with her, in ways she couldn’t explain, and it always made her feel worthy of something so good.

It never crossed her mind that he’d betray her like this, she never saw that in him — she never saw him being angry at her, or resenting her, or disliking her until this very moment, as he’s staring right through her, like she doesn’t even exist.

“Would appreciate it if you left me alone for today.”

There’s a thud in her chest that makes her blood run cold and her insides freeze with sadness. And there’s this look on her face that makes Harry want to take it all back, and he almost does, but he doesn’t.

She’s lived twenty four years of misery, yet never has she felt so hurt, because never has she loved so hard.

“Oh, o — okay.” She mutters with a faltered voice, nodding her head through unshed tears.

There’s forty minutes left of lunch hour and the only friend she has doesn’t even want her here. She has nowhere else to go.

But she leaves anyway.

Y/n locks herself in her room that night.

It’s a bad habit she made out of herself when she was a teenager — where she’d lock herself up, shut herself out from the world, and keep herself quiet until she’s forced to leave her house again.

She keeps the lights off and sits in the corner in silence, keeping herself awake by repeating self-loathing mantras in her head — like a form of punishment only she is deserving of.

She cries, but that’s all she allows herself to do.

Harry doesn’t sleep that night.

He lays in the dark and just stares up at the ceiling, wondering how he let himself do what he’s done.

Y/n means everything to him, whether she knows it or not, she’s the only thing he has. There’s nothing left in this world for him to hold onto, except for her, and he still managed to let her go.

Tomorrow, he wants to tell her he loves her, because he does. But that’s just another form of selfishness he can’t put onto her again.

He won’t allow himself to, though that’s all he wants to do.

Y/n doesn’t show up for lunch hour the next day.

And Harry’s never felt so alone.

Harry sees her three hours later organizing files in Jeremy’s office.

Suddenly, his hands are slicked with sweat and his fingers shake with nervousness. He feels as if the world has stopped turning because what he chooses to say determines whether or not he could ever have her the way he so desperately needs her.

He wipes his palms against his pants, gathering his breath and his thoughts before he slowly creeps himself up behind her — terrified that if he makes one wrong move, she’ll walk away from him again.

He really wouldn’t be able to survive it if she did.

“Y/n.” Harry greets her hesitantly, knowing in the pit of his stomach that what he’s done was so much worse than he thought because she doesn’t even acknowledge him — doesn’t even look at him — when that’s all she ever used to do. “Can I have a word with you?”

Still, she doesn’t look up at him. She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t even want him looking at her and she would tell him that if she were still talking to him, but she isn’t. She’s just going to keep biting her tongue until it falls off and she has no choice but to swallow it down whole.

Harry’s heart breaks when all he’s met with is her silence.

This isn’t her, and this isn’t what he wants.

His hand reaches down to her wrist, holding onto it so lightly, Y/n almost doesn’t feel it. Her movements halt.

He’s never touched her before.

“Please.”

Her eyes follow the path to where they’re connected, watching as Harry’s thumb traces the smallest of circles against her skin. And as she stares down so pathetically, she feels Harry’s eyes casted exactly where hers are, too, wondering when he’s going to have to let go.

And though his touch is mending the broken bones within her, his words cut like knives, and she’s still bleeding out so helplessly.

She rips her wrist out of his grasp, her eyes now just as far away from him as before. It happened so fast, Harry wonders if he imagined the whole thing.

“Busy.”

He waits for her to say something else — waits for her to curse him out, to yell and scream and rant to him about how much she hates every last bit of him because anything is better than this. But again, he’s left with nothing.

His world falls apart.

“One word? That’s all you give me?”

Her eyes flood with tears.

“That’s all you asked for.”

He slams the side of his fist against the shelf in defeat, so incredibly angry with himself that he can hardly stand on his own two feet without wanting to beat himself down. She’s crying and avoiding him like he’s the last person she ever wants to see, and the worst part is that he can’t even blame her for it.

He has half the mind to walk away and never look back because she doesn’t deserve this; wants to spare her the heartache and let her find somebody that is so much better than he is — somebody who can look at her like they want her to be there, somebody who can smile at her, somebody who can laugh with her.

He can’t give her any of that because that’s not the kind of guy he is, but he doesn’t have that kind of heart. He can’t let her go because deep down he knows she loves him, too, and what would it make him if he were to destroy something so beautiful before it’s even started?

“Look, if you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. All I’m asking is that you listen to me, please. Y/n, you know I didn’t mean it.”

He runs his fingers through his hair, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“I like you so much.”

Y/n looks back at him now, her eyes still as wet and distant as before, and it tears him apart.

She looks into his eyes because all of her answers are there — they always are — and she can tell this has taken a toll on him the same way it has her. Even with his voice being so stagnant, and his face being so cold, he’s falling apart.

She wishes that was enough.

She looks away from him again.

And Harry’s at a loss. He doesn’t know what else to do to convince her how much he means it — how much he really is sorry and how badly he wants her. He’s so bad with words and so bad with expressing himself that he doesn’t know what he can and can’t do to get her to forgive him.

So, he does the only thing that feels right.

He grabs a hold of her arm and spins her around until her chest is against his, and before she has the chance to say anything to him, and before he can talk himself out of it, he kisses her.

His hands are intertwined with hers as he gives her everything he has. He’s absolutely relentless but it’s nothing short of passionate and desperate, longing for her even when she’s right up against him.

It’s better than either of them could have ever expected it to be.

He’s the first to pull away, and Y/n is let completely and utterly lovestruck.

“You can take it back!”

Harry looks up from his notebook with furrowed eyebrows and curious eyes, watching as Y/n slams the door shut behind her before standing at the head of the table with her arms fisted at her sides, nervously biting on her bottom lip and tapping her foot with anticipation — all the while keeping her composure as firm and collected as possible.

“Pardon?”

“The kiss.”

She waits for him to say something about it — anything about it — maybe even scoff or gag a little at the reminder. But alas, he gives her nothing but empty stares and emotionless lips.

“You can take it back, if you want to. I promise, it won’t hurt my feelings.”

And of course, she’s lying.

It would really break her heart in two if Harry felt that what happened yesterday was a mistake — that the feelings only fit in that one particular scene, that he was just caught up in the moment and didn’t know how else to apologize.

She had been waiting a lifetime for that sort of magic to be casted onto her — the kind of magic that has her feeling like she’s been granted everything she has ever wanted and more than she could ever ask for. And it feels so surreal that he kissed her that her head keeps swooning with hopes and dreams of everything that could possibly lay between them.

But if he isn’t laying in bed, desperately wishing for the same things she is, she needs to know before it’s too late.

“Oh.” Harry purses his lips, looking back down at his notebook as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “No, thank you.”

Y/n’s mouth drops ever so slightly before she shuts it closed again, flaring her nose as she lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She had been preparing everything she was going to say for every possible scenario, yet here she is, racking her brain trying to come up with how to respond to such an ambiguous yet lucid answer.

And now he won’t even look at her, his undivided attention set upon the pen and paper below him as he writes the ideas for his next project, like it was the most casual and most nonchalant conversation he had ever been in.

“Was that all, love?”

Y/n blinks at him and tilts her head to the side, dazed in her confusion and lost at his choice of words.

Love. He called me love. He’s never called me that before.

But when his eyes sneak back up to hers, she shakes her head as if to pull herself together. She didn’t sacrifice last night’s sleep just to get lost in those very eyes — she needs to know where he stands with her before she takes another leap of faith, though all she wants to do is jump right into the same arms that were holding her so closely yesterday.

“I’m giving you a chance to opt out.”

Harry feels his chest fall to the pit of his stomach.

He straightens himself up upon the chair, his shoulders tensing and his fingers stiffening around his pen, feeling uneasy because does she want him to opt out? Does she want him to take back the kiss that’s been lingering on his lips for far too long now?

And he just looks at her, desperate for her to tell him how badly she wants him to do it again — tell him how badly her lips are aching without the feel of his and how badly she wants him to kiss at them until they’re numb and no longer her own, because he’d do it. He’d do it in a heartbeat if she asked with those pretty eyes of hers, with that stutter and that stumble over her words that never fail to make his heart give out.

And if that just becomes another long-lost dream in his never-ending curse of a life, it will do him in deeper than any of the trenches that have been dug out from within him — deeper than any cut anybody’s ever made on him because right now, in this moment in his life, she’s all he has.

“This is the one and only time I will let you break this off without me babbling about how perfect we could be together and how serious I am about you. Because it’s not going to stop — this rambling thing that I do — and I just want you to know that that’s what makes me who I am and it’s not going to stop for you or for anybody else. And so if it annoys you, if it bothers you and embarrasses you, I’m giving you the chance to leave before either of us get hurt and we can pretend nothing’s ever happened between us.”

She thinks we’d be perfect together.

That’s all his brain can process despite everything else that came with it — all that’s stuck in his brain and tightening at his chest.

He thinks they would be, too, when he really thinks about it. She gets lost in stories he lives so vicariously through, and he gets lost in feelings she lives so curiously in — submerging herself between the lines, reading what lies so dangerously beneath him. And nothing sounds better to him than spending every second of his day relishing in that feeling of intimacy they had both been deprived of for so long.

So how dare he? How dare he make her feel so insecure, so unworthy and so undeserving, to be standing here defending everything that makes her who she is when he’s so captivated by it all? And why is it so fucking hard for him to just tell her?

He feels the corners of his lips dip slightly to his chin, but that’s all he can manage to do. He hopes she can see it, and he hopes that it’s enough.

“I’d rather not.”

She frowns herself, looking down to her feet, feeling slightly ashamed for putting him on the spot like this. But what else was she to do? She couldn’t risk getting her heart beaten and bruised because of her stupid mouth all over again.

“But I’ve annoyed you before.” Y/n mutters between a pout, her foot kicking softly at the ground, wishing she didn’t let his words cut her as deeply as they did. “And like I said, it’s not going to stop. I’m still going to want to be around you and talk to you and keep you company and I don’t know what I would do if later down the line you decide you’ve heard enough of me and can’t handle the way I deal with my feelings anymore.”

But he wants all of that, too, more than he’s wanted anything else in his entire life. He wants her next to him during lunch hour talking about her days and her nights, wants her midnight pillow talks, wants her to be the only company in his cold and vacant home.

He just wants her to see it, wants her to feel it, just as much as he does.

“That was different.” He tries to sound more convincing for her sake, but he fails so miserably it hurts.

Talking to you is like talking to a wall — that’s all he can hear beneath his words and it makes him want to give up on the conversation because he’s afraid it’ll only bring her down more, but he can’t leave her like this. Besides, it’s Y/n. And for reasons so unknown, she understands him.

“I wasn’t aware of your importance.”

“My importance?” She scrunches her nose, squinting her eyes. “My importance to what?”

“To me.”

Y/n’s eyes widen in disbelief and she sucks in a breath so deep, it settles in her chest and she swears her heart is on the verge of flatlining.

“To you, right. To you. Because I’m — because I’m important to you...” she mumbles mainly to herself, so quietly and so breathlessly before it dies down on her tongue — the sight of Harry taking off his glasses and throwing them onto the table making her knees buckle and head spin with emotions she’s never felt before.

He’s got this glimmer in his eye and a faint smile painted on his lips and she really can’t breathe, now, as he makes his way towards her.

This is the first time she has ever seen him smile, and though it is as soft and small as any other she’s ever seen — so soft and small, she would have missed it if it were on anybody else — she’s the reason it’s there, and it’s a sight she wouldn’t dare take her eyes off of.

He stands before her now, his fingers reaching up to cup the blush of her cheeks, eyes following the shapes he traces with his thumb against her skin. And though his smile has faded to nothing and he looks as serious as ever before, he doesn’t look away from her for even a second.

And that’s enough.

“Is there anything else you’d like to say?”

She flutters her eyes closed upon his words, knowing this moment is going to end all too soon, and she doesn’t have the heart to say goodbye to it yet.

She wants to remember this feeling for when she has to.

“No, no. That was all.”

He ducks his head and nudges his nose gently against hers before pulling away to pull her back into reality, just for a moment — just long enough for him to know that she isn’t holding herself back from him.

“And I’ve put your worries to rest?”

Oh, how her worries have subsided to nothing but a stomach full of butterflies and a chest of pulled heartstrings.

Nobody has ever made her so sure of anything, the way Harry makes her so sure of him.

“Yeah, I — you make me feel really good, Harry. Can’t explain it. Can’t even put it into words, really. Just, really, really good.”

He makes her feel loved.

And she wants to tell him that, she does, but that word — loved — it’s the same word he called her not just five minutes ago, but it’s so much more than that. Maybe he doesn’t love her, she surely doesn’t expect that from him just yet, but how is she ever going to explain that her feeling of feeling loved is what other people — normal people, she supposes — would consider feeling liked?

And as Y/n’s practically melting between his palms, Harry is trying so hard to understand just how he’s ended up here, being this close to her, when he always believed he’d go his whole life not being this close to anybody.

His eyes bore into hers just to reassure himself that it’s okay — that she’s okay and that they’re okay and that now, it’s okay for him to do the one thing he’s been dreaming about doing since yesterday. And when she smiles at him, a real and genuine smile, he nods.

And he leans in for their second kiss, his thumbs rubbing along her cheeks, humming into her mouth because his own has been watering for a chance to do this again. And it’s perfect. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this way about anything.

And Y/n is on cloud nine. She could really kiss him all day every day and still feel like she hasn’t missed a thing. This — this feeling, this moment, this person — is everything she’s ever wanted and everything she will always need. It’s irreplaceably and undeniably hers, and she’ll do anything to keep it for as long as she lives.

Her hands are on his neck, pulling him further into her because she can’t get enough of him and nothing else matters besides them meeting in the break room, kissing behind closed doors like teenagers who haven’t learned how to keep their hands to themselves.

The only thing that breaks them from their moment is the sound of the copy room door being slammed in the hallway, their breaths heavy and lips red and wet from each other’s.

“Have dinner with me tonight.” Harry suggests as his fingers tuck loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Wherever you want.”

And Y/n’s unsure as to whether it’s the sleepless night sneaking up on her or if it’s the aftermath of Harry kissing her senseless, but she can’t think of a single thing she could possibly want for dinner when she just wants to be with him. He could take her to the most run-down restaurant in this city and she would still feel as though she were on the highest of hilltops, overlooking the prettiest view, all because of him.

“I don’t — I don’t care, really. It wouldn’t even really matter, anyways, just — just as long as you’re with me. Don’t even have to have dinner, if you don’t want to. Could do anything you’d like.”

She’s blushing and looking down at her feet, and Harry hates when she hides herself like this, hates that she puts herself under to put him first when she deserves to be the first and the only — he has a sick and twisted feeling she’s never been any of those things to anybody.

“Y/n.” His tone is slow and stern as his head ducks down so her can eyes can meet his. “Wherever you want.”

And how could she say no to those eyes — though always so dark, so void, are also so gentle and so kind, so deep and so open? The light in them changes just ever so slightly whenever he looks at her, and she wouldn’t dream of ever taking that away from him.

“I want what you have for lunch on Tuesdays.”

His thumb brushes against the edge of her jawline.

“It’s homemade. I can pick you up around seven, eat dinner at mine.”

Her fingers wrap around his wrist absentmindedly, holding his hand so that it stays pressed against the back of her head.

“No, Harry, that’s not — that’s too much work for you. Let me at least drive and meet you at your flat, yeah? I can’t let you do that.”

She really is just the cutest, sweetest, most considerate person he’s ever met, and the most beautiful he’s ever laid eyes on. And if she wasn’t all of those things, he would let her drive and meet him at his flat for dinner, but she is, and what kind of date would it be if Harry didn’t come knocking on her front door, holding out his hand, and leading the night away?

She deserves to have a night that’s just for her. And surely, Harry wants this date just as much as she does, but it’s not about him, because as long as she’s beside him, he doesn’t have a care in the world what he has to do to get her there.

“Y/n.” His voice is as low and stern as before. “I’m picking you up at seven.”

Y/n looks at him for a moment, studying him, wondering how she’s ended up here — the only place she has ever wanted to be. She lets out a breathy chuckle, her cheeks flushed, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth.

“I’ll see you at seven, then.”

His eyes light up.

And they kiss.

It’s 6:35 when Harry actually comes to pick Y/n up, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to see her so badly, and he couldn’t just sit on his sofa trying to justify waiting to be with her again. He would have been more than willing to watch her finish getting ready, or just stand at the other side of her door, trying to convince her to let him in because she’s going to look beautiful no matter what.

He doesn’t even care if he comes off as desperate, because he is.

And Y/n is, too, because of course she was ready by 6:35. Since the second she got home, she was putting herself together as best she could, though refusing to try as hard as she normally would with anybody else because for whatever reason, Harry likes her for her — likes her in her work clothes with her hair up, without makeup on, first thing in the morning — and she wouldn’t ever dream of jeopardizing that.

And Y/n is left speechless as she opens her front door, because not only does Harry look as handsome and fit as ever, but he’s also holding the prettiest bouquet of flowers she’s ever seen.

“Harry, I — wow.”

He holds them out to her, failing to mention anything about them, just handing them to her like it’s something so normal and so casual, when in reality, the gesture is anything but.

Out of all the years she’s lived, nobody’s ever given her a reason to believe she’s been thought about once out of sight. Even when she was with Cooper — her one and only boyfriend — he’d never bought her flower arrangements or spontaneous gifts whenever they were apart, even on the days he should have, like she only existed when it was convenient for him.

This is just her first date with Harry and she’s never felt more alive. She lives in his mind even when she’s blocks away — nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard.

She takes the bouquet from his hands, looking down at what must have been two dozen flowers, wrapped all together by a rubber band and light purple plastic wrap.

“Lilies.” She marvels at him, eyes wide with an open-mouthed smile, like she couldn’t believe the sight of them. “These are my absolute favorites.”

He nods, his hands locked behind his back, lips pursed and body rocking from heel to toe. “I know.”

She tilts her head at him.

“You told me a couple months ago during lunch hour.”

And again, she’s left speechless.

She can’t even remember telling him about her love for lilies, yet here he is, recalling all these small details about herself she’s said in passing. Even in the moments he wasn’t the most fond of her, even in the moments he could hardly stand her company, he was paying attention to her. He was listening to her, so much so that her words have stuck with him despite all the days that have passed.

And it’s no wonder she’s fallen so quickly under his spell — it was made just for her. Nobody else could ever see what he sees in her, and nobody else could ever see what she sees in him, and that’s exactly how they’ve ended up here — both standing on her doorstep, refusing to take their eyes off each other, anxious to spend the rest of their night together, hoping it’s forever.

“I love them, Harry, thank you.” She blushes, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I’m just going to put these in a vase real quick. You can come in, if you’d like. Or you can stay out here, it doesn't matter.”

He follows her into the flat, which looks and smells exactly how he imagined it would. It feels just as warm as she does and smells like a mix of lavender and honey, just as intoxicating as her.

And though there are so many things he wants to see — the books she collects beside her living room couch, the movies scattered alongside her DVD player, and the pictures hung up on her walls — all he can focus on is the woman that’s stolen his heart so effortlessly.

He leans himself against the wall of her kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, watching as she pours the water and powder into the vase, stirring it together gently between her hands. And as she unwraps and unties the flowers, Harry wishes they could live for as long as they do.

This is the view he wants forever — Y/n putting flowers he’s gotten her in clear vases, surrounded by her favorite things, sharing comfortable silences she’d feel so nervous in if it were with anybody else.

She is his, he decides, and he is helplessly hers.

“Didn’t tell you when I first saw you but, you look stunning.”

She looks over at him, her eyes gleaming and lips tugged upward at his words.

“Yeah?”

His lips tug upward, too, in the same way they did earlier today in the break room, and it amazes her how something so small could mean so much to her.

“Yeah.” He breathes out, his eyes soaking her all in, still convinced she’s a dream he hasn’t woken up from. “You always do.”

She blushes, reaching forward to place the vase onto the windowsill above her sink. She can feel his eyes on her still, refusing to break away from her, and it makes her feel like the only woman in the world. And maybe she is — at the very least, the only woman in Harry’s.

She walks over to where he stands so irresistibly — so tall and so handsome, with a chest she so desperately wants to make a home out of and kiss at until she has nothing left but the burning of his skin on her own.

And as she stands before him, neither of them have anything to say because in times like these, their breaths are taken away and all they can process is how close they are to each other.

Her hands graze over his chest ever so slightly, hesitant to touch him the way she’s been shamefully aching to, afraid to push him away. But she can hear his breath hitch in his throat and can see his pecs tighten beneath her fingertips, and she lets out an uneven breath. He likes it.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do this.” She whispers, her breath fanning his neck and she swears she can see his eyes fighting to stay open.

Her hands graze up to the dip of his collarbones, her thumbs running along the sides of his throat. And to give her more access, Harry dips his head back, overstimulated by the feeling of it all.

“To touch me?”

His voice is strained and croaked, borderline delirious. And though his eyes are fluttering closed as her fingers now run along the shape of his shoulders and up the sides of his neck, dancing along his jawline, he can see her bite down on her bottom lip and it makes his heart hurt, in the best way possible.

Her eyes gleam as her fingers twist around the chain on his neck.

“It’s been all I could think about since I met you.”

His head falls back against the wall, the smallest of whimpers falling from his practically drooling mouth.

God, everything about her drives him wild. He has so completely lost himself in her, he can’t even remember his own name. He can’t even remember who he was just twenty seconds ago, much less who he was before he met her, and it’s something so new he can’t grasp the reality of it.

Her hands all over him is a feeling he can’t put into words, and one he certainly can’t hide.

He is falling.

And falling.

It doesn’t take them too long to figure out how similar they are despite their differences, certainly not after downing half a bottle of wine mixed with being so incredibly drunk on each other.

Y/n confided in him about her past — about how her nervous habits have never made her feel like she never had a true sense of belonging because everywhere she went, she was constantly kicked out. She’s had such unfathomable lows that she’d lock herself in her room for weeks on end, forcing herself quiet, because even she was sick of hearing herself.

And as Harry listened to her speak about all the cruel, heartless things that have been said to her, he couldn’t help but feel understood despite the feeling of guilt throbbing in his gut, for he had done what everybody else did not just one day ago.

Harry confided in her, too, about how he had always been left out because he always managed to bring down everybody else’s mood. He told her things he hadn’t told anybody else because he had nobody else to tell them to — told her about all the drugs he’s taken and all the other toxic habits he’d pursued in a poor, desperate attempt to become emotional.

Then, they talked about their parents — a conversation so barren and so untouched, it was almost impossible to talk about.

Y/n grew up with parents who didn’t understand her, because who could? Even when she was little, barely forming an identity and her only concept of friendship being imaginary ones, her parents would tell her that she was embarrassing herself. She’ll always remember the look on her mother’s face at a New Years Eve party when she said, “I just can’t take you anywhere, can I?”

Harry grew up with absent parents — absent in a sense that they were around, just never really there. His parents hardly acknowledged him, hardly ever spoke to him, and when they did it felt so forced, like an obligation they couldn’t find their way out of. He’ll never forget the way they looked at him, like he wasn’t even there, like they didn’t even want him to be.

It makes them question just how strongly the universe works in their favor.

Because what seems to be the first time in her life, Y/n has found something only made for her, a place where nobody else belongs, and it wouldn’t have brought her here if she had kept herself locked away, rotting in her self pity, refusing to let anybody in for all the rest of her years.

And for what seems to be the first time in his life, Harry feels he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, with the person he’s supposed to be with, and it wouldn’t have brought him here if all the wine, all the blunts, and all the pills did what he so desperately wanted out of them all those years ago.

They had spent their whole lives trying to make something out of themselves when they were always enough, because they were enough for each other, and each other was what they were made for.

“So you’re saying that all this time, we’ve been the exact same person?” Y/n chuckles, because though their conversation was so serious, the mood was still as lighthearted as everything else between them.

“Peculiar habits, a history of toxic behavior, no friends, and shitty parents? Yeah, sounds like it.”

Y/n laughs, shaking her head.

“Here’s to nobody liking us.” Y/n raises her glass.

“Here’s to nobody liking us.” Harry repeats, raising his own. “Except for each other.”

And they clink.

Maybe they shouldn’t have finished that entire bottle of wine to themselves, but they did.

What started off in the kitchen made its way to the living room, both sat beside each other on Harry’s sofa with their heads hung back, Y/n cracking jokes and humming along to the songs on her playlist, and Harry admiring her from the distance.

They both have their last glasses of wine nearly gone, holding them upon their thighs, taking their final sips throughout the hour and with every one they take, they feel closer somehow.

Y/n’s giggling about how Harry won’t stop looking at her, and though she can’t see it between her squinting eyes and their gaze set upon the ceiling wall, he smiles.

He can’t help it — looking at her like it’s the last time he ever will though it’s only the beginning, but he doesn’t ever want to forget the way he feels whenever he does. This is the only good feeling he’s ever had, and even when she’s not in view, he wants to hold onto it ‘til his dying day.

“You’re my favorite person.” Is all he says, his lips fallen. “My only person.”

Y/n finally turns her head over to him, now, so that her eyes are locked on his. And she wishes he can understand the feeling in her heart and the way it’s beating so eroticly, but she doesn’t, because it’s so overwhelming and too much of a good thing for her to make sense of.

Never in her life has she felt so good, yet here she is, feeling even better than that, all because of one person she met nearly two years ago.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He nods, because he understands, and they both look away from each other again.

They’re getting lost in the music and lost in the feeling of the air that surrounds them — so full of unexplainable things that leave them wanting more than they did before, breathing in nothing but longing and desire.

And it isn’t until one of Y/n’s favorite songs comes on that the comfortable silence between them is all but broken, in the most beautiful way possible.

“Green was the color of the grass where I used to read at Centennial Park. I used to think I would meet somebody there.”

Harry stiffens beside her, his fingers instinctively curling tighter around his glass of wine — speechless and breathless as the sound of her voice intoxicates his already drunken state of mind, the room now spinning but only because of her.

“Teal was the color of your shirt when you were sixteen at the yogurt shop you used to work at to make a little money.”

This is heaven, he feels. It has to be because things this beautiful don’t exist in worlds so cruel, in worlds so evil.

Things this beautiful don’t belong here.

Y/n doesn’t belong here. She’s too perfect for her own good — too perfect for a world that refuses to believe in such things, but he does. He does because how can he deny the woman that’s sitting right before him? How can he deny the sound of her voice in a dim lit room, soaked in red wine, existing only to be heard by him?

“Time — curious time — gave me no compasses, gave me no signs. Were there clues I didn’t see? And isn’t it just so pretty to think all along there was some invisible string — tying you to me?”

Y/n’s raising her glass to her lips as the lyrics pause but god, if Harry has to watch her lips touch anything but his, it’s going to be the end of him. And right as her mouth puckers for a taste, Harry reaches his hand out to grab the bowl of the glass, lifting it from her fingers before setting it down upon the coffee table beside them.

She tilts her head at him with furrowed brows and squinted eyes, watching as Harry practically crawls over to her until his thighs are pressed to her knees and his hands are at either side of her waist.

“You’re so pretty.”

Y/n rolls her eyes at him but it hides behind her flushed cheeks and growing smile.

“Harry —”

“Sh.” He shushes her, laying his forehead against the top of her chest, slithering his arms to her lower back, and Y/n giggles. “Keep going.”

So, she does — keeps singing the very words she had been so hopelessly trying to put a face to, to the very man that holds her to them.

And she’s falling.

She feels it now more than ever as he practically buries himself into her, rocking her gently back and forth like she’s some sort of delicacy he wouldn’t dare to break. Everything about it is so intimate, so real, so raw — no boundaries, all walls crumbled down so vulnerably, feeling each other so deeply.

She wonders if he feels it, too.

And oh, does he feel it — her words, his touch, the room fading to nothingness. It is just them — no fears, no doubts, no resentment — together in this moment, becoming one, letting everything else simply slip through their fingertips.

Harry rests his lips upon her collar bone, settling them against her sweltering skin. He can feel her heart beating against his mouth, and it feels right.

“Spend the night with me.”

Y/n stiffens.

She wants to spend the night, she does, more than anything else she could ever want. It’s been her long-lived dream to be cuddled to his chest, feeling him breathe against her, burning in his touch until slumber clouded her senses; waking up beside him in the early morning and hearing that voice so rasped and far gone.

But all of her dreams are so innocent, so pure, and so holy by him, and what if that’s not where his head is? Between all the drinks, all the touching, and all the stolen stares, it could be somewhere so far out of her reach, somewhere so far away from her own, and it’ll absolutely ruin her if that’s all he wants out of her.

Harry must have felt her uneasiness because he’s quick to lift his head from her chest.

“No, no. Not like that, Y/n. I promise. Never even —”

Had sex.

He was so close to saying it to reassure her, but he couldn’t — he couldn’t because if he did, she’d have every reason to believe he was thinking of such things when it was the farthest thought from his mind. Really, he wants her to spend the night because once she leaves, she’s all he’s going to think about and all he’s going to want beside him. He probably would have ended up on her doorstep at two in the morning, dazed and confused, all because he never wants to be away from her.

She is so close, and he wants her so bad.

“Had a girlfriend.”

He settles for something less straightforward but just as truthful and vulnerable. Besides, he figured it’s something she should know because if he ever fucks something up, or fails to do right by her, even if it’s unintentional, maybe she’d understand why.

He’s absolutely terrified that he’s going to be the first one to start a fight and not know how to fix it, or be the first one to make the other cry and not know why. He’s done it before, with Celeste. And though what he has with Y/n is so different and so much more real than what he ever had with her, he still managed to break her heart enough for her to leave him. He wouldn’t blame Y/n if she ever decides to, too.

Y/n looks down at him with eyes full of sorrow. He’s not asking for pity, she knows that, but how he’s gone his whole life without ever being loved, she’ll never understand.

It’s all he deserves.

And she can’t help but feel like she’s the least deserving person to be the first because she knows, down to the very pit of her soul, that Harry isn’t like the others — that Harry wouldn’t kiss her, ask her out on a date, and snuggle himself into her the way he is right now just to get a proper shag — yet she convinced herself that maybe, somewhere so deeply within him, he is that kind of person, and that is so far from fair.

She runs her fingers through his hair.

“I’ll only spend the night under one condition.”

He blinks at her.

“Anything.”

She leans forward to rub her nose against his, a soft smirk set on her lips as she kisses him gently.

She giggles before pulling away, sliding out from underneath him and though the small pout on Harry’s face would send her right back to him, she chooses to stand beside him with an open-palmed hand sticking out before her, her eyes glistening, her lips bitten.

“Dance with me.”

And god, how could he ever say no to that face?

He lets out a breathy chuckle as he hitches his glasses up — the closest thing to a laugh Yn has ever heard out of him, and it makes her want to cry. And he shakes his head softly before grabbing onto her hand, letting her lift him from the sofa.

“You drive me wild.”

She hums, lifting his hand up to her lips.

She guides him behind the coffee table, grasping both of his hands in hers, and though she fully intends on pulling him to her and leading the rest of the way, he beats her to it.

He’s got her pressed up against him, one hand hooked to her lower back and the other holding hers between their shoulders, swaying them side to side as they dance together in slow circles.

They’re at peace. Together, they can do the most cliche of things — make a dance floor out of a living room, make a night out of a date — and not feel anything but pure, genuine happiness out of it.

They don’t need anything or anyone outside of each other, and that’s what makes it all the better.

“Hm…” Y/n hums, resting the side of her cheek against his chest. She feels at home like this. “Quite the dancer, you are.”

His thumb rubs at her wrist, and he shakes his head.

“Only for you.”

Y/n doesn’t go home the following night.

Or the night after that.

This must be the third time Y/n’s set off the smoke alarm.

And in any other circumstance, she probably would have given up and called Harry’s favorite take out to spare him from a night of potential food poisoning, but Harry’s spent the past two weeks telling her how much he wished Thanksgiving was a British holiday, and now that it’s late November and Harry has spent the past three months of their relationship doing all the cooking, she can’t quit him now.

Even as she’s flinging around the oven mitts trying to waft the smoke from the open oven out of her face, she still can’t quit.

The things she does for love, she fucking hates it.

“Pretty, you’re going to burn our flat down.” Harry chuckles from behind her, his hand landing on the small of her back as he rubs gently at it. “Let me take it from here, love. I’ve got it.”

Y/n’s quick to close the oven door back shut and press her back to it, practically flinging herself away from Harry’s touch as she does so. She’s panting and sweating and her hair is an absolute wreck, yet she refuses Harry’s helping hand.

This is his day, and she is his girl, and she just has to do this.

“No, no, mister! Don’t you even think about it! I’ve got it all under control.”

Her lips are pursed for the simple reason that she knows it’s an absolute monstrosity — she’s burnt two rounds of yams, somehow turned mashed potatoes into soup, and overcooked the green bean casserole to a cripst — but at least it’s all been made with love.

And she assumes Harry doesn’t believe her, either, because he’s trying his absolute hardest to not laugh at her, but that’s exactly what he’s doing.

“Pretty,” Harry laughs, facepalming himself before his hand cups around his mouth to try to stifle the sounds. “You — you closed the oven door again and it’s —”

“Fuck!”

She turns herself around before ripping the oven back open, coughing and groaning as a cloud of smoke hits her face for the millionth time tonight before reaching in to grab yet another round of burnt yams.

She slams it onto the stove, ripping her oven mitts off and throwing them onto the counter beside her.

Harry feels bad, he does, because she’s been slaving away in their kitchen for the past five hours and she’s the farthest from satisfied she could possibly be, but he can’t deny that he loves seeing her like this — so passionate, all cute and grumpy just to make him happy.

Oh, how he loves her so, even when she burns his beloved yams.

He kisses the back of her head.

“Looks incredible, baby. Don’t need anything else than what you’ve got.” His lips move to her cheek. “Let me set the table while you put everything in dishes, yeah? Starving.”

He lights two pumpkin spice candles upon the table, pouring two glasses of their favorite wine, and setting down two plates for each of them because they haven’t eaten all day in preparation for their dinner, and they’re both at their wits end.

Y/n sets dinner up buffet style along the kitchen island — the roasted young turkey set in the middle surrounded by bowls of corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, and dinner rolls.

Though she’s far from being a good cook, she does feel slightly better when she sees it all set up in autumn-colored dish sets. It could have been a lot worse, it really could have been a lot worse.

And it’s the look on Harry’s face that makes the past five hours of hell so incredibly worth it.

His fists are on the kitchen table, his body leaning forward as his eyes marvel at the sight in front of him. Autumn has always been his favorite season, and he’s always been so fond of the concept of Thanksgiving — spending time with his loved ones, reminiscing all his favorite memories throughout the year, delving into his favorite foods.

He’d contemplated making a Thanksgiving of his own for the past couple years, but whenever it came down to it, he realized he didn’t have much to be thankful for, and he didn’t have any memories to look back on. So, he never did.

But now, he has so much to be thankful for — so many unforgettable memories, a lifetime of happiness, and a loved one to finally celebrate with — all of which are standing right before him.

Nobody else in the world would ever do the things she does for him. She is one and a million, his little miracle, and the absolute light of his life.

“Have I ever told you that you’re the best girlfriend in the world?”

She shrugs, a teasing grin playing on her lips.

“Once or twice.”

She loads their plates up with everything she made — giving Harry extra stuffing, of course — before she makes her way back to the kitchen table, sitting across from the very man she’s thankful for this year.

She didn’t realize how good it would feel — to spend a holiday with Harry, even though it’s illegitimate — but it’s warm and homely and everything else in between. It’s no wonder she falls more in love with him everyday, and no wonder she wants to spend all of her days exactly where they are now, until they’re old and grumpy and can hardly stand the sight of each other anymore.

Y/n lifts up her wine glass.

“This year, I’m thankful for being yours and only yours. I’m nothing without you.”

Harry lifts up his wine glass.

“This year, I’m thankful for you and your love. You’re everything to me.”

They clink, they eat, they kiss, and they do it all over again.

“You know, I don’t think guys are meant to do this kind of stuff.”

Y/n’s sitting across from Harry on their queen-sized bed, their legs crossed Indian style as Harry’s hand is spread out before her, Y/n grasping onto his fingers with her own as she paints a thin layer of black nailpolish onto his nails.

It didn’t take Y/n much convincing to get Harry in this position. She knows full well that all she has to do is pout and cross her arms for him to give her what she wants. And normally, she doesn’t use his weaknesses against him — she doesn’t think it’s right, and he’d never do it to her — but this is something so harmless that she gave herself a free pass.

Plus, she knows he’d look hot with his nails painted black.

“Shut up, H.” She giggles, shaking her head. “They’ll look really good, I promise. Besides, it could be our little secret.”

He can’t lie, it does feel nice to be pampered like this. Her hands are soft and it tickles when she goes finger-to-finger, and it’s a damn good excuse to touch her and look at her for minutes on end. She’s got her eyebrows pinched together as she moves his fingers around, trying to get into every edge and crevice, and he can see it in her eyes how much she’s truly enjoying herself right now.

His eyes take a peek at his nails and it’s not nearly as bad as he thought it was going to be. They make him feel… different, but in a way that can only be described as holding a certain power he never knew he had.

Guys normally don’t do this kind of stuff, but he is, and he looks damn good while doing it.

And as Y/n takes both of his hands out to her and starts to blow on them, his eyes flutter with amusement. Maybe, just maybe, he’d let her do this again.

She pokes one of her nails into his.

“They should be dry now.”

And though his nails are finished, Y/n still hasn’t let go of his hands, and her eyes haven’t left his fingers. Instead, she’s marveling over them — eyes gleaming, bottom lip tucked between her teeth, her digits twisting at his rings.

He smirks at her.

“Look good?”

She nods, lifting one of his hands up higher towards her neck.

“They look really good, H. So good, I —” She doesn’t even let herself finish before she brings his pointer and middle finger up and into her mouth, hollowing her cheeks and proper sucking on them like she was born for it.

Harry’s breath gets locked in his throat, his entire demeanor changing as he broadens his shoulders and tenses his chest, his eyes darkening and hawking over every move of her mouth, every swipe of her tongue.

She’s moaning — whimpering and whining like she’s been left starving and he’s her first proper meal in weeks. And nothing’s even started yet.

He reaches his free hand over to her face, petting her cheek with the back of his fingers.

“That’s it, my pretty girl. Just like that.”

She pops them out of her mouth, her lips red and wet and eyes glossy with lust. And Harry watches as she grabs a hold of his wrist and guides his two, sloppy and dripping fingers down her neck and between her breasts, stretching down the collar of her shirt, leaning back for him to have the most perfect view.

“Fuck.” He breathes out, the hand that was once on her cheek reaching over to grope at her thigh. “Is this what I’m going to get every time you paint my nails black? You being such a good girl for me?”

She nods her head, gulping.

“Y — yeah.” She shudders as the hand on her thigh inches up with every passing second. “Told you they’d look so good.”

He chuckles darkly before he reaches his hand up to grab at the base of her throat. It’s her favorite, when he takes her breath away like this, because all she can feel is him.

And right now, he doesn’t want her to feel anything else.

He pushes her down until her back is fully pressed against the mattress, and he crawls until he’s above her on his hands and knees, his fingers still squeezing at her throat.

Such a pretty neck, such a pretty face. And it’s all his.

“Let’s see how good they look all over you, yeah?”

Harry hears something when he passes one of the vacant offices at work.

It’s a bloodcurdling sound, one he hasn’t ever heard before and one he wished he’d never heard at all, but he knows exactly what it is before he sees it.

He could never mistake the sound of his girl — it’s all he ever hears and he’s been around her long enough to know the sound of her very breath. She’s a part of him — he feels her in his bones when she’s close and knows exactly what she’s feeling at every moment in time.

But what he sees is worse than he could have ever imagined.

Y/n’s sobbing something so awful her face is nearly blue, lips trembling and eyes all but swollen shut, shaking and convulsing upon the chair below her.

And Harry doesn’t know what to do.

His brain is working at a million miles an hour and he can’t keep up — doesn’t know left from right, up from down — because all he can feel is the overwhelming sense of heartbreak and his world crumbling out from underneath him.

He practically runs to her — tripping over the legs of office chairs, ramming his hips into the corners of the table, on the verge of collapse with every step he takes. Yet nothing stops him from falling to his knees before her, letting his hands grab a hold of her soaken cheeks, having his thumbs wipe away her endless tears.

“Pretty —”

He can’t even get a word out without wanting to cry, but he’s never done it before. He wouldn’t know how to even if he wanted to, but it’s there — that lump in his throat, that tightening of his chest, that burning in his eyes, it’s all there.

“What happened, baby? Talk to me.”

And though she really didn’t want Harry to see her this way, she can’t help but clasp her shaking fingers around his wrists, holding him there because she doesn’t know what she would do if he were to leave her now.

What happened today — what happened to her — is just further proof that the only person she can trust and the only person she can truly be herself with is Harry. The world is so vengeful and so deceiving towards her, for reasons so unknown, but it’s brought her to the very man kneeling between her thighs, with eyes full of unshed tears, wanting her and loving her even when nobody else does. And if he were to walk away from her now, though she knows he wouldn’t dream of it, she’d lose every last bit of hope she has, and she wouldn’t be able to survive it.

She needs him so badly it hurts.

“Can’t —” She shakes her head as she sniffles back a sob. “Can’t tell you.”

She can’t because she doesn’t want him to see just how bad it can get for her — see how her differences are so obvious to everything and everyone around her. It never ends. It’s been like this for as long as she can remember and she’s so scared and so afraid that if Harry sees it, too, he’d do the very thing that happened to her twenty minutes ago.

But even through her waterfall eyes, she can see just how devastated Harry looks at her words.

“Pretty, you can tell me anything. You know that. Can’t —” He shakes his head, gulping, one of his hands rubbing at the back of her head. “Can’t see you like this and not know how to fix it.”

She pulls her hands away from her tight hold on him so that they can cover her face — too ashamed for the world to see how much it’s broken her down, too humiliated to face somebody so much better than her.

“It — it’s s — so emb — embarrassing!”

She’s hiding from him. Harry hates when she hides from him.

“No, please don’t — please don’t do that.” He practically begs as his hands reach back up to hers, pulling them away from her face and intertwining their fingers together. “It’s me, baby. It’s me. You don’t have to do that with me. Please, don’t do that with me.”

He’s got their hands held on top of her knees, the pads of his thumbs stroking her palms, his lips pressing to the top of her exposed thighs because it’s the only thing he can think of doing right now.

He’s never done this — never had anybody break and shatter before his very eyes, much less somebody he loves — and he is so bad with words and so bad with dealing with his own feelings he wouldn’t even know where to start dealing with hers, but he does know that he can be the most affectionate boyfriend there is towards her, and he hopes that’s a start.

But he doesn’t have a single clue just how good it feels for Y/n to be loved by him when she feels so hated. He is the only person that really, truly matters to her, so to feel him touch her and kiss her when she’s at her absolute lowest, is all she really needs.

Harry notices her breath starting to shallow and her sobs fading to distant cries every time he presses his lips to her skin, and despite how much of a mess he is, it warms his heart to know that they share a love that can overcome anything life decides to throw at them.

He reluctantly lifts his head up to look at her properly, now. His glasses are all fogged and wet but he refuses to take them off the way he normally would with her, because that would require him letting go of her hands, and for both of their sanity, that’s not something he can do right now.

He’s crying.

And though his face is as stone cold and tight as always, his eyes, Y/n notices, are unlike anything she’s ever seen. They’re so undeniably broken, and her heart crumbles into a million pieces just at the sight of it.

She feels it’s all because of her.

“The new recruit, Mason, he —”

She sucks in a breath, trying to find the right words that could possibly explain the amount of damage that he caused her without sounding so weak and pathetic. It wouldn’t have hurt her as badly if it wasn’t something that’s happened to her more and more over the years, beating her down further and further each time, digging deeper and deeper into her already hollowed out chest.

And all Harry can think about is how one name, one person, has made this much of a mess out of her — one that she has to see every single day, that she has to speak to in order to get her work done, that she has to face time and time again.

He’s never hated so much in his life.

“What did he do to you?” He whispers it, afraid that one wrong tone of voice or one wrong word can tear her apart all over again. “Did he hurt you? Did he touch you?”

She shakes her head, her eyes casted down at their intertwined hands.

“Laughed at me.”

Her voice is so small and so sad, it’s the most heartbreaking sound Harry has ever heard. And he feels like he failed her.

He knows full well that somebody laughing at her and degrading her, hurts her more than any physical pain she could possibly feel. Even if Mason had touched her, it wouldn’t have made her like this — so afraid, so self-conscious, and so successfully ruined.

“In front of the whole team, just — just kept poking fun at me. Mocking me. Speaking about me as if I wasn’t there. Making fun of my nervous stutter and — and talking over me like, ‘oh, and she keeps going.’ and ‘wow, it just never ends, does it?’ and making everyone laugh at me.”

He should have been there. All he can think about is how he should have been by her side the way any boyfriend should — should have been there to protect her, to keep his eyes on anybody who dared to even look at her the wrong way, to never let her out of his sight.

They’re on the same team and he just should have fucking been there.

“Said he’d take bets with people to see how long it would take me to shut up and I wanted to tell him so badly that the more he says those things the more I ramble because it makes me nervous and I don’t know what else to do but apart of me — apart of me felt like he already knew that and kept going so that I could keep going so that he can keep making a fool out of me.”

Her bottom lip quivers again, and so does his, and Harry has had enough.

He can’t keep seeing her like this because who knows what his love for her could make him do. He’s already broken so many boundaries just from taking one look at her, he can’t even imagine what comes next, or what would come next, if he has to see it again.

With every last bit of courage he has, Harry lets go of her hands and brings his wrist up behind his glasses, wiping away the remnants of his tears, before bringing his hands back down to her knees.

“I’m going to tell Jeremy that you’re not feeling well and that you needed to go home, okay?”

She nods with a pout on her face because god, how badly does she want to crawl into their bed and hibernate beneath the covers until the weekend’s over.

“I’ll help you finish up whatever you need me to, and I’ll meet you back at our flat once I’m done.” He hooks his pointer finger under her chin, kissing away the pout his heart just can’t handle the sight of. “I love you so much. You’re everything to me.”

He didn’t have to tell her, because she already knew.

And it’s so hard for him to leave her like this, but he has to. He has to because she can’t stay here and face the same team that just spit on her name and pretend everything is okay, when everything is so far from it.

He kisses her one last time.

“Go home. I’ll be there soon.”

Harry wasn’t looking for Mason.

He really wasn’t, though every fiber in his body instinctively wanted to hunt him down and brutalize him until he was nothing but a pile of broken bones and battered flesh. His fingers ached for it, but he was more focused on getting home to Y/n so that she didn’t have to be alone — so that he can hold her, and kiss her, and remind her that the only reason the world keeps trying to knock her down is because she’s too perfect to be existing in it.

But as he stands in the copy room to help finish one of Y/n’s major projects, that’s exactly who he sees.

He walks in, whistling the same tune he does every other day, one hand holding a pile of papers and the other slinging the office keys by their lanyard. And as he occupies the empty copy machine next to Harry’s, he lifts his chin up as if to greet him on this truly horrible, unforgiving day.

Harry tenses on sight, his shoulders straightening up and his fingers tightening around the folder that now holds everything he needed to make his way out of here.

But how could he, when Mason is right here?

He takes one last glance at Mason and one last breath before he slowly and steadily makes his way to the door, shutting it closed, before he says anything at all. And really, he doesn’t even fully know what he wants to say, but he does know that he can’t let him get away with the things he’s done, or the words he’s said, or the pain he’s caused to the one and only person Harry cares about.

He’s never been one for confrontation — never been one to project his feelings onto people, or make his problems into somebody else’s — but fuck, it’s Y/n, and his love for her is so different than any other emotion he’s ever felt. It makes him hate, it makes him dangerous, and it makes him something so beyond himself when he sees her the way he did not just three hours ago.

And who would he be if he didn’t do what he knows is right?

“I’m not an emotional guy, Mason.” Harry starts, his fingers twisting and knotting against his palms, trying so hard to keep himself together. But this is too small of a room to carry around so much anger, so much loathing for one person, and the narrowing space between them is building so much tension Harry feels like he’s drowning in all of it. “But I am today.”

Mason’s full attention is on Harry now, fully suspicious of his actions and words, confused as to why the temperature in the room has suddenly fallen below zero.

“I’ve got a lot of feelings… never really learned how to express them. Got a lot of resentment, a lot of anger, a lot of love for my girl.”

Harry takes his glasses off, closing them shut before stuffing them in his jacket pocket.

“Got a lot of all three right now. But if it ever came down to it, I’d do what’s right by Y/n and I wouldn’t think twice about it. Can’t say that for anybody else, except for her.”

And it’s true.

She’s the only thing in existence that can get to this side of him. He’s been so visibly numb his entire life, it didn’t matter how angry he was, or how hurt he was, or how depressed he was, he was so incurably lifeless despite all the vulnerability scrambling inside him. Yet seeing Y/n practically fall apart between his palms set something so deeply within him, he cried alongside her.

And now, he’s rolling up the sleeves of his jacket.

“You understand what I’m saying, correct?”

There’s a pregnant pause in the air, and Harry’s left starving to feast on this poor excuse of a man.

“Look, mate —” Mason finally turns to him, smiling so obnoxiously it makes Harry’s stomach churn. Y/n’s spent the whole day crying and Mason is smiling, laughing, even, like he doesn’t have a care or a clue in the world that he’s broken somebody down so badly — somebody so innocent, somebody so undeserving. “I’m a jokester, alright? Whatever I said to her, it wasn’t personal. I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit — make some jokes, crack some smiles. All innocent here, yeah? It’s all good.”

Out of all the things he could have said, he chose all the wrong words.

And Harry just can’t understand how somebody could be so heartless and cruel and be so completely unaware of it — how someone could turn something already so foul into something so nauseatingly evil and do it with shrugged shoulders and a shit-eating grin.

His palms twitch.

But it isn’t until Mason pats his hand against Harry’s shoulder like he’s the one that’s being let off the hook, that Harry is pushed over the edge.

He should be on his knees, begging for mercy, begging for forgiveness, writhing in fear.

He grabs a hold of Mason’s wrist so tightly his fingers turn numb under the pulse of the very man he so desperately wants to demolish. And before he can even process what’s happening, before he has time to suppress the blackout rage crashing down on him, the fist of his right hand knocks Mason down cold.

It happened so fast, Harry couldn’t even keep up. One second he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with the enemy and the next, he’s towering above him with knuckles covered in blood that isn’t his.

“Man, what the fuck?!” Mason cries from the ground, his hand reaching up toward the side of his already swollen and busted eye, cupping the wound as if to keep the pain from spreading and the blood from dripping. “You just fucking hit me!”

Harry’s panting and shaking and still has yet to finish what he’s started.

“My girlfriend is not a joke. She is not somebody for you to pick on when you want to crack some smiles and she is not a punchline for you to use when you have nothing funny to say.”

The tone of his voice is such a contradiction to the rest of him that if anybody else were watching, they wouldn’t understand why he did what he had just done. Because he’s far from yelling, far from screaming, far from anything other than the way he’d talk in any other circumstance, yet he doesn’t care. For the first time in his life, he just doesn’t care, because what he did was enough.

He rolls his jacket sleeves back down, the side of his wrist wiping the sweat from his top lip.

“You could have done anything else, but you didn’t.”

His bruised and busted hand takes his glasses out of his pocket, unfolding the temples and sliding them back onto the bridge of his nose. And he doesn’t bother taking another look at Mason — doesn’t even want to — before he hooks his fingers around the doorknob.

“If you ever make a joke out of her again, I’ll kill you. That’s it. Just like that. I’ll kill you.”

When Harry gets home that night, he’s got his hands full of all Y/n’s favorite things.

Not only does he have two bags of her favorite take out, but he’s also got a pint of her favorite ice cream, a heated blanket she’d been eyeing whenever they walked down Bond Street, and a bottle of the sweetest wine he could find at the liquor store.

And when she walks to the front door to greet him, wearing nothing but underwear and one of his favorite sweatshirts, he realizes that he couldn’t imagine a single day not coming home to her, or loving her, or protecting her from all the bad that’s been chewing on her and spitting her out.

“What’s all this?” She smiles softly at him, reaching to take some of the bags out of his trembling hands.

“A peace offering.” He whispers so quietly, Y/n almost doesn’t hear it.

He knows what he did was right, but what he doesn’t know is if this will make her see him differently. Because what he did was not the Harry she fell in love with, and maybe it’ll drive her so far away she’ll never have to see him again.

But he’s praying, down to the very depths of himself, that she’ll understand.

“What?” She tilts her head at him, “What do you mean?”

His eyes fall to his knuckles, that are still scarred and busted from before. And as her eyes follow his gaze down upon them, she gasps.

“Baby —”

“I had to do it, Y/n.” He whimpers, his eyes closing. “He made you cry, I had to do it.”

And later that night, after they ate everything Harry had brought home until they could barely get up from the sofa, Y/n kissed at his knuckles, one by one.

He’d get his knuckles bloody every single day if it meant getting his hands full of all the love he has to offer her. He’d cry, and cry, and cry if it meant Y/n doesn’t have to face the world alone. He’d go against himself in every way, in every conceivable notion, just to make her smile the very smile he’s looking at right now.

She is stronger than any drug, stronger than any other pain, any other happiness, any other feeling he has ever felt. Because now, he is so much more than he could ever imagine himself being, and all it took was her.

She is his favorite person, his only person — his little miracle and the absolute light of his life, even after all this time, and he couldn’t imagine it being any other way.

And it was then, he knew.

#harry styles fanfiction #harry styles one shot #harry styles imagines #harry styles imagine #harry styles preference #emotionless!harry

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