Matching Rings [h.s]

73

POV: BAYLIN GRIGGS

It's warm, a nice kind of warm. The kind of warm you feel when the rising sun is beaming down on your skin, or the touch of hot skin wrapping around you, the warmth of a soft white duvet swallowing you whole.

I know it's morning, I'm only half awake and the realization of what I've done hasn't at all settled in yet.

There's a hand gently placed on my bare stomach where my shirt was rolled up to under my bra. I feel a magnet force holding my abdomen and the palm of the familiar hand. To my left, another lays sleeping. My eyes finally flutter open, revealing the relaxed features of the beeping grenade beside me.

Fuck, it settled.

My eyes bug out of my head and my heart drops to my feet, which happen to be tangled with another pair. I freeze in my position, not knowing how to get myself out of this.

I wasn't supposed to sleep in this late, I wasn't even supposed to sleep at all. I was supposed to slip out before Harry woke up, not when the sun was already rising.

I suddenly feel stiff, my body refuses to take in the comfort feeling of having Harry wrapped around my body like this. I should enjoy it, but my brain can't seem to push away all he's been through.

My eyes peek at the alarm clock on the nightstand, reading that it's already half past six in the morning. I needed to get back before Jim wakes up, which from what I gathered should be in about an hour and a half— so I have time.

With one less thing to worry about, I steal another glance at Harry sleeping with his head cradled on my shoulder, he looks so peaceful. The sun coming through the slit in the curtains is casting a subtle glow on his angelic features, making his chiseled jaw and ripe cheekbones more prominent.

What was I thinking? Me staying the night was a mistake. It's not like anything happened besides a drowsy and heart hurting conversation, but we shouldn't be sleeping beside each other when we put each other through so much only two days ago.

I bask in the sight of his perfection, missing how things were when I used to wake up to this every morning. It's a nice sample of how things are before he starts talking and messes things up.

I feel a slow tear brim my vision, with that being my body's warming to leave, I attempt to wiggle from his grasp.

He was beyond drunk last night, and our conversation will only be memorable for one of us if I don't wake him. Hopefully he won't remember the majority of it, or none at all.

I shift only an inch away from him, the second I do, his strong inked arms are tightening their hold while his face nuzzles into my neck.

So he's already awake, great.

"Harry, I need to-"

"Good morning." He murmurs in that sweet husky honey silk voice he has in the mornings that could melt metal.

He doesn't seem surprised that I'm here, which gives me the sense that he must remember some parts of last night.

"Harry." I warn, forcing myself to lift his hand from my waist so that he'd release me. But for some reason, even after he let go, I didn't get up.

"Stay," The vibration of his voice scatters chills across my collarbone, "just for a minute."

My brain is screaming at me to move, to get out of this and go home to give myself more time to think things through. But my body doesn't want to move an inch, it wants to stay and reminisce in this feeling for as long as I can.

Harry used me, he lied and said things that hurt me. I should be hating him. And here I am wrapping my arms back around him, telling him it's okay to do the same.