Insomnia [Harry Styles One-Shot]

                   This is what I brought you, this you can keep 

                        This is what I brought, you may forget me 

                       I promise to depart, just promise one thing 

                                     Kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep...

                                                                       - AFI, Prelude 12/21

It was 1:03 on a brisk October morning in 2009 when I met her.

I had been taking an insomniac stroll through my hometown of Holmes Chapel where I literally stumbled onto her. On my midnight path, I first passed by a house party held by Holmes Chapel honorary douchebag, Ethan Littleton. Rap music vibrated the big brick house along with cusses and shouts, something along time lines of "chug, chug, chug." I immediately scoffed at the house, and continued onto my night walk. Just as I passed the house's side, my converse must've caught a hold of an ingrown tree root because I could feel my leg twisting and sticking in a distinct space.

"Watch it, asshole!" A voice yelped.

I twisted his body around and realized the supposed root was a hand. And that hand belonged to her.

She glared at me as I studied her. She wore a tight pink dress, which fell far from her scuffed knees with the straps hanging off her shoulder blades. One of her black heels was on her foot, with the other one elsewhere. She held a brittle cigarette between her skinny middle and ring fingers but I realized she wasn't smoking it. She just let the smoke whirl into the cloudless English night sky, never taking a slow drag to the mouth and having smoke billow out of her cherry stained lips. Her empty gray eyes were strewn with mascara all the way to the edges of her mouth and her long, dark hair was flipped over the right side of her head plastered with sweat. I looked down to my side, and there was a small object glistening next to her ankle. A knife.

She was a mess; a beautiful, intriguing mess.

"Was it Ethan?" I projected abruptly.

The girl lowered her head closer to the concrete, her gray eyes shuddering as she reluctantly nodded.

Yes.

"You don't deserve this," my voice echoed under the dim streetlamp,

Frankly, I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. What was 'this?' And what didn't she deserve? I barely knew her, and I was already presuming how good or bad she was of a person, that she didn't deserve scraped knees or mascara stained face. But I said it anyways, and I didn't regret it.

She raised her falling head at me, narrowing her hoary eyes as she sized me up.

"Excuse me?" she guffawed almost humorlessly. "How the hell do you know my situation or anything? Are you god himself?"

"No, I don't think I'm god," I mumbled stupidly. "I just know you don't deserve it."

She rolled her eyes, but I could see under the spotlight of the streetlamp those same eyes rolled with tears also. She slowly stared back at me, and that's when I decided she was probably the most beautiful and interesting human I had ever met. More shouts and cusses rang through the wind, but I ignored it. And by pure miraculousness, she did too.

"Why are you being so nice?" She whispered, not necessarily sad or angry-like. Just a general question.

"I'm being a decent human being. Come on, let me help you up."