Stall

Chapter 28.

"And nothing comes close
To the way that I need you."

***

I couldn't get Harry to explain to me what he meant last night, but he seemed quite bothered by it. I tried gently coaxing him to tell my what he meant by people like him don't get to keep people like me, and I tried not getting my hopes up about the insinuation that he wanted to 'keep' me, in some aspect. What ever that means.

By the time we dragged ourselves out of the shower and into bed, which was met with more firsts for me, I was back to trying to wrap my brain around all of this.

Harry gave me a clean shirt of his to wear to bed, looking sheepish again when he offered it to me, it seems to be something that's become a thing for him, and I can't help that little spark of affection in me that finds it really endearing.

It's something so small, but it seems to be so big for him.

Every time I've gotten into bed with Harry, it's always been shrouded in a shitty situation, whether it was the nights he would call me when whatever was wrong with him was torturing him again, or the two times he had stayed in my bed.

One being after he had just finished crushing my heart for a month and the other when I had the man I'd trusted for two years use me as a punching bag.

But last night was nothing like that, there were no black clouds looming over us, no barrier there to keep us from getting too close, it was pleasant, comforting and felt almost normal, or as close as normality could get with someone like him.

Just thinking about what happened last night has my whole body blushing, everything from undressing each other to when he kissed me against the wall and what happened after, I still can't believe it happened.

That mouth of his... Dear lord.

With this new reality where I don't have to push him away any more, I have no reason to say no to him if I don't want to, I'm trying to figure out how to adjust.

What is my relationship with him if it's not this cat and mouse game with us?

I'm not naive enough to think we're even close to being together in a literal relationship - or that there's even a chance of that, but I can't even tell if we're friends? What do you even call what we are?

I don't know where things will go from here, but I know I'm far too attached to not throw myself in the deep end and hope I can swim.

I'll gladly take all of the uncertainty and insanity that comes packaged with a warning label when it comes to him, because he's the one thing that's managed to make me feel alive and like I'm not just existing.

He's the technicolor explosion in my world of black and white, and he's not the only one that's hooked.

We fell asleep that night wrapped around each other like some kind of deformed pretzel, and while Harry fell asleep quickly I found myself fighting to stay awake as long as I could, I don't know when I won't feel like I have to be worried that he will just disappear and act like none of this happened, but I hope it's one day soon.

I can't even bring myself to think of the notion of how capable he would be of hurting me with that, when he disappeared before I was definitely deeply hurt but now he has the power to absolutely devastate me, and I can only see the risk getting worse the longer I'm around him.

It was strange waking up that morning in his bed, the brief moment of panic I had when I woke up alone quickly subsided when I heard him in the shower and I found myself curled up against his pillow smiling to myself like an absolute dipshit because yet again, this was real and I wasn't dreaming.