sign {h.s.}

capitolo ventisei*

n. lmao i can't wait for you all to love me (rr's will remember <3)

I AM SWEATING when I wake up. Harry's naked body is wrapped tightly around mine, every limb clinging on to me with a sense of urgency and desperation that I am not used to seeing from him. It makes a hint towards the new type of intimacy that we had explored in the three am hour the night before.

More shocking still is the lack of panic in my chest.

Though I'm not a particularly flighty person, I would have assumed that there would be some level of panic associated with waking up held so tightly in someone else's arms, especially after all of those nights of sleeping alone. Instead, I only find peace here. Fleetingly, I allow myself to wonder whether this means that this is a sign of where I am meant to be.

Locked so tightly in his embrace, I know that I can't move without waking him up. Slowly I try to wake him, running my fingers through his hair as I softly call his name. "Let me go," I tell him, pulling out of his embrace, if only slightly. Unwillingly.

"No," he grumbles, his voice thick with the fog of the morning.

"I want to shower," I laugh, tugging against him once more. "If you let me go now, maybe I'll even let you join me." I purr, my own voice low as I tug on his hair slightly.

"I'm up."

"Ha, ha," I deadpan, still trying to shove out of his arms. Knowing that he is awake, my motions are no longer soft and muted. They're more forward now, desperate for freedom from his hold. My entire body aches for the reprieve of a shower—the moment that my skin will clean itself of the bad memories from the night before. "Let me go," I plead again, something strong in my voice. "Join me if you want but I just need a couple of minutes alone, if that's okay."

Harry squints open one eye to look at me. He studies me with a certain intensity, his gaze hardened as his fingers reach up to cup my cheek. "Are you okay? We didn't really talk about—"

"I don't want to talk about it," I cut him off.

The other eye opens as he studies me. He's quiet for a moment and I watch the rising and falling of his chest as he deliberates on whether to let me go and get off the hook so easily. "If you want to talk about what happened at the party, I'm here and I'll listen. I believe that must have been difficult for you to go through and I understand that I can't understand exactly what it felt like, but that doesn't meant that I don't care."

"Thank you."

"Because I do care," he continues, no longer making eye contact with me but instead laying flat on his back and staring at his reflection in the mirror hanging above his head. "I care about you."

I sit up in his bed, not able to respond. Nothing that I say would be a surprise to him. Everything that I feel is plain on my face when I look at him and I know he knows that, too. Not responding isn't a slight to him, and I think that he knows it. "I'm going to shower," I press my hand down on his chest fondly. He puts his hand on top and squeezes before I walk out of his room and into the bathroom.

Again, it strikes me as odd that he has such a large apartment all to himself. Harry Styles is an enigma to me. There is so much that I don't understand. I don't understand the minimal decorating. I don't understand why there are so few pictures and souvenirs from his travels or of his family that he talked so fondly about the first time that I met him. I know that if I had lived in Paris for a time as he did, there would be proof of that upon every corner. The same for his time in Italy or wherever else he has spent any period of time.

He has never offered up an explanation of why this is, and I've never wanted to push him in terms of explaining himself. Once or twice it has crossed my mind that there is no need for an explanation. After all, this might just be his taste—this severe sense of minimalism.