°• 𝙰𝙻𝙱𝚄𝙼 𝙰𝚁𝚃 •°[ 𝚣𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 ]

Grace 🗺

ZAYN

"I can't seem to drown you out long enough
I fell victim to the sound of your love
You're like a song that I ain't ready to stop
I got nothing but you on my mind"

You'd think that after spending ten years in boarding school—where days started before dawn and beds had to be made with military precision—he'd at least be able to wake up when his alarm rang. Or maybe on the second ring. But no. Somewhere between those rigid years and six more of late-night college studio sessions, missed deadlines, and a thoroughly undisciplined freelance routine, he had lost all his instincts for waking up on time.

The alarm had been going off since 7:30 a.m.

He was currently snoozing it for the fourth time.

Cocooned in the soft chaos of his blanket nest, the morning light barely filtering through the closed curtains, he was blissfully drifting between sleep and wakefulness. Then, suddenly—something in his subconscious sparked, and he sat up like he'd been electrocuted.

"Shitshitshitshit—"

He grabbed his phone off the nightstand, squinting at the screen. 9:02 a.m.

His stomach dropped. Panic punched him in the chest. The meeting—the one with the artist. The artist whose album he'd be designing. Album art, tour merch, digital promos, posters—the whole visual universe. It was his first major job under contract with the label. A foot in the door. A big one. And he was supposed to be there in twenty-eight minutes.

Not just in the building—in the room.

Throwing off the blankets, he stumbled out of bed and into the mess that was his room, pulling open drawers and flinging clothes in every direction, as though somewhere, hidden underneath, there was a magical outfit labeled "emergency: impress very famous client." But there wasn't. He grabbed the closest things: a worn-out grey jumper that swallowed him whole, baggy track pants with ink stains on the thigh, and his cursed, never-fashionable-but-always-within-reach sandals.

No time for hair. No time for breakfast. No time to even look in the mirror.

He shoved his sketchbook and tablet into his backpack, grabbed his keys, and ran out the door, only remembering halfway down the corridor to lock it. He did, barely, before bolting down the stairs and out of the apartment complex.

His car—a battered, beloved Mini that wheezed like an asthmatic squirrel in the cold—coughed to life on the third try. As he merged onto the main road, weaving slightly too aggressively through early-morning traffic, he kept muttering under his breath.

"Not dead. Not fired. Not yet."

The whole way there, his mind raced through everything he didn't know. He hadn't read the full email from the label—just skimmed enough to know it was someone big, someone important. The name had been in there, sure, but in that blurry pre-sleep haze last night, he'd let it pass. It couldn't have been that important. He would've remembered, right?

Apparently not.

He screeched into the parking lot at 9:28 a.m. and practically leapt from the car. He didn't even try to look cool anymore—just ran full-tilt across the pavement, through the glass doors of the conference building, down the pristine corridor, and into the hall.

Where he promptly stumbled over his own foot and nearly faceplanted in front of an entire room of sharply dressed, very attentive people.

Silence.

Every head turned.

He flushed from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears. There was an executive from the label looking over his glasses at him with barely-concealed disdain. Two marketing people stared at him as if he were an exotic (and disappointing) animal dragged in from the street.

And then his eyes landed on the artist.

And his heart stopped.

Standing near the far end of the conference table, in an immaculately tailored suit, his curls perfectly tousled and a calm, curious expression on his face—

Harry Styles.

Harry. Bloody. Styles.

The man whose music he'd listened to during every late-night study session. The artist whose evolution—from pop heartthrob to androgynous rock icon—he had studied like scripture. The face he may or may not have once drawn into the corner of his sketchbook in an embarrassingly romantic moment.

This was who he was designing for?

He nearly turned and ran back out the door.

But Harry's eyes had already found his. And—worse, somehow—he smiled.

Not a mocking smile. Not even a curious one. A gentle, easygoing smile that said this happens a lot more than you think it does.

And just like that, he knew: the first impression was already made.

There would be no undoing it.