The Mysterious Knight 🏹 🔞 |Harry Styles AU| COMPLETED ✔

Chapter 26

Another Chapter!
Hope you like it!

Warning: graphic sexual contents.

Lying in the darkness, his head pillowed atop his clasped hands, Harry tried, for the fifth time that night, to get himself to sleep.

He closed his eyes tightly and began counting.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…”

No, that wasn’t right. It didn't help.

He opened his eyes and tried to recall what his mother had told him , when he was little.

Her soft voice and even softer hands were easy to recall.

He would never forget how tender and gentle her
touch was. 

How she nurtured him after he’d waken from one of his bad dreams.

“Count back from one hundred, Harry...”

she’d say, stroking her beautiful fingers slowly through his hair.

“and before you reach one you will be asleep.”

It had always worked.

He would begin to count aloud, and she would stay beside him, stroking his hair, keeping him safe, until he’d unwittingly fallen to sleep.

He closed his eyes once more and tried again as he now remembered it should be. Imagining her beside him, stroking his hair. Making him feel safe and whole.

“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…”

“It’s all right, my Harry. It’s all right, son. Go ahead and cry.”

“No!”
Harry said aloud, shuddering at the memory.

He closed his eyes tightly and began counting more loudly.

“Ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four…”

It didn’t work.
Nothing was the same...
His mother was gone.
Dead.

Strong arms circled him in his memory, holding him close, rocking him, soothing him while he cried and cried and…

“No!”

He sat up, chest rising up and down rapidly.

“Damn!”
he swore, swallowing hard and trying to force his breathing to slow down.

He worked at calming himself for several long moments, then laid back down again, shutting his eyes closed and starting up the counting from the beginning.

“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six…”

He tried to force his mind to concentrate on the numbers, but still the memories rose up to torment him again.

A long arm reaching out to hug him, the warm, deep laughter, the words.

“You rascal, Harry Dart! I should turn you over my knee for giving me such a fright!”

And him laughing…laughing as if he had a right to laugh with this man.

“You were scared, Father! You were scared!”

“I’m never scared!”

“You were scared for me!”

More laughter.