pretty please (with sugar on top) - larry stylinson

41

Days passed in a blur. The threat went away, but it took hours for him to feel safe enough to leave his hiding place under the bed, and even then, he covered himself in the messy sheets and did his best to hide whenever he heard an unfamiliar noise coming from another part of the house.

Harry felt lucky to be incoherent during most of his heat, because the longing was agonizing and it was better if he was just simply unaware. At some point, a box of toys appeared outside his door, which facilitated the repetitive process of satisfying himself. A knotting dildo was nothing at all like the real thing, but it filled him up better than his fingers, and he could keep it inside him while he napped post-orgasm, and that was what mattered.

The little moments of coherency were spent sitting up in bed and staring out the window as he sipped from a bottle of water or chewed on a granola bar. He was messy with too many bodily fluids, but every time he stood up to hop into the shower, another wave of heat hit, leaving him crumbling to the floor and scrambling for something to fill him. Slick was everywhere, dripping down his legs, coating the sheets, and he felt horrible for destroying Louis' bedroom.

He was aware enough to know Louis was gone now, unable to smell his presence in the house any longer. Of course everything still smelled like him, but that was at least a few days old, no longer fresh, just a trace of his existence like a wisp of a memory. Niall was in the house, he knew, lounging around on the first floor while Harry was banished to the bedroom, locked away until further notice. Niall's scent calmed him marginally because it was friendly and comforting, but he still missed Louis.

Spending a heat alone sucked. There was no other way around it. He was burning hot half the time, sprawled out on the bed with a layer of sweat coating his skin, but freezing cold the other half, wishing he had a warm body to curl up next to. He prided himself on being an independent omega, but his heat made it clear that he would always be dependent on someone or something. If it wasn't an alpha, it was his prescription of heat suppressants, or the toys he kept under his bed. He had never wanted to have sex so badly in his life, and of course, out of all these years, this was the first time he couldn't.

On the fifth day, he woke up without the urge to rut against the sheets and whine about being empty. Instead, he just felt tired. Exhausted. Like he'd gone a week without sleep. Which was almost true. It was hard to sleep when he was busy forcing orgasm after orgasm out of himself. But now, that was over. He sat up in bed, knowing he needed to tell Niall that he could go home since Harry was in his right mind again.

A shower first was a brilliant idea, though. He didn't want Niall to see him like this. He didn't want anyone to see him like this. The water felt so nice on his skin, soothing and pleasant, enough to alleviate some of the extensive soreness in his wrung out muscles. The last five days had been full of tension and strain, reaching out for something he needed that wasn't there. His back was sore from contorting into positions that challenged his flexibility, and it felt like someone had mixed up his insides with a fork. How pleasant.

He spent a long time under the shower spray, too tired to cry about everything that had happened, and when he got out, he found two of the fluffiest towels he could and wrapped himself in them. It was so tempting to sink back into bed without changing the sheets, but he knew he would regret it later, so he removed them and added a fresh set. Hearing Louis' stern voice in his head, he nibbled on the edge of another granola bar and drank a few more sips of water, just to appease the alpha who wasn't even here. Once his inner omega was satisfied for following orders, he collapsed forward on the bed and promptly passed out.

He woke later in the day, around noon. Disoriented as he was, he only knew the time because he checked his phone. He only checked his phone because he was hoping Louis had left a message.

Sifting through the boundless number of texts and missed calls on his phone only left him even more despondent when he saw that there were none from Louis. He thumbed through a few from some of his sugar daddies, but couldn't bring himself to reply to any of them, not even the simple miss you's or what are you up to's.

The messages that actually gave him anxiety were the ones that asked variations of when can I see you again? It was a simple question, one he had never hesitated to answer before. Harry was the star of setting up dinner dates and organizing plans, literally scheduling arrangements to get knotted into his weekly planner. But now the excitement of hanging out with rich alphas had washed away. He only wanted Louis.

Tossing his phone to the side without responding to anything, he wondered if he was single-handedly throwing all of his sugar relationships out the window right now. None of these men liked to be ignored, and they would be cross with Harry once he finally decided to respond. He would have to make up some excuse about a family emergency or something.

Rolling out of bed, he sifted through Louis' wardrobe for one of the t-shirts he left, and his own pair of pajama shorts. There was a fuzzy pair of pink house socks in the bottom of his duffle. Once he was dressed, he headed downstairs and spotted Niall reclining on the couch.

"Oh hey, you're up."

Harry nodded, feeling his lower lip tremble as he crossed the room and wandered over to his friend. There was an empty box of pizza on the coffee table and Niall's acoustic guitar resting against one of the armchairs. Niall must've caught the look on his face, because he stood up and opened his arms without question. Harry sunk into his hold, whimpering. He felt pathetic.

"Jesus, you look like shit. What happened?"

"I'm sad."

Niall squeezed him closer, rocking them back and forth. With his fingers wrapped tight around either side of his rib cage, it felt easier to breathe. "No duh. Why are you sad?"

"He left me."

"Oh. Trust me, he didn't want to. We got in a huge fight over it."

"What?" This was news to Harry. Louis had seemed happy to leave, very insistent about it.

"Yeah." Niall sat them down on the couch, helping Harry get situated beside him, so that he was partially curled up on his lap. This was how they always sat together, when Harry would call Niall late at night or even just after a bad date and ask if he could come over. It was almost habit by this point. "I know he told you he was gonna leave because he had meetings he couldn't miss. But when it came down to it, when you were in heat and needing him, he just couldn't make himself leave."

"So why did he?"

"I made him. Sorry," Niall grimaced at the horrified look on Harry's face. "You should be thanking me. He was worried about taking advantage of you and he was right. Don't give me that look. I know you guys did it before I came over."

"Niall! I wanted him to stay!"

"I know, pet. But by that point you were too far gone to make a rational decision."

Harry groaned, covering his face with his hands. Niall rubbed his shoulder. He wasn't stupid, he knew Niall was right, he couldn't consent to anything when he was already slipping into heat. Louis knew that too, and that was why he was so adamant about leaving. But it didn't mitigate the fact that it hurt. It hurt like this stupid, aching void inside his heart.

They sat together in silence for a while, Harry soaking up Niall's warmth and alpha comfort as he mulled over the situation in his mind. He wasn't sure where to go from here. Was he just supposed to fly back to NYC, and everything would go back to how it was before he met Louis? Or would they stay in touch? They hadn't discussed it, and now he had no idea what to do, what to expect.

Eventually, Niall got up to make lunch. They ate their sandwiches at the kitchen table and then returned to the couch to cuddle and watch golf on TV. While the competition interested Niall, Harry was mostly bored by it, and dozed in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day.