pretty please (with sugar on top) - larry stylinson

44

Two days after his birthday, Harry decided he was over romance, over love, and over Louis. Heartbreak wasn't worth it. He didn't want it anymore; he was bigger than that. So, he marked the occasion by setting up a date with a potential sugar daddy. A nice night of emotionless, detached sex was exactly what he needed to get him out of his slump.

While he probably wasn't in the right place in his life to be adding more alphas to the list of people he had to please, it felt good to start fresh with someone new. He got dressed up in his nicest pair of black jeans and a champagne colored blouse, spraying rose perfume on the crook of his neck to enhance his natural scent. Usually, he never even touched an alpha on the first date, but today he was feeling more than a little reckless. He told himself he wouldn't mind if they ended up in a hotel room after dinner. Which was exactly what happened.

The meal had gone swimmingly and Harry was surprised by how easily he fell back into his previous role, despite the fact that he was demoralized and depressed. The alpha's name was Derek, and they flirted over authentic Italian cuisine and mostly talked about football because he was a retired linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles. He was a huge person, physically speaking. Harry was more than a little interested in this fact about him.

Everything was fine, up until they started kissing and taking their clothes off. The hotel room was one of the nicer ones he'd been in, and the bed was comfy beneath his back, and Derek was behaving as gentlemanly as he could while also unbuttoning Harry's jeans, and everything was fine, right, it should've been fine. Harry had done this before, hundreds of times. He was practically an expert in these activities. He was no stranger to kissing or undressing or anything that came after.

Except, his hands were shaking. So badly that Derek noticed.

"Are you okay?"

Harry stared up at the ceiling, which was covered in a large mirror. His distraught, debauched reflection stared back. His skin was pale, his eyes lost. He didn't look like himself.

"Yeah, yeah," he gasped, going back to kissing him. Kissing was always a good distraction. This kiss in particular wasn't the most pleasurable thing in the world, mostly due to how unsettled Harry felt, but he could work with it. If only he could get his hands to stop shaking. He felt weak and dizzy but it was probably just from the lack of air, since his mouth was otherwise occupied. The mirror on the ceiling was throwing him off, because with every glance, his eyes wandered to the reflection of him and Derek, and it was wrong, all wrong, somehow, for no reason at all. It didn't look right. It didn't feel right. It made his skin itch and crawl, made his heart threaten to run away.

Derek shrugged and yanked Harry's pants and underwear down in one go, leaving him exposed to the cold air of the hotel room. Harry was uncomfortably sweaty and hoping the alpha wouldn't notice, to the point where his armpits and the backs of his knees were actually dripping, his back sticking to the sheets, the entire surface of his skin turning damp with nervous perspiration. The anxious outside was matched with an anxious inside, a physical ache in his chest and tingles trembling up his fingers.

All of it was incomparable to the overwhelming sense of doom and dread sinking deep into his stomach. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew he couldn't do this right now.

He pushed the alpha's hands away from his pathetically soft dick, rolling onto his side and curling his knees to his heaving chest. He was so embarrassed. Each breath was felt shallow and impossible. There wasn't enough oxygen in the universe to satisfy him. The world was shaky in his vision, vibrating with unexplainable energy. He thought he was going to pass out.

"What the hell-"

His tone of voice wasn't cruel or rude, but mostly just confused.

"Don't touch me, please," Harry whimpered, brushing the alpha's hands away again. He crawled out of bed, nearly falling off of it, and stood up on the shakiest legs imaginable, impeded by his jeans stuck around his thighs. He looked like a mess. He was a mess. The world kept flickering in and out of focus and he had never felt terror like this before.

"Are you... You're not okay. You're having a panic attack?"

Harry could only fish-mouth at him and stutter out, "I have to leave," in the shakiest, most unsteady voice imaginable. His throat was raw and cracked with dryness, and he sounded like a chainsmoker lost and dehydrated in Death Valley.

"Babe, wait- You can't go outside like this-"

He yanked his jeans back up and pulled his shirt down, fumbling around the room for his belongings and struggling into his shoes. Phone on the nightstand, purse on the settee. His mind was elsewhere. It was almost comical.

"I'm so sorry, I have to leave right now."

"Let me at least call you a cab," Derek insisted.

Harry sucked in one last shallow breath before turning around and bolting out of the room, too overwrought to even decline the kind offer. He stumbled down the hallway and tripped down half the stairs to the lobby, fleeing the hotel altogether. People were staring at him like he was crazy, but he hardly noticed.

The world spun around him as he stood in the middle of the sidewalk, utterly lost. He'd been in this part of the city many times before, but everything around him looked unfamiliar. It was impossible to focus on a single location, a single sight. His mind was racing even faster than his heart. A grimy fire hydrant covered in snow. A whining car alarm with flashing lights. An omega signaling for a cab. Slush splashing on the sidewalk from passing cars. The stoplight changing from red to green. A child throwing a tantrum. Nothing but people, cars, tall buildings closing in on him. He leant his weight on the brick wall beside him and somehow ended up on the ground.

His phone was in his hands. He scrolled through his contacts, called whoever he could. Niall was in Mullinger visiting his family and Shawn was traveling to Boston for work. He had no one else. The rest of his contacts were alphas who didn't actually care about him. Including Louis. Harry's thumb hovered over Louis' contact.

The phone rang. He couldn't remember hitting call.

He picked up.