°• 𝙰𝙻𝙱𝚄𝙼 𝙰𝚁𝚃 •°[ 𝚣𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 ]

I want you 🌻

ZAYN

Anytime I need to see your face
I just close my eyes
And I am taken to a place
Where your crystal mind and magenta feelings
Take up shelter in the base of my spine
Sweet like a chic-a-cherry cola
I don't need to try to explain
I just hold on tight
And if it happens again
I may move so slightly
To the arms and the lips and the face
Of the human cannonball that
I need to, I want to

Come stand a little bit closer
Breathe in and get a bit higher
You'll never know what hit you
When I get to you.

It was late—far later than I usually stayed at the office—but I'd fallen into that familiar trap again: obsessing over tiny details, tweaking colours, nudging text layers by millimetres, and staring far too long at the same batch of poster designs. We were in the final stages of wrapping up the promotional materials for the campaign, and I wanted everything to be perfect—flawless.

But if I was being honest with myself, the problem wasn't the design. It wasn't the layout or the resolution or even the saturation.

It was Harry.

Or, more accurately, it was Harry's face.

I'd spent weeks looking at his face through the course of this project—every photograph from the shoot, every raw take and edited variant. And sure, I'd known from the beginning that the man was stupidly good-looking. That wasn't news. But after weeks of working so intimately with his image, it became obvious that this man didn't have a single bad angle. He was a designer's dream, the kind of person who could wear anything, stand anywhere, and the camera still adored him.

But it wasn't just about symmetry anymore.

Somewhere along the way, I'd stopped looking at Harry Styles like a celebrity client. Instead, I'd started seeing the warmth in his smile, the subtle intelligence behind his gaze, the kindness that felt like it radiated from him even in still images. It was becoming harder and harder to separate the man from the myth, the person I'd admired from a distance for years from the person I was now working with almost daily.

He was—without exaggeration—one of the most grounded, considerate, and genuinely open-hearted people I'd ever met. And I'd met a few high-profile names in my time. But Harry... Harry was something different.

And today, that difference had taken up residence in my head like a song I couldn't turn off.

I'd wasted an entire hour just staring at one of the final poster mockups, my eyes locked on the green of his, trying to figure out what it was that had started tugging at me. At first, I'd chalked it up to professional exhaustion. Too many hours, too many pictures, too little sleep. But that wasn't it.

It wasn't just that Harry's eyes were striking—it was that they made me feel something. And not in the giddy, fanboy way I'd felt as a teen. It wasn't about being starstruck anymore. It was quieter, deeper. Almost dangerous.

And I didn't like where that thought was going.

Eventually, after realising I'd barely made progress in the last twenty minutes, I gave up. I shut down my computer, packed up my sketchbook, and slung my bag over my shoulder. There was no point in sitting there pretending I was being productive when all I was really doing was circling a feeling I didn't want to name.

The train ride home passed in a blur of city lights and tired passengers. I kept my headphones in but didn't press play. My thoughts were loud enough on their own.

By the time I reached my flat and opened the door, the scent of baked cheese, butter, and something rich and familiar hit me immediately—mac and cheese. Comfort food. The kind that wraps itself around your bones and tells you you're home.

I heard Joe before I saw him—his voice, slightly off-key, singing along to the music drifting from the speaker in the corner of the living room.

I stepped into the kitchen, rounding the corner—and froze.

Joe stood at the stove, in sweats and one of my old university hoodies, stirring a bubbling pot on the hob. The table had already been set, the soft lighting making everything feel warmer. He glanced over his shoulder with a grin, cheeks flushed from the steam.

"Hey, babe. I figured you'd be knackered, so I made dinner," he said cheerfully. "Hope you're hungry—this is my gourmet chef moment."

But it wasn't just the gesture that got me—it was the song.

Fine Line. Harry's song.

Joe was playing Harry Styles as he made me dinner. He had no idea that I'd spent the whole day lost in the thought of the man whose voice was now soundtracking this moment, or that seeing Joe now—so effortlessly thoughtful—was making me feel something I hadn't expected:

Guilt.

A heavy, creeping kind of guilt that curled around the corners of my stomach.

Because Joe was everything. Sweet, supportive, successful in his own right. We'd been together for three years, built a rhythm, a life, a kind of quiet domesticity that I'd always dreamed of. And here he was, giving me exactly what I needed at the end of a long day—comfort, love, and a bowl of warm food.

So why had I spent so much of the day thinking about someone else?

Not just anyone else. Harry.

Why had I been trying to decipher the emotion in his eyes, wondering what it would be like to make him laugh outside the office, imagining—if only for a moment—what it might feel like if he ever looked at me that way?

I pushed the thought away, smiling as I walked up behind Joe and wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck.

"Smells amazing," I mumbled.

"Good. You need a bit of spoiling," he said, turning around to peck my lips.

And I nodded. But inside, something twisted again.

Because I knew—deep down—I needed to figure out what the hell was going on in my head before it got any worse.