Spreading you open is the only way of knowing you
Y/N isn’t quite ready to be with Harry the way he wants, resulting in many nights of unspoken words and sweaty bodies.
2.5k words // TW: mentions of sex and minor mistreatment (can’t exactly call it abuse but it wasn’t love or an appropriate relationship)
The cacophony of noise from the city below was no match for what had echoed from the walls of Y/N’s flat for the past twenty minutes. She was sure she would be quite embarrassed to see her neighbors the next morning with the noises that were undoubtedly loud enough to be heard through the walls. She was even more embarrassed by the thought of them not even being phased anymore. But her discomfort was worthwhile as they all kept their mouths closed.
The sight of Harry Styles frequenting her front door was something they saw quite often, and the shock of a massive celebrity leaving out the same door the next morning had worn off over the past few years. Meeting the year of his second to last tour with One Direction, the two had grown close behind closed green room doors and over long phone calls. But it wasn’t until he left the band that Y/N had noticed a change between them. It was quite crazy to think of how that change let them to their position now.
Y/N laid on her bed, basking in the shadow that Harry’s body created, watching his chest rise and fall as he slowly fell back onto the sheets. Taking one last moment to right himself, he ran his hands through his hair, despite it being far too obviously unkempt to pass as simply bedhead. After seeing his hair look so many different ways over the years, his hair after her hands ran through it was easily the best looking, but she’d never admit it.
He looked down at her, finding her stare within seconds as he always did. His eyes had become such a comfort, that it was hard to picture a night without them roaming over her body like they had done for years now.
His smile, ever-present, was different. His eyebrows slightly furrowed, Y/N could tell he was thinking hard. Struggling to find the words he was searching for, Y/N simply ran her hands along his bicep, hoping it would bring him some solace.
“I’ve, uh, got to go to Bath next week to work on something I wrote a little bit ago.”
Y/N perked up. “A song! You’ve written a song!”.
He giggled a bit, “Well it is my job.” The nerves washed over him again, the song he had written wasn't something he really wanted to have to explain to her. The inspiration coming after a difficult night they had spent together while on a break from his first tour. “But, me and some guys found a great studio there and I think it’d be nice to hash it out with them.”
Y/N propped he head up now, closer to Harry’s lips than he thought he could handle. “For a second album?” She whispered, trying to hide her excitement at the possibility.
Trying his best to conceal the truth - behind both the prospect of a second album or the fact that it was entirely thanks to her - but ultimately failing, Harry nodded. Y/N didn’t even bother to cover herself up, leaping from her position under the sheets to straddle Harry, whispering about her excitement.
He lifted her off his torso and more onto his chest, with the anterior motive of not being able to handle another round of her body atop his waist, and basked in her excitement.
“That’s wonderful Harry, I'm so happy for you. How fun! A new album, more pretty suits, more touring.”
“Maybe you’ll come along for more of it this time”. He asked apprehensive, not being able to muster the courage to look into her eyes.
Y/N moved further from his body, letting out a small laugh. “Me?”
“Me?”
It was obviously not the response he was expecting to hear, such was evident in his rapidly falling smile.
“Who else?” He asked slowly.
“A real date?”, she asked.
“Yeah,” He said, his confidence from only a few moments earlier almost completely gone, “At the place Ben was telling us about.”
“That restaurant is always jam-packed with people, I don’t think-”.
“We don’t have to go to that restaurant, there’s a nice trail-”.
“A trail? Harry, I’m not quite sure I could...”
Fumbling over every word made the thoughts race through her head even faster. Not a single cohesive idea was around long enough before the fear of being seen shot it down. The cameras, the fans, the press. She could see the headlines now, ones calling her a slag and a gold digger, the posts making assumptions about her and her relationship with Harry. Comparing her to his past girlfriends, the girls with ultra-slim waists and perfect pouts.
“It’s alright we don’t have to do anything big, I just wanted to-.” He muttered whilst reaching out to caress her thigh. A nervous habit she noticed he had over the past two months since she met him.
“No, we can’t do anything.” She said louder, cutting him off again. Her breathing became heavier, and the feeling of his eyes on her was unbearable.
The ‘anything’ that he was referring to was a broad range, one in which they both were scared to breach the subject of. Admit that they had both thought of some sort of future together, in which all their worries melted away with a simple touch. A future full of late nights and hectic mornings, picking children up from school, eating a big dinner, and asking how their days went. A future that started with a date, and led to many many more.
After a long pause, filled only with the sound of their heavy breaths, he whispered; “You don’t want to go out on a date with me?
“I can’t”, Y/N choked out.
“You don’t want to be with me?” She could see the tears threatening to spill from his eyes.
“I do, I just can’t”. Just the same as she couldn’t tell him how deeply in love with him, that every beat of her heart was for him. She loved him, but what came with his heart wasn’t something she could carry.
“Nobody has to know, no one but our friends. I know you don’t like the paparazzi but-“
“What kind of relationship would that be! We just fuck in private and pretend we don’t know each other in public?”
Funnily enough, it was exactly what they ended up doing. When you researched ‘Y/N L/N’ online all that came up was her name and photo from the ‘about us’ page of the production company she worked for, just as she liked it.
If you really looked hard enough in the foreground of a few photos of Harry taken at restaurants or beaches you could spot her, but her face among their sea of friends wasn’t one worth recognizing. Despite Harry saying otherwise. He didn’t often pay attention to the people who called themselves fans of his when they picked apart the photos transpiring from invasive cameras with too bright flashes. But when some would pick up on a glance between the two of them, a grappling of hands, or a stolen smile he couldn’t help but dwell on it. He understood what simply being seen with him brought upon her, but is he too optimistic for thinking she’d ever be willing to endure it for him?
It was easy for Y/N to ignore the fact that their relationship, or whatever it was called, had become exactly what she didn’t want it to be. The moments in which she would look at him and wonder what it is they were doing would end as his lips would be on hers in an instant.
It wasn’t that they didn’t have anything else to do, they spent a very long time as nothing more than friends and they undoubtedly had fun. Being able to wander the halls of arenas, gorging on expensive foods in restaurant back rooms, and jumping off yachts. Until things became - complicated - they never doubted their friendship. There were no secrets that they hadn’t whispered to each other under the cover of a starry night. Or so they thought.
Y/N couldn’t believe what they had done, not that she could bring herself to fully regret it, but having sex with her best friend for the past three months - even after she turned him down - was something she could never have imagined. She had sat at his kitchen island many times beforehand, but never after having just been underneath him. She watched as he meticulously placed the cheese for his quesadilla at the stove in front of her. He had insisted he make them a small meal after she had mentioned hardly eating much of a dinner.
Harry had always taken very good care of her, but this was different. He always paid for meals no matter Y/Ns resistance, invited her to parties with his hot shot friends, and gave her gifts she never felt she fully deserved. But this wasn’t something she had ever really had before, this realization being so profound that she told him. He grinned, now focusing on chopping the onions. The sizzling in the pan filled the kitchen, filling the void of silence that Y/N was debating breaking.
“Ryan was never so … gentle with me”.
The sizzling continued, but Harry paused. After Ryan had broken up with Y/N she had spent the proceeding two weeks at his flat watching shitty TV and crying into his shirts.
“Ryan wouldn't have made you a meal…. after?” Harry asked, not daring to breach the subject of what they had just done.
“I mean, sometimes he would but I’m talking about … when we…” Y/N felt like a child, she couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say a stupid word. Harry’s head whipped to her, an unrecognizable expression on his face. “He didn’t like … do anything” referring to one of her worst fears “but … sometimes I wasn’t able to tell him to loosen his grip or slow down when I needed him to.”
Harry had done everything she had told him to. When she asked him to change positions, he obliged without a second thought. Telling him where to put his hands, what she liked, and how fast to go. But not only could she feel his consideration with every stroke, but something else as well. Something that they shied away from at every second except for in bed.
He didn’t expect her to laugh at his question, after having spent so many nights hyping himself up to ask it. Trying to remind himself that Y/N was his friend and that he would take a question like that seriously (because she’s always taken his other serious questions with the reaction he’s hoped for in the past). He looked into her eyes, a pair that he thought of in the moments before he fell asleep. She quickly realized the seriousness in his face and moved a bit further across the bed. Despite not being able to make it far considering the mass of pillows along the edge.
Harry wanted nothing more than to reach out to her, but it was obvious at this point, six years into their friendship and three years into whatever it was they were doing now, that there was no point. Not unless she was underneath him could he evoke the reactions he wanted from her. The careless smiles of absolute bliss were like a secret he could only be privy to at night.
“I… I’m sorry Harry, you know that I ca-“
“You can't do what!? Y/N? You can’t…”
Y/N’s suddenly felt every inch of her body that was touching Harry’s, his torso underneath her, her feet at his thighs. Every inch burned. The affection that had just been pouring out of her, both emotionally and physically to both their delights, had suddenly run dry. There was nothing but unsaid words and rumpled sheets now, the passion long gone.
Y/N could never tell if what they had been doing for months was ruining their friendship, or that their friendship ended the second that he leaned in and kissed her that night in New York all those years ago.
Y/N could never understand how someone could ever say that the magic to being in New York City could ever be lost. She had lived in her apartment for a few months now, and it was easy to say that she loved it. A space to herself, if you ignored her three roommates of course. It was only temporary of course, being needed back in London in six months, but there was no way she was going to sit idly by and let those six months slip away.
Making her extra grateful to have Harry come visit. Y/N had fixed the creases on her comforter at least nine times before she received his text telling her he was on her way up. Sprinting past her roommate's doors and into their well-decorated foyer she stood excitedly waiting for him.
The second Harry stepped in before he even got a chance to look around - there was Y/N running toward him - she had a hard blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that the roommates he had heard plenty about were watching, Harry bent down and kissed her. After several long moments, or it might have been half an hour (or possibly several sunlit days) they broke apart.
The grin that had been on both of their faces only moments before was still plastered on their faces but now covered with cherry red lipstick. Lipstick that Y/N rushed to wipe off Harry’s soft lips as she slowed her breathing to avoid the person attached to the footsteps that were steadily growing louder.
But with each kiss, they communicated just what they couldn’t say out of bed. The words that they could hardly even dare to think, let alone say out loud. So when it came to conversations in the space they usually used for sex, it became difficult. Leading them to one of their two usual answers. Have sex, and if they already did, have sex again, but ultimately to leave and pretend like it hardly ever happened.
So, when Harry watched Y/N slowly crawl off the side of the bed, he could hardly force words to come out. Only being able to push a final “Why can’t you? Y/N? please.”
The tension grew stronger with each article of clothing Y/N put back on. She took her time meticulously fixing the hem of her shorts to ponder his question. Why? Why couldn’t she? But, she was already two steps from the door. Leaving the room that fostered the only space Harry and Y/N would truly allow themselves to be open.
I’ve never written for Harry before so go easy on me please! I really do like this though, it was a lot of fun!
