#dom!harry

You pushed up from the edge of the dock where you'd been sunning, and sauntered toward the table, just shy of the zone where your dad would bark. On your way to the cooler, you gave Harry a small, private smile, then bent for a beer and let him have the view. Tits, ass, whatever he chose to take. You just needed his eyes on you.

The first swallow of cold ale carved a clean line down your throat as you stood right where Harry could watch. He glanced, but not too long. You tossed him another look, then drifted toward the cedar-and-stone house, slipped through the sliding doors, and let the air-conditioning lift the heat from your skin.

Even as your sweat began to dry, you were still heated from all the inappropriate thoughts about Harry. His arms were strong and tattooed, his shoulders were broad, he was tall, big hands… There wasn't a single thing you could find about him that wasn't appealing. He was even a little bit boorish, which you loved. You wouldn't call him mean, but he definitely wasn't nice. He'd never been rude to you, but you'd let him if he wanted.

And best of all, you were positive he had a huge cock. You'd seen the bulky line of him after pulling himself out of the lake, the way he plucked his shorts away from the heavy lump that swayed in his navy swim shorts. Plus, there was no way a man like that wasn't nicely endowed. You wanted to see it for yourself, though.

You took another drink of your beer, your forearms pressed over the granite kitchen island, just as Mark walked in and set his dark eyes all over your skin before he walked behind you. Rolling your eyes, you took another swig and turned around, propping your elbows on the island behind yourself to look at him. "Like the color green. Or you just like my ass?"

He laughed and reached into the fridge to grab out a few more of the special beers. The ones that didn't go in the cooler because they were too expensive to sit amongst the common lagers and ales that sat drowning in water and ice in the Igloo cooler. "You got some mouth on you, Y/n."

"I saw you lookin'. Don't pretend you weren't. If Darius finds out, he'd probably kill you, though."

"If your dad finds out what?" Harry's voice cut through from the sliding door as he stepped inside, eyes on Mark. There was tension.

"Nothin'."

"He was looking at my ass," you smirked and then took another drink of your beer.

"She's right. Darius'll kill you. So will I. Go back outside, Mark."

Mark scoffed and gestured toward you. "I wasn't looking at her ass, Harry. She's just a kid. Why would—"

"I'm 23. Full-grown woman," you corrected.

Both Harry and Mark looked at you and laughed. You rolled your eyes. Harry kept his sight on you as he spoke. "Go outside, Mark, before you do anything stupid."

You licked your lips and grinned at Harry, swaying your hips just a little as you shifted. His eyes grazed your thighs before he stepped in front of you, jaw set hard.

"Don't be playin' with Mark. He's going through a lot right now."

"I know. Poor thing," you mock-pouted. "Heard his wife left him. Probably desperate to get laid. That's why he was staring at me."

"You need to behave, Y/n. You're lookin' for trouble." Harry glanced out the window then back at you.

You fluttered, your lashes innocently. "Hmm… Not looking for trouble. Honest. Not from Mark anyway."

He shook his head and sucked at the front of his teeth like what you'd said was unbelievable. But you think he got the hint. "God help me."

And just like that, he walked away. Left you standing there in the air-conditioned kitchen as he stepped back out to the patio with his friends. All boring older men his age who he knew couldn't entertain him the way you could if he just let you.

.

The wifi sucked at the lakehouse. That was one of the only things you hated about the place. The rest was kind of magical. You sat on the balcony off of your room, a joint perched between your fingers as you watched the sun slip down, and one by one, your dad and his friends began to come inside. Bedtime for the old men. But that meant go-time for you.

Patting out your joint, you stepped back inside your room and checked yourself in the mirror. Your button-up shirt was unbuttoned, nothing underneath. You grinned and felt your nerves ramp up as you tiptoed from your room, down the hallway to the one off the shared bathroom. Harry's room.

None of the men had made it upstairs yet. You could hear them all down in the kitchen still. Once again, the thrill of doing something you knew you shouldn't was too big to pull back from. Just one night with Harry would cure you. Definitely.

His room was dark when you stepped inside and closed the door behind yourself. The rush of what you were doing made your heart race as you climbed into his bed and pulled the shirt off, dropping it onto the floor next. You turned your head to inhale the pillow he'd used the night before.

It was like a dopamine hit to your brain. Harry always smelled good, and now, lying in the bed, he'd soon be coming to… your insides were churning, and your skin was prickling with heat.

Look, you knew you were ridiculous. You knew it was dumb. But you really didn't care. You should have cared. You should have gone to therapy instead of going to older, unavailable men to fill in the gaps of whatever it was that was missing in you. But for you, rational thought rarely won. For better or worse. You were a walking disaster.

When footsteps began to hit the stairs and deep voices laughed and lulled, doors opened, and then closed, you pulled his blankets over your head and bit your lip in anticipation. You had a feeling he was going to kick you out of his room. Tell you that you needed help and that you were barking up the wrong tree or something like that.

The moment his door opened, you held your breath. You heard his footsteps, the door closing behind him, then locking. When the light came on, you could see it slip through the edges of the blanket, and then everything went silent. You slowly inhaled and blinked your eyes against the dark of the blankets over you and tried to listen for any single noise, but there was nothing. Not a footstep, nor a breath. Was he playing a game? There was no way he didn't notice the clear outline of your body under his blankets, and there was no way he didn't know it was you.

Just before you were about to pull the covers from your face to find out what was going on, all of the blankets were suddenly ripped from you and pulled to the floor, cold air hitting your bare skin. You gasped and sat up to see him standing at the end of the bed, an unreadable expression on his face as he trailed his eyes down your nude figure sitting right in the spot he would be sleeping.

He pressed his lips together tight and nodded before he crossed to the side of the bed to casually plug his cellphone in to charge it. You blinked, confused, and shifted to sit with your legs tucked under your thighs as you watched him. Why wasn't he giving you some kind of reaction?

"Um…" You said thinly. "You gonna say something?"

He slid his gaze to yours, and he sniffed before he sat at the edge of the bed and began to remove his shoes. "What do you want me to say?"

Shaking your head, you frowned. "I don't know. I thought it'd be funny. Maybe make you laugh."

He pushed out a laugh, but it was missing its edge of humor. "Funny? This is you being funny, Y/n?"

"Well…" You looked down at your lap and suddenly felt like escaping. You could just grab your shirt and dash back to your room, pretend you'd never done it.

"Well, what?"

"I don't know. I don't know why I did it."

"Not every day a man steps into his room to find a naked girl in his bed. Worse when it's his friend's daughter."

Biting your lip hard, you lifted an arm to cover your breasts and hook your fingers over your upper arm, suddenly not feeling like your usual bold self. Harry's reaction had not been what you'd expected at all. You were used to an extreme response. But this?

He brought a hand up and pulled at your lip, voice soft. "Don't bite it. Make yourself bleed."

You blinked slowly, eyes on his as you parted your lips where he pulled and grabbed his wrist, pushing your lips over his thumb and sucking around it. It was automatic when you did it. He didn't pull away.

"Fuck me," he muttered under his breath. But it came out sounding less like a man excited and more like a man with a conundrum.

You laved your tongue all around and moaned softly, pushing and then pulling your lips over his digit as he watched you. Shifting your hips, you scooted closer to him, his thumb still in your mouth. And you thought maybe it was just that easy. Show him how nasty you could be right off and he'd give in.

But he moved away and stood, your hand falling to your lap. He bent and grabbed the blankets, tossing them back over the bottom of the mattress. You watched him pull his wallet from his back pocket and place it on the dresser, with his back to you. You had no idea what was going on. But he wasn't kicking you out. Yet.

You were honestly used to one of two reactions from men when you pulled this kind of shit—not that you'd done this exact thing before, but still.

Men would either respond with a lot of enthusiasm in favor of getting to fuck you, or they'd freak out and leave (or tell you to leave).

Of course, your actual "body count" was not nearly as high as that makes it seem. You were no virgin, but you were also not really a "bop" either. Well, maybe you were a little bit, but you preferred thinking of yourself as a lover girl, really. Just a girl looking to be loved. Looking for something real, but probably in all the wrong places.

He turned to face you, bracing his hands against the edge of the dresser behind him. "Why are you here?"

You tipped your chin up to make it look like you had more confidence than you did, given that you were naked, in his bed, uninvited.

"I just wanted to see what would happen."

"To see what would happen," he repeated. You watched him nod and drag his eyes down your body to where your feet were tucked under your bottom.

"I think I already know what you want. But I need you to tell me first. Otherwise, you'll return to your room. This isn't a game. Tell me why you're here."

You swallowed and put your palms on your knees. "To see if I could get you to..."

He waited to let you finish your thought but when you didn't, he did it for you. "To see if you could get me to… what? Look at you? Pay attention to you?"

You nodded, your throat tightening. "Yeah. I wanted you to like me."

He huffed a quiet laugh. "You think I don't like you?"

Right then, you really wished you had some clothes on. "Hard to really tell."

He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. "If I didn't like you, you would not be sitting here right now."

It was pathetic but the edge of your lip nudged upward at that admission. So he did like you. At least enough to keep you sitting on his bed, naked.

"Tell me why you're here."

God, you were so out of your depth with Harry. You slowly inhaled and sank your nails into the skin on the outside of your knee. "I wanted attention. Your attention specifically."

"Attention. Okay. Well, you got it. You realize I'm not much younger than your dad."

"I know. I just… like you."

He laughed and pushed away from the dresser, stepping next to the bed closer to you. "I can see that. Not very wise, though. Is it?"

You shook your head, looking up at him through your lashes.

"No, it's not." He blew out a slow breath. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Nothing since dinner. I’m not even tipsy. Well, I smoked a half joint before I came in here.”

His eyes stayed on yours long enough to make you feel naked in a different way. “A joint? And now you're sitting here without any clothes on in my bed? Your dad would be very disappointed in you.” He glanced at the door, then back to you.

Your heart thudded as you let out a humorless laugh. “He won't ever know unless you say something. Besides, he doesn't care about me anyway. Mom either.”

Harry reached down and took your chin between his thumb and middle finger, palm cradling the underside. "Darius doesn't give you enough attention? Is that what this is? You're desperate for someone to take care of you?"

You nodded, chin padded by his palm as you rounded your eyes on his. You reached up to grab his forearm, but he tsk'd at you and moved his hand away. "Hands back in your lap. You want attention from me, then we're doing this my way. Is that clear?"

"Yes," you spoke in a whisper.

"Good." His mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile he didn’t want to have, but you saw it. "Few rules first." He stepped away, moving toward the door to double-check that he'd locked it before he returned to your side next to the bed.

"You'll listen to me. You keep your voice down. If I say stop, you stop. That door stays locked until I unlock it. You'll go back to your room when I say. And in the morning, you are polite and distant, and you don’t make me a liar in front of your dad."

You nodded too fast, blinking your eyes as you swallowed.

“Understood?”

“Yes,” you said, throat tight. “I can do that.”

He lifted a hand toward your face, and you leaned into it. His knuckles skimmed your jaw, the heat of his palm cupping your cheek. The careful way he touched you made your bravado feel small and your want feel enormous.

“There can be no loud noises coming from you, much as I'd like to hear it,” he said. “Are you able to keep yourself quiet?”

“Yes,” you said plainly. You hoped you could.

"Good, because one peep too loud and you're out of here. I'm not risking my relationship with your dad so some spoiled, bored girl can get her kicks and play out her twisted fantasy on an older man. We're both adults here, Y/n. Let's call it what it is."

You frowned, brows pinching together.

"What? Did you think this was gonna turn into a love story? Honey, this is what you get when you play around with people you shouldn't."

You turned your gaze toward the edge of the room, your heart thundering so loud you could hear it in your ears. You just wanted to find a man to love you at the end of the day, but you knew the way you went about it was all wrong. The kind of men you went after weren't fit for that. Harry wasn't going to be your knight in shining armour and sweep you away to his city penthouse and take care of every want and need you had.

"I know," you said, your voice hollow like the space inside of you that you so desperately wanted filled.

The bed dipped when he sat down. "Hey. Look at me, Y/n."

Blinking, you shifted your gaze back to his. His clear rules were making you confront yourself in a way you didn't usually need to, and you felt very outmatched for it.

"Where'd all your sass go? Hm? Don't tell me you're this easy to break."

"I don't… Most men don't care about rules. I'm used to just…" You shook your head, picking at your nails in your lap.

"Most men? How many?"

"What?"

He raised his brows. "How often do you do shit like this?"

"Well, not like… all the time. Like a few."

"You usually go for older men?"

You nodded.

"Right. So this is a pattern. You could have picked any of the guys here this weekend, and you'd have been satisfied. Mark would probably already be fucking you if you'd picked his room."

"No. I didn't want anyone else. That's why I came here."

"And you're used to men not giving a damn about the consequences. Thought I'd be easy to seduce, didn't you?"

Shaking your head quickly, you spoke. "No. I honestly thought you'd just kick me out."

He tilted his head, a slow grin pulling at his lips. "You did all this thinking I was just gonna send you out of here? You like being humiliated, Y/n?"

You shrugged. "Just for attention. Even if you just yelled at me and told me to get out, that would've been fine. Take what I can get."

He blinked, eyes shifting between yours. "That's kind of fucked up. You realize that, right?"

You pushed out a breath of a laugh, embarrassed, and looked back down at your lap. "I know. I have issues that I should probably work out in therapy."

He slid his palm over your knee, and you flicked your gaze back to his. "Probably? Baby, this is a whole shit sandwich you got goin' on here."

You laughed, a little too loud, and covered your mouth quickly, eyes wide.

"Shh…" he smiled, shaking his head in disbelief. "Get on your tummy. Tush up."

Your face went hot immediately, and every inch of flesh burned as your vision went bleary from the sudden shift in his demeanor and the drop in his voice. But you quickly did as he said, moving to your side and then lowering your tummy to the mattress. You kept your neck turned so you could see him in your peripheral. He didn't move at first, but you could hear his breath.

It felt like minutes that he sat there and just stared at your backside. Like he needed to make sure he was ready for it himself. But when he finally touched you, a big hand pressing at your low back and tracing upward along your spine, you smiled and sighed a soft moan.

"Jesus, Y/n." His hand paused at your shoulder blade. "Acting like you never get touched. Need it that bad?"

You breathed out and nodded into the crook of your arm. You didn't want him to stop touching you. However he wanted to do it, you'd be happy. You just needed it.

He shifted, his hands pressing flat into the mattress on either side of your waist as he leaned over you, his voice next to your ear. "Bet you like to be spanked, don't you? Like to get smacked around just to feel a man's hands on you? Like it rough?"

You nodded, your eyes pressing toward the limn of your vision so you could see the outline of his face over you.

"Not happening tonight. Too much noise. Understood?"

You nodded again. "Mmhm."

When he pushed away, he didn't move far. He pulled your hands down and placed them on your tailbone. "Keep these here."

You threaded your fingers together to hold your hands still as he moved behind you. A shift of fabric, the bed tipped under his weight and then lifted when he stood. He was taking off his shirt. Maybe everything, you weren't sure.

He turned on the lamp on the side table and then walked across the room to shut off the overhead light. Then you saw him grab his cellphone. A few moments passed before you heard the sound of white noise coming from his phone. The pulse of waves and the soft lapping of water receding from a shoreline. The constant, gentle drone of sound that could drown out small noises while putting someone to sleep. Only tonight, the white noise wasn't for sleeping. It would serve as a disguise.

With your hands still exactly where he put them, you turned your head to see him walking toward a small suitcase on the other side of the bed. He'd removed his shirt and his jeans, but was still wearing a pair of black boxer briefs that hugged his thighs and glutes tightly. He pulled something from his suitcase that you couldn't see before he stepped around to the bedside table, and you turned your head again to watch as he laid down two condoms. Two.

"I'm on birth control," you said, your eyes following his movements.

"Oh, I'm sure you are, honey."

And that was all he said before he was kneeing back up onto the bed behind you, his hands moving up the backs of your thighs and pressing them apart. You squeezed your eyes closed, feeling more exposed and naked than you ever had.

Then he was touching you with purpose. His hands sliding over your skin and around the curve of your ass before he squeezed and pulled. You could hear his breath as he went. The warm span of his palm and fingers wrapped your sides and then he pinched gently. You rocked your hips and moaned softly.

"You let men fuck you without condoms?"

You swallowed. "Sometimes. Not usually."

"Is that why you told me you're on birth control? Want my cock bare?"

You nodded and lifted your head to look back at him, but your hands, being where they were, made it difficult to turn. "I'd let you."

"Lie down."

You lay back into the position you'd been in and waited. He took your hips and lifted gently and you heard him inhale through his teeth before his thumbs found your labia and he pulled. "Looks pretty. Would love to fuck you raw, but I don't think that's a good idea tonight."

Tonight. There it was again. Your heart beat picked up faster at just the idea. Not tonight, but perhaps another. Not that that was what he meant, but the way he said it…

His fingers prodded and pulled at your folds slowly. It was strange to be scrutinized so closely like that. You felt cool air hit your skin before his lips pressed against your pussy and you moaned, turning your mouth down into the blankets to muffle the sound.

"Good girl. You do know how to listen." He squeezed your ass again and yanked you up further, bottom higher in the air, knees digging into the mattress, before he shifted and you felt his thighs line up with the back of yours. You immediately rocked back against him and felt the line of him pressing into you.

He let you rub yourself against him, your hips pressing, swaying against him as you whimpered like an idiot into the blanket. His hands were light on your hips as you moved, like he enjoyed watching you do it. And given how hard he was under his briefs, you figured he did.

He pushed out something that could have been considered a moan when he tightened his grip on you and then rutted forward, his big dick pressing harder against your ass. But then he pulled back, and you felt his fingers on your crease again, sliding them through, up and down.

"Knew this ass would be cute."

The sudden press of two of his fingers inside of you had you gasping as you rolled against him. He groaned quietly and began to finger you with one of his hands, his other holding your hip loosely so you could still push back onto his digits.

"There you go. Fuck my fingers, honey."

You arched harder, letting your body rear back and shift forward so you could keep sinking down onto his fingers. The white noise coming from his phone did a good job of covering up the gushy, wet sounds your pussy made as you rocked. But then he moved again, his fingers were gone, and the mattress dipped.

"Sit up."

You released your hands and scrambled up quickly to face him, and he laughed at how obedient you were. He stepped onto the floor to the edge of the bed and pointed. "On your back, head at the edge here."

You moved right away, scooting your bottom until you were where he wanted you, head slightly hanging from the mattress, throat exposed. You looked up at him and just saw his tall frame, upside down, standing over you as he pulled his cock from his briefs. Long and thick… just like you knew it would be. You reached for him, but he swatted your hand away.

"Hands down by your side for now."

You pressed your arms to your sides and balled your fists tight as he grabbed your throat and bent enough that he could smear his tip against your chin and then your lips. You opened your mouth wide, and he huffed a quiet laugh.

"Love the enthusiasm. Stick out your tongue."

You jutted your tongue out as he reached over you, and his hands found your breasts for a quick squeeze before he took his cock in one palm and tapped it to your tongue. He ran his dick along your tongue and passed your lips a few times, wetting himself with your saliva.

He started off slow like that. Gently pushing in, not too far, and dragging himself back. He held his base as he went, working into you until you felt more relaxed with the angle and his girth before he snapped his hips down and thrust in past your gag reflex.

He chuckled darkly when he did it again, and you gurgled. His crown curved into your throat as he gasped and you swallowed around him with a quiet sputter. But you were determined to give him what he wanted and be the best you could be. Only when he moaned and reached forward to squeeze your nipples did you feel like it was a job well done. He liked it. You were making him feel good.

You'd had a couple of men fuck your face before and do it rough. You didn't mind because it felt like a reward when someone was enjoying your body. If he was having a good time, then so were you. And the small gasps coming from Harry, the salty precome dripping down your throat, the pulse in his thick vein, the way he was pinching your nipples… You felt like you were on your way to winning first prize.

"Fuck… That's it…"

Your face was numb, your throat was raw, saliva dripped down your temples and into your ears and hair, your eyes were blurry, and you could hardly breathe… But you were being enjoyed and that's all you wanted. It turned you on more than anything else.

Harry pulled out, his chest was heaving and he cursed under his breath. "Goddamn, Y/n."

You blinked tears from your eyes and moved your head to look up at him, still upside down from your vantage point. He walked around to the other side of the bed and you followed with your eyes as far as you could until you felt his hands on your ankles, pulling you to lie lengthwise on the bed before he climbed between your legs and pulled your thighs over his shoulders.

"Fuck, baby…"

Then his mouth was on you, soft, hot, wet… His tongue drew silent lines up and down your center before he sucked at your clit. You lifted your hips sharply with a gasp, throwing your arm across your mouth to keep as quiet as possible.

He moaned into your pussy and pressed in harder with his lips and tongue. But it was the way he slid the tip of his tongue quickly back and forth on your bud that made it hard to stop the noises from falling out of your mouth.

You reached down to stuff your fingers into his thick hair and rolled your hips up against his mouth. He didn't let up, and he didn't make you put your hands down. It was heaven being eaten out by Harry. It was like being loved on, which was something you craved constantly. Most men skipped foreplay with you because they figured you were just a slut who didn't need that kind of thing. But of course, you never asked for it because you figured they were at least partly right.

"Mmmm…" you moaned, mouth closed as your spine bowed from the bed. Harry pulled away and spat over your pussy and then looked up at you.

"Never seen a girl get this wet before," he said as he slid three fingers flat on your clit to rub his saliva in with your slick arousal. He kept his eyes on you as he rubbed your pussy, and then he reached up to your tit, wiping your wetness on your nipple and then then thumbing over your peak. He pushed his mouth against your hip and moaned before he sat back, pressing the insides of your knees further apart, pupils drawing through the space of your pussy and everything between your legs.

You moaned quietly and blinked up at him, your hands drifting up to your breasts as you lifted your hips in a silent plea.

"Shit." He shook his head and sighed. "Gonna want more of this." He traced his palms up your thigh and to your hips. "Which is dangerous. But I need to hear you beg til you're crying." He smoothed his hands around to your hips and then under to your ass as he squeezed. "Wanna take you over my knee and spank you when you make a mistake, when you mouth off. Can't do any of that here, can we?"

You swallowed and shook your head, a whisper of a no coming out as you lifted your hips again, impatient.

"Fuck. Hold on."

He reached over you, his strong arm stretching to the bedside table where he grabbed his phone and a condom. He laid the condom on your tummy and fiddled with his phone until you heard it ringing, speaker phone on. He put his finger up to his lips to signal for you to be quiet the moment a woman answered.

"Hi, handsome."

"Hey. Got a sec?"

"Sure, what's up?"

You blinked and pushed yourself up by your elbows as Harry laid the phone down next to your hip, glancing at you before he plucked up the condom and tore it open.

"Hate to do this on the phone, but it couldn't wait." He laid the rubber over his tip and began to roll it down as he continued speaking. "Can't see you anymore. Something came up and wouldn't be right to drag this out any longer. Really sorry."

"Wait. You're breaking up with me? What happened?"

"What happened is that something came up. I really am sorry. I just wanted to let you know before we took it any further. Okay?"

When the condom was rolled down as far as it could reach, he scooted closer to you and lay his cock over your tummy.

"Harry, I don't get it."

"Nothing to get. No hard feelings. I wish you luck."

He reached down and ended the call, the white noise returning with a soft crashing wave, and then he looked down at you, your brows pinched together.

"You had a girlfriend? I thought you were single?"

"She wasn't a girlfriend. Just someone I was seeing casually. Wasn't serious."

"So, why'd you end it with her if it was casual?" Your heart was racing.

He pushed out a laugh and dragged his hands to the underside of your thighs. "It was a courtesy. Was gonna break it off anyway. Least I could do was be a gentleman about it and break up with her before I fuck someone else. Shoulda done it before I laid my hands on you, but kinda forgot she existed there for a bit."

You smiled, a small laugh puffing from your lips. "You could've just texted. That's usually all the courtesy I get from men, and then they block me so I can't call back. Woulda made that a lot easier."

He stared at you blankly and ran his hands up your thighs to your hips. "You haven't been getting treated right, Y/n. Breaking up over text is for cowards. Not my style."

You bit your lip and ran your palms over your tits, pressing them together gently. It made you feel special that he broke up with some woman while he was there with you, sliding a condom onto his dick, fucked up as it was. "You're a lot nicer than I thought you'd be."

The smirk that worked its way up on his mouth was almost villainous as he brushed his tip through your crease and pressed it just to your opening. "Is that what that was? Nice?"

"Well… yeah. Wasn't it?"

He breathed out a laugh and shook his head. "Was it nice of me when I made you choke on my cock before the call?"

You opened your mouth, but your response was cut off when he pushed himself in past your tight muscle, your insides opening up for his cock as he went. Inhaling sharply, you reached to close your hands around his biceps as he nudged deep into you.

"But you liked it. That's all that matters to you, isn't it? Like taking men from other women. Spoiled brat behavior."

You whined quietly, your mouth still opened wide as he forced himself in further, taking the back of your knees and pushing your legs apart for him.

"Think she'd agree it's nice that I'm fucking a cute young thing with a pretty, wet pussy just minutes after breaking it off with her?" He spoke low, rocking into you. "Feels really fucking nice," he moaned under his breath. "But this is far from nice, Y/n."

You puffed out a breath, and he reached down, taking your breast into his palm, squeezing. "She loves nice guys, but you? You don't want a nice guy, do you?"

You blinked, shaking your head, the breath of a no falling out of your mouth as he pushed himself in and dragged back, your insides splitting apart for him when he drilled down into you. It was hard to answer the question when he was plunging in the way he was, when he had you bent in half under him, one hand gripping tight under your knee and the other over your tit to hold you in place.

"Hm? Tell me. You want a nice guy, Y/n? Or are you lookin' for someone to sort you out? Someone to fix you?" He spoke quietly as he fucked into you, pushing his dick to the hilt every time he bottomed out.

"Hnnhh—" You wobbled out some kind of noise and gasped. "Yes… Fff… Need to be fixed."

He moaned, hips pumping into you harder, making the bed creak under your back. He slowed his thrusts, and the mattress springs went silent again. You watched his eyes flutter shut and his mouth drop open as he released your breast and placed his hand back to the underside of your knee, holding your legs apart. He dipped his hips shallowly, and you were so wet that the sound of his cock dragging in and out of you couldn't be disguised by the white noise coming from his phone. But he kept going.

When he opened his eyes again and looked down at you, the expression on his face was tight, pained. You'd seen that look on men before. When they were getting lost in lust. Lost in the way you felt around them. He panted a breath as he pushed his big dick deep into your tummy and ground down on your pelvis. You both inhaled, your body clinging snugly around him.

"Oh, baby. Shame I can't fuck your brains out like you need me to. Hear all those pathetic noises you want to make, turn you into a slobbering little mess on your knees for me."

"I want it, please…" You moaned, stretching your neck out as you gushed around his thrusting dick. Suddenly, his palm was on your mouth, stopping the noise from escaping further. He rutted into you hard, your body jolting.

"What did I say? You want to go back to your room?"

You shook your head, eyes wide on him, his hand still covering your entire mouth.

"No? If you want to stay here, then you need to be good and keep quiet. Let me work, and you just lie here for me. Should be really easy for you."

Easy? You'd hardly call it easy. Harry's girth pushing into your guts, his strong, solid body, tattooed arms and chest, wicked green eyes, the way he was speaking to you… You pinched your eyes closed and moaned, damp, into his palm when he drove in deep.

Then you felt him squeezing at your cheeks, and you opened your eyes to look up at him just as he slid his thumb past your lips. You sucked around it as he pumped his cock into you slowly, being careful not to move too fast or make too much noise.

"Know how hard this is for me? Having to be gentle with you like this…"

You laved your tongue over his thumb and moaned, his dick nudging to your end. You wanted his lips on yours. You wanted to know what he'd be like with his tongue against your mouth, sliding softly over you. One kiss from him and you'd never ask for anything else again.

"Knowing you like it a little rough, just like I do. Knowing you need something I can't give you right now."

You whimpered around his thumb and he hissed when he bottomed out, stuffing his entire length into you and feeling the tight squeeze of you pulling him in. "Sucking my thumb like a proper baby, aren't you?"

There was a time when he just thought you were an innocent young woman. It had been easy to ignore how cute you were when he met you just after you turned 20 years old, his friend's daughter with sweet eyes and a nice ass under your jeans. He wasn't interested in innocent and cute, especially not when you were Darius's daughter. And especially not when you were so damn young.

But then, as time went on, he started to notice your attitude. The comments you'd make when he'd stop by to see his friend. The way Darius would yell at you and you'd roll your eyes at him but then smile at Harry with a kind of sultry smirk that had blood rushing through his veins. Eventually, it became clear that you weren't so innocent. You were seeking something risky, and Harry certainly couldn't get involved with any of that. So he kept his distance.

Until that night when he walked into his room and saw you naked in his bed… pretty tits, soft hips, dirty grin on your face. He should have kicked you out, like you thought he'd do. He should have sent you on your way and pretended it never happened. But there was something about you that he needed to uncover, and right then, as he was balls deep inside of your warm pussy, he knew he was fucked cause he was thinking with his dick and not his head.

It was a terrible idea to give in to you, but he couldn't seem to help himself. You'd been a bratty temptress earlier, and now here you were all pliable and submissive, needy. You had something he'd been missing in the women he'd dated over the last few years. It wasn't easy to find a woman who liked what he did. A little punishment. A little guidance. He'd pretty much given up, resigning himself to vanilla sex, which was still fun, but didn't fulfill his deeper desires.

"Christ. What am I gonna do with you, hm?" He drilled down into you, hips pasted to yours as you sucked his thumb into your mouth with a whine.

Suddenly, he pulled out, rearing back, and pressed both of his hands down on the bed by your hips, your legs falling flat. You watched him drop his head, shoulders rising and falling heavy like he was trying to recharge himself. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to yours, green irises nearly hidden under blown-out pupils.

He sat back and grabbed your calf, lifting your leg, and used his opposite hand to squeeze your ass, fingers pinching into your skin with a painful bite. You pressed your lips flat to stop the yelp from falling into the room, and he smiled at your restraint.

"Good fucking girl."

Good fucking girl… You would have purred if it were possible. He'd been mixing in little drops of praise between scolding words. You rolled your eyes to the back of your head at the praise and moaned, mouth still closed. Then he let go and his hands were on your hips and then your breasts, fingers pinching your nipples, rolling them between the pads of his fingers and you arched your back from the bed with a gasp.

When he moved over you, he ran his tongue along the edge of a nipple before he pulled it into his mouth, a hand on your other one, pinching. He sucked your bud softly, wetting, tongue swirling, and then you felt the sharp nip. You wiggled, and your hands flew to his hair.

"Harry, fuck…" You breathed his name into the room, focusing really hard to keep your voice quiet.

He moaned against your breast and went harder before he moved his mouth to the other side. The room was spinning as he pinched and sucked. But every time you felt his teeth graze your nipple, everything halted, and your vision blurred.

You couldn't stop rolling your hips up into him. It was involuntary, the way you needed more and more. Little whimpers bubbled from your mouth when he lifted his lips and began to dot wet kisses up to your clavicle, along the column of your neck and then… oh god… when his lips pressed over yours, you grasped onto the back of his neck with both hands and wrapped your thighs around his waist to get him closer.

He grunted, tongue sliding against yours as he closed his mouth over your lips softly. When he plunged his cock back into you, thick head bullying its way through your little opening, it felt different than before with his lips on yours. Like everything you needed. He thrusted in, pelvis grinding against your clit, and you moaned into his mouth.

"Oh, you like that, don't you?" He murmured against your mouth with a smile as he buried in as far as he could go. "God… You just need someone to take care of you."

You nodded, lips brushing his, still clinging tight to him as your thighs began to shake. He lifted his face to look down at you. "This is a disaster in the making," he said, shaking his head. "Open your mouth, Y/n."

When you opened your mouth and stuck your tongue out for him, he groaned softly at your obedience. He grinned and dipped down, licking your tongue, before you felt his saliva sliding into your mouth. Then he was kissing you again, making you swallow his spit.

You felt one of his hands smooth down your side to your hip and squeeze to hold you still, his other sliding under your neck as he worked his mouth against yours. He felt so good on you like that… his body pressed to yours, cock slid deep, pelvis pressed to your clit, lips smearing against yours…

Your insides were twisting, pulsing, gushing with every dip, every lap of his tongue. The muscles in your body began to tense as your orgasm slowly swelled in your tummy. And Harry seemed to notice it. He kept his pace and moaned, the bed squeaking quietly under the weight of his thrusts. But he didn't stop because your grip felt so good around him, tightly squeezing in little pulses that were making his cock throb.

And then your body gave in completely, limbs shaking, loud moan that he captured with his mouth, pussy shuddering and spasming around him with every wave of pleasure that leaked through your guts. Your nails carved the smallest little half moons into the nape of his neck as he pumped his hips, working you through it all the way until you went limp.

When it was safe, he pulled away to look down at your face, eyes closed, lips parted. He moved his hand around to brush his knuckles on your cheek. "Did good for me, Y/n. Gonna flip you over, okay?"

You knocked your head up and down, fluttering your eyes opened slowly as he moved, cock slipping out of you, his warm body lifting away. It felt so gentle the way he helped you to your tummy, hands gripping at your hips and waist and carefully laying you down flat as he whispered to you how pretty you were when you were coming, how good you'd done. Your heart was kicking hard in your chest at his words and the way his hands were holding you.

Then he squeezed the round of your ass and pulled you apart before you felt his cock dragging into you with a tight push. He inhaled as he went, lifting your hips up just enough that he could angle himself down into you properly and fuck into you a little harder. The plap of his skin against yours filled the room, and his moans were slowly getting deeper, breathier. You felt him faltering, hips jerking, breaths jagged.

He pressed a hand to the back of your neck and worked into you in deep, languid strokes. "Fuck baby… I'm coming… fuck…"

He slid his hand around to the front of your throat, lowered his chest to your back, and pressed his lips to the curve of where your neck and shoulder met as he pumped into his condom, cock throbbing heavy against your walls. You moaned into the blanket, a smile on your face. His release was your prize.

When he relaxed over you, he slowly kissed the skin at the back of your neck, and the weight of him pressed you hard into the mattress. You sighed, content. The sound of white noise from his phone filled the room again as you both quieted.

You could feel his heart pounding against your back, your own heartbeat racing with his. Your body felt like melty, gooey happiness as you closed your eyes and felt him lift off of you. He didn't kick you out of his bed and send you back to your room like you thought he might, which would have been totally fine given the circumstances. Instead, he slowly flipped you over, hands sliding over your skin before he wiped a clean t-shirt between your legs and then shut off the bedside lamp, pulled you into his arms, and let you drift off to sleep against his chest.

.

"Y/n. Wake up, honey."

You blinked your eyes open slowly and saw the shadow of Harry just above you. The room was still dark, and you had no idea what time it was or what time you'd fallen asleep as he shifted next to you.

"Gotta get you back to your room. Before Darius wakes up. Come on. Sit up."

You nodded, eyes fluttering shut and then open. He pulled your shirt over your back, helping you slide your arms inside, and then buttoned up the front for you. You were pulled to your feet, an arm sweeping around your low back to hold you upright before he walked you to your room quietly.

When he lowered you to your bed, you held tight to his forearms. "Gotta let go, Y/n. Can't have anyone seeing us."

You blinked up at him in the dark, suddenly aware that this was probably the last time you'd ever get to see him like that, and you sat up. "Harry, don't leave."

He sat down next to you. "I have to. You promised me you'd be good. Now let go."

"This is it, isn't it? Got what you wanted and now you're done with me."

"I shouldn't have even touched you, Y/n. But I did." He reached up to your face, thumb running gently over your cheekbone as you kept your hand gripped on his forearm. "And I should end it here. But I don't think I'm done with you yet."

You lifted to your knees, hands reaching up to his face. "Really? Don't lie to me."

He placed his big hands on your thighs and slid them up under your shirt to your hips. "Really, Y/n. Trust me. We'll talk about this later, okay? But your dad gets up early, and if he sees me in here with you, then there will be no later for us."

You wrapped your arms around his neck and grinned so wide your cheeks started to hurt when he had to peel you off with a huff. He gave your bottom the softest swat and spoke quietly into your ear, be good, before he got up and walked out of your room, closing the door behind him.

.

You rolled over to see the bright sun shining through your balcony doors and stretched your limbs. It was after 11 am so you were positive all the men were already up. You sat up and grinned, squealing quietly to yourself, throwing your body back down to the bed as you kicked your feet when you remembered Harry's promise of "later".

But you also remembered your promise to him—And in the morning, you are polite and distant, and you don’t make me a liar in front of your dad.

When you finally made your way downstairs in your little pink bikini, you could hear their voices in the kitchen. Taking a breath, you stepped in, eyes sweeping over everyone before you opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice to pour a glass for yourself.

"It's almost noon, Y/n. Do you really have nothing better to do than sleep the day away?" Your dad spoke.

You took a long drink of orange juice and put the carton away before you turned to look at your dad and sighed dramatically. "No. I don't. You guys are all boring, and WiFi barely works. My choices are limited to sleeping, drinking, and lying out by the lake."

"Just like your mother," his words cut through to your bones, and he laughed, looking at the other men.

Everyone laughed. Except Harry. You glanced at him quickly before quietly putting your glass into the sink and stepping past them to go outside.

“Beer's in the cooler, ready to go if you want one now. Or... later,” Harry said, casual. But nothing about it was casual. You understood it was an attempt to quell your dad's harsh words for you.

With your fingers on the sliding door handle, you turned to look at him and blinked, flicking your gaze to the other men and then back to Harry.

“Later,” you said, a small smile pulling at your mouth. “I’ll come grab it when I’m thirsty.”

You slid the door open and stepped into the wash of sun, the men’s voices dissolving into background noise. Outside, it was only the lake and the heat on your skin, but your insides churned with the sound of his voice. Later. It was a promise you were already restless to keep.

. .

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She pulls her sweater tighter around her body. Her clients have been keeping their coats on during sessions for the past couple weeks as the weather has gotten cooler.

The clinic phone rings. She picks up.

“Hi, you’ve reached the Trauma & Wellness Centre.”

“Hi, Y/N. It’s Agatha. I’m calling to let you know I can’t make it for tomorrow’s session. I know I’m calling within the twenty-four-hour window, but it’s a family emergency. Do I still have to pay the late cancellation fee?”

Y/N could make her pay the late fee and probably should, considering how tight finances have been.

“No, Agatha. That’s okay. Thank you for calling and letting me know.”

After hanging up, she looks up at the ceiling and groans loudly. That’s the second client who has cancelled this week. Both of them are some of her only clients paying the full fee for her sessions because she offers a sliding scale, which most people end up using.

The phone starts ringing again. She squeezes her eyes shut, bracing herself for another cancellation.

“Trauma & Wellness Centre,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound as miserable as she feels.

“Hi, Y/N,” is all the caller says. A deep male voice. Most of her clients are women of various ages, though she has seen some men in the past. This doesn’t sound like any of them though.

She waits for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. “Who is this?”

“Harry. From high school.”

She doesn’t speak.

“The guy you did homework for? The one who—”

“I remember you.” Of course she remembers him. How could she not? “How did you get this number?”

“From your website?”

“Oh. Right.” If someone wanted to find her, it would be pretty easy to search up her name, click on her clinic website, and get her contact information from there.

“How’s life?” he asks.

This is so weird.

“Um, good,” she answers, while her mind works in the background to make sense of this odd situation. “Sorry, why are you calling?”

He clears his throat. “I’ve been thinking about everything that went down in high school. The way people treated you. The way I treated you...” He pauses, takes a breath. “I don’t like who I was back then.”

She narrows her eyes, confused. “You defended me,” she says slowly, wondering if she’s the one misremembering things.

“I exploited you. Made you do my homework and cheated off you in exams in return for defending you. I wanted to apologize and pay you back for all the work you did.”

“You want to pay me back for doing your homework in high school?”

“Mhm. So, what do you need? A house? A car?”

She laughs. “You cannot be serious right now. This is… This is a joke, right?”

He must be pulling some sort of prank on her. Is he in cahoots with others from high school? Did they plan this?

“I’m serious, Y/N.”

“You’re willing to spend thousands of dollars on me because… What? You feel guilty about something that happened fifteen years ago?” She wonders if he also hears how absurd that sounds.

“Look, I… I’ve done quite well for myself since then. Let’s just say I have a lot more money than I need. I’m not making empty promises here.”

He sounds sincere. But she still can’t wrap her mind around any of it.

“This is ridiculous. I haven’t even seen you since high school, Harry.”

“Would you be more open to it if we met in person?”

“Maybe? No.” She covers her eyes with her hand and sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s meet.”

She has to admit she’s curious about him. Back in high school, he was this tall, handsome jock. The girls would’ve been all over him if he wasn’t so intimidating. But it was that intimidating demeanor that successfully kept the bullies away from her.

He wasn’t mean though. Even when telling her bullies to back off, he didn’t do it in a way that personally attacked their character. He was just serious, straightforward, and had enough muscle on him to scare off the guys who had been especially cruel to Y/N.

She wonders what he’s like today. So, she agrees to meet him, and they exchange numbers.

As she locks up the clinic for the night, the conversation is replaying in her head. Why now? Why would he reach out to her now? After all these years?

She gets into her car—an old, beatup Honda Civic, which is also hanging on by a loose thread. The check engine light comes on as she turns the key in the ignition. She desperately needs a visit to the mechanic.

Harry’s offer is already starting to look tempting.

***

Y/N doesn’t know what to wear to this meeting. Should she dress like someone that has her shit together and doesn’t need his pity money? Or should she dress like someone whose life is falling apart and could clearly use some help? Ultimately, she decides to stay in her work clothes—a simple blouse and dress pants.

She drives to the address he sent her. As she pulls up to the house, she notices the size of it. The huge winding driveway leading to a three-car garage, the perfectly manicured lawn, the pristine porch with a bench and flowerpots.

She rings the doorbell and waits. Harry appears a moment later, dressed comfortably in a hoodie and sweatpants, and yes, just as handsome as she remembers, but now in a more mature, rugged way with stubble and crinkles by his eyes when he smiles. His curls are styled much better than they were in high school, when he didn’t seem to know quite what to do with them.

“Come in.”

She steps into the spacious foyer. It smells like a fall scented candle in here, notes of cinnamon and vanilla in the air.

“I’m surprised you invited me to your house.”

He takes her coat without asking and hangs it up in the closet. “I wanted you to see I’m not lying about the money.”

“What do you do for a living?” She looks up at the tall ceiling, sun pouring in through the skylight.

“I play hockey. Or I used to. I retired last year.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Oh. I had no idea. Then again, I know nothing about that world.”

“It pays a stupid amount. As you can see.”

“It’s just you living here?”

He nods. She wonders if it ever gets lonely.

As he leads her to the living room, he offers her something to drink. She politely declines. They sit on separate couches, facing each other.

“You look different,” he says, studying her for a moment.

“So do you.”

They stare at each other. He looks away first, a faint smirk on his lips that she would’ve missed if she wasn’t looking so closely.

“You’re a therapist now,” he states.

“Yeah. I unfuck people’s brains, as my best friend Cindy says.”

“Some people in high school could’ve used that.”

“I didn’t have the skills back then, unfortunately.”

He laughs. She holds back a grin.

“So, the offer...” she begins, rerouting her attention from his cute dimples to the point of their meeting.

He nods, encouraging her to continue.

“Why? I mean, why now?”

He leans back on the couch, laying one arm over the back of it, his pensive gaze settling on the glass table between them. “Since retiring, I’ve had a lot of time to think. And the one thing I can’t get off my mind is...” His green eyes lift to find hers. “You.”

She swallows. Her throat feels dry. Maybe she should’ve accepted that drink.

“Like I said on the phone, I don’t like the way I exploited you when you were vulnerable.” He pauses, jaw tightening. “I told myself at the time that it was a fair trade. Protection for homework. But that’s not what it was. You were scared and alone, and I saw an opportunity. I don’t regret defending you. I just regret trying to get something out of it.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’d like to think I’m not that person anymore…”

She didn’t truly believe he felt guilty until now, seeing and hearing him explain it to her in person. The way he struggles to meet her eyes but still wills himself to. The way he fidgets with the strings on his hoodie. He’s clearly been rehearsing what to say and how to say it.

“Harry,” she starts gently, “I appreciate you reaching out to apologize after all these years. But I really don’t need—or want—your pity.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not what this is. Y/N, I wouldn’t have all this”—he gestures vaguely to their surroundings—“if it wasn’t for you. I owe you.”

She laughs. “You’re giving me too much credit.”

“You’re the reason I was able to party my way through high school and still get into a good university.”

That part may be true, but she still doesn’t believe she was the reason he made it this far. She decides to concede on that point.

“I just think that money could be used for much better things,” she argues. “You could donate to a charity—”

“I already donate to charities.”

“Okay, well, maybe I could give you a list of charities that are close to my heart and—”

“That’s not enough. I want to help you directly.” His gaze is intense now, piercing into her with determination. “Consider it a donation to your clinic.”

She pauses. It’s technically the same thing. Him sending her money versus “donating” it to the clinic. And yet, this framing makes it sound different. Better. Noble.

She thinks of the dying space heater. The clients who keep cancelling. The old work computer that takes fucking ages to turn on. The things she could do with that money are… Well, endless.

“You’re actually making a difference,” he says more softly this time. “I just played a game. You deserve this money more than I do.”

She wants to keep arguing, but there’s no point. He has his mind made up, and she can be quite stubborn herself. They’ll keep talking in circles.

“Can I think about it?” she asks.

“Sure. The offer doesn’t expire.”

***

“So, let me get this straight,” says Cindy, swirling around her iced matcha.

Y/N needed to consult someone about this whole situation, and Cindy would tell it to her straight. So, she invited her to brunch that Saturday.

“You have a hot, rich former hockey player offering you a shitload of money for nothing in return…” Cindy taps a finger against her chin. “I’m not sure I’m seeing the issue.”

Y/N quirks a brow. “I never said he was hot.”

Her friend rolls her eyes. “Bitch, I googled him. Those shots of him on the ice are sexy.”

Y/N hadn’t even thought of googling him. She’s been too busy with work. Maybe she should do her research too.

“Fine. He’s hot. But that’s not the point.”

“Right. The money is the point.” Cindy leans forward on the table, punctuating her next few words, “The money that you very clearly need! When someone’s throwing you a life raft, Y/N, you take it.”

“Wouldn’t you feel weird accepting money from some guy from high school?”

“Maybe at first… But then I’d take a look at my bank account, and it wouldn’t feel weird anymore.” Cindy shrugs and takes a bite of her sandwich.

Y/N sighs. Her friend does have a point. Most people in her position wouldn’t hesitate to accept an offer like this. In fact, they would jump at the chance for free money before even vetting that it was legit. Is she being stupid for not accepting it?

“Look, you’re struggling,” Cindy says, more gently now. “Mark royally fucked you over and left you with heaps of debt. You keep giving discounted sessions to clients even though you can’t afford it because you’re a good fucking person.” She reaches for Y/N’s hand on the table and gives it an earnest squeeze. “You, of all people, deserve this money.”

Y/N looks down at their hands, feeling the weight of Cindy’s words settle in her chest. Her closest friend who has known her for nearly a decade.

“That’s what this is really about, right?” asks Cindy. “You think you don’t deserve it.”

That thought has been nagging at her ever since the initial phone call with Harry. She has always been someone who earns her success, who fights for every scrap. Hardship is familiar, perhaps even comfortable. But that also means she doesn’t know when to ask for help or even how to accept help when it’s offered to her on a silver platter like this.

She is struggling. Mark, her idiot of an ex-husband and former business partner, mismanaged their clinic’s finances. When he lost his license for misconduct, he disappeared, leaving Y/N to pay off the debts he incurred. She’s not blameless; she was stupidly in love and blindly trusted him.

She can’t bring herself to ask Harry to pay off her debt. She just can’t. Not yet. But maybe she can use his help in other ways.

That night, she calls him.

“Hey. So…” She takes a deep breath. “I guess I could use help with a couple things at the clinic.”

She expects some smug response about her finally giving in, but all he says is, “Okay. Name them.”

“The chairs in the waiting room need to be replaced.”

“Done.”

“And my work computer. It’s from 2018. I could use a new one.”

“Done.”

“That’s all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm.”

A few moments of silence pass by, as if he’s waiting for her to change her mind and add more to the list, but she doesn’t.

“Alright,” he says. “Well, if you think of anything else—”

“I’ll let you know. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“No need to thank me.”

***

The new computer arrives that following week. The chairs are delivered the next day.

Y/N is in her office, catching up on notetaking for her sessions that day, when she hears footsteps out in the waiting room. It’s nearly five o’clock. She has no more appointments that day, so she’s not sure who to expect when she walks out of her office.

She certainly wasn’t expecting Harry. Dressed in a blue long-sleeve shirt and black athletic shorts, sunglasses perched on his head. He waves.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” she asks.

“Just came to see if the chairs arrived.”

“Yeah, they got here an hour ago. I still need to get rid of the old ones.” She eyes the worn-out chairs with holes in the fabric. The new ones are stacked in a corner.

“I can do that.”

She raises her brows. “Oh, you don’t have to. I was going to take care of it after finishing my work.”

“No, no. I’ve got this. You go do your thing.” He starts moving towards the old chairs before she can protest.

She returns to her office and sits down at her desk. Harry can be seen through the blinds, carrying the chairs out to the dumpster. She tries to focus on her notes, but her attention shifts to the window each time he walks by. She watches him pause at one point, placing the chairs down, his hand rubbing his hip. Even through his shirt, she can see his muscles flexing as he picks them back up.

After some time, he stops appearing outside her window. She hears movement out in the waiting room—the sound of him rearranging the new chairs.

Then he’s in her doorway. She meets his gaze, smiles. He saunters in, observing his surroundings. The art on the walls. The plants on the windowsill. The couch set up on one side of the room facing an armchair, a coffee table in the middle. Her desk sits on the far side of the room.

“Nice office,” he comments.

“Thanks.”

“How’s the new computer?”

She glances at it. “Fantastic. Hasn’t crashed on me once. But I’m still hitting save every other minute because I have trust issues.”

He chuckles.

“Bit chilly in here, no?” he asks, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“That’s because I turned off the space heater.” She pats the old thing on the floor by her desk.

He frowns. “No central heating in this place?”

“There is. Or used to be. It’s wonky.”

He gives her a look that tells her exactly what he’s about to say.

“We can get that fixed, you know.”

She hesitates. “You’ve already done a lot.”

“A computer and chairs is not a lot.”

For him, it’s hardly a drop in the bucket. She bites her lip, considering it. It’s definitely harder to say no with him standing right there, looking at her with his intense green eyes.

“Okay, it would be nice to not freeze my ass off every time I’m in here,” she admits.

“Done,” he says. Like he’s her fucking fairy godmother. Or her own personal genie in a bottle. A cute genie. With dimples and broad shoulders and incredibly toned thighs—wow, how had she not noticed the thighs?

She realizes she’s staring and yanks her gaze back up to his face.

“I should get back to my notes,” she says.

“Right. I’ll leave you to it. Bye, Y/N.” He backs out of her office.

“Bye, Harry.”

As soon as she hears the front door close, she turns to her computer and googles his name, clicking on Images first. Cindy was right. Harry in hockey gear is mesmerizing. On the ice, he looks stern, focused, and intimidating. Photos of him off the ice—in press interviews and photoshoots—show a different side. Warm, friendly, and kind. In all of them, he looks undeniably attractive.

After scrolling through images for God knows how long, she returns to the All tab. She clicks on his Wikipedia page, scanning his accolades. A list of championships, MVP awards, stats that mean nothing to her. Then she reaches the section on his retirement. Recurring injuries. Surgery— She closes the tab. It feels too personal.

The link below his Wikipedia and Instagram is for The Styles Foundation—a charity founded by Harry that focuses on youth mental health initiatives and, more recently, covering the cost of therapy for retired athletes who can’t afford it.

Reading about his charity, Y/N feels a different kind of connection to him that she never did before. Connected not only by their past but also a cause—the desire to make mental health care more accessible.

Next, she looks up videos of Harry playing hockey. Watching him masterfully weave his way through his opponents on the ice makes something stir in her lower abdomen. After spending fifteen minutes watching his top ten career highlights and slow motion fan edits of his best goals, she snaps out of her trance and abruptly closes the window.

***

A few days later, Y/N parks outside her clinic, mentally gearing up for the day ahead. If she remembers correctly from her calendar, she has a day full of back-to-back sessions. As she exits her car, she notices a woman standing outside the clinic entrance, watching her. She’s in her forties, maybe, with a neat bob and a blazer. Not one of her clients.

“Are you Y/N Y/L/N?” asks the woman as she approaches.

“Yes.”

“You’re my daughter’s therapist.”

“Who’s your dau—”

“How dare you?”

The vitriol in her voice takes Y/N by surprise.

“How dare you report me to child protective services? I have never hurt my daughter or any of my children. I would never do such a thing!”

Now she understands. This is Kayla’s mother. Nineteen-year-old Kayla began seeing Y/N six months ago. Last month, she opened up about being physically and verbally abused by her mother growing up. Although Kayla is an adult now, she has younger siblings still living with their mother, which meant Y/N had to report the abuse.

“What has Kayla told you?” asks the woman.

“Ma’am,” Y/N begins slowly and calmly, “I can’t disclose that. I understand you’re upset—”

“You are tearing our family apart, do you understand?” The woman steps closer, her voice rising with each second. Y/N takes a subtle step back. “Do you have any idea what this is going to do to us? Are you even a real therapist? I heard about what goes on at this clinic. I should be the one reporting you!” She points an accusatory finger at her. “My daughter is never coming back here.”

Y/N’s jaw tightens. “Your daughter is an adult. She can decide for herself.”

“Not when I’m the one paying for her sessions.”

Y/N’s heart sinks. Kayla never mentioned that her sessions were being funded by her mom. Not that that would’ve changed anything. Y/N would’ve had to report the abuse regardless. But it still stings to know that this may prevent Kayla from accessing therapy again.

The woman finally turns on her heel and storms off to her car, slamming the door shut and speeding off.

Y/N unlocks the clinic with trembling hands and steps inside. Tears well in her eyes as she walks to her office. It’s not the first time something like this has happened in her career, but it never gets easier. She collapses at her desk and takes a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart.

The sound of the front door opening sends her heart into a tailspin again.

“Y/N?” Harry’s voice carries down the hallway.

She quickly wipes the tears off her face and walks out to the waiting room.

“Morning,” he says. “I was just— What’s wrong?” His brows furrow in concern, eyes scanning her face.

“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “Just a client.”

“You already had a client? I thought you just opened.”

“No, um…” She pauses, carefully considering her words. “It was a client’s mother. She was waiting for me when I got here and yelled at me for reporting her for child abuse.”

“Shit. That’s awful. I’m sorry.”

She shrugs, but her eyes fill with tears again.

Harry appears to move towards her instinctively, then stops himself. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shakes her head.

He studies her for a moment. “How can I help? Let me take something off your plate today.”

His offer lifts some of the weight in her chest.

“Really? Don’t you have, like, stuff to do?”

He shrugs. “Nothing important.”

“I have back-to-back sessions today, but I’ve been wanting to organize the back room. There’s a ton of boxes with documents that need to be shredded.”

“I’m a great shredder.”

She laughs. That weight lifts a bit more.

***

When Harry first reached out to Y/N, he wasn’t expecting it to turn into… this. He was prepared to drop a large sum of money directly into her bank account and call it a day. He didn’t think she’d be so reluctant to accept the offer.

It didn’t seem like pride. She just seemed skeptical at first and then like someone who isn’t used to having things handed to her, which Harry could respect. Still, he was determined to help her, and when he met her in person, that impulse only grew stronger. She was so… genuine. And tenacious. And inspiring.

After everything she went through in high school, she could’ve turned into a bitter shell of a human being who takes her grievances out on everyone else, and she would be totally justified in doing so. But instead, she turned into someone that spends her days helping people heal from trauma and other mental struggles. How could anyone not be inspired by that?

When he found her crying after getting yelled at by a client’s mother, it reminded him of the last time he saw her cry, which was in high school. She was hiding under a cold, dark stairwell by herself, sobbing quietly into her knees.

“Are you, um… Are you okay?” he asked when he found her there.

The sobbing abruptly stopped. She stared up at him wide-eyed, a deer caught in headlights. “Y—yeah.”

“You can’t let them see you cry, you know,” he told her. “It’ll just make things worse.”

“I know.” She sniffled. “That’s why I’m here.”

That was the day they made the deal. She was vulnerable and desperate. Harry thinks she would have agreed to just about anything. And he used that to his advantage. Maybe if it had been someone else in his place, they would’ve gone even further, made even bigger requests, but he couldn’t use that to excuse his own behaviour.

Now he’s trying to make things right. He’s not sure if he believes in karma, but he does believe in taking accountability.

He spent that whole day at the clinic, shredding papers in the back room while Y/N saw clients. He put his headphones in and listened to music to entertain himself. It felt oddly relaxing. And it was nice to see Y/N popping her pretty head in every now and then to check on him.

He kept returning that week to help out, even bringing her coffee some days. She eventually asked him to sign a volunteer contract, explaining the confidentiality rules to him, and to get a background check.

“Not because I think you’re a criminal,” she reassured him. “It’s just protocol.”

He understood. If anything, he found it admirable that she wanted to do things the right way.

He enjoyed being in the clinic. Even if he was only doing menial tasks, like shredding papers, cleaning, and organizing. It felt… meaningful.

“I noticed you don’t have a receptionist,” he said to her one day. “Is there a reason for that?”

“We used to have one. She was pretty flaky. Then she just became another expense to stress over, so I had to let her go.”

“We?”

“Huh?”

“You said ‘we’ used to have one.”

“Oh. Did I? Whoops.” She gave a sheepish laugh and walked back to her office.

Except Harry had noticed the other office. The one that remains unused with nothing but a desk and two chairs inside it. It looks like it once belonged to another therapist. But he doesn’t want to pry, so he keeps his questions to himself.

It’s Friday now and he’s in the back room again, shredding documents, headphones in, humming along to Joni Mitchell. He pauses for a moment to lean back in his chair and stretch. That’s when he notices her standing in the doorway, a small grin on her face as she watches him.

“Oh, hey.” He removes his headphones.

“I just wanted to let you know I have to close the clinic early because I have plans tonight.”

“Wow. And here I thought you were a workaholic.”

She gives him a wry smile. “I am on most days. But I can’t miss this. My best friend Cindy got a promotion, so a few of us are going out to celebrate.”

Good, he thinks to himself. This past week, he has seen her work ten-hour days, which apparently is the norm for her. She deserves a night out.

“Actually, would you…” She hesitates, biting her lip. “Would you want to come?”

He doesn’t even have to think about it. “Sure. Your friend won’t mind?”

“No, I think she’ll be happy to finally meet you.”

“You told her about me?”

Her eyes widen briefly. “Only in passing. She’s nosy.”

He chuckles. “Alright, I’m in.”

He offers to drive them to the bar. Her friends are already there when they arrive, sitting at a table in the back. She introduces all of them. Cindy, Poppy, Sara, and Jamal. Harry tries to commit their names to memory.

Cindy is a short brunette with a sharp wit. Y/N was right. She seems thrilled to meet Harry, exchanging sly glances with Y/N in the way that women do sometimes when they seem to be telepathically communicating.

Her other friends seem alright, though a couple of them make comments at Y/N that could pass as innocent on the surface but seem to have snarky undertones. Maybe he’s reading into things too much or doesn’t understand their dynamic quite yet. That can happen when you’re the outsider in a friend group.

It’s fascinating to see Y/N in a different setting, in non-therapist mode. She’s dressed in a fitted white t-shirt with a short black skirt and boots. Her hair is down, her shoulders relaxed. Her hands nurse a margarita. She laughs freely and often, and when Harry realizes it’s the sweetest sound he’s heard in a while, he knows he’s in trouble.

“Harry, how do you and Y/N know each other?” asks Poppy.

“We went to the same high school.”

“Oh! High school sweethearts!”

“We never dated,” Y/N quickly corrects.

Poppy gapes at her. “What?! Let me guess. You were too busy paying attention in class and being a good student,” she says in a patronizing tone. “Boring!”

Harry quirks a brow and glances at Y/N, who just quietly sips her margarita.

“What was Y/N like in high school?” asks Sara.

Now she shifts uncomfortably in her seat, brushing her fingers through her hair, avoiding his gaze, like she’s afraid to hear what he has to say.

“She was smart. Really smart. She was kind, even to people who didn’t deserve it.”

He keeps things vague. It seems like most of her friends don’t know what she endured in high school.

“Wow. You make her sound like a saint.” Poppy laughs. “She can’t be that perfect. C’mon, give us some embarrassing stories.”

“Poppy, shut up,” Cindy cuts in, then turns to Harry. “Was Y/N always this hot?”

Y/N nearly chokes on her drink, coughing into her elbow.

Harry smirks. “I thought she was pretty, yeah.”

Pretty felt too simple. He remembers watching her during an exam. He told himself it was just part of their deal—cheating off her meant frequently looking over at her. But then he started getting lost in the details. Like the way her brow would furrow when she reached a difficult question, puckering her soft lips, tapping her pencil against her temple as if the answer was just stuck somewhere in her brain and the pencil would knock it loose. Yeah, pretty was just skimming the surface.

Y/N seems taken aback by his admission. Cindy grins, pleased by his answer.

“Harry, my brother is a huge hockey fan,” says Poppy, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Oh yeah?”

“You were actually his favourite player until you retired. He would kill me if I don’t at least get a selfie.”

“Poppy,” Y/N says sternly.

“What?”

“It’s fine,” says Harry. “I don’t mind.”

Y/N still gives him an apologetic look.

Later that night, he leaves to use the restroom. When he returns, the live band has started their set and most of their group has moved to the dance floor, leaving their drinks behind at the table. Y/N is still there with her friend Jamal, patiently listening to him rant about his toxic ex-boyfriend who keeps calling to fuck with his head.

“J, you really need to block him,” she shouts over the music.

“You know I can’t do that!”

She sighs, like they’ve had this conversation fifteen times. Eventually, Jamal tires of ranting and saunters off to the dance floor. Y/N watches her friends dancing with a small, wistful smile on her face, one hand fiddling with her dangly gold earrings.

Harry leans closer and says in her ear, “You should go dance.”

“I promised to guard everyone’s stuff,” she replies, gesturing to the unfinished drinks, purses, and other belongings messily strewn across the table.

Harry doesn’t like that sweet Y/N had been relegated to guard duty. “I can guard it.”

She hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Go dance.”

She gives him a grateful grin and then she’s off. He watches as she joins her friends on the floor, throwing her hands up in the air and grooving along to the music. Cindy starts grinding on her theatrically, and she returns the favour by giving her friend’s butt a few playful spanks. Harry laughs, thoroughly entertained by their antics.

By the end of the night, Y/N is happily drunk and high on life. So much so that she nearly crosses a busy street without looking on the way back to Harry’s car, but he grabs her by the waist just in time. When they reach his car, he opens the door for her before getting in himself.

“Did you have fun tonight?” she asks as he pulls out of the lot.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Did you really? I hope you don’t feel like I just brought you along to take selfies with my friends and guard our stuff while we danced. I swear that wasn’t the plan. I didn’t even know Poppy has a brother who likes hockey? She might have made that up, now that I think about it.” She frowns thoughtfully, her lips set in an adorable pout.

“I didn’t feel that way at all, lovie.” The pet name slips out before he can stop it, and he feels his ears go warm. But she hardly seems to notice. “And Poppy is, um… an interesting character.” That’s the most polite descriptor he could think of.

Y/N gets an odd expression on her face when he says that. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” He decides that having this conversation while she’s drunk is probably not the best idea and drops it.

She falls asleep at some point, and Harry subconsciously drives smoother to avoid waking her up. He glances at her periodically, the image of her sleeping face under the glow of passing streetlights too beautiful to resist.

She stirs awake on her own when they reach her apartment.

“Thanks for the ride, Harr bear,” she says. “You’re the best.”

He chuckles. “You’re welcome.”

He waits until she’s inside the building before driving away.

***

Y/N sleeps in the next day. Well, her definition of “sleeping in,” which involves getting up at eight instead of six.

She eats breakfast and gets ready to go to the clinic. She keeps her Saturday afternoons open for clients who can’t meet during the week. It’s half past noon when she leaves her apartment and gets in her car. Except when she turns her key in the ignition… The car doesn’t start. She tries again. And again. Nothing. Not even a click.

Fuck. That’s what she gets for ignoring the check engine light for so long.

She has a session at one o’clock. She could take the bus, but it would take her an hour to get there. She would call Cindy, but she’s out of town for the weekend. She calls Jamal. No answer. She calls Sara. Voicemail. She doesn’t even bother with Poppy. Sighing, she realizes she’s left with one choice. Harry. She feels bad asking him for yet another favour. Not that she necessarily asked for the other ones. But still.

The clock is ticking. She doesn’t have time to deliberate. She calls Harry and explains her situation. Not surprisingly, he agrees to give her a ride.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she says as she gets into his car a few minutes later. “No one else was available.”

“No, no, I’m glad you called,” he says with a smile.

“Really? I thought you’d be sick of me after we basically spent all of yesterday together.”

“Please. I could never be sick of you.” He says it like it’s a given, like there’s nothing he’d rather do than spend time with her.

When they reach the clinic, he asks what time she gets off work that day.

“At six,” she answers. “But I can take the bus home, it’s fine.”

He gives her a disapproving look. “You’re not taking the bus. Text me when you’re done, okay?”

“Okay.”

She’s smiling as she walks into the clinic, her dead car forgotten and filed away in the back of her mind. Her good mood doesn’t last very long though. Her sessions are tough that day. One client recently got back together with her abusive ex-boyfriend, seemingly undoing all the work they’ve done in therapy. Another client lost a loved one to a long battle with cancer. And finally, her last client lays into her for not immediately fixing all her problems, even though they’ve only had three sessions so far and she has refused to do any of the homework Y/N assigns.

By the end of the day, she is utterly exhausted.

While she waits for Harry, she decides to check her banking app. Another loan payment was automatically withdrawn today. Her balance is hovering close to zero yet again. She’s been paying off this loan for three years. Three years, and it feels like she’s barely made a dent. She groans, feeling twice as drained as before.

Harry must see it on her face when he pulls up in his car because he says, “Rough day?”

“Yeah,” she sighs, settling into the passenger seat. Then she pauses, pokes her nose in the air like a dog and sniffs. “Were you eating in here?”

He turns to look in the backseat. She follows his gaze to find multiple takeout bags sitting there.

“I got Thai food,” he says. “I was going to invite you over for dinner, but if you’re too tired, I—”

“I love Thai!” She looks at him with wide-eyed excitement.

“I know. You bring it for lunch all the time.”

Y/N could cry. She could actually physically burst into tears right now. He noticed what she was bringing for lunch? And went out of his way to get it for her and was planning to invite her over for dinner?

“I’d love to join you for dinner,” she says instead of crying.

***

Y/N has never felt more comfortable, snuggled under a fluffy blanket on Harry’s big couch, legs curled under her, belly full of Thai food. Harry goes to the kitchen to put away their dishes and trash. When he returns to find her wrapped up like a burrito on the couch, he seems quite pleased, as though his mission has been accomplished.

“I have a confession,” she says as he sits down next to her.

“I’m listening.”

“I googled you.”

He lets out a laugh. “To be fair, I googled you first. That’s how I got your clinic number.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She frowns, realizing it’s not as wild of a confession as she initially thought. “But I mean, I watched you play. You’re really good on the ice. Like, scary good. Do you ever miss it?”

He thinks for a moment. “Sometimes… Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I think I have a game the next day. And then I remember I’m retired. And there’s this mix of relief and…”

“Grief?”

He meets her eyes. “Yeah. Not just missing the game, but, like, the structure that came with it? The schedules, the teammates, the expectations. It was all so predictable. And then suddenly, I was just… a guy with a lot of money and no idea what to do with himself.”

“How did you deal with that?”

“Well, at first, with a lot of alcohol.” He laughs sheepishly. “That wasn’t quite working, so I started talking to people. Other retired athletes. That helped. And I started putting my time and money into things that matter to me.”

“Is that how your foundation came about?”

He raises his brows. “You really did your research.”

She shrugs, a small proud smile tugging at her lips.

“I actually started the foundation while I was still playing. I lost a teammate to suicide, and I wanted to contribute to mental health initiatives, so that’s how it started. Then after I retired and struggled with that transition, I wanted to help other retired athletes.”

She watches him closely as he speaks, the way he gestures with his hands, the grief in his eyes when he mentions his teammate, the determination when he explains wanting to help others like himself. The warm feeling in her chest expands and spreads through the rest of her body.

“You’re a really good guy, Harry.”

He smiles, then looks away briefly, like he’s contemplating his next words. He opens his mouth, then closes it.

“What?”

“I have a confession too,” he finally says.

Her stomach flips.

“In our last year of high school… I was going to ask you out.”

She blinks at him, hardly processing the words at first. “You were?”

He nods.

It’s suddenly too hot under her blanket, so she pulls it halfway down her body. “Why didn’t you?”

He thinks about it.

“Were you scared of what people would think? It’s okay if you were,” she says softly, though her heart sinks at the thought.

“No, I was scared of what you would think. I thought you were too smart to go out with a dumb jock like me.”

She frowns. “That’s not true.”

He tilts his head. “No?”

“No.”

They gaze at each other for a long moment. She realizes how close they are on this couch and how warm her face is and how he’s directly staring at her lips now. He shifts closer and closer. Her breath catches in her throat.

And then he kisses her. A soft, lingering kiss at first. Then another. And another. It’s only once she has fully melted into goo that he properly kisses her, hands cupping her face and angling it towards him so he can slip his tongue in easily. He tastes like the guava candy they found at the bottom of their takeout bags—sweet and tangy.

She brings her hand to his chest, gripping the front of his shirt in her fist. She’s breathless when he pulls away. He huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head like he’s in disbelief.

“What?” she asks.

“You have no idea how many times I imagined doing that back in high school.”

And she stops breathing again. She really had no idea. Not a clue how he felt about her. Of course not. She was too busy trying to survive.

His thumb traces her bottom lip. Then he gently pushes her onto her back and props himself up on one elbow next to her, a hand resting on her lower abdomen, which twitches and clenches under his touch. Leaning down, he hovers just inches from her mouth. She tries to kiss him, but he pulls back. She tries again and he does the same thing, smirking. The teasing bastard. Finally, she grabs his face and plants a firm kiss to his lips.

His hand shifts from her abdomen to her waistband. She’s still in her work clothes. Undoing the top button of her pants, he slips a hand inside, fingers grazing over the wet spot that has formed over her panties. He nips gently at her bottom lip before pulling away and shifting down the couch. His fingers hook into her waistband.

“Can I?” he asks, looking up at her.

She nods, acting like her entire body isn’t vibrating with anticipation.

Soon, her bottom half is exposed. He wastes no time in spreading her legs apart and bringing his mouth to her clit. The sudden contact makes her flinch away.

“Too much?” he asks.

“Just sensitive. Sorry.”

He hushes away her apology, then takes his time sprinkling kisses all over her inner thighs. He pulls her legs up over his shoulders, hands firmly gripping her sides when he licks her clit again, more gently this time.

“Tastes so good, Y/N. So sweet,” he murmurs against her clit.

She grins to herself, letting her head drop back as he slips his tongue directly into her wet hole. Her hands grasp at the blanket beneath her at first and then the back of his head. No part of her was expecting tonight to go like this. He laps at her pussy like some sort of starved animal until the orgasm rips through her, making her toes and fingers curl.

“Fuck, Harry, oh my God,” she stammers out as she comes.

He licks her clean with his tongue, being careful not to overstimulate her. Then he stands up and her gaze lands on the clear outline of his bulge pressing against his sweatpants. When he begins undressing, she starts to move towards him.

“Wait,” he says. “Stay where you are.”

She obeys, sinking back into the couch, her eyes never leaving him. She knew he was fit—former athlete and all that—but seeing the proof before her eyes is something else. The broad shoulders, the thick pectorals, the insane biceps and quads, but also the slight pudge that has formed around his middle and sides—she admires all of it.

He leaves the room for a moment and returns with a condom, rolling it on before sitting down on the couch.

“Come here,” he says, patting his thighs.

Entranced, she crawls over to him. He pulls her into his lap so that she’s straddling him. Between them, his cock is swollen thick, the veins visible through the flushed skin, pulsing and throbbing in a way that makes her salivate.

“Put it inside you,” he says.

She doesn’t hesitate. Her hands grasp his cock. She already knows how full and thick and tight he’s going to feel inside her. She lines his tip with her entrance and presses down slowly, taking him inch by inch, moaning at the overwhelming sensation of his length filling her up.

He hisses, closing his eyes for a moment. “Fucking hell, Y/N.”

Once her pussy swallows him whole, he grabs her hips and holds them there. His gaze scans over her face, eyes swimming with lust.

“Jesus. You’re so beautiful.”

He unbuttons her blouse, pulling it off of her, then unclasps her bra. His large hands cup her exposed breasts, fingers tweaking the hardened nipples, making her gasp.

Then with a hand wrapped around her throat, he pulls her in for a brief kiss and says, “Ride me, pretty girl.”

And she does. Her hips start bouncing on his cock. He grabs her ass with his other hand, kneading the thick flesh, as she rides him faster and faster.

“That’s it, baby,” he grunts. “Good girl. Don’t stop.”

He thrusts up into her, meeting her halfway. His hand remains around her throat, squeezing lightly at the sides. She wraps her hands around his forearm, keeping it there.

“Harry…” she moans, unable to form any other word with her mouth right now.

“Feels good, yeah? Are you going to come on my cock?”

She nods, swallowing thickly, feeling the pressure of his palm around her throat.

“Yeah, you are. Give it to me, Y/N.”

She comes hard, clenching around him intensely and repeatedly. He coaxes the orgasm out of her before following it up with his own, his cock throbbing against her walls and filling the condom with each spurt.

She lets herself collapse on him, burying her face in his neck, his cock still inside her. He wraps his arms around her and keeps her close until she’s ready to get up. Then he carries her up to his bathroom so they can get cleaned up.

As they lie in bed that night, she reflects on what a turn of events today has been. From her car breaking down to Harry confessing he had feelings for her in high school to them having sex? Her teenage self could’ve never foreseen this. She almost chuckles to herself as she falls asleep.

***

When Y/N awakens the next morning, it takes her a few moments to remember where she is and why she suddenly has curtains on her window that weren’t there before. She rubs her eyes and looks beside her to find Harry lying on his side, his soft gaze trained on her. He wraps an arm around her waist and slides her closer with no effort at all. He kisses her forehead and the tip of her nose.

She laughs softly. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine-ish. Please tell me you have the day off.”

“I do.” She never sees clients on Sundays. Thank goodness.

“Good.”

Then she remembers. Her car. A dreadful groan escapes her.

“What?”

“I still have to deal with my car.”

“Are you going to take it to the mechanic?”

She shakes her head. “It’s been giving me trouble for a while. Too many repairs this past year. I fear it’s time to let her go.”

He gives her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry.”

She stretches her arms overhead. Harry pushes up on one elbow, his green eyes deep in a thousand-yard stare. She can almost see the wheels turning in his head.

“So, hypothetically, if you were to get a new car, what kind would it be?” he finally asks.

She narrows her eyes at him.

“What? It’s a hypothetical. Humour me, will you?”

“I don’t even know. I’ve had this one since I was in college. I never imagined replacing it.” She thinks about it. “Maybe I should go look at some cars.”

His eyes light up. “We’re going car shopping?”

“We’re going to look at cars,” she corrects.

“Right. Looking. Very serious, non-car-buying looking.”

She rolls her eyes.

***

As soon as they enter the dealership, car salesmen start circling them like sharks. Harry handles them smoothly, telling them to fuck off in the most polite way possible (“we’re just looking, thanks”).

He lets her take the lead on where to go first, so she heads over to the row of sensibly priced sedans, though they’re still far out of her price range. She sits inside one of them. Harry joins her in the passenger seat.

“I like this one,” she says, hands smoothing over the steering wheel.

“It’s very… practical,” he says, looking over his shoulder at the backseat, clearly unimpressed.

“That’s the point.”

“But it lacks personality, don’t you think?”

She glares at him. “Harry, it’s a car. It just needs to get me places.”

He throws his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. But let’s just look at some more. For fun.”

She sighs and agrees. Why is she not surprised that he’s a car guy?

He takes her over to some of the more high-end models. Y/N’s eyes rake over the glossy exteriors of the cars, the obscene price tags making her chest cave. Harry excitedly points out some cool features he notices. When one of the salesmen walks over, he doesn’t turn them away this time. Instead, he lets the guy tell them about the car they’re looking at.

Y/N feels strange all of a sudden. Like the world around her is fading into the distance, the salesman’s voice turning into muffled background noise. Her heart feels like it’s in her throat. She’s vaguely aware of Harry glancing at her, his hand finding her elbow.

“Are you okay?” his voice breaks through the fog.

She shrugs him off and heads for the exit. Except she doesn’t know where it is. Where the hell did they enter from? Why is this place so fucking big? Why are there no exit signs?

“Y/N!” Harry catches up to her and grabs her hand. “Hey, stop. What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this.” She shakes her head, not meeting his eyes.

“Do what?”

“Act like this is normal. Someone buying me a car? And don’t say ‘we’re just looking.’ I know you’re seriously thinking of getting me one. And I know it’s not a big deal to you, but it is to me, okay?”

“Okay, I—”

“And it’s not that I’m ungrateful.”

“I never said you were—”

“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me so far. But this”—she gestures at the showroom around them—“is too much. I can’t keep taking from you like this. That’s not— That’s not who I am.” Her voice quivers. She swallows hard, pushing down the emotion. “Can we go?”

***

Harry keeps glancing over at Y/N on the way home, wondering if she’s okay. She appears calmer than she did at the dealership, her gaze focused out the passenger side window, but she looks so defeated, it makes his chest ache.

Did he push her too hard to accept his money? He just wants to help her. That’s been his goal this entire time. He thought that buying her smaller things for the clinic might warm her up to bigger purchases, but maybe he was wrong. The last thing he wanted to do was stress her out even more, and now he feels like that’s exactly what he’s done.

It’s late in the afternoon when they get back to his house. Y/N is quiet for the rest of the day. She takes a nap on the couch, while he gets some chores done. When she wakes up, they put on some trashy reality TV and eat dinner. That’s when she starts to seem more like herself, roasting the guys on the show for their mediocre attempts at impressing the women.

She pauses the show after a couple episodes. He looks at her.

“I need to tell you something,” she says, fidgeting with the remote in her hands.

He nods encouragingly.

“The clinic was previously co-owned by someone else... My ex-husband, Mark. We met in grad school and came up with the idea of opening a practice together. The first couple years were great.” She pauses, a haunted look creeping into her eyes. “And then the complaints started coming in.”

“What kind of complaints?”

“Mark was flirting with clients. Bringing wine into sessions. Kissing them. Sleeping with them. The list goes on.”

“Jesus Christ,” Harry mutters.

“I know. I had no idea. I know that sounds dumb. Our offices were literally across the hall from each other. How could I not have known? But he hid it so well.”

“I believe you.”

She looks at him. He sees the relief there, like she’s been bracing herself in case he didn’t.

“I filed for divorce after that,” she continues. “Several clients sued. He lost his license. And then… He vanished.”

“Vanished how?”

“His office had been emptied out overnight. He texted me that he was sorry, that he needed a fresh start. And then he blocked me.”

“Hardly an apology.”

“Yeah.” She scoffs. “Anyway, I was left with the debt. We took out a loan to start the clinic. It was in both our names. When he left, I had to pay it off. And the settlement from the lawsuits. The clinic was liable. I had to pay that too.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s my punishment for being so fucking oblivious.” She shakes her head at herself. “I didn’t see what he was doing to those clients. God, I’m a therapist. I should’ve seen it. That’s my entire job.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that.”

She shrugs, staring down at her hands. She’s shaking.

“How much?” he asks softly.

She closes her eyes. He can tell she’s debating whether to answer the question honestly.

“The loan is about 40k. The settlement was way more. Like 80k. I’ve been paying it off for three years. I’m down to about 60k.”

The numbers don’t shock him. He doesn’t even flinch. But the fact that she’s been carrying this burden—largely the consequences of someone else’s recklessness—all on her own shoulders makes him irate. His jaw tightens. He imagines bashing Mark’s head in, then running him over with a bus. Repeatedly.

But beneath the anger is something else. Guilt. The same guilt that drove him to contact her in the first place. Didn’t he once exploit her vulnerability too? Perhaps not in the same way as Mark. But still. Is he really that much better than this guy he wants to rip to shreds?

“I’ve been paying it off bit by bit,” she says. “But I’m barely staying afloat. It’s a constant reminder of the biggest mistake of my life, and I can’t take it anymore.” She finally breaks, the tears pooling in her eyes. “I thought I could do it on my own, but… I need help, Harry. And I hate the way I feel when I say that. I don’t know if it’s pride or what—”

“It’s not pride,” he interjects gently. “You’re just so used to fighting and enduring and working your ass off for every little thing. That’s all you’ve ever known, lovie.”

She puts her face in hands, body trembling with quiet sobs.

“Come here.” He moves closer and wraps his arms around her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do it alone anymore.”

Harry hardly sleeps that night. He lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, while Y/N is sound asleep next to him. He keeps replaying what she told him about her ex-husband and the debt. The way she took responsibility for someone else’s actions and called it her punishment made him sick.

He doesn’t want her to go through something like that ever again. Not just the financial hardship. But also the betrayal by someone she deeply trusted, someone who was supposed to love and protect her. He can’t let that happen again. He won’t.

***

The next day, Y/N and Harry have an honest conversation about how this is going to work. She agrees to let him pay off her debt in full. She also agrees to let him buy her a new car… on one condition.

“I get to choose the car,” she says. “No luxury models. Just a normal, sensible car.”

“But a Lamborghini would look so sexy on you,” he whines.

“Harry.” She gives him a stern look.

“I’m kidding. Mostly.” He smirks. “Okay, no luxury cars.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank you for letting me do this. I know it’s not easy for you.”

For the next few weeks, she feels lighter than air. She hasn’t felt like that in years. At least not since before the debt. She’s sleeping better. Opening her bank account doesn’t make her stomach turn. At the clinic, she’s more present with her clients.

To make things even better, she’s been spending most nights at Harry’s place. They’ve fallen into a routine of having dinner together, sleeping together, waking up together, moments of intimacy sprinkled into every interaction.

One morning, she wakes first and heads to the kitchen to make breakfast while catching up on her friends’ group chat, which was popping off last night, but she was too busy having fun with Harry to read the messages.

Poppy: Mandatory drinks tomorrow night!!

Everyone except Y/N and Cindy liked the message.

Cindy: i’m out of town for a work trip again sorry babes

Jamal: Y/N pls say you’re coming. We need your therapist superpowers

Sara: Yeahhhh I need help dealing with my narcissist boss

Jamal: And my narcissist ex!!! :(

Y/N leaves her phone on the counter with the group chat open, as she finishes preparing breakfast. It’s been a while since she has seen her friends. She briefly considers the consequences of not going. Poppy wouldn’t be too happy. Not because she adores Y/N. She just hates when someone cancels on her plans and acts a bit cold to them the next time they see her. When Poppy plans something, everyone is expected to be in attendance.

Harry enters the kitchen and immediately walks up behind her, hugging her waist and kissing her cheek. She grins and turns her head to kiss him back. Then he moves over to pour himself a cup of coffee. She notices him glancing at her phone on the counter.

“Therapist superpowers?” He looks at her with a cocked brow. “Aren’t you supposed to be off the clock when you’re with friends?”

She shrugs. “I’m the therapist in the group. They come to me for advice.”

He takes a sip of his coffee and walks over to the fridge, out of sight.

“Are you going?” he asks.

“Yeah, probably. Do you want to come?”

“I have some foundation stuff to take care of.” He pauses. “Is Cindy going?”

“No, she has a work thing.”

“Is it even going to be fun without your best friend there?”

Her brows furrow slightly at the odd question. “Yeah, why not? I love Cindy, but I don’t need her there to have fun.”

He doesn’t say anything.

She turns around now to face him. “Why do I feel like you’re trying to convince me not to go?”

He shuts the fridge, laughing softly. “Maybe because I am?”

“But why? You won’t even be home tonight.”

“It’s not about that.”

She stares at him expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate.

“I just got a weird vibe from your friends last time,” he says. “Especially Poppy. She called you boring to your face.”

“That’s just how she is. She’s insecure and annoying. She’s also fun and hilarious sometimes.”

“But even the others… They treat you like a free therapist to help solve their problems. Doesn’t that bother you?”

She laughs. “Harry, they’re joking around. It’s banter between friends. That’s all.”

He gazes at her quietly, like he’s holding back from saying more.

“Okay,” he finally says. “Maybe I misread things.”

She gives him a gentle smile now. “Thanks for looking out for me. But everything’s fine. Really.”

He smiles back, but the skepticism is still there, just below the surface.

***

“I’m glad he ended things, but… I don’t know.”

“I’m sensing some ambivalence there.”

“I just feel like everyone leaves me eventually—”

A loud bang outside the office makes both Y/N and her client jump. The client’s eyes dart towards the door.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll be right back,” says Y/N.

She hurries out of the office and finds the light in the restroom is on. Inside is a large man lying on the ground beneath the sink with a wrench in hand.

“Um, hi, excuse me?” she says, taking a tentative step towards the stranger.

He looks at her. “Hi! Harry said you had a leak in the bathroom?”

A leak in the— She never told him that. He must’ve caught it himself.

“Good news!” the man continues, beaming like he just won the lottery. “It was just a loose compression nut. Took two minutes.” He scoots out from under the sink and stands up. “You have a good day now.”

“Wait, don’t you need payment?”

“Harry said he’ll handle it.” He leaves.

She stands there for a moment, somewhat flustered. She appreciates that Harry had taken care of something that otherwise would’ve been a nuisance for her. She just wishes he would’ve given her a heads up to make sure the plumber wouldn’t interrupt one of her sessions. She returns to her office and tries to resume where they left off, though the client seems a bit guarded after that.

Her last session runs late, so she’s the last of her friends to show up at the bar that evening. She parks by the front and joins them inside. Poppy immediately brings attention to her lateness.

“Y/N! We were worried you got lost.”

“Sorry, things ran late at the clinic.”

“How are things at the clinic? Any psycho client stories?”

Y/N gives a nervous laugh. “You know I can’t talk about clients.”

Poppy pouts. “Well, that’s no fun.”

She called you boring to your face. Harry’s words from that morning ring through her mind.

“Is that a new car?” asks Jamal, pointing out the window at her car.

She suddenly regrets parking so close.

“Oh, um, yeah.” She starts perusing the drinks menu.

“Wait,” says Sara. “Didn’t you say a few weeks ago that you can’t afford a new one?”

Before she can respond, Poppy says, “Harry got it for her.”

Y/N is taken aback by the confidence in her voice. “Wh— How did you know that?”

Poppy smirks. “I didn’t. But I do now.”

Y/N shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

“I knew you looked different,” she says, giving her a once-over. “So, what? He’s your sugar daddy now?”

Y/N laughs. “We’re the same age.”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s buying you a car? Did he get that dress too?”

She doesn’t respond. Because the answer is yes. She and Harry went shopping last weekend. She saw a dress she liked with a ridiculous price tag. He pleaded with her to at least try it on, which she did. She fell in love with it. And well, there he was, ready with his credit card.

“Hey, I’m not judging,” says Poppy, leaning towards her. “If I knew a guy like that, I’d be milking him for his money too.”

Y/N frowns. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

Poppy just smirks again. Y/N tries not to roll her eyes. The conversation moves on to Sara’s narcissistic boss, but she can’t stop thinking about how Poppy’s last comment got under her skin. She’s not milking Harry for his money. But she can see how it may appear that way to an outsider. And now she’s insecure about it. Great.

The comment keeps nagging at her for the rest of the night and into the next day. She knows she shouldn’t bring it up to Harry. She knows.

And yet, that evening, while they’re cuddling on the couch watching some corny romcom that she can’t pay attention to, she blurts out, “Do you ever feel like I’m using you for your money?”

He’s quiet at first, then pauses the movie and shifts on the couch so he can see her face. “Why would I think that, lovie? I practically had to beg you to accept my money.”

She instantly feels reassured by his answer. But now she has to deal with the concern on his face.

“It was just something in the back of my mind I had to clear up,” she explains, reaching for the remote to resume the movie, but he doesn’t let her.

“It was in the back of your mind or did someone else put it there?”

She frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It was Poppy, wasn’t it? Or one of the others?”

She sighs and rubs a hand over her face. “Look, I’m sorry I brought it up, okay? Let’s just drop it.”

“No, Y/N.” He sits up, making her do the same. “I don’t like that your friends say shit like that. It clearly bothers you too or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

“What do you want me to do, Harry? Stop hanging out with them?”

“Yes.” His jaw tightens.

She scoffs and leans away from him, genuinely shocked by his response. “Well, that’s... kind of controlling.”

He blinks, equally as shocked by her choice of words. “Controlling? How’s that controlling?”

“You want me to stop hanging out with my friends because you don’t like them? Do you hear yourself?”

“I’m not trying to control you. I’m trying to protect you.”

“We’re not in high school anymore, Harry. I don’t need you to protect me from people. I can do that myself.”

“Can you?”

She narrows her eyes. “Excuse me?”

He sighs. “Y/N, you constantly let people take advantage of your kindness. Your friends, your clients, your ex? Can’t you see? It’s all the same fucking pattern. I hate it because I love you, and I know you deserve better than that. So, no, I’m not being controlling when I say you have shitty friends.”

She doesn’t say anything. His words settle like a pit in her stomach. Harsh, acidic, and, worst of all, true. Softened only by the confession of love casually thrown in there.

Her job is about recognizing patterns in people’s behaviours. Patterns that they repeat from childhood, from past relationships and friendships, from past mistakes. Has she seriously failed to recognize them in her own life?

Harry stands up, visibly frustrated and tired. “I’m going to bed.”

He leaves her on the couch and heads upstairs. She stays there for a while, stewing in her own mix of anger and hurt. When she finally goes up, he’s on his side of the bed with his back to her. She gets in on her side and tries to sleep, neither of them saying a word.

***

The next day, Y/N is up and out of the house before Harry’s even awake. At the clinic, she buries herself in her work, though her mind is still processing the argument from last night. A client cancels last minute without good reason, and she once again waives the late cancellation fee because… Well, she can’t help it. Maybe Harry was right. She does let people walk all over her.

Still, she doesn’t appreciate the way he said it. Implying that she can’t take care of herself. That she can’t think for herself. That she needs someone else to step in and tell her what to do. She’s not that incapable of looking out for herself. Right?

At lunchtime, she stares at her phone, wanting to text him but not knowing what to say. When her screen lights up, her heart flutters, expecting it to be him. But instead, it’s Jamal. Shoving her disappointment deep inside, she picks up the call and listens to her friend vent about his ex for the hundredth time. Ten minutes into his monologue, she finally works up the nerve to lie and tell him she has a client waiting to see her. He takes up five more minutes of her time before hanging up.

Y/N shakes her head at herself, pinching the bridge of her nose. Before her fight with Harry, she might not have thought much of these interactions. Now, it’s impossible to ignore the way she fails to set boundaries with people.

Then she hears someone out in the waiting room. She goes out there to find a delivery person setting down a bouquet of wildflowers on the front desk.

“Hi there! Delivery for a Y/N Y/L/N?”

“That’s me.”

She walks over to the flowers after the delivery guy leaves, feeling the delicate texture of the petals between her fingers. A small note is nestled among them.

I’m sorry. — H

She sighs, staring at the two words, hating the way her heart liquefies in her chest, hating the way she wants to call him up right now and tell him all is forgiven, and especially hating the way she craves his presence. A craving felt deep in her abdomen, raw and tantalizing.

She recalls what he said to her last night. Not the criticism of her friends or her tendency to let people take advantage of her. But how he said he loved her. The way it naturally slipped out in the midst of his rant, like the words had been sitting on the tip of his tongue for far too long.

Y/N: The flowers are pretty

She texts him once the flowers are in a vase and she’s sitting in her office.

H: Glad you liked them

H: I really am sorry. I hope you don’t really think I was trying to control you

“I don’t” is what she types at first but then deletes it.

Y/N: I know that wasn’t your intention

He doesn’t reply for a while after that. He texts again as her workday nears a close.

H: Can I take you out to dinner tonight?

Y/N: Yes

***

Y/N’s texts have seemed distant today. Harry knows trying to decipher tone over text is not wise, but he can’t help it after their argument last night. He hoped that the flowers would show he’s thinking of her and he’s sorry. Not for recognizing that her friends treat her poorly or that she deserves better, but for conveying it in a way that came off as controlling.

He hates the idea of Y/N thinking that he wants to control her life. Sure, every time he sees her, he’s consumed with the primal urge to wrap her in his arms and shelter her from everything horrible in the world, and it takes everything to rein in that part of himself, but he would never want to make her feel like she’s not a person that can make her own decisions.

When she comes over that evening to go on their date together, he expects her to be just as distant as her messages. But she greets him at the door with a firm smooch on the lips, arms wrapped around his neck. He grins and takes in her appearance. An olive-coloured satin dress with a lace trim around the low neckline and a fuzzy brown jacket over it. Cute gold butterfly earrings. Her hair swept back in a low bun. She looks like a tiny fairy that flew over and put a little spell on him to make him weak in the knees.

“You look stunning.” He kisses her cheek, then adds with a sheepish laugh, “I realized this is my first time taking you out on a proper date. I’m not sure why it’s taken this long.”

He knows why it’s taken this long. Because he enjoys having her to himself when they’re at home, where he can cuddle and kiss and touch her however he likes and not worry about odd looks from anyone while he sniffs her hair when she’s not looking.

She smiles. “It’s okay. I like spending nights in with you…” Her gaze travels down his body, taking in his appearance now. A dark button-up, sleeves rolled to his forearms, and tailored trousers. His curls are more tamed than usual but not too perfect. “But it’s also nice seeing you like this.”

A smirk tugs at his lips. “Yeah?”

She nods, her eyes flicking down to his mouth, then back up. And he’s a goner.

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her hard, tongue finding hers with ease. She leans back against the door, her hand on the back of his head keeping him close. He reaches down to find the slit in her dress that exposes her thigh. His fingers trail up to her underwear.

She hums against his lips and pulls away briefly. “We’re going to be late.”

“That’s fine.” He bites her bottom lip. A soft whimper escapes her.

Dropping down to the floor, he hooks his fingers into her panties and pulls them down her legs. She steps out of them, her heels still on her feet. He adjusts the dress so it bunches up around her waist and tells her to hold it there. Then he lifts her right leg over his shoulder to give himself better access. And then he notices the arousal leaking out of her, the dampness along her inner thigh.

“What’s this?” He looks up, smirking when he finds her blushing.

“I was thinking about you on my way here,” she confesses, a little breathlessly.

“Thinking what about me?”

“Just… Your eyes. Your hands. Your mouth…” She swallows. “Your cock.”

The swelling in his pants intensifies. He digs his fingers into the thigh resting on his shoulder while his tongue nudges her hole. He licks a single line from her entrance to her clit. He’s not sure how it’s possible, but every time he tastes her, it feels like the first time and it makes him want to devour her even more. His tongue moves ardently between her folds. She nestles her fingers in his hair, grinding her hips against his mouth.

“Harry, that feels so good. Please don’t stop.”

Her moans get louder, thighs tensing around him as the orgasm sweeps through her. He licks her clean with his tongue, not missing a spot. Then he helps get her panties back on and rises to his feet. She looks unbelievably cute with her flushed cheeks and dazed eyes.

“Now we can go,” he says.

***

Harry’s hands keep finding her that night. A hand on her thigh as he drives them to the restaurant. On the small of her back as they enter. Caressing her arm as they peruse the menu together.

After ordering, he asks about her day and listens to her vent about a frustrating call she had with a client’s insurance company. Their food arrives fairly quickly. He’s about to dig in when he notices Y/N eyeing her plate oddly. Then he realizes.

“You asked for no mushrooms,” he states, noticing the mushrooms sprinkled all over her plate.

“It’s fine.” She waves a dismissive hand.

“You should tell them.”

“It’s no big deal.”

He glances around and makes eye contact with their server, waving her over.

Y/N gives him a look. “Harry…”

The server approaches their table.

“Hi, I think there’s been a mistake,” he says. “She asked for no mushrooms.”

The server’s brows shoot up. “Oh! I’m so sorry. We’ll get that fixed up right away.”

Harry gives her a polite smile. “Thank you.”

The server walks away with the plate.

Y/N glares at him.

“What?”

“I said it wasn’t a big deal,” she says in a hushed but firm tone.

His brows furrow. “Well, it is to me.”

She sighs and looks away, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Y/N—”

“I’m going to use the restroom.” She starts to scoot to the end of booth.

“You’re upset.”

“I’m not. I need to pee,” she says flatly without looking at him.

He stares down at his food after she leaves, pondering her reaction to what he thought was a kind thing to do. They brought her the wrong order; he spoke up because she didn’t want to. What was so bad about that? He thinks back to their fight last night.

Controlling.

Does she think he was being controlling again? He just wanted to make sure she gets what she asked for. She did say it wasn’t a big deal, but he thought she only said that to avoid being an inconvenience. Maybe he was too quick to assume she wanted him to speak up for her. Maybe she felt embarrassed. Maybe he should’ve asked first…

She returns a few minutes later. Her food has arrived by then too, without mushrooms this time. They eat in silence for a bit. Then she asks about his day. He tells her about the meetings he had with some of his foundation’s donors and the cute puppy he met on his run that morning, pulling up a picture on his phone. She coos at the happy little Corgi in the photo.

The rest of their night proceeds normally. They finish their food and share some cheesecake for dessert. He pays the bill. They head home.

When they reach his bedroom, he sits on the edge of the bed and begins unbuttoning his shirt, preparing to sleep. Y/N slips off her dress, leaving her in just her panties, then walks over to stand between his legs. She takes his face in her hands. His fingers freeze on the second last button of his shirt. He meets her gaze with curiosity.

“You said something last night,” she says.

He immediately knows what she’s referring to. He was worried after he said it. Worried that he chose the worst possible time—the middle of an argument—to say the three most important words. But they slipped out before he could even assess the context in which he was saying them. Maybe that’s what happens when you love someone as much as he loves Y/N—it eventually overflows through every crack and crevice.

“Did you mean it?” she asks, studying his face.

“Of course.”

“I love you too.” She plants a tender kiss to his lips.

His hands rest on her forearms, caressing her wrists with his thumbs. Then he shifts one hand to her hip, thumb tracing the lace on her panties. He’s already thinking about burying his face between her legs again, getting lost in the sweet scent and heavenly taste, but before he can do anything, she sinks down to her knees on the floor.

He watches as she finishes undoing the last two buttons on his shirt, letting it fall open. Then she unzips his pants and releases his hardening cock from its confines. He leans back against his hands on the bed, inhaling a shaky breath as she wraps one hand around the base and her lips around the tip. Her gorgeous eyes blink up at him as she takes more of him into her mouth, tongue stroking the underside of his cock deliciously. She bobs her head along his length, stroking whatever’s left of him with her hand.

“Look so pretty like that,” he says. “Taking my cock on your knees. Just the filthiest sight.”

She closes her eyes and moans around him.

“Touch yourself,” he tells her. “But don’t come.”

Her free hand disappears between her legs, fingers rubbing her clit while she continues sucking him.

“Good girl. So good for me.”

He places a hand on the back of her head, applying some pressure, guiding her mouth along his cock. His tip makes contact with the back of her throat with every other thrust, which alone might drive him to madness. Her moans send the most gratifying vibrations down his length.

He pulls out before he can come and takes a second to enjoy the sight of her. The drool and pre-cum coating her chin. Eyes gazing up at him as if he hung the moon in the sky just for her.

“Get up here, sweet girl.”

As she stands, he positions her face down across his lap. He pulls off her panties and spreads apart her legs. He can see the arousal glistening between her thighs before feeling it with his fingers. She makes a sound when his hand makes contact with her clit, burying her face into her forearm.

“Got yourself nice and wet for me,” he says with approval, inserting a finger into her slick hole.

She squirms in his lap, pushing back against his hand. He removes his finger and lands a sharp spank on her bum, making her squeal.

“Stay still,” he warns.

She whines in protest but obeys, keeping her hips in place as he inserts two fingers this time, nudging them in and out at an agonizingly slow pace.

“Harry, please,” she groans, her toes curling.

“Please?”

“I need more!”

He smiles. “Getting greedy, are we?”

“Not greedy. Just…”

“Needy?”

She nods.

“Yeah? Are you my needy little slut, Y/N?”

She nods again, moaning. He relishes the filthy sounds her soaking pussy makes each time he thrusts his fingers inside and the way she struggles to keep herself still but tries anyway. Then he retracts his fingers and takes his time licking her juices off of them, savouring the taste.

“Stand up and bend over the bed,” he says.

As she gets into position, he moves to stand behind her, somehow still in his unbuttoned shirt and trousers. He runs a hand down her spine and over her ass, spanking her once before pressing his cock directly into her pussy. She cries out, hands clawing at the sheets. He lets out a low groan as he bottoms out inside her.

“Fuck,” he breathes. It’s like her pussy was made for him, the way her walls adjust so perfectly to his length, clenching around him just right, forcing him in deeper.

He fists a hand in her hair and starts pounding into her. The sound of his hips slapping against her ass fills the room, but his ears zone in on her moans and whimpers and pleas to fuck her harder.

“So needy for me,” he chuckles darkly. “My perfect needy slut.”

His fingers tighten in her hair, pulling her head slightly off the bed. His other hand grips her hip, keeping her steady while he fucks her senseless.

“Harry, I’m going to come. I— Please—”

“Come for me, baby.”

And she does, the orgasm turning her into a quivering mess beneath him. But he’s determined to coax a second one out of her, so he doesn’t slow down, only thrusting in deeper and harder, grinding his hips against her ass. She screams out as she comes a second time. He joins in now, letting the elation consume him as he lets go inside her.

They’re still for a moment, their breathing gradually slowing in tandem. Then he helps her stand back up on shaky legs, gathering her into his arms, praising how well she did for him.

“Love you. I love you,” she murmurs into his chest.

He kisses the top of her head. “I love you too.”

He finally takes off his clothes, leaving them both naked. They decide to take a warm shower before bed, scrubbing each other clean and deliriously giggling over nothing. Soon, they’re curled up in bed, limbs tangled, drifting off together.

***

The next few days are quiet, peaceful. They have a lazy weekend, going outside only to stroll through the neighbourhood and admire the changing colours of the leaves. Y/N notices that Harry seems different. He pauses before doing things for her, asks instead of assuming. It’s not perfect—she still has to talk him out of driving back to the Thai place when they forget to add the guava candy she loves into their takeout bags—but she realizes he’s trying.

That Friday, she arrives at the clinic for another day of back-to-back sessions, though there are a couple clients she’s really looking forward to seeing. She tries not to grow attached, of course, but she’s human and it happens sometimes.

She’s taking off her coat in her office when she hears someone in the waiting room. It’s a tall blonde woman who appears to be in her early twenties with thick eyeliner around her large brown eyes. Y/N doesn’t think her eyes could possibly be any bigger until they widen at the sight of her.

“Y/N! It is so nice to meet you. I’m really looking forward to working together.” The woman holds out a hand for her to shake, but Y/N just squints at her, trying to figure out who this person is and how she knows her name.

“I’m so sorry, but who are you?” she finally asks.

“Uh, Vanessa? Your new receptionist?” She eventually retracts her untouched hand, clutching the strap of her bag instead.

Y/N’s frown deepens. “My new… receptionist?”

She nods. “Harry hired me. I used to work for his foundation. He said you had a position open and asked if I’d be interested.”

“Huh.” She can’t help the way her facial expression contorts into an irritated glare.

“Should I just set up over there?” Vanessa points to the front desk. “Or maybe there’s paperwork to do first? I already got the background check, as Harry requested. I also have the—”

Y/N has zoned out at this point. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels guilty for being impolite to this poor stranger, but the guilt is drowned out by her exasperation with Harry. She has half a mind to pull out her phone and call him up right now to ask why he thought hiring a whole employee for her clinic (hers!) without discussing it with her first was a good idea, but she has a session in a few minutes and she needs to maintain composure.

She ends up leaving Vanessa with some basic tasks of cleaning and organizing the back room, which Harry had mostly done weeks ago, but she can’t think of much else on the spot and she doesn’t exactly have time to train Vanessa on anything.

Compartmentalizing her feelings about the situation carries her through the day. She sends Vanessa home well before 5 p.m., waving off her concerns about “not getting much done today.” Although she has several session notes to complete, she decides to put it off and head out early for once. It happens that she pulls into Harry’s driveway right as he’s getting out of his own car.

He automatically smiles when he sees her, walking around his car to greet her.

“You got me a receptionist?” she says, stopping him in his tracks a few feet away.

He tilts his head to the side. “Vanessa? Yeah, she’s great! She worked for the foundation a while back. I thought I’d pay her for a month, and you can see what you think. I think you’ll like her though.”

“Harry, you can’t just hire a receptionist for my clinic without talking to me first.”

His smile falters. “Well, I thought you’d say no.”

“Exactly!” She splays her hands up in the air before letting them drop by her sides. “If you had talked to me, I would’ve told you that I don’t want this.”

“Y/N, you work twelve-hour days—”

“More like ten.”

“—And it’s because you’re doing it all on your own. You shouldn’t have to deal with all the scheduling, billing, and insurance on top of seeing clients.”

“You don’t get to make that decision for me.”

He just stares at her wordlessly.

“You keep deciding what I need before I even get the chance to tell you!” She can feel her voice going up an octave and pauses to take a breath. “This is my clinic. I get to decide who works there. You know how I felt walking in there this morning? It felt like I wasn’t the owner anymore.”

His brows pinch together. “That’s not— I was just trying to help, lovie.”

“But this isn’t helping. I didn’t ask for this.”

“I—I’m sorry.”

He takes a step forward. She takes one back.

“I think I need some space,” she says, rubbing her forehead and averting her gaze.

“Y/N, I’m sorry. I overstepped.” There’s something in his voice that she isn’t used to hearing from him. Panic? Fear?

“You’re suffocating me, Harry,” she says quietly, her own chest constricting at the words, but what’s more painful is the look on his face as she says it. The way he deflates. “I need to be on my own for a bit.”

She gets back in her car and tries not to look at him as she pulls out of the driveway because she knows his sad eyes will make her tear up and she’ll be driving home blind.

***

For the next week, every time Y/N’s phone buzzes with a notification, she expects it to be him. But it never is. He has been respecting her request for space. She can’t say she doesn’t miss him though. She misses him when she wakes up alone, when she gets in her car, when she goes home to her empty apartment, which was once just fine.

But intermingled with all the longing is her lingering frustration with him. She can’t get past how he thinks it’s okay to decide what’s best for her without even consulting her, and she’s reminded of that every time she sees Vanessa behind the front desk, who she still hasn’t fired because it doesn’t seem fair to let the poor girl get caught up in her and Harry’s quarrel.

At first, the protectiveness just looked like love, but it has since turned into something else—a threat to her autonomy—and she can’t have that. She rebuilt this clinic from the ground up after Mark burnt it all down. That wouldn’t have been possible if she wasn’t competent and capable all on her own.

When she goes to Poppy’s place for a group hangout that weekend, she’s already not feeling her best. She sits in her car for five minutes, staring out the windshield with a dazed look, before heading inside. It’s their usual dynamic at first, everyone talking over each other, not letting anyone finish a thought before moving on to the next, voices getting louder with each minute. Y/N gets interrupted five times, mostly by Poppy, and it grates on her nerves more than ever before.

“Can’t believe Cindy bailed,” Poppy says.

“Did she say why?” asks Jamal.

“Just that she has some work thing again.” She rolls her eyes, pursing her lips. “You know, I don’t even think her job is as demanding as she makes it seem. She’s in marketing, for fuck’s sake.”

“People are allowed to cancel on plans, Poppy,” Y/N interjects.

Everyone turns to her, like she spoke for the first time that day.

“Okay, Y/N. That was rude,” says Poppy.

Y/N narrows her eyes. “What?”

“That sounded so judgmental.”

The irony feels like a slap in Y/N’s face. All Poppy does is judge other people, from complete strangers to dear friends. For her to accuse anyone else of being judgmental is so absurd that it makes Y/N laugh out loud.

“It kind of did,” Jamal agrees, making Y/N even more bewildered.

Sara just looks away, quietly sipping her beer.

“Anyway,” Poppy says, changing the topic.

The interaction leaves Y/N fuming in her corner of the couch. Her face is hot. Angry, exhausted tears prick the backs of her eyes, but she holds them in. She contributes nothing to the conversation after that, not that anyone notices she’s acting any different. They don’t know her. They never have.

At some point, they’re talking about renting out a cottage for the holidays.

“Y/N, you should ask your sugar daddy to rent one out for us,” says Poppy in that annoying singsong voice of hers. The condescension masked behind a thin veil of hospitality.

“I’m not doing that,” Y/N snaps.

“Why not? All you have to do is bat your eyes and he’ll open his wallet.”

“Fuck off, Poppy. Like, seriously, fuck off.”

Everyone’s eyes widen. The silence in the room is palpable.

“I was just kidding, Y/N.” Poppy laughs nervously, shifting in her seat. “You know I was just kidding.”

“No. I’m tired of your little jabs and jokes that aren’t funny to anyone but you. I’m done.”

She stands up and walks straight out the door, not looking back. As soon as she gets in her car, she takes out her phone and pulls up her text conversation with Cindy. Her fingers tremble as she types.

Y/N: I hate Poppy

Y/N: I hate all of them

Tossing her phone on the passenger seat, she starts her car and pulls onto the road. Her heart is racing. Her hands grip the steering wheel hard enough to mask the tremors. The adrenaline is the only thing keeping her tears at bay. For now.

Cindy calls two minutes later, her name popping up on the centre display. Y/N picks up.

“I hate them,” she states, voice dripping with venom.

“I know,” her friend replies.

“Why did I ever think I’d fit in with them, Cin?” She lets out a humourless laugh. “I’ve never fit in. Not in high school. Not now.”

“Okay, that’s not true. You’ve got me. You’ve got Harry—”

“Harry and I haven’t talked in a week.” Her voice breaks now, the adrenaline wearing off quickly with the mention of the man she loves, replaced simply by heartache.

“What happened?”

“He keeps trying to fix things! He got me a receptionist for the clinic without talking to me first. He thinks he’s helping, but it’s becoming too much.” She wipes the tears streaming down her face now. “It’s overbearing.”

She vaguely mentioned to Cindy a couple weeks ago that Harry’s protectiveness was starting to overwhelm her, so none of this comes as a shock.

Cindy pauses before responding, “Do you think maybe that’s just… his way of expressing his love? Like, he thinks he has to solve your problems and make your life easier to show he loves you, but to you, it comes across as overbearing?”

“That’s probably it.” She sighs, pulling over to the side of the road because she definitely should not be driving when she’s this worked up. “But I don’t need him to do all that. I just need to know he’s there for me, not to swoop in at the first sign of danger but to trust that I’m capable of handling things. Am I crazy to want that?”

“Of course not. You just need to tell him.”

She chews on that for a moment. Then her mind returns to her outburst from five minutes ago.

“What about Poppy and them?”

“Fuck them,” Cindy says calmly. “You don’t need that energy in your life.”

“I don’t want you to have to choose between me and them.”

“Meh. I’ve already been pulling away. Why do you think I wasn’t there tonight?”

Y/N releases a sigh of relief, feeling some of the tension in her shoulders loosen. “You’re the best, Cin.”

She can hear the smile in her best friend’s voice as she responds, “You deserve nothing less.”

***

Harry has had the worst week. As if Y/N not talking to him wasn’t bad enough, he fucked up his hip trying to help his elderly neighbours across the street lift their massive old dresser out of their house.

His hip has been weak for years. He injured it a few times while playing hockey and decided to push through until he literally couldn’t anymore, his body revolting against his decision in the form of debilitating hip pain. Surgery and physical therapy worked wonders, but they didn’t magically return his hip to its original condition.

This is his first flare-up in a while, but it’s a bad one. A deep ache runs along the front of his hip and groin area every time he stands up. He’s been limping around the house. Getting comfortable in bed at night is damn near impossible, leaving him awake at odd hours.

He doesn’t mind the pain. He can handle pain. What he can’t handle is how slow it makes him. The mere task of walking from one part of the house to another takes twice as long. When he gets up from the couch, he has to wait a few seconds for the stiffness to subside before moving. Even putting on a pair of socks takes fucking forever.

Layer on his heartache about Y/N, and he’s downright miserable. He told himself he was helping. That he was making her life easier. But the truth is uglier than that. When he sees a problem, he has to fix it because he can’t stand feeling useless. It’s the same thing that drove him to push through injuries and play through pain until his body gave out. The thing that made him start his foundation. His unrelenting need to fix.

But Y/N is a person. And he keeps treating her like a project. Countless times this week, he found himself staring at his phone, typing out a message to her, then deleting it.

I’m sorry.

Please talk to me.

You don’t have to talk to me. Just tell me you’re okay?

I miss you.

I love you.

It takes everything in his power not to send those messages. She asked for space. He’s going to give her space, dammit. Even if it kills him. Even if it makes this hip flare-up feel worse than it is.

The house has felt so cold and hollow and lifeless without her around. It used to feel lonely, living here all by himself, especially post-retirement. But he found his coping mechanisms—running, playing hockey recreationally with friends, foundation work. Now he can feel himself slipping back into that loneliness, but without the same coping mechanisms because his hip won’t cooperate.

On the tenth day—yes, he’s been counting—since his fight with Y/N, he’s genuinely considering driving to her clinic and parking across the street just to catch a glimpse of her. Is it creepy? Yes. Has the past week driven him to insanity? Possibly.

He’s on the couch with an ice pack attached to his hip, weighing the pros and cons of this foolish idea, when the doorbell rings. He groans. It must be his package. He ordered a new heating pad recently since his old one is over five years old.

He braces himself as he stands up, pausing to let his body adjust. Then he carefully walks to the door, ready to greet the delivery driver. But that’s not who he finds.

“Y/N?”

“Hi.” She gives him a small smile. She’s dressed in a cozy sweater with black tights, her hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, a few strands falling loose around her face. God, he missed her.

“Hey. Um, come in.” He steps aside, letting her in before shutting the door.

“I was hoping we could talk,” she says.

Fuck. She’s here to break up with him. Fuck.

He tries to ignore his heart plummeting in his chest and gestures towards the couch, letting her walk in front of him so he could limp behind her. But she notices. Of course she does. She notices the way he winces as he sits down next to her. She notices the ice packs. The painkillers.

“You okay?” she asks, studying him to figure out what’s wrong.

“Yeah.”

She gives him a look.

“It’s my hip.”

Her brows furrow. “Did you get hurt?”

“It’s an old injury. From hockey. It just flared up recently when I was helping a neighbour move their dresser.”

“Oh no. How bad is it?”

“Not terrible. Just… hard to do some things.”

“Like what?”

“Um, walking. Sitting. Sleeping.”

“So… everything?”

He laughs softly. “Pretty much.”

“Have you been resting?”

“Yes. Mostly.”

Another look.

“I hate sitting around.”

Her gaze drops to his hip, where he’s now holding an ice pack. The frown is still there, etched between her brow. He doesn’t like her seeing him like this. Not because he’s ashamed of the pain, but because this version of him—weakened, slow, useless—is so different from the way he views himself.

“I didn’t know you had hip problems,” she says quietly.

He shrugs. “I don’t like talking about it. It’s why I retired.”

She nods, understanding.

“You wanted to talk?”

“We can do that later.”

“No, it’s fine. We can do it now.” If she’s here to break up with him, he’d rather just have her rip off the band-aid and leave him to wallow in his misery alone.

“Okay…” She still seems hesitant, her gaze flicking from his hip to his eyes. “Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I was so angry… And part of it was because you weren’t wrong.”

He blinks a few times, trying to hide his surprise.

“It has been a lot, trying to do everything myself. Especially with the amount of clients I’m seeing. But the solution isn’t a receptionist. I need to reduce my caseload, restructure my schedule. That’s something I needed to decide for myself.”

He shifts on the couch, wincing when his hip protests. Y/N watches him unsurely.

“Sorry. Continue,” he encourages.

“It’s not the first time something like this has happened. You do it a lot. Making decisions for me. I know you’re trying to help, but it’s starting to feel like I don’t have autonomy in this relationship.”

He forces himself to keep his mouth shut and listen rather than getting defensive. He’s done plenty of reflecting of his own these past ten days, and something he’s realized is that his true intentions are not always translated through his actions.

“I’ve seen clients have relationships like that. They don’t last. Even when they do, one person ends up resenting the other. I don’t want that for us.”

She’s silent then, giving him the floor.

“Neither do I,” he says. “I don’t know why I’m like this. I don’t know why I feel the need to…”

“Fix things?”

He nods. “I don’t do it because I think you’re incapable or weak. You’re the toughest person I know. I just…” His eyes widen. “Fuck, maybe I am controlling.”

She smiles sweetly and reaches for his hand. “You’re not controlling, Harry. You just have a big heart, and you get carried away.”

He stares at their intertwined hands. “I’m scared I don’t know how to be any different. I like feeling needed.”

“You are needed. But not in the way you think. You don’t need to save me. You don’t need to be ‘Harry the fixer.’ You just need to be… Harry.”

For a moment, he imagines what that would look like. Not Harry the fixer. Just Harry. Not stepping in to save the day. Not anticipating every need before it arises. Not making every decision. Just being present, available, supportive.

“I’m sorry I took your choice away,” he says.

She scoots closer to hug him, but when the couch shifts with her weight, his hip screams at him. He winces. She freezes and stands up, leaning down to hug him instead.

“I feel like I’m sixty years old,” he says, hugging her back, though not as tightly as he would’ve liked to.

“Take solace in the fact that you’d make a sexy sixty-year-old.”

He laughs.

She straightens up. “Okay. What can I get for you? Water? Food? Have you eaten yet?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

She places her hands on her hips. “You’re not the only one that likes feeling needed.”

A slow smile spreads across his face. “I haven’t had lunch yet.”

“On it. You stay right there.” She points at him with a stern look before disappearing into the kitchen.

He finally relaxes into the couch, soothed by the sound of her footsteps in the next room, opening and closing the fridge, rearranging pots and pans, humming softly while she works. And he smiles to himself.

***

It turns out Harry is just as bad, if not worse, at receiving help as Y/N. He tries to do everything himself, even though he can barely walk without being in pain.

“It’s not that bad,” he’ll say, then proceed to demonstrate that it is, in fact, that bad.

It’s actually somewhat amusing for Y/N because she realizes this is exactly how she sounds when she tries to pretend that everything is fine. They’re both shit at acting. At least around each other.

She helps him get comfortable in bed that night with a heating pad wrapped around his hip and an extra pillow under his leg. Then she gets under the covers on her side of the bed.

“You’re so far away,” he whines, reaching for her.

“I don’t want to hurt you!”

“You won’t. Come here.”

She slides into his arms, placing her head on his chest. He lets out a content sigh. As they lie there, she remembers an important update she has yet to share with him.

“By the way,” she says, “you’ll be happy to hear you were right about Poppy and them.”

“That doesn’t make me happy at all, lovie. Are you okay?”

She nods and lifts her head to look at him. “I told Poppy to fuck off.”

A proud smirk tugs at his lips. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you feel about it?” His eyes search her face.

“Relieved… Sad.”

He kisses her forehead, gently stroking her hair. She rests her head back down.

“I always thought something was wrong with me,” she says. “High school. College. After college. Always feeling like the outsider.”

“You know what I think?”

She smiles. “You’re going to tell me anyway.”

“I think you’ve been trying too hard to fit into places that weren’t made for you. I think when you find the right people, you won’t even have to try. Because it’ll feel easy and natural.”

“Like coming home.”

“Exactly.”

“Like I feel with Cindy…” She looks at him again. “Like I feel with you?”

He grins. “I would hope so.”

She kisses him on the lips, soft and tender.

When she pulls away, he says, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to help this old man take off this heating pad. It’s getting way too hot.”

She chuckles, moving before he even finishes his sentence. “I got you.”

***

It’s Y/N’s last day at the clinic before she takes two weeks off for the holidays. Something she never would’ve done in previous years.

“But my clients need me!” she’d argue when Cindy suggested she take some proper time off over Christmas.

But things are different now. The dangers of sacrificing her own needs for the benefit of others are so much clearer to her. The very real possibility of burnout, which she naively considered herself immune to, is also clearer to her. To put it simply, she’s done with putting herself last on the priority list.

Now she’s at her desk, about to shut down her work computer when her email pings. The subject line makes her smile before she even opens the email.

Subject: Thank you

Hi Y/N,

I wanted to let you know that I settled into a new apartment six months ago. My new job is going well, I’ve made a lot of friends there. I might actually be going on a first date this weekend. I’m safe, happy, and hopeful. I wanted to thank you for helping me navigate my trauma and get to a better place in my life. I truly appreciate everything you’ve done for me.

Happy holidays!

Sincerely,

Yasmin

Y/N is smiling from ear-to-ear by the second sentence and tearing up by the last one. Yasmin was a former client trapped in an abusive relationship. Together, over the span of two years, they formed a plan to help her leave safely and create a new life where she wasn’t constantly living in fear. To read that she’s still thriving makes Y/N want to ugly cry happy tears. She keeps it together enough to type out a response, making sure Yasmin knows she did the work herself.

After hitting send, she shuts down her computer. Her phone buzzes.

H: Done for the day?

Y/N: Yeah, you?

H: Same. I’m outside. Got you a little something…

She hurries to make sure everything is in its place and all the lights are off before locking up. Harry’s car is parked directly in front of the clinic. He’s dressed in a hockey jersey and jeans, his hair hidden under a black beanie, a hot drink in each hand. He looks up when she walks over, greeting him with a kiss.

“Hot chocolate,” he says, holding out the cup in his left hand.

She caresses his cheek, tempted to squeeze it. “Sweetest boyfriend over.”

He chuckles. As they get into his car, he asks, “So. Are you ready to go to your first ever hockey game?”

They’ve been watching several games this season on TV together. Y/N asks a lot of questions—why do they fight so much, how is that allowed, why is the net open, where is the goalie?!—and Harry patiently answers each one. It’s been a fun, enlightening introduction to his world. Now she gets to see it in person. Cindy and her new partner are also meeting them there.

“I am,” she answers. “The real question is: are you ready to answer my stupid questions about the game every five minutes?”

He starts the car and backs out, his hand automatically resting on her thigh. “No such thing as a stupid question, my love.”

“I’d beg to differ.”

On the way to the arena, they exchange updates about their day, everything from the mundane to the extraordinary. Y/N tells him about the thank you email. Harry tells her about the new donors he had lunch with. She notices how easy it is, how safe she feels. Safe, happy, and hopeful. Just like Yasmin.

You watch Harry’s eyes darken as they stare down at the open suitcase that’s situated on the edge of the bed in the hotel you’ll be staying in with him for a few nights, his teeth sink into his bottom lip as he reaches down and grabs an item he didn’t expect to see right when he unzipped your bag so he could help you unpack seeing as he’s already been in Amsterdam for a little over a week so he’s made himself at home in the sprawling suit that’s on the top floor of a luxury hotel in town. He had begged you to come visit him for a few days, sending you long over dramatic voice notes about how he can’t focus without you and needs his creative muse around, and while that was lovely and fed into the twisted part of yourself that craves hearing how miserable he is without you it wasn’t until he mentioned filming a music video for one of your favorite songs off his new album that you really started to take his requests for you to come see him more seriously.

It’s not as if you didn’t miss him as well, of course you did but you just know Harry and know he gets lonely very easily and it didn’t help that you had already planned on being with him at the start of his tour that kicks off in just two weeks so you didn’t see the need to come earlier until he tossed the dance no more video out like a shiny lure on the end of a fishing hook. Needless to say you were on a train to see him the very next day, he could barely contain his excitement when you told him to book you a ticket because he really felt a little off without having you just an arms length away. The two of you have been nearly inseparable during his break from music and to say Harry’s been struggling with the distance sometimes forced between the two of you due to his now hectic schedule is a massive understatement. So he plans on making the most out of your trip to see him and has already warned you that you’ll be lucky if he lets you out of his sight during the next few days, not that you’d ever care if he follows you around and is extra handsy because you’re well past getting used to his clingy behavior and now it’s something you encourage, loving the feeling of his sloppy kisses and grabby hands.

As Harry raises the object up and his eyes flicker over to where you’re sitting with your back resting against the headboard of the bed and your legs stretched out with your hands in your lap fiddling with the hem of your t shirt not feeling an ounce of embarrassment, you just give him a smile because you’ve never been one to shy away from telling him what you want or what you like, especially when it comes to the bedroom. He tears his eyes away from you and looks back over to the bright pink silicone dildo his long fingers are securely wrapped around and he can’t help but let out a laugh as he lightly shakes his head because while he might not have been expecting to find it resting so casually on top of your fancy black dress you brought for a night out, he can’t say he’s all that shocked you decided to bring it with you. The sound of his laughter sends a welcomed warm tingle down your spine, having missed being able to witness how his face manages to light up as the sound bubbles up from deep in his chest.

“You couldn’t have packed this in your toiletry bag or something?” He asks teasingly as he places it down on the bed beside your suitcase so he can move on to unpacking your clothes, not really caring in the slightest that you didn’t try to hide it by shoving it into a bag or cramming it into the bottom of your suitcase.

“No because then it would’ve taken you longer to find it.” Your answer has him looking at you with a raised brow as he pauses his movements, his hands let the silky material of your black dress slip through his fingers and land back into your suitcase when your lips curve upward into a smile that Harry knows means you’re up to something. “You always unpack my toiletries last.” You watch the wheels start to turn in his mind as you tell him a simple fact about the way he always goes about unpacking your bags, something he’s been doing for you ever since you went on your first trip together years ago because making sure you don’t have to lift a finger while he’s around is just one of the ways Harry likes to show you he cares about you.

“Oh I see.” He says with the beginnings of a smirk on his face as his eyes roam over your features, he lets them linger on your lips for a beat longer than he should before he brings them back up to meet your eyes. “And that would’ve been a problem? Not finding your pink—friend until later?” He asks making you give him a nod as you move so you can crawl the short distance to the edge of the bed until your suitcase is the only thing separating the two of you.

“It would’ve been tragic.” Harry holds back a chuckle as you poke out your bottom lip in a pout as you rise to your knees only an arms length away from him, the softness of the comforter feels nice on your skin and Harry can’t help himself from letting his eyes get their full of your plush thighs that your sad excuse for shorts leave exposed to him since they really only keep a small portion of your backside and your most intimate bits from being on display. “I would’ve had to sit and wait and-”

“You’ve never been good at waiting have you baby?” You roll your eyes at his question while he gives you a playful wink that you know is all an act because you’ve always been able to read Harry like one of your favorite books, easily seeing through the cocky and smug facade he tries to build up in moments like this and seeing the needy and sometimes desperate man hidden underneath.

“You’re not so good at it yourself.” You remind him to which he just gives you his sad attempt at a casual shrug as he looks down at your suitcase trying his hardest to act as if he doesn’t want to reach out and grab you so he can get the comforting feeling of your skin under his palms. “Besides it’s been-”

“Nine days.” He says finishing your sentence for you as his hands clench into fists at his sides. “It’s been nine days.” He repeats but this time with an added sigh, and when you watch him close his eyes and let out a deep breath through his nose you know he’s on the verge of coming undone because nine days apart is a record for the two of you and you’re honestly not sure how he’s managed to keep it so together for the past hour and a half you’ve been in the same room.

“Exactly—don’t you think we’ve waited long enough? I know you missed me and it’s been so hard for you but I’m here now.” Your voice doesn’t have even the smallest trace of playfulness to it, instead it’s soft and each word that rolls off your tongue has a sticky type of sweetness wrapped around it that seeps into the small cracks that have formed in Harry’s heart with every passing day he had to spend alone, mending it back together in a way that only you know how.

Before your brain can process what’s happening Harry has a hand on the side of your face only giving you time to blink before his lips are crashing into yours in a hungry and desperate kiss. You hear the sound of your suitcase crashing to the floor as Harry uses his free hand to slide it out of the way letting him have all the room he needs to pull you closer to him, your hands grab onto his face as his tongue slips into your mouth making him let out a small moan when he gets a taste of the mint gum you were chewing on earlier. Your eyes fall closed as you let yourself melt into Harry’s touch, having missed the feeling of being able to let him guide and move your body however he pleases because you know his pleasure is derived from your own so you enjoy the moments where you can turn your mind off and let him take control.

Harry can sense the subtle shift in you as your cheek presses into his palm that’s keeping you from getting too far away from him, he smiles against your lips when yours hands slide down the front of his t shirt until they end up back down at your sides. He uses his hold on you to gently urge you down onto your back, moving so he’s standing between your legs that are halfway hanging off the edge of the bed and he tries his hardest not to laugh at the frown that takes over your face as he pulls away from you so he can stand up. When you open your eyes you find Harry just staring at you, his bottom lip is tucked between his teeth as he lets his eyes freely roam over your body only pausing when they land on the waistband of your shorts.

“Need these off.” He says as he reaches his hands out, you automatically lift your hips so he can easily tug your shorts down your legs until they fall to the floor near his feet. “I’m gonna tell you what’s about to happen okay baby?” His voice is more relaxed now that he has his hands running up and down the tops of your thighs, when you reach your hands out for him Harry already knows what you want so he smiles as he moves a hand so it’s resting next to you letting him lean over and place a quick kiss to your lips.

“Okay I’m ready now.” Harry lets out a chuckle as he pulls away and you give him a grin. “What’s about to happen?” There’s an unmistakable giddiness to your voice as you stare up at Harry and it’s a reminder of how much trust you have in him, that the idea of him taking control not only relaxes you but brings you a sense of excitement because you know you don’t have to worry about anything when it comes to him.

“First I’m gonna take this off,” his hand softly pulls at the fabric of your t shirt making you nod as his eyes move down to your pink and yellow polkadot panties. “Then I’ll do my best to not rip these but-”

“Wait a minute-” Harry’s eyes instantly bounce up to lock with yours as you sit up onto your elbows with your brows scrunching together and a tiny hint of concern hiding behind the color of your eyes. “These are too cute to end up in shreds Harry just take them off now if you need to because I am not leaving here with less clothes than I came with okay?—I actually want to have the opposite problem.”

“The opposite problem?” He asks with a raised brow, you just give him a nod before you sit up just enough so you can pull your t shirt up over your head so you can toss it to the side along with your bra making Harry bite back a smile at how eager you are.

“Yes I want to leave with more clothes and things than I came with.” You answer with a smile as one of Harry’s hands slides up from the side of your thigh to your hip. “I know you like spending money on me—you like the looks people make when you hand me your shiny black credit card and tell me to have fun.”

It’s no secret that one of the many things Harry likes about his relationship with you is knowing he can offer you a lifestyle none of your previous boyfriends could, it makes it a bit more exciting for him when he does something for you that you didn’t expect simply because you’re not used to being taken care of the way Harry takes care of you. He knows you’d still be with him if he was broke or worked a normal job because none of the extra stuff really means anything to you but still, he likes to spoil you in any kind of way you’ll let him.

And it’s true, he enjoys the sideways glances and small gasps of shock whenever he just appears in a store you’ve been shopping around in just to pay the bill before giving you a kiss and rushing off to his next meeting or studio session before anyone can really put together who it was that just swiped their card and left. He gets a bit of a rush of satisfaction anytime he gets to flaunt his wealth, not getting the opportunity very often since he runs in a very small circle of people who don’t discuss things like money so he feels a small twinge of pride in his chest when he gets to simply show up, hand you his card without even bothering to look or ask you what the total is all while you smother his face in kisses and mumble a few thank yous against his neck.

“Well if you already planned on doing some shopping-” your eyes narrow into a glare as you watch Harry stand up so he can slide his thumbs under the waistband of your panties. “Add another pair of these to the list.” You let out a huff that he knows is all for show as you let yourself fall back onto the bed making Harry laugh as he does exactly what you knew he would, rips the thin fabric with a simple tug that subtly shows off how little effort it takes him to turn the pretty pair of panties into a useless pile of fabric.

“I don’t know how I didn’t see that coming—should’ve known you’d say something annoying like that.”

“You really should’ve.” Harry teases as he leans over you, a hand on either side of your head with a look that’s a mixture of love and something hungrier on his face that has your heart doing flips in your chest. “Now can we get back to what I was saying or do you have anymore silly requests like don’t pull your hair or keep the lights on while-”

“I asked you to keep the lights on one time because we had just watched that scary movie about the thing that lives in the shadows and-”

“And what? You thought I’d let some creepy creature get you while I had you bent over the bathtub?”

“Well I mean you were a little preoccupied so how would you even have noticed if there was a creepy thing in there with us? Especially since you only had on the vanity lights.” It’s moments like this, when the two of you are in such intimate positions but having extremely normal conversations that get to Harry the most because it’s just another thing that solidifies the fact he’s finally found his person and it’s you. “But I guess you would’ve gotten eaten first so I would’ve had a decent chance at getting away.” You add with a smile as you reach up and run a hand through Harry’s hair, as you stare up at him you can’t help but feel a strong sense of desire for the man hovering over you because in this moment the comfort level the two of you have with each other serves as a different type of turn on, knowing he isn’t in a any sort of rush so he can take the time to indulge in silly conversations with you just makes you want him that much more.

“Exactly you would’ve been fine.” He tells you softly as he leans down and presses his lips against yours for a quick little kiss. “Now are you ready to listen?” He asks between kisses down your jaw, your hands grab onto his shoulders as you give him a nod.

“Yes I’m ready to listen.” You tell him already knowing he needs more from you than a simple nod, you feel him smile against the skin of you neck making a shiver run down your spine from his stubble rubbing against the sensitive skin.

“Yeah? You’re ready to be a good girl now?” You swallow thickly as he lifts his head just enough so his eyes can find yours, the anticipation of what he has in store for you has your mind racing and your insides buzzing.

“Yes.” A grin spreads across Harry’s face as he presses a quick kiss to your forehead before he slowly starts to kiss and lick his way down the length of your body, only stopping just an inch or two past your belly button.

“I know you brought this for a reason.” You look down at him as he reaches a hand out so he can grab the pink toy resting on the end of the bed. “You want to tell me why or should I just take a guess?” He asks as he keeps one hand on your hip so you don’t get the familiar pout on your face at the complete lack of contact when he stands up making your arms fall off his shoulders and down to your sides landing on the soft comforter of the bed.

“I want you to use it on me—please.” Harry nods as he soothingly runs the pad of his thumb up and down the soft skin of your hip helping your body relax just a bit.

“Okay—since you asked so nicely.” You can’t help the giggle that falls out of your mouth at the little wink he shoots you before he looks away from your face and down to the glistening mess between your legs. “Can’t even use your own toy properly can you baby? It’s like you need me to do everything for you.” Your eyes snap closed when you feel Harry teasingly drag the tip of your dildo up and down your slick folds making you clench around nothing. “After I get you off with this I’m going to make you come on my cock over and over until all that pretty little mind of yours can think about is me—how’s that sound baby? Does that sound good?” His eyes flicker up to your face as you bite down on your bottom lip when he slowly pushes the tip of your pink silicone toy into you, he smiles when your hands grip the sheets at your sides when he pushes it in just a bit more.

“Y—yes.” Is all you’re able to say before a soft moan slips past your lips and it has Harry quirking a brow as he moves his hand down from your hip to the outside of your knee.

“Yes what?” He asks as he gently grabs at your leg so he can place it over his shoulder letting him inch the pink toy deeper into you, allowing you to feel it’s soft ridges press against your warm wet walls. “Answer me sweetheart—yes what?”

“Yes that—that sounds good.” You say with a loud moan as Harry uses his grip on the base of the toy to push it all the way in until you feel the side of his hand pressing against you. “Sounds so—so good.” You mumble as Harry looks down and lets out a rough sounding groan at the sight before him.

“I think pink is your color baby.” His voice is deep as he starts to pull the toy out, licking his lips as he sees the familiar sheen of your arousal clinging to the pink silicone, he only lets it get half way before pushing it back in making you moan his name as he repeats the same motion a few more times. “I mean it—your needy little cunt looks so good getting fucked with this pretty pink toy of yours.” You feel your hips try and match the steady pace Harry has set as his free hand keeps a firm grip on the side of your leg that’s over his shoulder, the gentle pull and push of the toy as it slides in and out of your center has your body craving more.

“Harry I-” your words get cut off by a loud moan when you open your eyes and find Harry staring at you as he turns his head and starts kissing down the inside of your leg, leaning down just enough so he can lightly nibble on the soft flesh of the inside of your thigh while he quickens the pace of his hand that’s wrapped around the base of your toy, the new angle letting him get it a bit deeper than before. “Oh god.” You moan as you feel his hand slide down your thigh and up over your hip until the pad of his thumb is rubbing tight circles over your clit.

“Come on baby—be a good girl and make a mess all over your pretty little toy.” He coos sweetly as his eyes lock with yours, you watch a smug looking smirk work its way onto his face as he adds more pressure to your bundle of nerves earning him a loud cry of his name, your back arches and your grip on the sheets tightens and you swear there’s some sort of glittery haze surrounding Harry as you feel the pressure in your lower belly finally snap.

“Hear that baby?” Harry asks as he continues his quick pace, plunging the silicone toy in and out of your soaked hole making a squelching sound fill the room as he helps you ride out your climax. “That’s the sound of you doing what you’re told—being a good girl and making a pretty mess everywhere.” You smile at his words of praise, feeling your arousal starting to drip down onto the bed but you know by the pleased grin on Harry’s face it’s exactly what he wanted.

You try to catch your breath as Harry gently moves your leg off his shoulder after giving the inside of your knee a quick kiss that you know is just to distract you from the feeling of him slowly sliding your pink toy out of your soaked center. There’s a flash of something in Harry’s eyes as he looks over at you and before you can open your mouth to ask him what’s wrong he’s bringing your arousal covered toy up to his mouth and licking it from where he hand is gripping the base all the way to the tip. The sight of him licking your toy clean of your juices has your thighs trying to squeeze together but Harry keeps them spread open with his body nestled between them.

“Couldn’t just let that go to waste.” He explains as he places the toy down on the bed. “You okay? Need anything?” He asks as he starts to pull his shirt up over his head letting you get a good view of his well defined chest and stomach that has you practically drooling.

“Just you.” Harry smiles at your answer as you watch him unbutton his pants and shimmy them down his legs along with his boxers, not bothering to make a show out of getting undressed because he thinks the two of you have waited long enough so no need to prolong it with a striptease that would more than likely end up with him getting a foot stuck in his pants and falling over.

“I’m all yours baby just gotta tell me how you want me.” His voice is strained as he wraps a hand around his painfully hard cock, you sit up and scoot down to the edge of the bed and pat the spot next to you.

“Want to ride you.” You tell him excitedly making him let out a small chuckle as he sits on the edge of the bed, his hands grab onto your hips as you move to straddle his lap placing one knee on either side of his thighs. When you feel the tip of his cock at your entrance you take in a deep breath and grab onto his shoulders, Harry’s hands give your hips a loving squeeze as your eyes lock with his green ones.

“Take your time love—there’s no rush.” He reminds you as you slowly start exhale through your nose as you begin to lower yourself down onto him, his lips places kisses to the tops of your shoulders as the all too familiar sting that comes with your body trying to adjust to the size of Harry’s thick shaft pulses through you. “Missed you so much baby.” He mumbles against your neck as you pause only lowered halfway down his cock, needing to allow yourself a moment to breathe before taking the rest of him into your tight cunt since it’s been nine whole days since you’ve gotten to be in a position like this so you want to savor it just a bit.

“Don’t wanna do that again—nine days is too long to be without you.” His voice is low and you feel his hold on your hips tighten as you continue to lower yourself down until you’re taking in the last inches of him making a muffled groan escape him as he rests his forehead on your shoulder.

“I missed you too.” You say with a sigh as he lifts his head up so he can look you in the eyes. “I love you.” You tell him as his hands come up and cup the sides of your face.

“I love you too.” His lips are on yours before you can even smile at how quickly he responds, you swallow down Harry’s moan as you lift yourself up so just the tip of Harry’s cock is snug inside your went center and then lower yourself back down with a quick drop. Your hands tangle into his hair as your tongue licks into his mouth, one of his hands slides down to the side of your neck as your hips start to find a rhythm, it’s as if a flip has been switched inside your body and muscle memory takes over as you bounce on Harry lap. Your knees dig into the plush mattress and your head tilts back as your swollen clit rubs against the patch of hair at the base of Harry’s cock creating a delicious friction, Harry wastes no time in attaching his mouth to your exposed neck, licking and sucking at the skin until he’s satisfied with the blotchy red marks that he knows will be a dark purple color by the end of the day.

“My cock is better than your little toy isn’t it love?” He asks as he gives the side of your neck a squeeze, you let out a loud cry of his name as he bucks his hips letting the tip of his cock nudge the spot deep inside you that makes your toes curl.

“Yes your—your cock is so much better.” You pant as Harry gives you a few harsh thrusts of his hips. “I missed it so fucking much—oh god.” Harry looks down as you start to squeeze and pulse around him, he lets out a groan as he watches his thick shaft disappear into your needy hole as you expertly bounce on him. “Harry I’m—oh fu-Harry.” Your vision goes blurry as Harry’s arms wrap around you and in a quick movement you’re being lifted up and then your back is being pressed into the mattress, you let Harry’s strong hands move you around until your legs are wrapped around his middle and you can barely catch your breath before he starts thrusting his cock in and out of you at a brutal pace.

“Fuck baby you feel so good.” Harry groans as your walls start to clench around him, your heels dig into his lower back as his name falls out of your mouth. “Needed this so bad—you have no idea how much I’ve missed your pussy baby you always feel so perfect when you’re wrapped around me like this.” He tells you as he keeps up the quick pace of his thrust, he watches your eyes fall closed as you start to come undone around him. Your mouth opens but no sound comes out as Harry continues to work you through your orgasm, your hands white knuckle the sheets as your back arches making Harry lean down and place a hand next to your head while his other one grips the outside of your leg chasing his own release.

“Look at me baby—wanna see your eyes please need those pretty eyes.” Harry says between kisses all over your face, he feels your body relax as he pulls away just in time to see your eyes slowly peel themselves open and the smile that you give him has his heart pounding in his chest as you reach out and cup his face in your hands.

“Your eyes are pretty too.” All Harry can do is smile at your half mumbled words, he feels his stomach tighten and when you use your legs and pull him closer to you while your hands bring him down for a kiss he can’t hold himself back any longer and with a few quick thrusts he’s spilling his warm load deep inside you making you smile as your name tumbles out of his mouth when he pulls away.

“Holy fuck—you’re so perfect baby I love you so much.” You giggle as Harry nuzzles his face into the crook of your neck, his stubble tickles your skin as he tries to catch his breath.

“I love you too.” You whisper into his ear as your hands run up and down his back, neither of you ready to move just yet because you’ve spent nine days apart so you want to let the moment last as long as you can before separating.

“I think I broke your suitcase.” You let out a laugh as Harry lifts his head up and looks down at the floor and sure enough your suitcase is sprawled out on the ground with a wheel missing having rolled under the bed after Harry shoved it to the floor to get it out of the way.

“That’s okay—it was yours anyway.”

“Okay so just have fun and get comfortable with the microphone—twirl it around or do whatever feels good to you in the moment.” Harry nods as the director of the dance no more music video gives him a little bit of direction for what he’s meant to be doing for this part of the video, you have a grin on your face as you sit in one of the chairs near the back of the gymnasium with a few of the backup dancers who aren’t needed in this shot.

“Yeah okay—I can do that.” Harry says with a smile before walking back over to where he’s meant to be standing, he grabs the silver microphone and shakes his arms and jogs in place to loosen up his limbs while the director takes his spot behind the camera.

You watch in awe as Harry instantly turns into the charismatic man people have posters of taped on their walls and spend copious amounts of money to watch perform on stage every night the moment he hears the word action. You’re so entranced by the movement of his hips in his silky red shorts you almost miss the way his eyes find yours in the back of the room, there’s a mischievous glint in his eyes as he grabs the base of the microphone with both hands and you feel your face get hot as he stares directly at you while he licks the microphone the same way you had watched him lick up the length of your pink sex toy the day before.

“Sorry H let’s go again in five—I really love that but this time let’s add some dancers.” Harry just nods and walks over to where you’re sitting with a playful grin on his face.

“That was for you.” He tells you with a wink that makes you just shake your head as he stands in front of you. “Knew you’d like that.” He teases as he leans down and places a quick kiss to your lips.

“You’re so annoying.” Harry just shrugs as you wipe off the remnants of your lipgloss off his bottom lip. “Thank you for letting me be here for this.” Your voice is soft and sweet and has Harry placing a hand on the side of your face.

“You’re always welcome to come to work with me baby you know that—I know how much you love this song.” You smile as you lean into his touch. “I perform better when you’re with me.”

“You’re just saying that so I’ll agree to going on tour with you.”

“Well yeah—that’s exactly why I’m saying it but it’s also just the truth.”

VOIR DIRE

{to speak the truth}

The cinder blocks are painted Deutzia white.

Y/N knows this because Deutzia white is, humiliatingly, the colour of her bedroom walls. What she's been metabolising over the last seventy-two hours—between the ceiling tiles, which are doing the bare minimum, the ceiling tiles again, and, for variety, the concrete, projecting no such aspirations—is that Deutzia white is just white, and white is not really a colour so much as it is the absence of one.

At some point, she went through the considerable trouble of selecting the same paint swatch as whatever benighted custodian was tasked with the aesthetic vision of this particular facility. She chose it because it felt clean, noninvasive, and neutral; as it turns out, that is more or less the design philosophy of a jail cell.

That's the thing about Irony. She is personified, and she is laughing at you, even when she is the only witness.

Unlike Y/N’s bedroom, there is a single metal bench (no cushion) and a lidless stainless-steel toilet angled for indecent exposure. The county-issued jumpsuit smells vaguely of a hospital after the patient has died and does absolutely nothing for her skin tone. This is not the primary problem with orange jumpsuits, but it's the one she chose to fixate on because the other problems are too large.

One week closer to AP exams. Her college counsellor is probably having an aneurysm. He has been treating her life trajectory like it's personally offensive since she chose not to apply early decision to Yale. This will give him actual heart failure.

The woman in the cell next to Y/N’s has been humming the same agonising tune for two hours. It's driving her slowly insane, but she can't bring herself to tell her to stop, because she sounds like she's the one maintaining sanity through ritual. The humming is hers. Such silence would be Y/N’s. They're both clutching their respective coping mechanisms and neither has the moral high ground.

Y/N’s been reflecting. Primarily about how she ended up here, which is the sort of reflection her father wants, but also about how cell walls feel colder on the left side than the right. How teenage mistakes feel like they matter more when they're written in abstruse legalese. How being eighteen feels exactly seventeen, but with voting rights and the capacity to sign your own arrest paperwork.

When that became tedious, she spent her newfound solitude renaming Deutzia white (Morning Guilt, Midmorning Guilt, Afternoon Guilt. Now, Guilt after Dinner), and trying to hate her father efficiently—and succeeding, mostly, in intervals—although it keeps folding into self-hatred, origami of shame. Ten-thousand-dollar bail is the balance of her tennis camp fund. Dad could fax the cheque between conference calls. He isn't, because consequence is expensive only when someone you love pays it.

The opium-smooth voice of a guard calls, "Up and at 'em, Princeton. You're being released," before he fumbles keys that rattle like tin bones. She contemplates refusing—polite hunger strike until her father arrives to scowl her out—but lets the lock slide without protest. Turns out resolve collapses quickly when the alternative is internment.

Y/N’s been pining for this moment, but now that it's here, it feels like being told she's being moved to a different kind of incarceration. The guard marches her past a series of doors identical to the one she just left. From behind one, a grumbled lullaby in Spanish. At the release desk, he dumps a clear plastic bag onto a counter. Her phone, wallet, keys, tennis bracelet—a mockery of her own social class. She signs her name four separate times, making an effort to keep the loops loose and illegible.

The clothes she wore that night—a soft linen skirt and blouse she should have chosen more carefully given how it would photograph—arrive in a different bag that someone labelled with her name in permanent marker. The guard tells her where she can change. It's a small room with a bench bolted to the wall and a mirror that definitely observes. The skirt hangs differently now, remembering what happened while she was wearing it. Just down the hall, a small vestibule opens into institutional law-abiding Tuesday.

"Congratulations, you're free. Don't drink and drive—also don't drink and park. Accidents cause people." The guard tries for jocular, lands profoundly short of it. She mutters thanks, as good breeding conquers contempt.

The waiting room is everything the Deutzia white walls were not. Sunlit, for one thing. Windows that show actual sky rather than cyanine approximation. Couches that have been sat on by people both more and less fortunate than her. She scans for Dad's bespoke cashmere, his exacting posture, eager to explain how she's disappointed him categorically. He's not there. Nobody's there. Just a room expecting someone who isn't coming, and her, standing in it wearing the weekend's mistakes.

She powers on her phone, but the screen blinks weakly. A dead, pensive brick. The polished brass timepiece above the window displays 9:17 p.m.; the world has continued scoring its evenings without her. After day two, she swallowed her pride and asked what became of her car. Impounded. She pictures it caged behind a chain-link fence, its taillight busted, her Spotify paused mid-croon. Functionally, she's stranded, and stranded feels different when you've spent three days in captivity. Less romantic than it sounds in novels.

The room isn't that big, but he's not that quiet. Charlie from that county thing Dad did last spring. Marcus, who handled the stock transfer. Just another eternal element in her peripheral vision, yet this one does not stay peripheral; her head lifts like a dog's as expensive Oxford leather squeaks linoleum with no hurry. The man approaching has been assembled by a committee for sexual disorientation. Tall, civilised scruff, dark curls brushing collar—not long enough to render as careless, but long enough to remind you other rules apply to him.

His top button is undone, forecasting restraint rather than imprecision. Ink creeps just above collar and cuffs—a cross, an anchor, three-leaf clover—and his eyes are green. Wild green. Mid-thirties, maybe thirty-seven, but impossible to pin because "tricenarian" looks like a decision he made rather than the inevitable. He smells like cedar and cold air, absurd in here.

Y/N’s seen this man before. Not often, but enough. The country club when her father was angling for something. Always on the perimeter of her family’s empire strategy, never quite in the middle. He stops two feet away, his hands tucked casually in his pockets as though he frequents jail exit lounges.

"Y/N." His voice is soft grain whisky, neat, no ice. "Your father asked me to collect you."

She draws herself straighter, some dumb tether of posture. "That's exactly what someone says right before the trunk."

The pause isn't hesitation. It's him choosing delivery. "Harry Styles. I'm a friend of your father's. We've met."

Harry Styles, a name that has skated across benefit galas, firm letterhead, her father's mouth casually attached to superlatives like "rabid dog" or "absolute shark" but always with undercurrent respect. The one who makes problems disappear.

"I don't recall."

"You do." His head tilts; the overhead light slides along the jawline shadow. "I'm afraid your father is still in Tokyo. He asked if I'd step in—legal representation and retrieval."

She swallows the indictment. Something makes her skin feel too aware of its own imprudent boundaries. "You're my lawyer?"

"At least one of them."

"And you just happened to be available on a Tuesday night after nine?"

"I bill by the hour, so yes." If humour were a dessert, this would be the unsweetened dark chocolate someone leaves for those who've outgrown frosting. "Car's outside. I'll take you home."

Wooden benches at confirmation creak behind them, but the memory tinged with pity fades the moment Harry—Mr. Styles?—opens the exit door. Wind, city-early-April, slides across her cheeks like cool silk on a sunburn. She follows him because tenacity, while admirable, would grant her nothing but another night of sleeping on cement.

His car is conspicuousness disguised as lavish discretion, yet he opens the passenger door as an absent courtesy, suddenly indifferent to opulence. Y/N slides in, and the seat assimilates to her back, as if anticipating her arrival. The door closes, he rounds the hood in a controlled whipcord motion, and settles behind the wheel.

He doesn't ask for her address.

They pull out smoothly, no engine noise, just forwards motion. They pass the courthouse, then the jail again from the outside. Seeing it from free air is surreal—the building looks designed to be intentionally forgettable. Her fingerprints are probably still drying somewhere inside.

"You didn't kill anyone," he starts, his tone a gavel. "That's where your luck begins and ends."

"Comforting."

Harry ignores the sarcasm. "Your charges: underage consumption of alcohol, driving while intoxicated, and reckless driving. In ascending order of complication."

He stares straight ahead as he rattles off the itemised list of her moral failings. Professional competence hypnotically wears a human face; the same features that look amiable in candid become punishing when discussing your immediate future.

"Your licence is suspended, automatic on the DWI. The reckless driving is the problem—that takes this from a first-time stupid decision to a possible criminal record." His fingers drum once on the steering wheel, an economy of movement that suggests everything he's not letting himself express. "Prosecutors see reckless, they know you weren't just drunk; you were driving like a drunk person. Different category entirely."

Y/N doesn't remember driving recklessly. What she does remember is the headlights on the wrong side of the road fluorescing her windshield, her chest aching with the epiphany that this was how people died—other people—and still somehow convincing herself she was two seconds from sobering up entirely.

"Is it the 'totally fucked' category?"

"Depends how much the DA wants to make a point. But whatever happens will be significantly less punishment than you deserve."

Two summers ago, there was a headline: Greenwich teen walks on vehicular manslaughter, probation and community service, judge cites promising future. The State loves redemption narratives, especially for adolescents with no priors. In this circle, consequences are a facade—anything is permitted; it's simply a matter of how much it's going to cost.

"Prosecutors respond well to narratives," he continues, merging onto the highway as the traffic reorganises around him. "We're selling you as a bright kid, Ivy-bound, made one mistake, but no pattern of behaviour and absolutely zero reason to believe this will ever happen again."

Bright kid (easy). Ivy League bound (check). One mistake (stretching it). She hears what's between the lines—the negotiation happening already in the space where this goes away or doesn't. She'll acknowledge fault in open court. She'll say the phrase out loud like she means it. Afterwards, she'll smile pleasantly while photographers she can't punch quantify her disgrace for the town-website notch on their bedposts.

"So, it's fine then?"

"No. It's not fine." His eyes track to the side, an antique projector of contempt. "But I'm telling the DA you're not like this, so you have to actually not be like this. Not so much as a tardy slip between now and resolution."

She ponders what "not being like this" entails for someone whose primary problem-solving strategy is typically "try harder to be perfect." There's probably an allusion to be unveiled, but she's too distracted by how his hands move on the steering wheel. Long fingers, deliberate placement. The tattoo on his wrist isn't delicate—the anchor seems to pulse, straining against the hold. Restraint is a secondary skill.

"I will be a caricature of impeccable."

The projector rolls, a three-sixty of brazen indignation. "You'll be good?"

Good is being quoted—a side comment in italics, patiently waiting for annotation. Somewhere behind his iris the same word is spelt in black lace: good girl, good job—arbiters and belts. As if being good is optional but preferred, as if it's something someone might ask for specifically, as if he wants a demonstration. It's a line of inquisition that sounds flirtatious if you aren't careful with your tone, and he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

"Yes," she says, the words tasting like submission and anticipation in tandem. "I can be good."

"Yes sir," he corrects. "I'll believe it even more when you say it like that."

The seats seem suddenly warmer despite the climate control remaining unchanged; the air thins, lurching towards something more illegal than what they're already discussing. His eyes flick to hers—one quick assessment—then back to the road like he's done nothing more interesting than check blind spots.

"Yes, sir. I'll be good."

"Better." The approval lands faintly frustrated—as if he didn't want it to feel so pleasing.

The houses are getting larger as they trace the spine of old money through the city. Most are set back from the street behind hedges or stone walls, their grand charades lit like museum exhibits. These are the types of houses that have names written on bronze plaques, though people stopped using them thirty years ago. Somewhere in here is hers, though defining "hers" feels increasingly private between the two passengers.

The road curves into the secluded area where the stop signs become more decorative than functional. When they roll past the stone pillars that mark her family’s property, the security gate swings open—the guards have his plates logged and approved. This feels like information she is not supposed to know.

"Your father's flight lands Monday," he says, following the long, gravel path to the house. "I'll have everything ready by then."

Y/N can't place if she's dreading that meeting for its contents or company, only that she's grateful to confront it wearing clean clothes and sleeping in a veritable bed.

The last stretch of driveway feels insurmountable, winding through landscaping that has never witnessed a member of her family being returned from jail. Floodlights illuminate the colonial brick house—three stories, predictable; white-columned portico, executive; black shutters bracketing windows, punctuation marks in firm rejection of any original thought. From the passenger seat, it appears as a production she inexplicably climbed out of, now complicated by explorations children aren't supposed to have.

Harry parks precisely parallel to the front steps, not quite blocking the entrance but close enough to broadcast procurement if the Johnsons were feeling particularly observant. The engine idle is the only sound in the million-dollar neighbourhood quiet; the automatic locks haven't released yet, so she is still his passenger until he decides she's not.

"Thank you for the ride, Mr. Styles."

He nods, the soft click of locks unzipping their détente. It's not until she's pushing open the front door that she realises he's still behind her, stepping inside without waiting for invitation. The chandelier above the foyer hangs, a constellation the wrong side of bail-release has shamed into silence.

"Car keys, please."

"Car keys?" she laughs. "Why? It's impounded. Unless you're wary I'll hot-wire the tow truck, in which case, I'm sure you could recommend less obtrusive felonies."

He doesn't smile, or even acknowledge the humour. He stands there in her foyer like he was installed along with the chandelier. "I'm aware. That's why I'm going to retrieve it for you."

"So this is about theft risk and daily ransom fees—not a subterfuge, then?"

"Bit of both, in case you forget every casual promise you've made in the last half-hour. Daddy’s orders."

If it came from her father, it must be praxis. She surrenders the set, hanging from the balls-for-all keychain that was ludicrous enough sophomore year. He accepts them without critique, although his eyebrow tilts. "There are at least sixteen other vehicles spread across this acreage. Unless your father has taken up eccentric lawn sculpture, they all start. I'll need those too."

Of course. Because temptation doesn't just wear the licence plate of the Porsche currently enjoying government custody.

From behind, there's a scuffle of soft-soled shoes that know this floor's every creak and avoid it out of respect. Alana appears from what her father persists in calling the "service corridor" despite her polite requests that he stop calling it that.

"Y/N! You're home." Her eyes flick to Harry, absorbing his ostentatious presence. "And Mr. Styles. Would you like a drink?"

"I won't be staying." An amalgam of dismay and relief, exemplified. "But thank you, Alana. Do you know where Dominic keeps his car keys?"

"He claims my own set isn't sufficient proof of caution."

Alana disappears, wordless and without protest—she's used to stranger requests at stranger hours. Her father once had a French diplomat's aide call at 3 AM because his boss was having an existential crisis about American butter standards and required immediate imported guidance.

"You're quite comfortable giving orders in other people's houses," she observes as Alana rustles around in what sounds like every drawer at once. "Is that natural talent? Do you teach seminars?"

He turns towards her fully, the movement as prepensive as a closing argument. "It's a talent derived from necessity. Usually when someone ends up in my custody, they're not looking for subtlety."

"And I'm looking for..."

"You, Y/N, are looking for someone to make you feel like this isn't your fault. But it is. Every decision you made three nights ago was yours. The good ones, the bad ones, the spectacularly stupid ones. Own them, or repeat them."

It's the tone that does it—like he's speaking from a place where choices aren't theoretical and repercussions aren't neologisms. Technically, it was Sarah who bought the tequila. Technically, the gas station bathroom was occupied. And technically, her APUSH tutor cancelled last minute, leaving her unattended and without her usual weekend obligations. So, no. It is not her fault. Except Y/N is a stickler for semantics, and even she can accept that technically does not mean actually.

"That's terribly helpful," she manages. "Truly, my self-awareness is transformed."

"Your self-awareness is shit," he says without heat. "But it's a curable condition."

Alana returns with a small ring of keys that looks like it belongs to a used car dealership. There's the Bentley, the European convertible her father bought during his Italy obsession, the vintage Mercedes supposedly owned by a Kennedy, the practical Range Rover, a motorcycle she didn't know they had. Alana hands them to Harry with the solemnity of a Eucharist. He drops them into his pocket, probably designed for this exact purpose.

"Thank you," he says, addressing Alana. "Dominic's not keen on investing in a follow-up performance."

Alana has gone very still. Watching this man stand in the house and speak to Y/N like she's actually capable of hearing difficult truths is novel terrain. Most people here address her hubris, or don't address her at all.

"Why don't you get some sleep, Y/N?" Alana offers. It is at this moment she realises the magnitude of her fatigue—and that three days of jail does something to your spine; it bends in ways you can't control.

Harry adds, "Best behaviour, please."

"Yes, sir," she says quietly. Maybe the novelty evaporated, maybe she wanted more of whatever it started, but the accidental intimacy turns flame-tip.

The stairs stretch above her like they're considering whether to allow passage. She must look like a stranger—a miscreant—because they have never witnessed her like this. No, that's wrong. They've witnessed everything; they're just very discreet.

Her bedroom door opens onto the same gallery it always was. Deutzia white walls, painted by someone her father paid to never speak of them.

IN LIMINE

{at the threshold}

"Remind me where you're going to university."

Harry is not making polite conversation. He is pining for a foothold, an angle for the judge, or perhaps a disqualifier for himself. That’s the purpose of this meeting—exhume, sculpt, condition—the holy trinity of fraudulent reformation that’s meant to replace what Y/N is with what she should be. Y/N is not offended by this. Everyone does it. It’s like deep cleaning only the rooms guests will see.

“Cornell. Is that my character witness?”

“It certainly doesn’t hurt.”

He flicks a page of her file, blinking at the details. He remains perfectly stoic, but every so often his prudence bleeds through—a slight furrow in his brow, a piffling eye roll. The man has tells, and Y/N has excellent retention. He has presented winning her case as an impossible feat, a labyrinthine negotiation requiring considerable goodwill from the prosecutor, but she has read the precedents, and she knows mercy is as certain as sunrise.

The hyperbole is not a lack of confidence, but rather a pedagogical extraction of contrition. If Y/N shows no remorse as is, he will engineer the conditions until she produces it naturally.

Some may call this manipulation. Harry would call it lawyering.

“Your blood alcohol came in at .11. Legal limit’s .08, but I may be able to get it downgraded.”

“To?”

He shrugs, the leather of his chair creaking. “DWAI, Driving While Ability Impaired. It’s a traffic infraction. Higher points on your licence, but no background check complications.”

“So a misdemeanour?” It’s less than that. Follows you like a speeding ticket and vanishes within three years if you don’t repeat the mistake.

“Not a felony.”

The same way sleeping isn't death. The ceiling of his reassurance, apparently.

“You’ll voluntarily enroll in alcohol education before you’re even required to.” Imperative disguised as suggestion, Juris Doctor knows best. “And community service—I’ll coordinate with whatever organisation fits the bill.”

Y/N has never been one to volunteer anything—not her time, not her attention, not her parking spot—but submission is a requisite for absolution, and absolution is the last lacuna in her otherwise unimpeachable portfolio.

“And the reckless driving?”

His hands stall, pointer finger tapping the black-and-white mugshot. Her own debased bingo card, captured by a somnolent booking officer. New, probably. Or at least, new to her antics. Crimson, black-rimmed eyes rebut, but there’s the tiniest hint of a smirk she genuinely thought she was suppressing. It’s instinctual, as automatic as breathing or blinking. “Candid” and “camera” are not a natural pairing in her experience.

“Most likely, DA won’t play ball on that one.” Two truths and a lie, delivered with the conviction of three truths. “You were going 83 in a 35. That's a misdemeanour. Comes with possible probation, mandatory licence suspension longer than the DWI alone would carry, and Cornell could–in theory–rescind admission if it hits your record before you enroll.”

His phone vibrates on his desk—he glances at it, but doesn’t reach for it. The screen illuminates his face in ghost-light, revealing the affect he wears when he’s building something inside himself, how other people build things outside. She notices he never asks questions directly, but makes observations and waits.

“I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt.”

“I meant your legal proceedings, not your academic standing.” His assistant trails down the corridor, stopping right in front of the brass name plate. Harry shakes his head no. No—what? No, cut your losses. No, push it to Monday. No, move the reservation. No, cancel the car. The assistant closes the door, courtesy or consequence.

He leans back in his chair, arms perpendicular, head tilted for inquiry. The starter shot has fired; the only wonder is who will make it to the finish line first. “Absolute best-case scenario, reckless driving gets reduced to a lesser charge, maybe careless driving. It’s like the DWAI, carries points and a fine but nothing criminal.”

“You really should have led with that.”

“The caveat is: you represent me as much as I do you. I negotiate with the DA using my reputation. If I promise you're worth the charity and you prove otherwise, I look foolish."

She surmised, even with his histrionics, this was a formality, a foregone conclusion. Harry's allegiance with her father has made it personal—confounding—and personal is its own jurisdiction, but the dynamics are, at least, transparent. Dominic is in Tokyo, and the discipline made the trip without him; Harry is the intermediary, except intermediaries aren't supposed to mean it.

“Does that happen often?”

He acknowledges this with a small nod that might be pleasure or meagre employment politics. “More often than you would think.”

She crosses her legs, over-under, his eyes hone the mugshot. “Perhaps you should exercise discernment.”

“And what—” he flips the page like it’s gone up in flames— “do you think I’m doing right now, Y/N?”

The file has three more pages. He's not going to reach them. "So is my obedience for you or for the court?"

“It’s for the court, and for yourself. I’m merely the third signature line.”

Nobody who was actually the third signature line would imply any awareness of being more than that. Cognisance is a conflict of interest.

“Do all your cases pertain to some form of quid pro quo?”

His lips quirk up, dimples making their debut. “You will soon come to learn all things in life pertain to a quid pro quo.”

Equivalence is a prerequisite, interchangeable in value, function, or meaning. He is domineering in both function and meaning; value is the only column left to Y/N, and she has always been good at being valuable. Attention, for example. Undivided, unconditional, even if unrequited, is a reverent phenomenon.

“You’re supposed to get me off,” she says, testing boundaries. “That’s what you said. If I’m good, you’ll get me off.”

“I said I'd believe it more. I didn't say to what degree it’d have utility,” he acknowledges, glancing at her sideways. “But that would be a different conversation between us than this one.”

"Is that what you’re in pursuit of?” This is either humour or petulance and Y/N’s always chosen the more useful option. “A man so enamoured with compliance becomes the authority. Is it virtue, vanity, or a simple obsession with control?"

He returns to the first page of the file, circles the mugshot, and adorns it with an exclamation point. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

“It’s how the interesting people find each other. I consider it my most redeeming quality.”

He sits up straighter, posturing his stringency. Hanging behind Y/N is a Richter—the first contrivance she noticed when she walked in, after the absence of personal photos and the visitor chairs that inspired the hostile architecture downtown. Like all art inspired before the twenty-first century, you don’t have to squint for the meaning. The paint was grazed into surrender, vigorously shoved rather than gently coaxed by bristles. Lawlessness, guided without resistance, or fortitude. Harry’s eyes track where the scarlet and cobalt bleed into Tyrian, scouting. He seems to have forgotten—paint isn’t sentient. It never stood a chance.

“I’m not obsessed with anything but resolution.”

“The process doesn’t interest you?” Her eyes narrow, filling the answer before she’s asked the question. “You don’t want to see me on my knees, begging?”

The dimples demand an encore; his lips curl, a slow smile spreading despite his attempt to conceal it. “It seems you’re the one in pursuit of something more. Don’t you think I'm a bit old for you?"

A leading question, designed to affirm or deny, irrefutably. Thankfully, semantics are, again, a divine endowment.

“That’s not what I asked. And that’s not a no.”

“There are bar association rules about this that exist for good reason.”

Still, not a no. “I didn’t take the bar.”

“And you’ll never have the chance, if you’re underrepresented and charged.”

Y/N is privy to catastrophising, too. Fear is her most considerable motivator; at present, it has taken an extended leave of absence. She finds herself studying the way his shirt collar sits against his throat, how the top button creates this angular shadow that’s somehow both strict and inviting. Much like the night that acquainted the two of them, she is not thinking about deliverables, or reputations. She is not thinking at all.

RES IPSA

{the thing speaks for itself}

Y/N’s piano teacher taught her two manners of refrain. One: abstention. To resist the impulse, desist before the inevitable. Two: recurrence. Repetition, returning without apology. Harry’s quid pro quo had her faithful to the first. In time, her case closed, she thought again about his top button, and proceeded to reconsider.

The refrain is the theme—the thesis of a piece, the part that gets smudged in your ear and reveals itself between waking and sleeping, linking one idea to the next. Like O Fortuna, or Boléro, or literally anything by the Beatles. Indelible, impossible to dislodge, eject, or replace.

Take Mr. Styles, as Y/N calls him, although he is Harry in her head. Harry is the thesis made flesh. Since the hearing, every night as she lies, she envisions him beside her, his deft fingers tracing the column of her throat, teasing against her collarbone as his lips savour hers. His tongue coaxes between short gasps as his hand trails lower, lower, lower. Her legs part, imbued, as he tugs the elastic of her underwear, finding his way beneath.

She fathoms his touch is like cool water on the back of the neck—astonishing, then ambient. Gentle fingers wading in arousal, steadily circling her clit. Each paltry, unrestrained moan swallowed with a kiss, a hum, a praise of “good girl,” as the pleasure coils taut in her belly. He laughs, because even in Y/N’s own imagination, he finds delight in her surrender.

Lust is a poor choice of word. Too simple, too common. This is more like a geological event happening inside her, something tectonic and patient and unstoppable.

So this—standing here with her palm against the cool door handle of his office—is not about her not thinking. Rather, that she is having the same thought, over and over, ad infinitum, like a pendulum returning to centre.

Y/N was going to leave it be. She was. The refrain had been playing for two weeks solid, and she had every intention of letting it fade into background noise, as all desires do if you starve them long enough. But if she doesn’t do this, the fantasy will keep growing, and fantasies that grow ignored become worse than reality; they become unassailable. Her piano teacher also taught her that there are few things in this life worth being unassailable.

The handle turns without resistance. She’s greeted once more by the Richter painting; black smears appearing vindictive, vaguely self-congratulatory chartreuse. She glances right, where Harry is standing with his office phone pressed to his ear, absorbed. The sleeves of the burgundy dress shirt he wears are rolled past the elbows, exposing an atlas of ink that retires into fabric she wants to strip back.

He looks up as she enters, but the look is not one of surprise; it’s foreboding. Harry doesn’t do surprise—or perhaps he doesn’t like surprise. Y/N will soon find out.

“Mm,” he says into the phone. “No, that’s not going to work. Tell them we’ll take the deposition Thursday or we’ll file the motion. Those are the options.” He pauses. “Yes, both are terrible. That’s why they’re the options.”

The door latches shut behind her; stillness expands to fill the room. The sound is microscopic but docks leaden. She feels the tap in the tendon behind her wrist. He sets the phone down, and then his eyes find hers, reading the fine print. She is in here now. There’s no accidental exit, or pretending she wandered into the wrong office looking for the water fountain.

“Y/N.” No rising inflection. He never uses it when he knows the answer.

“Hello, Mr. Styles.”

She stays by the door, because progression feels like a commitment, and she is suddenly reneging. From here, the desk is a cordial episode before the refrain. From here, she can still pretend this is an act of social decorum, something her father has instilled in her to do when someone has done her a professional favour.

“The court shouldn’t be reaching out with anything new. I’d have been notified.”

Her thumb brushes forefinger, flicking hesitation beyond. “They haven’t.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“No issue. I came to say thank you.”

His eyes do something that allies a narrowing and a roll, the facial equivalent of an ellipsis. “Most clients email.”

“I prefer in-person gratitude.”

While she doesn’t know if Harry does surprise, she does know, incontestably, that he doesn’t fill silence. Most people do—they rush into the gaps with small talk or nervous laughter or questions that aren’t really questions. He lets it fester, boiling, until you’re the one who feels compelled to fill it. It’s a lawyer trick. It’s also, she suspects, a Harry trick.

But since her sanctioned foray, as it conjugated in her head, she’s learnt that silence is only uncomfortable if you’re trying to hide something in it.

So she lets it fester too.

“You came all the way to the city,” he repeats, slowly, testing the words for structural integrity, “to say thank you.”

“Well, you talked the DA down to 50 hours of community service and a fine.” A parody of righteousness, her father celebrated with a round of golf and Macallan Sherry Oak. “So, yes.”

“That’s all.”

“That is all.”

His weight shifts from his left foot to his right, and his fingers tap against the desk in contemplation. He’s reading her. Trying to, at least.

“What are you really doing here, Y/N?”

Her hand finds the tie of her dress. “I told you, I wanted to say thank you.”

It’s the colour of a swimming pool at dusk, and it wraps around her how a river swathes a sunken pebble. This dress is not frequent in her rotation, because one swift motion and you’re nude, intention be damned. (Ask her how she knows.)

The fabric glides off her back, relieved to be free of obligation, and gathers at her feet into a puddle. Her heels click as she step forwards, abandoning any and all nuance.

It’s a Trojan horse. What’s more pertinent than the dress is what it’s meant to conceal: black lace, a set she bought at a store she’d never been in before, from an associate who seemed to figure exactly what she was planning and approved, dimly. The bra is strikingly transparent, letting her nipples peek through, and the thong is cut to sit high on her hips, magenta detailing reinforced along the trim. Between her thighs, she’s already soaked.

Harry doesn’t look away, which is saying something. He doesn’t pretend he’s not looking, which is saying even more. But he also doesn’t move. He stays perfectly still, aside from his left hand, which reaches behind him and yanks the cord for the blinds. They descend in a rapid whir, cutting off the post meridiem sun in increments that make the room dance with furtive shadows.

She checks his hand—no ring. She’s checked each time she’s seen him. If this were the time for it to premiere, she’d have cut it off.

He squints, short-lived. “You’re cute.”

Cute. Cute as in, adorable. Cute as in, something a child does that amuses an adult. Cute as in, not serious, or tempting, and certainly not worth the energy of a substantial response.

Neurotically, he turns away and begins rearranging the desk. He closes his laptop, slides it into a drawer. Gathers a heap of files into a neat little stack. Collects the pens and returns them to the holder. Y/N is not disrupting anything he’d struggle to put back in order.

“Cute? That’s your assessment?”

He glances over his shoulder, the bare minimum of validation for someone standing functionally naked before him. “You’ve got a crush. It’s normal, and I’m flattered, really. But we’ve been over this. It’s not happening.”

“Yeah, when I was your client.” She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them because her breasts push together, and right now, she’s not trying to be lewd, she’s trying to be understood. “Which I’m not anymore.”

“No,” he agrees, sounding just as definitive as he did in court. “But I’m still thirty-seven. You’re still eighteen. And I’m still close friends with your father, who would—”

“I didn’t plan to tell him.”

“And I don’t plan to tell him about this.”

It suddenly occurs to her that the refrain may have been the quid pro quo.

Her dress is on the floor and her nipples are visible through her bra and the only praise she’s getting for her seduction attempt is related to the production value. Something resembling shame blooms behind her cortex, but she declines to evaluate further, because that would be confessing that this has deviated beyond repair from her itinerary.

“So the ethical consideration—”

“Is one of several.”

“It’s not unprecedented.”

“No. It’s just generally a bad idea.” Men are notorious for their bad ideas, surely this one in particular is licenced. “And even if neither of those were issues, it’d still be cruel.”

Cruel is less dismissive than cute, somehow, although it’s just as much a rejection. She doesn’t understand what he means, but she understands that he means it.

“Cruel to whom?”

“To you.”

He rounds the desk the way a planet orbits and leans against it, crossing one foot over the other. They are two feet closer than before, but miles away from consensus.

Y/N’s heart hammers against her ribs, shoving her to retreat or advance. Advancement implies achievement. Achievement is relative to success. If she looks at it that way, this is a recess, not a verdict.

“You don’t find me attractive.” An observation extending opportunity to mince words. She takes a step, teasing the elastic of the thong. “Shame. Because I clearly find you very much so.”

Harry rests his hands behind him on the desk, unintimidated, for appraisal. His gaze falls to the mesh panelling that veils her heat, blemished with slick evidence. This has mutated into a standoff between two people who seldom welcome defeat. One of them is about to have a new experience.

“Turn around for me.”

Her lips twitch a smirk. Perhaps, between now and his laundry list of objections, he has learnt the value of switching sides. She turns, painfully slow, a ruby in a display case pining to be scored, as he beholds every curve of what the lace doesn't cover.

It’s more reverent than she anticipated. She expected to feel like prey, but as his eyes track the small of her back, the smooth, plump skin of her arse, Harry is preoccupied with maintaining his restraint. She turns back to face him, exhaling the fear that, even still, this conversation will end the way he presented it: her dressed, him unchanged, the hierarchy intact.

“If it’s validation you want, fine. I’ll play along.” Y/N notes, with satisfaction, the argument straining against his trousers. “You’ve got a mouth that needs managing, an arse I’d kill to mark up, and I’d fuck you ‘til you'd never dare walking into someone's office like this again.”

“Then why don’t you?”

He briefly lifts his hips, accommodating the argument. “Because you couldn’t take it.”

A challenge cloaked in concern. She scoffs. “I can handle myself, thank you.”

“But you can’t handle me.”

Boys Y/N’s age—she calls them boys, because that’s what they are—are lacking in both the sapience and the self-control that makes refusal possible. But Harry is more mature. He has a type (presumably), and standards (evidently), and an acquired taste for something specific (unknown). Abstaining from the convenient means sex—for him—is not a hunger that accepts alternatives, and attraction alone is not grounds for rationale. That he could want her and still say no only makes her want to dismantle his principles.

“But you’ve thought about it.”

“Yes.”

A mind without bars entertains both, and while he’s disciplined, he’s also not a monk.

“So, in your fantasy, could I take it? Or was the fantasy that I couldn’t?”

He closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and exhales just the same. Any other context, Y/N would marvel in the triumph of pinning a man against his own logic. But in this one, she is mostly starting to grow concerned that the lingerie is losing its novelty.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says, flicking his eyes open, a match struck and caught. “It’s not an insult, just the truth. You’ve had sex, I’m guessing, but you haven’t had this. You’d get more than you bargained for, and then you’d be in my office, crying, and I’d be the prick who made the princess cry.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”

“I’m making one assumption.” The light tosses his shadow against the wall behind him, staggering and regnant. “That you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the one assumption that’s never wrong.”

“That is also an assumption.”

“Y/N.” He says her name like he’s reading the riot act, scolding and unimpressed. “I’m serious. I don’t share control. I'd take what I wanted, and you'd be expected to give it.”

The feeling of wanting to be used—immorally, exquisitely, used—is not one she often entertains. But she wants him to put her over his knee and remind her how to behave, to make her regret every sardonic thing she ever said to him, to give her something to actually be sorry for. It’s not control that she’s after; she can find control anywhere. No—what she wants, for once, is for him to make her.

“I told you I’d be good. I’ve been good, haven’t I?”

He laughs, puncturing what’s left of her self-righteousness. “You haven’t been anything but the brat you always are. You’re so used to getting whatever you want, to wearing people down until they give in. If that’s what you think of me, you’ve read me wrong. I’m not doing that.”

She tilts her head, courage seeping out. “Then what would you do?”

His face stalls, the exasperated crease in his brow turning spellbound. “What would I do? I'd put you right on the edge and keep you there. I’d make you beg ‘til you cried, and I wouldn't let you cum unless you earned it. And I’d be pleased to do it, too.”

The wetness between her thighs is getting worse, a slow ache that’s forcing her knees together. It’s becoming unbearable, much like—she’d imagine—the argument in Harry’s trousers, growing into a critical, needs-attention obtrusion. And, no. She doesn’t believe it’s attributed exclusively to the arousal of saying all of this aloud.

Naivety is mistaking someone’s reluctance for patience, or resistance for denial. Y’N’s never been cited as naive—not by anyone of importance—but as she considers his bulge, the realisation strikes her like lightning: this is a game of chess, a war of attrition. Their perversions are selfsame, indistinguishable from each other. He wants her insolent just as much as he wants to be the one who makes insolence concede.

She stares at his lips and wonders what he might taste like. “What makes you think you can make me cum?”

The corner of his mouth lifts. Mint, she decides. Or cinnamon. “Please. You’re practically dripping into your shoes, and I haven’t even touched you.”

She looks down, where desire has migrated, then back at him. Her cheeks are burning. Not with embarrassment—or not only with embarrassment, but with impatience. “Well, are you going to?”

He runs his tongue along his teeth. The clock ticks, quarter-til, but time is the last thing on their minds. This will take as long as it will take.

Two taps on the mahogany, and he shifts left, liberating space beside him. “Come here.”

She’s standing in front of him before she considers the request that’s not so much a request as it is a command. Today, he smells like vanilla bean and tobacco leaf, which would be intoxicating if she weren’t already incapacitated by this very moment.

His hand reaches out, grasping her bare hip. After this much anticipation, the subtle touch is enough to make her legs consider buckling beneath her.

“Can you be quiet?”

She nods, then remembers she might be doing so too eagerly and stops. “Yeah, I’ll be quiet.”

He hums, disapproving. “I thought you told me you’d be good—what did we talk about, again?”

The words spill out like they’ve been preprogrammed in her brain. “Yes, sir.”

Her arse makes contact with the wood as he, without warning, lifts her onto the desk. Suddenly, he is standing between her, bracing her knees, and she is very, very quiet. He glances down at her slick heat, then at her lips, and then steps back, letting his hands fall to his sides.

“Touch yourself. I want to watch.”

Y/N quit piano for one reason and one reason only: performing is a spectator sport, and she has stage fright worse than death. Playing alone, or alongside someone, was fine. Playing for someone was not, because it’s an invitation for scrutiny; everyone is thinking of her phrasing, or her posture, or—especially in this scenario—what her face is doing. The moment she became the entertainment while others simply observed, something in her stuttered and refused.

Irony, who is personified, is no longer the only witness.

“What if I said no?”

This does not appease Harry. He looks at her like a door labelled “unlocked” that refuses to open. “I’d point out that’s not a ‘yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir.” The sir rolls off her tongue asphalt-slick; she feels its acid etch her initials to her ribs.

She parts her legs, bracing on the heel of one palm. Harry watches, intrigued, as she trails her hand down her stomach, rubbing herself over the drenched cloth. She wants to touch herself, to let him watch her unravel just by the sight of him alone, but her hips jerk, a small pivot seeking friction, and then she stiffens.

“Look at that.” His voice is sly and taunting, making her stomach drop. “Someone’s gone shy on me.”

“I’m not shy.”

“No. Not usually.” He watches her fingers hover at the waistband, reluctant to commit. “Do you want to stop?”

“No—” She clears her throat, thinking twice. “No, sir.”

He crosses his arms, the fabric of his sleeves pulling taut across his shoulders. “Good. Go on, then. Touch yourself.”

Checkmate demands the king to fall.

Her fingers skim into her panties, and before she even grazes her clit, her hand is drenched. It would be embarrassing if you completely bypassed the detail of her being naked on her lawyer’s desk. As she circles her fingers against her clit, the pleasure swirls up her spine in a torrent so compelling she has to bite her cheek to keep from making a sound.

She wishes it were his hands. That’s the thought that won’t leave her, the one that makes this both tremendous and substandard. Their long fingers and the anchor tattoo that strains against his skin, the one she’s been staring at as they flex in suspense. His hands instead of hers, his touch instead of this pale imitation.

So she watches him, watching her. He doesn’t blink much. His eyes track the movement beneath the lace, the syncopation as she lures herself closer and closer to the brink. He keeps his arms crossed, gripping his bicep with enough pressure to make his knuckles grow pallid. Y/N tries to suppress a desperate sound—the same sounds that would get swallowed by her pillow at two in the morning when she’s alone with nobody to hear her wanting something she shouldn’t—but it comes out without permission, and his lower lip catches between his teeth.

His belt comes undone like a sentence being passed. The leather slides through the loops of his trousers until it falls to the floor with a heaviness that seems to shake the room. Y/N watches it land, coiled on the floor like a hibernating animal.

Her heart drubs persistently as he unbuttons his trousers. The zipper descends, and then his hands are at his hips, pushing the fabric down. His erection strains against his boxers, a thick line pressed against the dark cotton, and as he palms himself through the fabric, a low, raspy groan escapes him.

Settling in the space between her knees, his hand finds her chin. Steady fingers tilt her head back, and then his mouth is on her neck, and she has to bite down on every noise trying to climb out of her because her neck is her core weakness, her absolute undoing. His lips move against her skin, warm and soft, and then his mouth opens and he sucks—merciless—right below her ear. Another gratified moan slips out before she can catch it in time.

“Fuck,” she whispers as his hand grasps her hair, pulling to improve access.

Harry moves lower, utilising his free hand to push the bra aside, and his mouth latches over her nipple. The sensation is jolting, sudden and sweet, and she arches into it. His tongue spirals, flicks, sucks; the pressure builds in her core like a typhoon gathering.

Love bites. She’s going to have love bites, plural. At her father’s dinner table, at her graduation, at the country club pool where her bikini won’t cover his branding. All of it flashes through her mind in a titillating panic that lasts exactly half a second before his teeth graze her and it disintegrates into something far more urgent:

Orgasm. It builds, winding tighter and tighter in her abdomen. Her legs shake, her hips moving, unsanctioned and uninhibited. Harry’s hand coasts from her neck down her thigh, fingers digging into the muscle, and he squeezes firm enough to leave a bruise.

“Not until I say.”

The pendulum stills, snagged at the exact peak of its arc. Y/N nods, forcing her fingers to drag against her clit in slower, wider circles, the frustration of denial coming impalpable from the wanting.

He pulls back from her chest, his lips wet and slightly swollen. “Don’t make me tell you a third time.”

The understimulation pulls her back to herself. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s better.” He takes her wrist and brings it to her mouth. “Taste yourself.”

She licks fingers clean, the syrupy tang of her own desire distinct on her tongue: slightly sweet, slightly bitter, slightly undignified. His eyes eclipse as she sucks each digit dry, and the intimacy of it—being witnessed while she tastes herself on his command—only exacerbates the ache.

There is an unspoken rule to wearing lingerie that separates experience from incompetence: you keep it on as long as possible, if not throughout. Lingerie is not simply a means to an end, but the whole dissertation. Harry knows of this rule, and he chooses the former, shifting her underwear aside, exposing her completely. Cool air whips her wet core, and she quivers from the insufferable vulnerability—and also from the fact that he’s looking at her like he’s finally decided she belongs to him.

His thumb lightly circles her clit, almost sadistic after the urgency of everything it preceded, and then two fingers plunge deep inside her, kissing a spot that makes her vision blur. Any self-control she had stockpiled dissolves into a blatant, ragged gasp.

“Quiet, kitten,” he warns. “You asked for this. I’ll give it to you, but I need you to be quiet.”

It’s not an ordinary pet name, Y/N doesn’t think. But then again, baby is too soft, angel would be insincere, and princess would be satirical. So, kitten it is. Like she’s something small and demanding and dependent on whether or not he feels like being generous. It should read condescending—it does read condescending. That’s apparently what does it for her.

His mouth is on hers before the sound has time to recapitulate. The kiss is nothing like she imagined, which is to say it’s painstakingly ardent—messy, hungry, his tongue sliding against hers with none of the composure he’s held everywhere else. He tastes, in fact, like mint, but also something arcane enough she’d be able to pick it out of a lineup blindfolded. His other hand cups the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair, pinning her exactly where he wants while his mouth works hers open.

“Fuck—just look at you,” he murmurs against her mouth. His fingers curl again, deeper, and she whimpers into his kiss. “All of this, and I've barely done anything.”

Y/N tries to respond, but she can’t. Her hands find his shoulders, then his chest, feeling the heat of him through his shirt, and she wants to tear it off, but she’s overwrought, trying to remember how to breathe around the sensation of his fingers inside her, and his thumb still stroking her clit, and his tongue in her mouth and—

“I’m—” she starts, but whatever she was going to say melts into a mewl as he picks up the pace, pressing firmly against her clit. The pressure builds, fast, her hips grinding against his hand of their own accord, chasing release. But every time she gets close, he slows his rhythm just enough to pull her back from the edge. It’s torture. It’s superb. It’s exactly what he said he would do.

He watches her struggle with naked amusement, and mutters, “What did I tell you, hm? You can’t fucking take it.”

She bites down on a sob. “I-I am taking it.”

But she is also so close to begging that the words are starting to form, polite and indelicate in equal measure. Please, sir. Please let me cum. Please, I’ll be good, I promise, just let me—

He slows his hand, divine agony. “Should I fuck you instead?”

Yes. God, yes. That’s what she needs, what she’s been asking for since she walked into this office with her stupid dress and her stupid, optimistic plan. Y/N doesn’t have to think twice about it. She doesn’t have to consider the implications or any of the other things she’s supposed to be considering. The answer is already there, written in the pool of pleasure that’s dripping onto his desk.

“Yes, sir. Yes, please. I—” she whines, piteous, pathetically whines. “I want you so badly.”

He plants a final, punitive kiss on her lips, and then he’s reaching for his wallet in the pocket of his trousers. He retrieves a condom—the man is nothing if not prepared—and sets it beside them.

Y/N’s never had the fulfillment of seeing him without his shirt, but it turns out to be everything her wet dreams suspected, and then some. As he lifts it over his head, she’s cordially met with chiseled, defined lines sketching each muscle, skin several shades darker than her own—tanned and silklike—and the tattoos—Christ, the tattoos. Mosaics she can’t make out in the dim light but wants to trace with her tongue: swallows below his clavicle, a moth below his ribcage, and two ferns adorn his hips, a path indicator to something far more pornographic.

He frees himself, boxers tossed absentmindedly into his heap of clothing. Her mouth waters—his cock is long, thick, and the tip is florid, already leaking a droplet of precum that traces the vein running along the underside, slow as a pulse. He wraps his hand around himself, giving a few slow strokes, keeping his eyes locked on hers. The distance between his hand on his cock and where she wants it feels supremely disgraceful.

His eyes drop to her feet, to the vermilion-soled heels that are still on because she never took them off. Undressing stopped at the lingerie and everything after that happened too fast to remember footwear.

“Keep these on,” he says, and then he lifts her leg, examining the bottom. The shade is proprietary and garish against her pale skin. “They’re meant to be pointed at the ceiling.”

Foil tears into crescendo, and the condom rolls onto his length. As his head slightly tips back in imminent bliss, she clenches around nothing.

“Actually,” he says, his voice rough and devious. “Turn around. Want you from behind.”

Turning your back on someone who has already seen you naked—it’s not the nudity, that’s been established—but there’s something that makes it punishing anyway. It’s the trust, or the illusion of trust, or the fact that at this point the dichotomy between the two has become academic.

She hops off the desk and turns without questioning, the movement mindless as a dancer’s pivot. At first, she looms, bracing her palms against the wood, and suddenly she’s the paperwork. But that is not enough for him. His warm palm pushes against her shoulder, flattening her chest against the mahogany until she can feel her heartbeat reverberating back to her. Y/N’s skin prickles everywhere it isn’t touching as he traps her wrists at the small of her back, one large hand encircling both, locking her in place. His knuckles dig into her tailbone, rigging her to the surface.

“Promise you’ll be good?” His free hand strokes down the dip of her spine, tracing each vertebra through the lace. “Gonna show me how good you can be?”

“Yes, sir,” she heaves, the words sticky with sincerity. “I’ll be so good for you.”

His chuckle ghosts across her shoulder blade. “We’ll see.”

She feels him shift behind her. The anticipation is its own form of delectable anguish—knowing what’s coming, not knowing exactly when, her body suspended for something it craves so badly it’s neglected craving anything else. Then she feels him, the blunt, silken heat of his cock sliding between her lips. Not entering, but coating himself in the undeniable evidence of how badly she wants this. The sensation wrings a gasp from her—buzzy friction against her clit, the teasing promise of abundance.

“Filthy,” he murmurs, dark and honeyed. “Knew you would be. Knew it since that night...” He thrusts shallowly, the thick crown stretching her entrance. “...this was exactly what you needed. For someone to make you earn it. Not just give it to you as everyone else does.”

He pushes in, the stretch pilfering her breath. He’s big. She knew he would be—she saw him—but knowing and feeling are different orders of knowledge, and feeling him now, Y/N’s afraid anatomy has limitations, and she’s found hers. But then his hands tighten on her hips, holding her immobile as he sinks deeper with infinite, tormenting control. The fullness is beyond anything she envisioned, a penetrating nuisance that ignites every nerve ending. He stops halfway, her body straining to accommodate him.

“So fucking tight, kitten.” His thumb rubs circles over her tailbone. “This feel good?”

She’s panting, her fingers scrabbling against polished wood. Her heels are on the floor, and she’s grateful for the height they add because without them she’d be climbing the furniture for leverage. “Yes, sir. So good.”

He withdraws slightly, just enough to make her whine, then sinks back in. “Want more?”

It’s not a question; it’s a fuse, lit with open flames. “Please. More, harder. Fuck, I need—”

And then he’s fucking her in earnest. The rhythm is severe, each thrust driving her forwards, slamming her against the desk edge and rattling the brass lamp. No more restraint—he pistons into her with deep, murderous strokes that steal her vision in bursts of white light. The sounds are abhorrent: the wet slap of skin, the creak of stressed wood, her own choked whimpers. His free hand fists in her hair, yanking her head back.

“Look at you,” he grunts, punctuating his words with each impulsion. “Absolutely gagging for it. Begging for my cock like a fucking whore.” The degradation makes her head spin, something close to nausea settling in her stomach. “And this…” He slams home, grinding his hips against her arse. “…is exactly what you’re useful for.”

He’s silver-tongued, weaving “good girl” and “filthy slut” in the same breath. “Taking my cock so well” and “such a greedy little thing.” The juxtaposition is devastating; it lures her closer to the edge with every crude, withering syllable.

Y/N tries to be quiet. She really does. She bites her cheek until she tastes iron, presses her face against the desk, anything to muffle the strangled sounds trying to escape. But as his thrusts grow more desperate, as the tip of his cock meets her cervix with each deep drive, a moan tears out of her throat—piercing, uncontrolled, perfectly tactless for an office building on a Wednesday afternoon.

Harry’s hand promptly clamps over her mouth, muffling the next cry. “I said quiet.” A pantomime of discretion; the moment it’s there he’s pounding into her with enriched force. “But you can’t help it, can you? Need everyone to know how well I’m fucking you?”

She yelps against his palm, eyes stinging with prophetic tears, and he eases his hand just enough for speech. “What was that? Can’t understand you.”

“Please, just—” she gasps, the plea catching in her chest.

“Please what? Use your words.” His thrusts don’t slow. “You were so smart with words five minutes ago. What happened?”

What happened is that she can’t think. What happened is that the only word she can remember is please, please, please, playing on a loop in her head. What happened is that he’s fucking her beyond coherence, beyond pride.

“Please,” she blubs defeated. “I need to cum. I can’t—”

“Not yet. Maybe I won’t let you at all. Maybe I’ll fuck you ‘til you’re begging me stop.” His hand returns to her hair, forcing her face harder against the desk. “Someone needs to teach you a fucking lesson. Break that bratty little attitude down.”

Y/N knows, rationally, that disputation won’t help her case. That pushing back when she’s pinned and spread and so close to coming she might actually die is not a winning strategy. But depravity, in this case, only ignites her audacity.

“But I’m being good! I’m being so good—”

“I like how desperate you are. But...” His hand slams back over her mouth as another moan builds. “...still too loud.”

Reckless insurgence: she lets her muscles flutter around him, thinking maybe he’ll let her cum when he does, but it only amplifies the sensations—the stretch, the burn, the friction as he pounds into her g-spot. The orgasm looms, inevitable, terrifyingly close despite his denial. Her thighs shake violently; her vision tunnels.

“Don’t you dare,” Harry warns, cutting through the haze. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

She shakes her head frantically against his restraint—I won’t. I promise. Then the tears spill without warning, a sudden slip of debility. At first, it’s just one or two, but then they keep coming, tracking down her cheeks and over his hand.

He must feel the wetness seep between his fingers, because his rhythm falters, and then he stops, a disorienting absence of motion, and pulls out.

He turns her back around to face him. She doesn’t need to see herself to know—her face is flushed, tear-streaked, hair sticking to damp skin. He props her back onto the desk, pushes her right knee up towards her chest, spreading her wide again, and locks his eyes with hers.

“Said I’d make you beg ‘til you cried.” His gaze pins her, as forcible as his hands, and he pushes in slowly, watching her face as he fills her up again. The new angle is deeper, more direct, his pelvis grinding against her clit with every shallow thrust. “Look at that. Such pretty tears for me, kitten.”

She’s already choking on her own sobs, but his hand wraps around her throat for good measure. His thumb strokes her crazed pulse, not squeezing, but letting her know that he’s thinking about it. The prospect scrunches her eyes shut—if she cums now, after all this, without approval, her subconscious will never let her live it down. But then the pressure of his hand around her throat tightens, just enough to get her attention.

“I can tell you’re trying so hard,” he murmurs, snide. “Ask me one more time. Maybe I’ve reconsidered.”

Eleventh-hour. “Please. Let me cum. Please.”

He tightens his grip; air vanishes. Y/N’s hand flies up, clutching his wrist in reflex. Suddenly, the cross tattoo, the anchor, the three-leaf clover—it all makes sense.

“There you go. Cum. Quietly.”

This is the part where pride gets stored in the overhead compartment and the body takes over. The orgasm doesn't build, it crashes, making her eyes roll back, blinding her in bliss. Pleasure scalds through every vein as she convulses around him, milking his cock in surges.

“Manners.”

“—thank you, sir.”

He watches her come apart, his thrusts growing heedless and uneven. “Oh, fuck you, Y/N,” he snarls, his control finally snapping. His hips slam into hers, his fingers digging into her thigh. “Fuck you.”

That one feels personal, but she’s too dissolved to care, because then he’s cumming, too. The groan that escapes him is low and bitten-back and sounds dragged out against his will. She feels the pulse of him inside her, and then stillness.

Her body twitches, tiny tremors running through her thighs and belly. Harry’s hand slides from her throat to cup her cheek, his thumb wiping away a tear track.

“Good girl.” He kisses her damp cheekbone, then her temple, his lips lingering. “You did so good.”

“Good girl,” he praises through gritted teeth. “Always come on my cock so pretty,” your head spins at his compliment of your, uh– “That makes–” he pauses, the sound of his lips and tongue moving as he silently counts, barely audible above the wet chasm between you, “Nine, nine baby, gimme one more and you’ll get what you want.” 

Harry couldn’t help but admire how blissed out you look, your features suspended in the dichotomy of euphoric bliss and twisted pleasure. He secures his grip with one hand on your hip, the blunt of his fingernails creating crescent moons in your skin as he finds the marker he’s kept close by. 

You were too far gone to hear the pop of the marker cap which he held between his teeth. The cold ink on the skin of your breast barely registers as he marks the nect tally. The marker’s permanent and you know it will be visible for days. Each dark line smolders against your skin, sinking into your flesh for you to wear as a badge– an emblem to represent the pleasure he brings. 

You weren’t one to back down from a challenge– not when you met Harry that one night so many weeks ago, not when he was buried between the plush of your thighs. But now, even in the mushy state of your mind, you were questioning your fortitude. 

Harry had poked and prodded, pushing at what you knew your body was capable of– “Edging builds character,” he’d said only a week prior. While that was torturous in its own right, the objective at hand– ten orgasms, seemed far more impossible. 

Your body hasn’t stopped trembling, your muscles ragged and overworked. It was hard to open your eyes between the force of his thrusts, each one strong enough to send your body jolting upward, breasts bouncing– the pillows a plush crown around the messy splay of your hair. 

Your babbles of protest were nearly incoherent as Harry laughed at the feeble push of your hands against his abdomen, the ferns that grace his hips inflexible beneath your mindless push. “Uh-uh,” he tsks. “Don’t you want to feel me deep in your tummy?” and you do– feeling him spill inside of you is the only thing illuminating the dark caverns of your blissed out mind.

His grip tightens on your hips once again as he increases the speed of his thrusts. Wails and moans claw through the cage of your ribs and up your throat, sounds you’d be embarrassed of if you were any more cognizant. “Asked you a question.” He growls, teeth nipping at the edge of your jaw, 

“Yes, yes–uhhng,” Harry grins at your capitulation. 

“Good girl, always taking what daddy gives you,” his tone is sweet, sickly so– a sharp contrast to the bite of his hands in your flesh and the force in which he’s fucking you. 

His hips snap, sinew and bone clapping against the back of your thighs and bum. The orchestra of your bodies echoes off the walls of the room, wet and sticky. You clench around him, your nails biting at the soft muscle of his shoulders as you feel your next orgasm approaching. 

“Gonna give me another?” He punctuates his words with his thrusts. “So- close -to- ten- lovie.” Harry goads, voice thick with lust and determination. “Can’t wait to stuff you with my cum.” 

You whine at his words, the thought of finally being stuffed sparking the flame that simmers beneath your skin. A fresh wave of tears prick at your eyes, hot– burning. The noises that tumble from your throat fall in time with the pace in which Harry’s plowing into you. 

Harry’s avaricious as you tip towards your peak. “C’mon, y’so close, feel you clench– fuck,” he groans, cut off from the first ripple of your orgasm. “That’s a good girl, give daddy another.” 

Your body tenses beneath Harry, nerves bubbling and simmering– hot. It doesn’t feel possible to come again, but here you are unraveling beneath Harry as he nips at the stretched chords of your throat. “That’s it lovie, gonna give you what you want,” his breath is tepid beneath your ear as a fresh mark blooms in the wake of his lips. 

As your orgasm settles, never quite burning down to the coals, Harry grants no reprieve from the snap of his hips. His teeth nip, his fingers biting at the pervasive flush that kindles under your skin– sinking down to the marrow. 

Harry can’t help but whine at the way your body grips his cock. How your gummy walls draw him in as his thumb finds your clit, resting in against your overworked and sensitive nub in the most torturous way. His fingers pin to your lower abdomen, applying pressure. It’s a dirty trick, one you were hoping Harry wouldn’t pull after all he’s put you through. 

You squeal beneath the pressure, body jerking for reprive from the touch of his hands. It’s all too much. If he wasn’t so determined to give you what he’d promised he’d laugh at the way you squirmed beneath him. “Stop- fucking- moving- and- take- it,” he orders through bared teeth. 

Your blindsided– the timber of your body burning as the peak of your orgasm crests. It’s white and hot– ears ringing as the force of it rips through your frame. The honorific, ‘Daddy’, falls from your lips, a mindless mewl. 

Harry’s eyes snap to where you bodies are connected as the gush of your final orgasm splashes against his thighs. “Fuck that’s it baby,” he groans. The sight of you squirting the final piece to tip him over the edge. 

You barely register the warmth that blooms in your insides, nor the stilling of his hips as he pumps you full of him. His touch is soft as he brushes the damp hair that clings to your forehead. He kisses away the tears that cling to your rubicund cheeks, salty on his tongue, as he whispers sweet praises of how well you did for him. 

You wince at the loss of him inside of you as he slips out. It’s wet between your bodies, tacky and slick with the combination of both of your orgasms. Too transfixed on the sight of his cum spilling from your cunt, the marker is long forgotten. 

Your legs twitch, thighs begging to close around his hand as a long finger presses his cum back inside of you. “Did so good for me,” he praises, placing a hand on your thigh to keep you spread for him. He presses soft kisses into your flesh, licking and tasting the wetness that coats the inside of your thighs as he works against gravity.

“You doing okay lovie?” he asks, any trace of the mean man who forced eleven orgasms out of you is gone, replaced instead by the sweet and caring timber he usually posses. 

Harry chuckles at your mumbled and incoherent response, shifting between your legs to abandon the impractical task of keeping you stuffed. “C’mon, gonna need you to talk to me baby,” he’s careful as he settles beside you, a lanky arm wrapping around your middle as he places a few chaste kisses to the marks he’d made along your neck and chest. 

“Was it worth it? A week without coming?” He asks as his thumb strokes over the tally marks on your breast. 

Your face screws up as you remember the torture he put you through leading up to this moment. Every teasing passing touch, every taunt as he pulled out just before you came, it all simmers in the burnt out frame of your body. 

You swore you could feel the sizzle of each tally mark on your skin as you remembered how hard you came tonight, each one seemingly better than the last. You smiled at the memory, at the glowing coals that kept your body hot, at the soreness that hummed deep in your muscles. 

“Yeah,” you giggle. “I never want to come again.” 

You could feel Harry’s lips curve into a smile as he kissed below your collar bone; pleased that you were coming back to him, pleased that you’d had a good time. “Mhm, is that so?” He goads, pulling your body closer to his. “I can deny you all you want baby, just say the word.”

Knowing him, if you said that in full sincerity he’d ensure you never came again. The idea of having him bring you to the precipice of an orgasm– over and over again just to never let you come, to be able to hand over complete control– because he knows best– burns deep in your mind. 

₊˚⋅♡‧₊˚⋅♡‧₊˚⋅♡⋅˚₊

You took a deep breath, feeling both excitement and a hint of pain as Harry began to work. The buzzing of the needle grew louder as it pierced your skin, creating the outline of the word 'kitten'. You couldn't help but whimper a little, but Harry's gentle strokes and soothing words kept you grounded. After every wipe away of ink, he would place a kiss on your other cheek, you both laughed at first, but the gesture made your heavy breathing softer.

As the minutes ticked by, the adrenaline of the spontaneous decision started to wear off, and the exhaustion from the long day began to set in. You felt your eyelids growing heavier, your body succumbing to the comfort of Harry's touch and the rhythmic buzz of the tattoo gun. "You okay, kitten?" he checked in, his voice a gentle rumble in the quiet room. You nodded with your eyes still closed. "You're doing so well. Just a little more, then we'll be done." he cooed.

With a few more precise movements, Harry finished up the shading on the 'N' in 'kitten'. He rolled his chair back to admire his work, his eyes filled with satisfaction as her looked at your ass, now marked by him. You felt a shiver run down your spine as he leaned in and placed a tender kiss just below the fresh ink. "So beautiful," he murmured, his breath hot against your skin.

He stood up, and you felt his hands slip your dress to gently lift it up your back, leaving it bunched up just under your shoulders. Harry's gaze never left yours in the mirror, and you watched as his pupils dilated with desire. The air grew thick with anticipation as he took a step closer, his tattooed hand sliding around to cup your cheek and turning your face towards him. "You're so beautiful, baby," he whispered before capturing your mouth in a slow, sensual kiss. His tongue danced with yours while his other hand trailed down your spine to rest on the small of your back.

With a low growl, Harry's demeanor shifted from gentle to dominating. He gripped your hip, his hand moving to pull down your thong. He stepped back, admiring the view of your now bare ass with the new ink.

"Spread your legs for me, but stay laying on your tummy." he ordered, his voice firm yet tender. You complied immediately, feeling a rush of vulnerability as you exposed yourself to him. He stepped closer, his hand moving to cup your wet core before his thumb began to circle your clit with expert precision. "Look at how eager you are, baby." He leaned in and spat on your pussy, the warmth of his saliva making you gasp.

With a predatory grace, Harry aligned his hardened length with your entrance and pushed in without hesitation. You moaned into the bench pillow as he filled you up completely. His grip tightened on your hip, guiding his thrusts deep and slow. Each time he pulled out, you felt the stickiness of his spit mingling with your arousal, heightening the sensation of his thrusts.

"Daddy," you whimpered, your voice muffled by the leather. Harry's response was a low, animalistic grunt, his pace increasing as he claimed you with every powerful stroke. He leaned over you, his chest pressing against your back as his other hand snaked up to play with your nipples, pinching and rolling them until they were hard peaks of pleasure.

His hand moved back to your ass, his thumb tracing the fresh ink as he fucked you, marking his territory with every thrust.

"Are you Daddy's good girl?"

You nodded, your voice trembling as you murmured, "'m Daddy's good girl." The words sent a jolt of electricity through your body, the kink of the scene only adding to the intensity of your arousal.

The smell of ink and sex filled the air as Harry's grip on your hips tightened. He leaned in closer, his hot breath fanning against your neck as he whispered dirty, degrading things in your ear, pushing you further into your submissive role. "You like it when Daddy's rough with you, don't you? You like being my slut?" he groaned. You could only nod, as he picked up the pace, pounding into you with a fierce need that made the bench shake.

With every thrust, Harry's spit-slicked thumb circled your clit, bringing you closer and closer to the edge of orgasm. "Come for me, baby," he urged, his voice thick with desire. You felt your body tighten, the pleasure building until it was too much to handle. You let out a muffled scream as your climax hit, your muscles clenching around his cock, sending him over the edge as well.

With a final, powerful thrust, Harry pulled out, his cock glistening with your arousal. He reached down and painted your un-inked ass cheek with his cum, leaving a sticky, hot trail across your skin. "So perfect," he murmured, his eyes never leaving the mess he'd made.

Harry grabbed his phone from the nearby counter. He snapped a picture, capturing the moment with a sense of ownership and pride. The image was a stark contrast: the delicate 'kitten' tattoo on one side, his hot, white cum on the other. You felt a thrill at the thought of the photo, the evidence of his claim on you, his brand of love and dominance.

Harry took a paper towel and gently wiped the warm cum from your ass. His touch was surprisingly tender, a stark contrast to the raw passion that had just consumed both of you. He threw the towel away and reached out to stroke your hair, his hand moving in slow, calming motions that made you melt into the bench. "Did a good job for me, baby," he murmured, his voice soothing as he praised you for your obedience and the pleasure you had brought him.

Despite the tenderness, his grip on your hair was firm, reminding you of your place. "You're so beautiful, kitten," he said, his thumb tracing the line of your cheek as he tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "And now, you have a permanent reminder of who you belong to."

Historically, it was faces like his, at the very least, that ignited adaptation— this wasn’t an overnight implementation, after all. Men don’t move that fast. There’s a long-lasting, brutally destructive record there, and a tale as old as time itself. Before charisma had to be manufactured in the absence of a devastating jawline, there was the high-cheekbone aristocracy, and its counterpart, what’s known today as the “he’s actually really nice” faction. The beauty privilege inventors; the bedroom-eye monarchy; the symmetrical syndicate of a resting smolder— 

And the rest of everyone else. 

Rumor has it that the first comedian was a man who watched another guy, who had eyes like wet chrysocolla and really broad shoulders, turn a casual glance into an entire bloodline’s origin story. Maybe the first poet sat next to a man wearing the skin of divine nepotism— and the only defense strategy was to pick up a hobby that spoke less in pretty, heart-shaped lips and more in words like love’s trembling hand doth trace its name upon thy skin. New seduction ritual: implemented.

Basically, the survival mechanism goes like this: if you’re competing with bone structure sculpted by an empyrean chisel, a mouth worthy of oil paintings and crumpled love letters, and the kinds of dimples that were engineered for the sole purpose of emotional damage (Cupid’s attempt; two, little exit wounds, the perfect pair of injustices parenthesizing his smile)…

And you’re lingering in the shadow of those attributes? Operating on a deficit? Well, then. There’s a little more work left to be put in. 

If you’re lucky, you’re tall, or you’re well endowed in the basement, or both. If you’re none of those things, you’re banking on a gift with a musical instrument, or you’re coping with the weight of your wallet. You’re getting into niche, esoteric interests you will impress upon every woman that steps foot into your orbit to stand out, or you’re polishing up your comedic abilities. The thing is, society has evolved to the point where this compensation is the foundation to procreation. The foundation to function. And the kind of men with faces like Harry, who got in line not once, but twice when God was handing out genetic privilege (the overachieved extra credit projects), just get to sit back and let the world unravel at their feet.

Men like Harry don’t need personalities because they already look interesting enough. When you’re the kind of pretty that inspires love songs and ill-advised tattoos, you don’t need wit, or pockets lined with green. It opens doors (and legs) with such minimal effort that it may as well be as simple as breathing. The quiet space in a room bends around you when you become the focal point by existing, incidentally magnetic. 

It’s pretty unfair, to say the very least.

Y/N only really registers it passing— in fleeting, peripheral moments when the space bends around him and her eyes glue, almost like an accident. A brief sighting here and there, like a rare animal caught between the trees— seen but not acknowledged, because staring starts to feel like stepping into something too raw, too deliberate.

He’s always moving. In motion, slipping past. Glimpses of wide shoulders cutting through the communal pool, water slicking over musculature in a smooth tide and then rivulets, droplets sticking against sun-warmed skin. A silhouette in the elevator at the end of the hall, head bowed. Sorting through crinkled envelopes between his massive hands with a ruckle between his brows.

He’s got the kind of face that suggests he should be gently perched on the edge of a marble fountain, carved in alabaster. A cherubic thing. Rosy-mouthed, haloed by damp curls that tuck around his ears in perfect, artistic disarray. The kind of beauty that feels vaguely mythological, like he should either be blessing crops or luring unbeknownst sailors to their deaths. A visage that belongs on domed Renaissance ceilings.

Y/N breathes. Her pulse feels like it’s rattling a little. It makes her head feel a little gooey when he’s stood in front of her. 

And here he is, holding a package in one hand, water still beading at his collarbone from a morning shower, damp curls dripping onto the fabric of a lived-in, vintage T-shirt. The tragic failure of modern existence is that a man like this— who should, by all logic, be strumming a lyre on the edge of a celestial fountain— has instead been doomed to wander the mundanities of the human condition. To swipe through his mail. To stand in front of her door and say things like “Think they swapped our mail again” in that perfectly unassuming, relaxed tone, like his very existence isn’t actively offensive to the concept of mediocrity.

His singular flaw? That one, teeny thing?

He’s a horrific neighbor. 

Abysmally inconsiderate, in fact. Maybe, one of the worst people Y/N has ever had the pleasure of sharing a paper-thin wall with.

The thing is, under all normal circumstances, eye candy is a desirable next door tenant, to catch those scarce glimpses of and swoon over. But Harry? He’s dangerous. An illusion gilded in beauty that sits in this achingly so, lazy way. It’s an excellent cover for someone who (based on volume alone) should be legally required to sublet a soundproof chamber instead of an apartment. Beauty privilege, remember?

Instead of spending his days spreading divine harmony and whispering sweet nothings into the ears of poets, her tragically beautiful neighbor has chosen a different calling. One that involves subjecting Y/N to an auditory experience that can only be described as an unholy, unprovoked act of sonic terrorism against anyone who possesses functioning ears.

While he may look like the patron saint of soft lighting and tasteful nudity, he lives like a man who has never once considered the presence of neighbors. Evidently, the universe operates on imbalance. 

It’s not surprising that he fucks. Nor is the frequency, given— everything. It would be more surprising if he didn’t, which, statistically, seems impossible. It is the sheer volume at which he fucks and the blatant disregard for customary noise ordinances.

Y/N has had the great misfortune of gaining intimate knowledge of Harry’s extracurricular activities through nothing but flagrantly inconspicuous, unsolicited proximity. She is now, against her will, deeply familiar with the sound of his bed frame against the wall. With the low, gravel-thick groan that spills out of him before everything goes quiet, the sharp gasp from whoever is tangled up in the sheets beneath him. The pornographic chainlink of yes, yes, yes, as if to lyricize the tempo of a wrought iron headboard ramming against hollow drywall. She’s a victim to secondhand moaning; a hostage to the unchecked libido of a man she’s not even screwing.

The young woman isn’t sure who he’s sleeping with, but based on the sounds, they either really, really like whatever feat of Olympian-endurance he’s performing on the other side of the wall, or they’re being held at gunpoint and doing an exceptional job of faking it. It’s loud. A predictable regularity. Enough to make her consider downloading white noise apps and investing in a stronger liquor cabinet.

And every morning, after nights filled with thumping and gypsum-dulled dirty talk— horny monologue hour, hardly softened by an overworked, underpaid layer of rental-grade plaster— and the occasional bass-heavy indie rock soundtrack, he leaves his apartment looking criminally rested. Peaceful. Unbothered by the absolute railing he has just put someone (and the walls) through.

For all his divine aesthetics, Harry fucks like he’s trying to earn a standing ovation. With the kind of dedication to performance that suggests he thinks there’s an awards committee waiting outside in the hallway to hand him a trophy when he’s done.

Y/N doesn’t know what’s worse— the rhythmic, wall-shaking thump of his bed frame, the low, muzzled stream of just incomprehensible enough to stay offensive murmurs, or the fact that he has the audacity to look well-rested when she sees him the next morning, while she lurches past him like a woman who’s been spiritually waterboarded by the full-scale resonance of his sex life.

Y/N has tried— earnestly tried— to ignore it. To mentally downgrade him from disruptively attractive to something more manageable, like guy-next-door cute. But Harry is simply too loud to be ignored.

And not just in volume— though, yes, he operates at a decibel that insinuates he believes “inside voice” is an urban legend. It's everything. The way he takes up space. The way he stretches his arms over his head and his shirt rides up, exposing a sliver of toned stomach like some kind of aesthetic oversight. The way his lips pull into a smirk when he's amused, a single dimple pressing into the smooth skin of his cheek.

The worst part? He doesn’t weaponize it. Just… exists, as if he entirely lacks self-awareness for the unrelenting power he yields with pure aesthetics. 

Perhaps the only thing more dangerous than his unregulated evolutionary favoritism is the lack of object permanence it causes. Inspires. Because at the end of the day, despite how polite, how deeply-gnarled in neighborly niceties, The Incident from last month still exists, but miraculously manages to melt into her every time she’s face to face with him. Like a static buzz settling into the way her composure thaws away.

His most notable sound pollution, to date, spilled in the form of audible rejection on a rain-drenched afternoon, dripping through the drywall in a dissent-rusted chain. Stop. No. Please. It was a voice she didn’t recognize. A voice trying to be firm but not entirely expecting to be listened to. It sounded so defeated, like a cry and then a high, sharp whine in response to whatever distinctly lower-pitched murmurs the insulation muzzled. All velvet-dipped tones swallowed by the structural integrity of a shoebox apartment.

Y/N is the last person to dig into others’ preferential depravities, nor does she have the mental bandwidth to file through the archives of a borderline stranger’s hedonisms, but her stomach had twisted up like one of those coiled, abstract sculptures that fits on a bookshelf, and she ended up on the couch with her cellphone tucked to her ear. 

Because it wasn’t just the kind of sound that prickled at her nape, but curdled deep in the belly of her, heavy and rotting. 

(“Um, hi, I think my neighbor is— hurting someone.”)

But the thing is, standing with her door cracked now, Y/N thinks there needs to be at least one, obnoxiously visible character flaw to remind her and offset the audacity of his aesthetics, because up close, it’s so much worse. 

Anything— an overinflated ego, a questionable tattoo, a personality cultivated exclusively from Joe Rogan podcasts. But no. Harry is polite— painfully so, armed with the clean-shaven jawline of a man who has never known an awkward phase and the kind of infuriatingly natural charm that makes all rationale and reason puddle off into awed oblivion. 

“Hey,” he says, cradling the package in one palm, curls wet, one rogue lock clinging to the crest of his cheekbone in a way that would look deeply artificial on anyone else. “Think they swapped our mail again.”

The level of allurement at which he functions should come with a warning label, so it’s a little tough to keep The Incident afloat when he just… waterlogs it with simple, blissfully unaware presence. In these types of situations, all that buoys is the vague, internal monologue reminding her that she’s been gawking wordlessly too long to be considered socially acceptable. 

Her taller neighbor (significantly taller; really, Y/N thinks— it’s as if he collected hallmarks like they were on conveniently timed clearance) blinks. He’s still holding the package out. Y/N blinks back. Batting her lashes shakes something, as if warding off gnats off in a plume of smoke. Slowly, she accepts the misdelivered offering, and unease creeps into the soft spot between her rib bones and her organs. 

Despite the way the man has embedded his existence so deeply into her thoughts— honestly, so much so that he may as well be paying rent (she should be getting compensated for the unpaid mental labor)— Y/N doesn’t actually know Harry.

She knows his name is Harry. H-A-R-R-y, always inscribed in all capitals, besides the cacographic tail end of the lowercase, curving Y. She’s given up on trying to understand why whoever the post office sends insists on treating their mailboxes like interchangeable suggestions rather than fixed addresses. She knows that their mail, through some act of bureaucratic sabotage, somehow manages to interchange between 9B and 9C with unsettling regularity.

She knows he fucks. A lot. So regularly that at this point, it’s practically a statistical impossibility that his celibacy record stands longer than a sparse handful of days. She knows that he wears the face of a misplaced effigy, with a halo’s worth of plausible deniability— the kind that should be mounted to an Italian plaza centerpiece, or live frescoed, immortalized on a high ceiling between Corinthian columns. She knows she called the police on him last month, so she needs to ball her resolve in her arms when it spills apart like unrolled toilet paper—

There is one truth Y/N must latch on and cling to in these tragically catastrophic stand-offs (probably… entirely one-sided, given that the opponent to her poor mettle and overactive nervous system is just… standing there, breathing, entirely oblivious of his innate talent to dilate pupils and cause momentary amnesia), and that truth is this: no superficially aesthetic veneer of deception can shell-up reality. 

And the reality is that Y/N does not know this man, and so no cherubic façade, neighborly niceties, or feigned self-unawareness can suppress that he may as well be an entirely different person behind closed doors. 

It’s months down the line that the irony will hit her— that yes, undeniably, Harry is almost a direct, walking contradiction behind the assumed sanctity of a closed door— that no pleasantries or seraphic, unassuming dimples can soften the obscenity of his pastimes. Hobbies include: vinyl collecting, long walks, and ensuring that an attitude adjustment sticks. But that’s months down the line, and right now?

Right now he’s just her obnoxiously loud neighbor that, according to probable cause (and the recording of the phone call she made to the emergency hotline, stored somewhere in the 911 archives), may or may not take no for an answer. Which is the biggest tragedy of all, in her opinion.

“Thanks.” There’s a little bite there to the word, there. Enough for him to clock it— for something to flicker along that lazily charming smile, like a gossamer-thin, bewildered film over the surface of his expression. 

Harry pauses, almost like he wants to say something (probably to acknowledge the awkwardly apparent dissonance going on), but then he just… doesn’t.

“Okay,” as the man breathes, the breadth of his shoulders swells up, thick muscle rising up under the cotton fabric (not quite pulled taut— not anywhere besides the span of his shoulders— but enough for the shape of his pebbled nipples to poke through the material). Y/N chews into the gummy-smooth skin along the inside of her cheek. Honestly, it’s unfairly disarming; his low voice, his stupid face, his hard nipples prodding through the tee. With his dewy meadow eyes glued onto her, her resolve wobbles like a flimsy stilt house on the coast in a hurricane. “Have a good one.”

He ducks his chin (a subtle period on the uncomfortable pause, a formal seal on his exit) at the young woman, still holding the parchment-wrapped package she’s been awarded as if solidified into a stone-encasement of the position. Y/N blinks. Harry turns. 

With a final glance toward his retreating back, the girl closes the door. As her fingers tighten around the package, her knuckles bleach from the strain. It’s either that or punch drywall, and quite frankly, she’s been paying too much in rent to consider remodeling and too many fees in the form of involuntary eavesdropping to afford a fracture in the (poorly constructed) noise barrier. She tucks the chainlink back onto its track as the door clicks shut and resigns herself to another unfortunate truth: Harry is so dangerously attractive that not only is she almost certainly going to think about this moment later, but she will be reminded, every time she’s shepherded into close proximity with him, that when God packages something up in 6 feet of limited-edition facial topography and artfully tousled curls, no amount of unsought aural pornography and creeping suspicion can stop a cosmic nepotism baby from dismantling her concentration. 

The last thing Harry expects from a disgruntled herd of bleary-eyed, sock-shuffling renters— a crowd caught somewhere between sleep-deprived and half-dead— is small talk. 

Half these people have a look that suggests they contemplated burning alive before choosing to evacuate, and the other half probably wish they decided to wear real pants to bed. Tonight, Harry falls into both categories. With the fire alarm still shrieking from the guts of the complex and the blinking glow of blue and red in the corner of a tar-black night, the briefs hitching high on his meaty thighs is almost… poetic. Cinematic, at the very least. Like a scene from an experimental indie film focused on the gradual dissolution of dignity.

The downy rabbit nestled in his arms, coiled more like a floccose ball than a living animal, is the sartorial maraschino cherry— it pulls the look together. Emergency Evacuation chic. He looks about as disheveled as the rest of the congregation; bedhead, sleep still dusting at his half-mast gaze, keyring slipped over his middle finger and his phone cradled in the same hand (though, Harry thinks wryly, no building-wide emergency couture quite tops the tighty-whitey socks-and-sandals combo that the guy up ahead of him is rocking). There’s sparse chatter going on all around him, a kind of background drone that fades into the wail, but he doesn’t have any intention to engage. Despite the unplanned slumber party and the potential opportunity to trauma-bond, he can’t really find it in him to start ice-breaking and sharing life stories. There’s a time and place to build community with your neighbors— half-dressed in a parking lot at three AM isn’t one of them. 

Instead, he stands in the midst of the mass, dead-silent as if still calibrating. It takes him a while to notice the young woman a few feet ahead of him— long enough that the cool air has settled over him in a coat. Her bathrobe wraps tight around her, cinched pink terry-cloth. He doesn’t recognize that she’s a familiar face until she turns enough for him to see her side profile, her phone screen casting light and painting shadows in the crease of her furrowed brow as she sniffs. Thumbing over the device, Y/N turns back over her shoulder. 

The longer he stands there, creaking into a more-awake rendition of himself as the faint chill cuts through the grogginess in his skull, the more the silence marinates into impatient restlessness. Stretching like old gum. She lingers in his periphery, shifting from foot to foot as if nursing the same restive itch. Once again, his neighbor twists to the side, rocking onto the balls of her feet and then back down onto her heels. A huff spills from her lips as she turns her phone off and tucks it up under her upper arm, crossing them. It’s not cold enough for the air to bloom with her breath, but the exasperation in it is audible. Maybe because he’s managed to seep closer. 

“—Wonder if someone just pulled it.”

At first, Y/N doesn’t acknowledge the statement, as if she doesn’t recognize the remark is directed at her. And then, the presence behind her— not pressing uncomfortably close, just distant enough to notice— has Y/N turning her head over her shoulder. She double-takes.

Harry’s in a new light. Still abysmal to her train of thought, already weak on its tracks given that the drowsiness from being rudely awoken in the middle of the night still has her lingering in a dull, cotton-wrapped awareness. But now, he’s a fraying shape; sleepy and half-nakedly soft. Hair a masterpiece of sleep deprivation— the typically styled ringlets on his head sit mussed; whatever shape (she assumes the usual— somewhere between windswept and enticingly intentional) existed yesterday has gone rogue, erased by his pillow. What’s left is a tousled disarray. He’s in another tee, once again pulled snugly over his shoulders, and he’s cradling what could be a live, fuzzy animal, but more resembles a balled fur stole, its potential face tucked into the nook between his muscly upper arm and his chest. Despite the ridiculous assortment of this particular wardrobe showcase, that’s not what catches her eye most. Y/N sucks in a breath. 

Considering a fair share of the evacuees around them teeter on the brink of public-indecency, it shouldn’t throw her guard off as much as it does, but all she can manage in such close proximity with Harry’s thighs is to blink wordlessly. It’s not necessarily his thighs so much as the way they’re denuded— not the way his trousers sit on them so much as their entire lack thereof. It’s the way his lower region is only covered up by a pair of jet-black briefs, clinging like a second skin, riding ridiculously high and ridiculously low. High enough that the only place her eyes can focus is the (chewy) musculature, slightly sun-bathed from all those hours spent in the residential pool, dusted with hair. Low enough that a sliver of skin peeks from between the waistband and hem of his shirt, hitched up just a touch on one side. Enough to hint at a sharp dip of a mostly concealed V, where muscle sinks in a hard line along bone. A tease of whatever workout routine he’s committed to. Beside the rigid line chiseled in there, an inked, leafy stem climbs (a set of mirrored layers that she’d observed on him, supine on a pool chaise). 

Basically, it’s the type of thing that should legally classify him as a walking thirst trap.

With the crowd sporting bedtime fashion, some covered only in the most legally vague sense of the word, it leaves Y/N wondering: if most of the people decided to haphazardly vacate their apartments by only tossing on the most minimal attire— if opting to add to their garb in any way— what did Harry add? Did he wear the cream-toned tee to bed? Just the Calvins? Both? Or was he entirely bare, only sloppily throwing on whatever was left discarded by the side of the bed? Does he sleep naked? 

With all these sordid thoughts clouding up the forefront of her mind like a thick plume of fog, she can’t find words through alphabet soup and the vague mental images of Harry’s bare skin tangled by sheets. To make it better, he’s just staring at her, like he’s expectantly waiting for her to respond. What was the question?

Y/N blinks again. “What?”

“The—“ Harry bobs his head towards the cluster of emergency vehicles, olive eyes oscillating to the apartment complex and back onto her, “fire alarm. I wonder if someone just pulled it.” 

If ever the universe was to humble Harry from a breathing renaissance painting, half-clothed and half-asleep would be the time. He could be knocked down to whatever status a man up front is bearing, clad in a questionably classy fusion of tragic, high-cut cotton underwear, socks, and suede, open-toed sandals. Somehow, though, it’s worse that his bedhead, for the most part, still leaves the tendrils curling in lazy, untamed waves. That his nakedly-beguiling thighs, strong and sculpted with muscle, look like they’re meant to pry knees wide. It’s mortifying—

“Then, they’d be an asshole,” she murmurs, her own gaze raking out and lingering on the building. The words come out clipped with exhaustion, and then that pause lingers again. 

Harry hums. She chances another glance at the furball curled to his chest. 

“Snuggles,” Harry supplies, raising one arm a tad from where it’s caged to support the animal. The motion is enough to jostle the thing, and it tucks its face out, twitching its nose. With careful precision, the man moves one hand out from the cradle— the one not clutching his keys and his phone (by the way, casually dwarfed by the sheer size of his palm and cupped, lengthy fingers) to skim his pointer along the Holland lop’s dangling ear. “He’s a bit delicate and has some strong opinions on sudden, loud noises. Not a fan of fire alarms, as it turns out.”

The young woman hums noncommittally, eyes snaking back off to the polychrome strobe. 

The last thing Harry expects from his neighbors during a mandatory, middle-of-the-night evacuation order are pleasantries. Between the slouched postures, the collective, dead-eyed aura of suffering, the general degree of resentment perfuming the air, and the visible internal debates over whether a hypothetical fire is worth enduring the cold, it’s safe to assume morale is at an all time low. Which brings him to his next point— there is, Harry suspects, something about him that fundamentally offends his neighbor.

Not inherently because she’s not talking to him. Naturally, the theory has no relevance to her lack of enthusiasm at the moment. 

There’s a clause to life that he learned as a little kid, an absolute truth that the motto “water off your back” was created around, and this clause is that not everyone will like you. There’s really no gentle way to chew on that one, but it’s a fact Harry has long come to terms with. Jealousy, misery, even a simple case of personalities repelling like mismatched magnets— all things that can cause someone to decide you’re just not their cup of tea. Incompatibility could very easily leave your existence grating someone down to the molecular level. And you can never please everyone— that’s another piece of that truth he had to gnaw on before he decided that he was going to spend the rest of his life marching to the beat of his own drum. 

Apparently, something about this tempo scrapes at some highly-sensitive nerve of hers like a dull knife on a chalkboard. 

It’s an intuition thing, really. There hasn’t so much been a sharp, substantial instance so much as there’s been instances. Little, creeping things; the way her eyes ward when he’s close, despite the way they hover; the tone she seems to reserve for him, not outwardly rude, but suspiciously close to some awkward admixture between tolerating jury duty and being held at gunpoint. There’s more, among those, too— the suspiciously long pauses that sit like preludes to every response she gives him. The way her gaze flickers off avoidantly. 

And those last two aren’t flustered mechanisms. 

Harry knows he is, according to conventional, societal standards, attractive. He’s no stranger to reflective surfaces, nor is he unaware of the way actual strangers look at him. Ogle. Gawk. 

It was a burgeoning metamorphosis he became acutely aware of between awkward kidhood and the place he’s at now. First, all lanky angles of uncertainty, only half-grown into his features, when his bones had made up their mind but the muscle and skin over them hadn’t quite decided what they wanted to be yet. Then, it was almost overnight. Everything began stretching into place and ubiquitously working in his favor. Eyes lingered, heads turned…

It’s safe to say he knows nervous girls. Boys. The lack of eye contact, or on the polar opposite hand, the blanking, empty stares and the silent beat as their response time glitches and their mouth tries (and fails) to keep up with a short-circuiting nervous system. Not everybody is able to stay the most suave version of themselves interacting with someone they find sexually attractive— his firsthand experience involves not only being on the receiving end, but on the giving end, as well. Granted, the aesthetics boost had given him a sense of confidence that buried his inhibitions down, so it’s been a long while since the last time he tripped over himself in front of someone that made his dick sit up and pay attention, but—

The thing is, Y/N doesn’t glance away like staring at him rapidly dissolves her thoughts in a static haze. She doesn’t take long pauses because she’s floundering over the next word. She doesn’t even look at him in a way that insinuates she’s worried he’ll nip her or something, she’s just so utterly…

Closed off. Disinterested. Like his presence is a jury duty evaluation and she’s wriggling in her seat, waiting to talk about her views on jury nullification. 

In fairness, it could very well be a me-not-you thing— the awkward shuffle through their interactions, the severe deficit of enthusiasm. Those communication patterns could very well be sound across the board… in another universe. There are footprints that lead him to the massive elephant in the room, and those footprints spell the vague shape of it didn’t used to be this way. 

Sure, Harry contemplates, if she was a miserably unpleasant person that holed up in her apartment with no interest in corresponding with another human being, he’d get it. If she’d given him the idea that something about him rattled her down to atoms the first time he ever said hello to her, he’d get it. But she used to smile. Coyly, almost, he’d go as far to say— one finger away from twirling a lock of hair around her pointer as she talked to him. The kind of simper that accompanies a giggle from a barista handing his drink over across the counter, eyes honed. She used to lean onto her door frame when he handed off a stack of envelopes that got misplaced into his mailbox, or hung back with her eyes wet and lively as she stood at his doorway and handed off a package. 

What’s more is that his history is marked by drawing more people in after he opens his mouth, than turning them away. He’s arguably likeable— not in an arrogantly self-absorbed way, but strictly based on track record. He’s befriended too many older ladies (who sparked up chatter with him in grocery stores unprompted, mostly), and gotten slipped too many drinks (on the house) from bartenders to believe otherwise. Generally, his existence tends to fall into the category of charming rather than grating.

When he considers all of this, his analysis only leads him to one conclusion— there is something about him that suddenly, fundamentally offends his neighbor. 

And it’s with this hypothesis that Harry clears his throat, hesitates, and prods, with just a moment of lull after she’s turned back away from him, “If I’m misreading this, feel free to tell me to piss off, but— did I do something?”

The young woman pivots back over her shoulder, blinking, almost as if she’d forgotten he was behind her at all. 

“…What?”

Harry shrugs. The motion coaxes Snuggles to lift his head again. “I don't expect us to be friends, but I also don't want to be the person you actively avoid in the hallway. If I've done something to make things weird, l'd rather fix it than pretend I don't notice." 

For a long second, Y/N doesn’t say anything. Just batting her lashes up at him, features lax, like she’s processing the earnest directness behind his words and letting them settle. And then her face twists. 

Ooh— okay. Ruckling brow bone, lips tugging down, the nearly incredulous burst of air she expels as she turns her prickling face away—

She scoffs, muttering something strangely close to, “can’t be serious,” under her breath, and Harry’s eyes pensively narrow just a smidge. Enough to be entirely imperceptible as he drinks in her body language. That’s an indicator, if Harry’s ever seen one. 

“You know what, Harry,” she says after a moment (now her arms are caging defensively, that’s an interesting touch), “…I just don’t really …appreciate how you treat women, to be honest.”

Of all the responses Harry had been anticipating, curiously honed on every word, that was— not the one. His dark canopy of lashes sweeps over his eyes as the admission lands and… knocks him off kilter, just a bit. His brows relax, then furrow up as he mulls the statement over, buffering. 

He sounds a little bewildered when he says, voice much more soft-spoken, “…Sorry?”

“You should be,” his neighbor tells him pointedly, her arms still crossed like a defensive barrier across her chest, “Hitting women is wrong. Very illegal for a reason, actually.”

At the mention, his head bobbles back a bit like he’s dodging a smack between the brows with the context-lacking declaration. He’s not quite sure he’s heard her right, eyebrows climbing and eyes widening almost comically. Right, okay. This is… a gross misunderstanding, he decides. When the realization hits him, truly hits him, his knee-jerk response is an incredulous laugh, which he muscles down. Instead, his appalled amusement trickles out like a little huff, corners of his strawberry mouth tugging up. Unfortunately, the reaction only seems to irritate her further, and her forehead crinkles up as her own eyebrows ascend in stunned disbelief. 

“You think there’s something funny about hitting a woman?” Y/N presses, eyes steeling into slits, her priorly indoor-voice rising a decibel. 

The volume of her statement (and the misleading content) has his otherwise mirthy expression falling into something far more serious. Full of comically flat, grievous denial, like a kid being scolded for spray-painting a concrete wall after being caught with the can in its hand.

“—No,” Harry shakes his head slowly, side to side, “Not at all.”

Cautiously, his gaze slips off to the corner, where a few tenants have turned over their shoulder to gauge the commotion. As the young woman’s head swivels to tail where his eye contact has meandered, Harry realizes that backpedaling is only going to become a feat of incredible verbal athleticism from here. Upon catching the other glimpses from the crowd, slowly turning back to their own conversations, Y/N makes a deadpan sound of amusement before she turns back to face him.

“Oh, what? You’re ashamed now that you’re being called out for it? Good,” she bites, shoulders teetering as she leans toward him and unfolds her arms, pointing her index finger into his direction scathingly, “You should be ashamed. It’s absolutely disgusting to put your hands on a woman.”

This is tragically weighed against Harry’s favor. Here he was, just a half-asleep evacuee, holding his rabbit, clad in only a pair of hardly decent briefs, contemplating whether he should Uber Eats tacos as soon as the emergency exit fiasco were to clear up (might as well, since he’s already awake). Somehow, he’s managed to morph from an unassuming extra to the perceived antagonist. 

No, Harry thinks— this wouldn’t be a disaster film; it’s a full blown, poorly-contrived drama with a plot twist even the supposed villain is caught off guard by. The curly-headed brunette chances another glance to the other side now, where more people have not only glimpsed over in brief acknowledgement, but have fully twisted their shoulders to observe the apparent scandal. As much as Harry wholeheartedly marches to the beat of his own drum, at this moment in time, his reputation is shaking in its boots and he’s reached a mental checkpoint called time for damage control.

Weaving sincerity into his tone and shaking his head placatingly as he steps forward— a subconscious attempt to coax her into lowering her volume— Harry tells her, “I don’t put my hands on anybody that doesn’t consent to it first.”

Her face scrunches up.

“I think,” his pink tongue slinks out to wet his lips, “maybe, there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“No, I really, really do,” Harry counters, ducking his chin into a nod. 

Instead of hearing him out, however, his neighbor, as if fueled by the internal calling to manually dismantle misogyny, one assumed violent criminal at a time, only raises her volume a little more. Exceeding the normal range, definitely steeping in public-humiliation-ritual territory. 

“I’m not misunderstanding,” Y/N bites, brows pinched like he’s personally offended her by even insinuating as much, “I have ears, just so you know, and I’ve heard a woman saying no, and please, and stop. So you can drop your good boy act, okay—“

Harry blinks. If not for the character defamation going on and the way Socks-and-Sandals raises his phone out of seemingly nowhere, pointing it into their direction as if there isn’t a potential fire to be filmed instead of all things, Harry would laugh. But there is, and the flash is on, weak along his peripheral edge—

“I know guys like you, I know your type,” Y/N declares, jabbing her finger against him again, this time so close to grazing the area along his chest, right between the tops of his pectorals, just over Snuggles, “and it’s gross that you think because you’re attractive you can walk all over everyone and do things like that to people, and you know what, next time maybe the cops won’t be so nice—”

Ah, nice. Another mystery resolved; one which involved a pair of men with guns in their holsters at his door performing a wellness check and an excruciatingly awkward clarification on impact play, consensual sadomasochism, and safewords. For weeks Harry wondered what had inspired a legal inquiry into his pastimes. Now, staring at the culprit— case dismissed— he can only blink before his brows wrinkle up. 

“You’re the one who called the police?” Harry murmurs, a note of soft incredulity soaking the phrase.  

“Any sane woman would call the police when she heard another woman being abused—“

“Abused?”

“Yes! Abused! And— and— honestly—“

Before Y/N can launch into another ruthlessly-curated, virtue-plated diatribe, Harry resituates the animal in his grip, unlocking his phone to the homescreen. Then, Safari. He thumbs over it with a careful determination seeding along his downturned, sculpted expression.

“I don’t know what form of assault would be worse,” Y/N chimes, hands climbing up in an exaggerated, universal symbol of exasperation before they fall back to her sides (as if she hadn’t even noticed his attention has been redirected to his phone), “but when someone says no, it means no.”

It only takes a second for her to register that his focus has been rerouted elsewhere, though. Her tone dips indignantly.

“Excuse me. I’m talking to you. And also, while we’re at it, you’re unbearably loud and an unmannerly neighbor—“

Harry turns his phone around. His expression is impressively flat, all things considered. Y/N pauses. 

“Typically,” Harry states as her eyes rake over the glowing screen, “I like to be wined and dined before I give a crash course on my preferences, but.”

The image stretched across the illuminated LED sits over her tired gaze as she absorbs it, pupils jittering as she reads, but through the lens of his own profile mirrored back, he can see the moment her righteously fueled demeanor chips. 

“I do, like, a… softcore porn type thing,” he admits. 

Still, her brows are kinked. Only now, in stupefied doubt. “I— what?”

It’s with a rotting sense of dread curdling in the pit of her tummy that it suddenly dawns on Y/N— the mortified realization that she has succumbed to a horrible misunderstanding. 

The website the tab is set on almost looks archaic, like a kitsch relic— repository archives of a porn blog from the early 2000s. Spankinggram. The page is set onto a profile, something called Rings&Paddles, and the squared image of an avatar slices through the garishly orange palette of the site’s logo. Her gaze sweeps over the vista; a man sitting down on an armless chair, thighs splayed, palm curled over a …hairbrush. 

The profile picture sunders off at the neck. It’s a faceless silhouette, but the miscellany of sketches cascading across a forearm and the distinctly chunky medley of rings are… enough—

“Consensually,” Harry— Rings&Paddles, Y/N recognizes, molten heat dripping along the crests of her cheekbones— adds, “No one is being abused.”

In retrospect, the only feasible option to survive this, Y/N decides, is to change her name and move to another state. 

Probably something short and vaguely melancholic, one of those names that would look intriguing in all lowercase. A quiet town. Somewhere coastal, maybe. West. No— north. As far north as geographically possible. Perhaps she could get a dog. An older, ratty boy from a shelter. Drive an old car that’s too big with a busted radio. She’ll pretend it’s a benefit, rather than an inconvenience, because she’ll be the fabricated kind of mystique that insufferably enjoys the quiet calm (and rainstorms). A rebranded, movie-clichè hipster, but not unbearable in real life—

“But I understand the concern,” her neighbor says, cutting through the haze as she contemplates what brand of cigarettes she’ll be taking up as a trait of her pseudo-identity. Against all odds, his tone is calm in an all-too-merciful kind of way, “You can look into… domestic discipline, if you’d like. If you wanted to understand a bit better. There’s loads of really good information on the internet.”

For a moment, Y/N deliberates burning alive. If there isn’t a fire licking up her department store drapes, she’s going to set one to avoid bearing the weight of this shame for the rest of her life. Granted, the heat sizzling at her face feels like a flame, enough, both at the way she’s just publicly kinkshamed an innocent man and at the mention of …domestic discipline.

She’s going to cry. 

They would be Virginia Slims.

“You— …what?”

The garbled confusion drenching her tone is almost laughable. She sounds it, too; voice pinched and deceptively close to trembling off into a sob. Y/N stares straight ahead, body locked in a fugue state of humiliation as the realization calcifies in real-time. Her shoulders have gone stiff and her spine rigid, posture squeezed somewhere between standing and catatonic. The scale of her miscalculation worms into her skull like a parasite that’ll chew her awake in the middle of the night, years down the line.

For the last month, Y/N has spent every interaction with Harry evasively toeing over eggshells. Floundering over the way his face was sculpted, rather than compromising the integral structure of their acquaintanceship. Somehow, a sleep cycle cut short and the ambiguous suggestion that he had picked up on her avoidant habits was all it had taken to not only slander his (apparently not safe for work) extracurriculars, but probably assure her foreseeable Amazon packages suddenly start going missing.

Now, with a semi-public declaration of his profile pressed out to her face and his name no longer being audibly smeared with accusations, Harry can appreciate the quiet sense of revelation. 

His neighbor, on the other hand, looks visibly wrecked. Her entire stance is pulled in tight, like she’s actively trying to make herself smaller, but it’s her face that really gives her away— the way it twists, fluctuating between wide-eyed horror and the dawning realization that she’s just detonated a social landmine at point-blank range. All heat-tinged and shame-doused, the young woman blinks up at him, doe-eyes rounded in apologetic appall and lips parted slightly like she’s still buffering. The combination of words that just left his mouth— softcore porn, domestic discipline, consensual— seem to be wrestling in her brain like tangled Christmas lights, none of them quite fitting together in a way that makes sense and glinters.

“I am sorry about the noise,” he tells her, shutting the phone off and nestling his arm back up under his pet, “I’ll make sure to keep it to a minimum from now on.”

Y/N wilts. With the phone no longer held out into her direction, the way she stays glued to the same spot on the cement— as if mortified into a motionless piece of stone— is ridiculous enough for him to gnaw into his cheek to chew back a bark of laughter. Despite all trials and tribulations, his coping mechanisms never fail. 

“You— oh my God,” Y/N whispers. She makes a sound that could be a vaguely pained noise or the byproduct of her soul seeping out of her body. “Oh my God.”

Harry blinks. 

“I called the police on you,” she tells him, utter dismay lacing the words together. 

“You did, yeah.”

Harry still remembers the blank expression varnished along the officer’s face— the kind of emotionally vacant stare reserved for department store mannequins. The echo of the distant, metaphysical NOPE that definitely rode along his brainstem the moment the curly-haired brunette mentioned “it’s a kink thing,” and the way his partner, hands allocated to his holster belt, started very obviously examining his own shoes. 

“I thought—“ Y/N stutters, her wobbling voice sounding squeezed from her trachea, “I thought—“

“You thought you were living next door to a criminal,” Harry supplies. When he tilts his head, a rogue curl flops over his forehead.  

Finally, the young woman moves, burying her face in her hands. This will haunt her, she thinks. Forever. 

From the corner of his eye, the man can tell that most of the tenants have gone back to their regularly scheduled repertoires of stalled misery. And despite the absolute PR mess her blunder has induced— his eyes wander over her, the way she’s cupping her face like she wants to melt into her own hands and seep off into the pavement— he feels oddly… bad. Not secondhand embarrassed (firsthand, definitely firsthand), but Y/N looks like she’s going to combust. It’s tragic, really. The kind of pitiful that makes him purse his mouth and stare down at her in contemplation.

“Honestly,” his voice cuts through the haze in her throbbing, hot skull, all even-toned sincerity (which is worse, so much worse), “if I was in your position, yeah? I’d do the same thing.”

The admission coaxes her into a horrified peer through the wedges between her fingers. The warmth pressed to her palms feels borderline pyrexic. 

“And if that were the case, you’d be the neighborhood hero. So.” He raises a shoulder nonchalantly.

Y/N doesn’t immediately respond. Instead, she soaks in the crime scene, doused in the blinking blue and red. 

“I’m not sure neighborhood hero is how I’ll be remembered,” the young woman finally answers, groaning through her hands, and then pressing her fingertips into her temples. 

Harry hums. Then, he sighs. “No, you’re right. I’d say misguided vigilante. I reckon it’s a bit better than violent felon, though.”

Y/N makes another sound. This one sounds a little more wounded.

Harry lingered in the doorway, arms crossed, watching her with a mixture of concern and quiet frustration. The faint aroma of the dinner he’d prepared still clung to the air, a cruel reminder that she had once again skipped a meal in favor of work. Outside, the streetlights cast a soft, silver glow through the thin curtains, tracing ghostly patterns on the floor. Y/N remained wrapped in the world of her screen, completely oblivious to his presence.

He cleared his throat, his voice cutting through the hush like a blade. “Y/N, it’s late. You need to come to bed.”

She didn’t look up. “Just a few more minutes, Harry. I need to finish this.”

Harry sighed, raking a hand through his unruly curls. “You’ve been saying that for the last three hours. You need a break.”

This time, she did glance up—just long enough for him to catch the flicker of exhaustion in her gaze before she turned back to her work. “I can’t. This project is a big one. I have to get it done.”

Harry pushed off the door frame and strode toward her, his presence heavy, unyielding. A warm hand landed on her shoulder, grounding her. “You’ve been at this nonstop for weeks. You need to take care of yourself.”

She shrugged off his touch. “I will. Just not tonight.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s not how this works, Y/N. You know the rules. You agreed to them.” His voice remained level, but there was an edge to it now, a quiet authority that she could no longer ignore. “Your body needs food, rest… You’ll burn out if you keep this up.”

Y/N’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, but for the first time in hours, she hesitated. She exhaled slowly, her voice softer, but still laced with defiance.

“I just… need to finish this. Can’t you see that?”

Harry’s expression didn’t waver. He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You can finish it tomorrow. During normal hours. Right now, you need sleep. I already let you skip dinner, and we both know that wasn’t the first meal you’ve ignored lately.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a murmur. “I’ve run out of patience, love.”

Y/N stilled. She understood the implication behind his words. Her breath hitched, cheeks heating.

“Harry, I can’t just—”

“Yes, you can.” His tone was gentle, yet immovable. “And you will.” With deliberate ease, he reached out and closed her laptop, the sudden silence deafening.

She finally looked at him, her eyes flashing with something between defiance and reluctant surrender. “You’re being over the top,” she muttered.

Harry smirked, tilting her chin up with his fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Maybe I am. But someone has to be.” His thumb brushed against her cheek, slow and deliberate. “You’re not taking care of yourself. And that’s not acceptable to me.” His voice was softer now, but it carried an unmistakable weight.

The air thickened, charged with something unspoken yet undeniable.

He took a step back, nodding toward the staircase. “C’mon. Up you get.”

Y/N hesitated for half a second before pushing up from her chair, her body drawn to his like a tide to the shore. As much as she wanted to argue, she knew he was right. This project had pushed her past her limits—late nights, skipped meals, unanswered texts and calls—Harry had let a lot slide. But tonight, that grace had run out. And now that she had been pulled from the blue-light-induced trance she had been under, she found herself grateful for his insistence.

As they ascended the stairs, a different kind of tension coiled low in her stomach. She knew exactly where this was going, and she could already feel the electricity crackling in the space between them.

Harry sat on the edge of their bed, his eyes steady as she hovered in the doorway. He extended a hand, beckoning her forward.

“C’mere,” he commanded.

She found her place in between his legs. His hands fell to her hips and slinked around to the soft flesh under her ass, holding her in place. She looked down at him, anticipating his next move.

“I think you have a pretty good idea of where this is headed, yeah?” His eyes held a quiet patience that stood in sharp contrast to the inevitable sentence looming over her head.

“Yes, Sir,” she whispered, avoiding his gaze.

Harry hummed in approval. “I’ve let a lot slide these past couple of weeks,” he said, tilting his head forward in search of her eyes. “I know big projects come up and that they sometimes get the better of our judgment. That’s just life. But you’re not doing yourself any favors by skipping meals and running on two hours of sleep each day… I know you know that.”

She rested her hands on his shoulders, fingers toying with the fabric of his shirt. A nervous habit.

He blows out a soft sigh, brushing his fingers against her skin, “I gave you plenty of chances to course-correct, Y/N. I wasn’t expecting perfection, but you’ve been running yourself into the ground, and that’s not something I can just overlook.”

She chewed her lip, her gaze flickering anywhere but his face. “I know. I’m sorry.” A frustrated breath escaped her lips, “It’s just… this project is important to me, and you know how cutthroat my coworkers can be. I can’t afford to fall behind.”

“I understand,” he says, lightly squeezing her flesh beneath his hands. “And I love how hard you work, but regardless, you know you can’t be on your A-game if you’re not taking care of yourself… That’s why we put these rules in place, remember? He moves his right hand up to her jaw in a silent command to meet his stare, “Because I love you and I care about you.” His voice was steady, eyes unwavering. “And sometimes you need a reminder to care about yourself, too. Yeah?”

She maintained eye contact this time, the guilt she had been trying to push aside settled heavily in her chest. “I love you too.” she mumbles, her voice barely audible. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t just an apology—it was an admission. She had ignored the rules, brushed aside her own well-being for weeks, and now the weight of it all felt like it was seeping out of her pores, pooling at his feet.

Harry lets his hand drop from her chin, his expression firm but not unkind. “And I appreciate that,” he says, his tone shifting, sharpening. “But you know the deal.”

It wasn’t necessarily a question, but she answered him, nonetheless.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Alright, over my knee,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. He patted his thigh—a silent summons, firm and absolute.

Y/N hesitated for a moment. Not out of reluctance, but out of the sheer pleasure of the moment—this dance between them—the thrill of defiance followed by sweet surrender. She always wanted this, always needed this, and until right now; she hadn’t realized how much she’d been craving it.

He didn’t rush her. He never did. He simply waited, watching her with steady, knowing eyes. The weight of his gaze alone sent a shiver through her, anticipation thrumming beneath her skin. Taking a slow, measured breath, she finally relented, placing her hands on the mattress for balance as she draped herself over his lap.

He took a moment to admire the sight before him—the gentle arch of her back, the delicate vibration in her limbs, betraying her excitement. His hands smoothed over her spine, warm and comforting, a soothing contrast to the tension coiling inside her.

He could feel her trembling almost imperceptibly as she laid there—a quiet, unspoken longing bubbling up from her core. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her leggings, peeling them down her legs with deliberate ease before tossing them aside.

His palms roamed over the swell of her ass, his touch featherlight, teasing. Y/N bit her lip, resisting the instinct to press her thighs together as he traced the lace trim of her panties, feeling her heat radiating through the delicate fabric. That alone nearly unraveled him. His cock strained painfully against his sweatpants, but he forced himself to linger in this moment—the exquisite torture of making her wait, of drawing it out until she was teetering on the edge.

His hands traveled upward, finding the hem of her shirt, fingertips grazing the sensitive skin beneath. He heard the small hitch in her breath, watched as goosebumps bloomed across her flesh. Slowly, agonizingly, he lifted the fabric, removing it from her body, letting the cool air kiss her bare back as she shivered in his grasp.

He towered over her, his presence commanding every ounce of her attention. His voice, low and unwavering, wrapped around her like a steel chain. “Is your work more important than your own health?”

Y/N inhaled sharply, steadying herself before she answered. “No, Sir.”

“And who decides when you’ve had enough?” His head tilted slightly, waiting—expecting.

His voice rumbled through her, a dark, velvety vibration that settled deep in her bones. Her breath hitched. “You do, Sir.”

A flicker of approval danced in his eyes. “Good girl.”

His palm ghosted over the curves of her ass, tracing gentle circles that did little to soothe the anticipation humming in her nerves. “I want you to count for me.”

She barely had a moment to brace herself before his hand left her skin—only to return with a sharp, resounding crack.

“One!” she gasped. But before she could stop herself, her right hand shot back instinctively, trying to shield herself from the sting.

Harry was faster. He caught her wrist effortlessly, pinning it against the small of her back. His fingers wove through hers, the delicate touch at odds with the firmness of his next words.

“You know better than that.” His voice carried a quiet, heavy disapproval that made her stomach flip. “We’re starting over. Every time you squirm, we’ll go back to one again. Understood?”

Y/N swallowed hard, resisting the urge to whimper. He meant business tonight. “Yes, Sir.”

The next blow landed just as hard.

“One, Sir.” This time, she tagged on the honorific—not required, but a subtle touch she knew he'd appreciate. A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips.

Then came the next. And the next.

“Two, Sir… Three, Sir!” The quick succession stole the breath from her lungs, leaving her voice edged with both pain and something deeper, something needier.

He could feel it—the way her body responded, her skin flushing beneath his touch, heat rolling off her in waves. His palm burned against her flesh, but he reveled in it. He lived for this part: the slow, deliberate breaking down of everything but sensation.

By number twelve, the sharp slap landed against the tender flesh of her lower thighs, and she wailed, the sound raw and unfiltered. Tears pricked at the edges of her vision, but still, she forced the number past her lips.

Harry knew her body better than she did. He knew exactly how to unravel her, how to make her cry out first from frustration—then from sheer, unadulterated pleasure. He wanted her mind empty, consumed only by this, by him.

The next set of strikes sent waves of something heady through her, an intoxicating blend of pain and euphoria. Her breath stuttered. She barely managed to grunt out the numbers between each punishing impact, her body trembling, craving.

By the time he reached twenty-eight, her head had fallen slack against the bed, silent tears soaking into the duvet. This was the most Y/N had ever taken. Normally, he didn’t have to go past twenty before she surrendered completely, but tonight—tonight she had been stubborn. Each slap chipped away at the stress, the tension, the weight she had been carrying for weeks.

He felt the moment her body gave in. The way her fingers went limp in his grasp, her voice raw, spent. She wasn’t resisting anymore—just accepting.

“Thirty, Sir,” she sobbed, the words almost lost in the haze of exhaustion and relief. Then, softer still, “I’m sorry.”

Harry let his hand relax, fingers tracing slow, soothing circles over the heated expanse of her skin. Her body was still shaking, but not from pain. Not anymore. He knew she had slipped, drifting into that quiet, blissful space where nothing existed beyond the warmth of his touch and the safety of his presence.

And he wasn’t about to pull her out. Not yet.

For a long moment, the only sound was the steady rhythm of his palm smoothing over her, and the lingering, uneven sniffles escaping her lips. He let her breathe, let her be.

After a couple minutes, he leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as he murmured, “You did so good baby. I’m proud of you.”

He pressed a few final, featherlight kisses along the curve of her lower back, his breath warm against her skin as he murmured, “Are you ready for me to check on you?”

He already knew the answer. Knew what he would find when his fingers slipped between her thighs. The anticipation sent a thrill down his spine as he let his hand drift lower, tracing the seam of her slick folds, drinking in the heat that seeped into his skin.

She was dripping.

Harry was hard beneath her, the evidence pressing insistently against her stomach, and he knew she could feel it too. But tonight wasn’t about him. Yes, she had broken the rules—deserved the punishment she had just endured—but more importantly, he wanted to strip away the weight she had been carrying. He wanted to unmake the stress that had hardened her and replace it with something softer.

His thumb found her clit, circling with just enough pressure to make her squirm, a broken whimper muffled against the duvet.

“Good girl, Y/N,” he praised, his voice a low hum of satisfaction.

“Just gonna make you feel good now, yeah?”

He slid a finger inside her, slow and deliberate, while his free hand threaded into her hair, stroking, grounding her.

Her nod was small, but he felt the way her body melted, giving in to his touch. Wetness seeped onto his thigh, further proof of how much she needed this—needed him.

He pushed a second finger inside, reveling in the way her walls clenched around him, her body trembling from the overwhelming sensations. With every stroke, he could feel her tension unraveling, her muscles slackening, the last remnants of restraint slipping away.

The world around him dissolved as his fingers curled inside her, seeking out the spot he knew would make her crumble. “You’ve been so good for me,” he whispered, his lips grazing the damp skin of her shoulder. “Took your punishment like a champ. Now, I want you to come for me. Just like this.”

Her skin tasted of sweat and salt, the scent of her arousal thick in the air.

Y/N was a paradox—a perfect blend of submission and defiance. As obedient as she was, that stubborn streak of hers ran just as deep, a constant challenge that kept him on his toes. But nights like this? When she surrendered completely, yielding every inch of herself to him without hesitation?

He savored it. Relished it. Worshipped it.

Because having all of her—mind, body, and soul—was a privilege he would never take for granted.

He studied her like an artist captivated by the final stroke of their masterpiece, burning the view into his memory—the flutter of her lashes as her eyes turned glassy, the flush that crept down her neck, the way her cunt clenched so tightly around his fingers as if trying to keep him there forever. He wanted to teach her to let go. To release all the anxiety, frustration, and exhaustion that had been suffocating her for far too long.

But he needed it to come from her—wanted her to own her pleasure as much as he did—to know that she was worthy, desired, loved.

Harry’s fingers slid deeper, moving with deliberate slowness as they arched just right, pressing against the spot that had her moaning, her body instinctively grinding against his palm. Her face was buried in the duvet, eyes squeezed shut as she gasped, overwhelmed by the rush of sensations flooding through her.

“Come on, Y/N. Let go for me,” he coaxed, his voice dripping with filthy promise.

Her body tensed, and he knew he had her. She trembled on the precipice before the dam broke. A shattered moan tore from her lips as pleasure ripped through her, muscles spasming in tight, rhythmic waves. The heat of her release coated his figures, and he didn’t stop—not yet.

He worked her through it, his thumb never relenting from the steady, precise strokes against her clit. He wanted everything. Wanted to hear her cry out for him, to watch the pleasure drag her under until she had nothing left to give.

And under she went.

Her cries turned breathless as the last tremors wracked her body, her limbs going boneless beneath his touch. Slowly, he withdrew his fingers, smirking at the needy little whimper she made at the loss. He soothed the ache with soft strokes along her trembling thighs, grounding her as she came back down.

“Atta girl, sweetheart,” he cooed, voice laced with satisfaction. “That feel good?”

A slow, exhausted nod was all she could manage. As the haze of pleasure lifted, she became aware of everything at once—the damp strands of hair sticking to her nape, the tingling in her limbs, the lingering warmth radiating from her backside.

But nothing could pull her back to reality quite like his voice.

“Can you sit up for me, sweet girl?”

***

Water cascaded from the shower head in silken ribbons, a warm, soothing contrast against the cool tile. Steam curled in the air, thick and languid, blurring the edges of the room until it felt like they existed in their own private universe. The scent of eucalyptus clung to the mist, wrapping around them like an embrace.

Harry held Y/N close, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, the quiet strength of him anchoring her. Her head rested against his collarbone, the sound of his heartbeat a calming metronome against the storm that had been raging inside her for weeks.

His hands moved slowly over her damp skin, drawing soothing circles along her spine, his thumbs tracing the delicate ridges of her back. She shivered—not from the cold, but from the contrast of sensations: the warmth of the water, the cool air beyond it, the roughness of his calloused fingers against the softness of her flesh.

She tilted her head up, meeting his gaze through the water’s shimmering veil. Her lips were parted, her lashes heavy, surrender written in every line of her expression. Harry felt something deep and primal stir in his chest.

With a lingering kiss, he turned her around, his fingers threading through her hair as he worked the shampoo into a gentle lather. His touch was reverent, a contradiction of tenderness and strength, his large hands cradling her head with the kind of care that made her stomach flutter. She sighed softly, melting into the sensation as she rested against his muscled body, her small noises of contentment filling the air like music.

When the last suds had been rinsed away, Harry reached past her to shut off the water, the sudden absence of sound leaving them in an intimate hush. Without hesitation, he grabbed the towels he had set out earlier, wrapping her in one before she could feel the bite of the air. He took his time drying her off, the plush fabric gliding over her sensitive skin like a gentle breeze, coaxing a soft sigh from her lips. Then, with the same quiet devotion, he slipped one of his t-shirts over her head, the oversized fabric swallowing her smaller frame.

As Y/N moved through the final steps of her skincare routine, Harry retrieved a bottle of lotion from the cupboard across the room. He approached her with the grace of a shadow, gently tapping her on the bum.

“When you’re done, I want you to lay on the bed on your tummy. Ok?” His voice a smooth, honeyed command.

She finished up and did as she was told, sinking into the mattress, her head resting on her folded arms. Her damp hair spread across the silk pillow like a river of dark water, cool and smooth against the fabric.

The bed dipped beneath his weight, and she heard the soft sound of lotion being smoothed between his hands. A moment later, the hem of her shirt lifted, and his warm palms met the tender skin of her backside. Y/N sighed deeply, the coolness of the lotion a welcome relief to the heat lingering from earlier. His hands moved with slow, deliberate strokes, massaging away the sting, his fingers tracing the curves of her body with intimate familiarity.

The room was quiet, save for the rustle of sheets and the steady rhythm of their breathing. Y/N felt herself unraveling beneath his touch, sinking into the present moment, leaving behind the weight of the stress that had knotted itself into her muscles. He always knew how to bring her back—how to pull her from the depths of her mind and remind her that she didn't have to handle everything on her own.

When he was finished, he leaned down, brushing a stray lock of hair from her neck before pressing a gentle kiss to the delicate skin there.

“How do you feel?” His voice was a low murmur against her ear, thick with warmth and something deeper—something unspoken but understood.

Y/N swallowed, taking a moment to gather her words. “I—I feel good, Sir,” she admitted, her voice still laced with the remnants of pleasure and submission. “Still a little out of it… but good.” She paused for a moment, then continued, “I’m glad for the punishment. I really needed that.”

She shifted to sit up, and he caught her chin between his fingers, maneuvering her head to face him.

Harry’s lips curved into a soft smile, his thumb tracing slow, reassuring patterns along her cheek. “You did well tonight. You know that, right? M’proud of you.”

The weight of his words settled over her like a blanket—warm, protective, unwavering. She smiled softly into his touch.

A beat of silence stretched between them before he spoke again. “When you feel like things are spiraling, I need you to know you can come to me.”

Then, without waiting for a response, he leaned in and kissed her. It was slow and deliberate, filled with everything he didn’t need to say—everything he had already proven.

When she finally pulled away, her voice was softer, more certain. “I do know that. And I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner. It’s… a habit, shutting people out when I’m stressed. But regardless, you didn’t deserve that.”

Harry exhaled a quiet laugh, “Yes, I’m well aware of that habit of yours, which we’ll crack one day. But in the meantime, you can push all you want, sweetheart. Unfortunately for you, I’m not going anywhere.”

She giggled, letting him pull her into his chest. “On the contrary. Very fortunate for me,” she corrected, her voice tinged with affection.

He grinned, maneuvering the covers so she could slide beneath them. Reaching over, he switched off the lamp on his bedside table, casting the room into a velvety darkness.

As Y/N melted into him, the last of her tension slipping away, he pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head.

“Get some sleep. I love you.”

“I love you too,” she whispered against his skin, finally surrendering to the quiet lull of sleep’s embrace.

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