Chapter 2: The 2 A.M. Truce
Sleep didn't come. It couldn't have. Harry lay beside me radiating heat like a furnace, one arm dead under my neck, and my whole body still hummed with him, and my brain kept replaying his mouth on my throat like a track on repeat.
"You're awake," he said into the dark.
"You're awake."
"I've got too much to say and four years of backlog." He rolled toward me, propped on an elbow. The lamp was still on, low, and his eyes were green as glass in it. "Can I cash some installments?"
"That's not how installments work, you owe me."
"I'm paying interest." His hand slid under the comforter and found my hip, thumb tracing the bone. "Junior year. Ask me."
"What about junior year?"
"That regional final. You wore Hanna's red jacket because yours got soaked in the rain and you screamed at me the entire second half from the bleachers and I played the best game of my life." His thumb drew slow circles. "I looked for you first when we won. Every time, after that. First face I found."
"You never said."
"I'm confessing. That's the whole point. You get one too."
I thought about it. His hand kept moving, patient, up my waist, along my ribs, learning me like he hadn't already learned me an hour ago.
"Sophomore year," I said. "Aria's gallery thing. You stood next to me in front of that stupid photo of the parking lot and said, this one's my favorite, and I thought you meant the photo."
He went still. "You thought I meant the photo."
"For three years, Harry."
"Christ." He laughed once, helpless, and then his mouth found my shoulder. "The photo of the parking lot. You think I drove Aria's opening out of my way for a parking lot."
I turned into him and kissed him, and the kiss went slow this time, none of the wall's desperation in it. His hand came up to my jaw and held me there, and we traded breath for a long minute, unhurried, the lamp humming faintly.
"Freshman year of college," he murmured against my lips. "You lent me your copy of Beloved and I never gave it back because your handwriting was in the margins and I used to read your notes instead of Morrison."
"You didn't lose it?"
"Third shelf of my desk. Spine cracked. Page forty-one has a coffee stain I cried next to, roughly."
"You cried next to my book."
"I cried next to a lot of things about you. Keep up."
His hand traveled down my stomach while he said it, unhurried, and slipped between my thighs again. I was still soft and aching from before, oversensitive, and I gasped when his fingertips found me, and he swallowed the gasp with his mouth.
"Already?" I managed.
"I've got three more years to pay for and I'm not sleeping anyway." One finger slid through the mess I still was, lazy, collecting it. "Tell me about junior year of high school. My turn to learn."
"You carried my bag to the bus. Whole season. Every away game."
"That's it? That's your confession?"
"You carried my bag and I wrote a poem about it and I will die before you read it."
"I'll find it. I've got your third shelf." He pressed the finger into me, slow, and my spine arched off the pillow. He watched it happen with his mouth parted, and he did it again, and again, building nothing toward anything, just occupying me, just being inside me with his hand while we talked like it was normal. It wrecked me worse than the first round had.
"Harry."
"Mm. Keep confessing."
"I can't think when you're doing that."
"Good. Then it's honest." He curled the finger and I grabbed his wrist, not to stop him, just to hold on to something. "The real one now. The Kendall one. You've been waiting to ask all night."
The room went very quiet except for his hand, the small wet sounds of it, obscenely calm. I made myself say it.
"Why her? Six weeks, Harry. You looked at me like I'd set something on fire. Why her?"
He didn't flinch. His finger kept its slow rhythm inside me, and his eyes stayed on mine, and I watched him decide to say the true thing.
"Because you felt like the end of the line," he said. "Everything I wanted was you. Four years of it. And I'd built my whole personality around not needing anything that much. So when it got loud, I found the one person on this campus who has never once looked at me like you look at me. Kendall's lovely. Kendall's also a seat at the back of the bus. A coward's seat with great cheekbones." His thumb brushed my clit, soft, and my breath stuttered. "Every time I chose her over you I was doing it on purpose. Testing whether you'd fight for me, because I was too much of a coward to fight for you first. It's the worst thing I've ever done and I did it weekly."
I was close. His voice, his hand, the confession pouring out of him, it was all one thing and my body couldn't tell them apart. I came the second time with my hand fisted in his hair and his name said low so the neighbor wouldn't hear, and he worked me through it with his forehead pressed to mine, murmuring, more of it, a year at a time, until I stopped shaking.
Then his phone buzzed on the floor. Then buzzed again, and again.
Harry groaned and reached for his jeans without pulling out of the tangle of my sheets, and fished the phone out of the pocket, and the screen lit his face white. I read it upside down. Kendall. Three messages.
hey did u think about formal?
we could go as friends if that's easier
louis said ur bringing someone so just lmk
"Louis," I said.
"Later problem." He started typing with his thumb, jaw set.
I took the phone out of his hand.
"Nikki."
"You said you were done thinking. So stop." My thumb hovered over the keyboard. Four years of waiting for him to be brave, and here was a text field, and my hands were steadier than they'd been all night. "Watch."
I typed: not going to formal with you, Kendall. sorry. it's not fair to you and it never would have been. it was never going to be you.
I hit send before I could revise it, because I am a Literature major and I know what revision does to the truth. The message delivered. Harry stared at the screen, then at me, then he pulled the phone out of my fingers and set it face-down on the nightstand.
"Okay," he said, hoarse. "That was the hottest thing you've done all night and you're not even dressed."
"Shut up, Harry."
"It's not going with you either. Formal. Just so we're clear. I'm not going at all." He pulled me on top of him, both hands full of my hips. "I'm busy."
"Busy," I repeated, and rolled my hips down against him, and felt him already half hard again under me. "Busy doing what, exactly?"
"This." His hands tightened on my hips. "Mostly this."
I reached down between us and wrapped my hand around him, and he wasn't half hard for long. He swore, head tipping back against the pillow, throat working, and I watched the tendons of his neck stand out while I stroked him slow, my thumb circling the head, my palm slick from the mess we'd already made.
"Nikki."
"You said installments. I'm collecting."
"You're going to kill me. I've got a nine a.m."
"Then die quietly."
I lifted up onto my knees and guided him to me, and this time I didn't go slow. I sank down on him in one long stroke and we both made the same broken sound, and his hands flew from my hips to my thighs like he needed to hold on to something while I took him.
"Fuck." His voice cracked on it. "Okay. Okay. You're in charge. Noted."
I rode him. Slow at first, my palms flat on his chest, feeling his heart slam under the tattoos, then faster, my thighs burning, the headboard starting its soft tap against the wall again. His hands roamed everywhere, my waist, my ass, up my ribs to cup my breasts, thumbs dragging over my nipples until they ached, and I ground down on him on every stroke and watched his face come apart.
"You feel," he started.
"Don't talk."
"You'd hate that. You hate losing an argument even naked."
"I'd hate you being wrong about something else. Ride the silence."
He laughed and it turned into a groan when I clenched around him, and he sat up under me, sudden, one arm banded across my back, and the angle buried him deeper and I gasped into his neck. He kissed my shoulder, my jaw, the corner of my mouth, unhurried while his hips rolled up into mine from below, and it was slow and deep and filthy all at once.
"Senior year," he said against my ear, breathing hard between words. "Confession. Prom. You went with that guy from debate."
"Don't say his name in my bed."
"He held your wrist when he danced with you. You hate that. You pulled your hand back twice and he did it again and I stood by the punch table trying to figure out how to commit a felony politely."
"You saw that?"
"Everyone saw that. Liam apologized to you on behalf of the gender. You left early and I left two minutes after you and sat in my car hating myself because I didn't follow you." His thumb found my clit where we were joined and pressed, slow circles, and my rhythm fell apart. "That's the year. That's the one I keep paying on."
"I waited in the parking lot for ten minutes," I said, wrecked, "hoping someone would follow me."
He stopped moving. Just stopped, buried in me, and looked at me with his whole face gone.
"Ten minutes."
"Ten minutes, Harry. Then I called Hanna."
"Christ." He kissed me, hard, and started moving again, hips driving up, his arm locked around my back, and the confession was still coming out of him against my mouth. "I'll make it up. I'll follow you everywhere. I'll be embarrassing about it. Ask anyone."
"I'm close."
"I know. I can feel you. Come on my cock, Nikki. I want to feel it this time from inside."
I did. It rolled up through me from where his thumb was circling, and I bore down on him and he made a sound against my throat, deep and helpless, and kept thrusting through it until I was shaking and overstimulated and grabbing his wrist to make him stop.
"Don't stop you," he clarified, and kept going. "Stop that. I'm not done with you."
He flipped us. Put me on my back on my roommate's side again, my blue hair everywhere, and hooked my legs over his shoulders, and fucked me down into the mattress with long, measured strokes while I was still pulsing from the last one. It was too much and exactly right. I grabbed the comforter in both fists.
"Harry."
"I've got you."
"I can't."
"You can. One more. You've got four years of interest and I'm being thorough."
He reached down and pressed his thumb to my clit again, and I came a third time, ragged, loud before I bit it back, and this time he followed me, his rhythm breaking, hips stuttering, my name said into my knee. He pulled out at the last second and finished against my stomach with his forehead pressed to my shin, breathing like a broken bellows.
He collapsed beside me after. Dealt with the mess with the sweatshirt off my desk chair, which was my favorite one and is now his, apparently, forever. He lay there with his hand on my stomach where he'd made it, just resting his palm there like he was claiming territory.
"Third confession," he said, quieter. "The last one."
"It's four in the morning."
"I know. I'm not sleeping. Listen." He turned his head. The lamp caught the edge of his jaw, the stubble coming in. "I'm not telling you it'll be easy tomorrow. It won't. Spencer's going to have a list. Zayn's not going to talk to me for a week and he'll be right to. Kendall might actually hate me and she did nothing wrong."
"She'll be fine. Kendall's got the best posture of anyone I've ever met. People with that posture land on their feet."
"You're not worried."
"I'm worried about one thing." I looked at him. "I need you to not do it again. Not the coward thing. Six weeks was a test I didn't know I was taking, and if you ever test me like that again I'm out, Harry. No installments. No third shelf. Gone."
"Never again." No hesitation. "I'd rather lose everything else first."
"That's dramatic."
"I'm a jock with a Literature major in my bed. I'm allowed one dramatic sentence."
I laughed, and the laugh cracked something loose in my chest, and I pressed my face into his shoulder and stayed there. His arm came around me. Outside, the first gray hint of dawn was starting to leach the color out of the window, and his phone sat face-down on the nightstand with Kendall's reply probably glowing on it, unanswered.
"I should call Liam," he said. "Before nine. Before the guys get me in a room."
"At four in the morning?"
"He's a grad student. He's awake. He's always awake." He hesitated, thumb moving slow on my hip. "Or I could tell them all at dinner. All nine of us. Say it out loud, in front of everybody, that it's you. That it was always you. Let them react."
"That's a massacre."
"It's an honest one."
I thought about it. My whole group, watching his face when he said it. Hanna's mouth dropping open. Louis yelling. Aria grinning like she'd won a bet she never made.
"Dinner," I said. "But you're sitting next to me. Kendall's seat is gone."
"There's no Kendall seat. Never was." He kissed my hair, blue roots first, like he was reading me top to bottom. "Six-thirty. I'll drive you."
"You'd better not make up an excuse this time."
"Only excuse I've got left is that I'm in love with you. I'll use it in front of witnesses."
"Then rehearse it," I said. "Say it to me like I'm the table."
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His hair was a disaster, matted on one side, curling wildly on the other, and there was a red stripe on his chest where my curls had dragged across it all night.
"Guys. I owe you an apology. Six weeks of it. I used Kendall to avoid Nikki because I've been in love with Nikki since junior year and I'm a coward. Also I texted Kendall at four a.m. to un-invite her. Any questions."
"That's a hostage statement."
"It's what I've got." He rubbed his face with both hands. "Louis is going to say something about honor and the team and then hug me too hard."
"Louis is going to yell first. Then hug. Then yell again."
"Yeah."
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Face-down, but I felt him stiffen beside me. He turned it over and I watched his jaw change.
Kendall. One message, then the typing dots, then nothing.
"She answered?"
"Yeah."
"Read it to me. If I'm in this, I'm in it."
He turned the screen toward me. Fine. that's what I figured weeks ago honestly. tell nikki she could do better.
I laughed. It came out of me sideways, half relief and half something meaner, and I clamped my hand over my mouth because the girl next door was still asleep.
"Weeks ago," I said. "Kendall figured it out weeks ago."
"Kendall has eyes. Unlike you, who thought I meant a parking lot photo."
"Let it go, Styles."
"Never. It's my favorite fact of all time." He set the phone down and pulled me back against him, my spine to his chest, his arm heavy across my ribs. For a while we just lay there while the window went from gray to pale, and his breathing slowed against my neck, and I thought he might actually sleep.
Then his hand moved. Low, slow, over my hip and across my stomach, and down. Not hungry this time. Deliberate. His fingers slipped between my thighs from behind and found me sore and tender and slick anyway, and I hissed when he touched my clit.
"Harry. I'm not going to survive a fourth."
"You don't have to come. I just want to touch you." Two fingers slid through my folds, lazy, not pushing in. "I spent four years not doing this. Let me have the ordinary version."
"The ordinary version."
"Me in your bed at five in the morning with my hand between your legs while you're too tired to be sharp with me. That's the one I wanted. That's the one I used to imagine when it was bad." His fingers moved in slow, shallow strokes, barely anything, and my body responded anyway, hips shifting back against him. I could feel him hard against my ass through nothing at all.
"You're hard."
"I'm always hard. Ignore it. This isn't about me."
"Then what is it about?"
"Learning you without an audience of my own desperation."
I turned my head and kissed him over my shoulder, and he made a low sound into my mouth and pressed his fingers a little deeper, just barely inside, teasing the entrance without committing. My hand reached back and closed around him, and I stroked him the same slow way, matching his pace, and we did that for a long time, hardly moving, the comforter tangled at our knees, the room smelling like sex and lamp heat and his skin.
"I want you again," he said into my hair. "Slow. Tell me it's not too much."
"It's too much. Do it anyway."
He reached for the nightstand. The condom went on faster this time, no shaking, and then he pushed into me from behind, one long careful stroke, and we both went quiet. I was swollen and aching around him and every inch of it registered, raw, almost too sharp, and I let it happen anyway because I wanted all of him inside me one more time before daylight made us into people again.
"Okay?" he asked, and his voice was wrecked.
"Move."
He did. Slow, deep, his hand splayed over my hip holding me still, his mouth at the back of my neck where the mark from earlier already lived. There was no hurry in it. He rolled his hips and I pushed back to meet him and the whole thing was almost silent, just our breathing and the faint wet sound of him inside me and the tap of the headboard so soft the neighbor would never hear.
"Tell me something true," I whispered.
"You're the best thing I ever almost threw away."
"That's terrible."
"It's true, though. It's so true it doesn't scan." He slid deeper and held there, and my breath caught and stayed caught. "Here's a better one. I'm not going to last, and I don't care, because it's you."
He kept his word. The pace didn't change, that same maddening slowness, but I felt him swell, felt his rhythm thin at the edges, and he reached around and pressed two fingers to my clit and worked them in time with his strokes. I came quietly for once, my whole body clenching around him, my hand clamped over my own mouth, and he groaned into my shoulder and followed me a few strokes later, his hips pressed flush to my ass, shuddering.
He stayed inside me for a while. His arm heavy across my waist. Outside, someone slammed a door in the hall and the building woke up around us in small increments, pipes and footsteps and a phone alarm muffled through drywall.
"We should get up," he said, and made no move to get up.
"Liam first."
"Liam first." He sighed, kissed the back of my neck, and finally rolled away to deal with the condom. I watched him sit on the edge of the bed in the gray light, phone in his hand, thumbs hovering.
"Call him."
"It's five in the morning."
"You said he's always awake. Call him, Harry. If I have to wait through a whole day of you building up to dinner, I'll lose my nerve, and I'm not doing this twice."
He hit the button and put it on speaker, and it rang twice before a crisp, awake voice answered.
"Styles. It's five a.m. Either someone's in the hospital or you've finally grown up. Which is it?"
Harry looked at me. I nodded once.
"The second one," he said. "And I need to tell you first, before dinner, because if I walk in there cold you'll have a list ready and I'll deserve it, but I'd rather take it with the apology already said."
A long pause on the line. Then Liam, quieter: "Say it."
"I was with Nikki tonight. She's here. I'm telling the whole group at dinner that it's her, it's been her for four years, and I'm apologizing to every one of you for the last six weeks. Especially for how I handled Kendall. That's the statement. Go ahead with the list."
Another pause. I heard Liam exhale, long and slow.
"One question," he said. "And then I'll save the rest for dinner, because you're right, I do have a list."
"Ask."
"Is she there because you asked, or because you finally stopped making her chase you?"
Harry took my hand off the pillow and laced his fingers through mine on the comforter, in plain view of the phone, and answered without looking away from me.
"Because I stopped," he said. "She's there because I asked."