Sweet Tooth [HS]

NINE

One day later.

The next morning, Harry was still in bed next to Max when she woke up.

She knew he was, before she was even aware she was awake. All she could feel was heat. And heaviness. And peeking an eye open, and then the other, Max found the culprit lying nearly completely on top of her. His head was in the middle of her chest and his body covered her own. Only her arms were free, and she debated for a second whether she should push him off - but please. She knew she could never.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around him, bringing her hands up to brush through his hair. Max was gentle, though. Didn't want to wake him. Wanted to just spend this second, this moment, enjoying the feeling of Harry pressing her down as he slept.

She could feel his slow, hot breaths against her bare skin, could feel his chest rising in time with her own. Could feel the way her heart sort of squeezed when she looked down at him- at the human boy made from CDs and old books and second hand jeans that were falling apart.

She thought he looked so different to how he did in the tabloids and the Instagrams and the fucking adverts for Dior cologne.

In them, Max sometimes felt like she was looking at a stranger.

In them, he was Harry Styles, with the celebrity friends and the flashy cars and the $3 million mansion in LA. The Harry Styles who girls had on their bedroom walls and who articles raved on and on about and who got spotted making out with Victoria's Secret supermodels every other day.

And Max didn't know that person.

To her, that person, that version of Harry, was like an alien. To her, that person was surely not the same as the boy who she'd caught glimpses of sneaking up into the break room at The Inkshop all those years ago. Not the same as the boy who she'd squabbled with for hours over three lines on a silly moth he wanted tattooed in the middle of his silly stomach.

Not the same as the boy, the real boy, who was lying asleep on her chest as she ran her fingers through his hair.

It made no sense to Max. She couldn't connect the dots on it. Didn't see how the Harry laying on top of her now, was the Harry she had seen at least three times in the last issue of Vogue.

Max sighed, and shook her head at herself.

It didn't matter.

It really, really, just did not matter.

Especially not when she could suddenly feel Harry's arms tightening around her, squeezing her tight. How could anything else matter when she was watching him open one eye, then the other, and smile at her with a face she saw in her dreams.

She smiled back at him.

"Morning," she said.

"Morning angel," his voice was all gravelly and his eyes were all puffy from sleep. "That feels nice."

She giggled and yanked on a piece of his hair. "What, this?"

"Nooo Maxie," he protested, "Do it how you were."

He settled himself back on her chest, and she rolled her eyes. "You're demanding in the morning."

"Mhmm," he hummed, and she felt him press his groin into her. Felt something suspiciously hard against her leg. "Don't you know it."

"Harry!" She swatted his head as he leaned up, resting his elbows on either side of her head.

"What?"

He looked down at her, still half asleep and baby faced like the boy she'd known for years, acting all innocent- like his massive fucking boner wasn't pressing into her thigh.

"I can feel that."

"Feel what?" he smiled, still feigning innocence.

She shrugged, "Oh, well, in that case," she started to move out from under him, as if she was getting out of bed.

"Oh no no no, Maxie," Harry grabbed her hip, pulling her back to where she was pressed in under him. "You're not going anywhere."