Sonata (Harry Styles FanFiction)

27. Patience Is A Virtue

Fire. All I could think about was fire. It was whisking through my veins and searing it's way through my mind. There was a reason my body craved his. There was a reason that he haunted my dreams and my reality. He was the first person to do it. I'd been shut down for years, just going through the motions. But now... now he made me feel alive.

Darien Grace

I'd forgotten what it was like to actually feel— to not just pretend that the shadows of emotions and sensations I was forced to endure were reality. That outside of myself there were fully functioning individuals that got to experience the full spectrum of human sensation... It was impossible to compute and it just made the numbness worse.

Ironically, sex was the only thing that helped maintain the fantasy that I was normal— that I wasn't as damaged and broken as my childhood had left me. Sex helped me to feel something and at this point I was willing to take anything I could get. I knew the image I'd earned for myself. I knew that half of the people I'd slept with didn't give a single shit about me and that they only saw me as a cheap fuck, but I didn't care. If promiscuity was the price I had to bare for basic humanity, then so be it.

Greg was hands down my longest relationship. I knew that he loved me; I could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at me, I could hear it in his voice, and sometimes, just sometimes I got the slightest notion that I could feel it in the way we touched. I knew that he still loved me, even after all the shit we went through. He was the closest I'd ever come to normal and I think that's why I had held on for as long as I did. I'd thought that, maybe one day, I'd be able to feel the same way about him. He was my first real model for romantic love.

Stephen was... he was post Greg and the string of one nighters that had followed. He was there to help me pick up the pieces of my shattered hopes. As far as the outside world knew, I'd been the one to brake up with Greg, but that wasn't the truth. He'd needed more from me— more than I would ever be able to give. When he finally realized how emotionally devoid I actually was, things began to fall apart. He wasn't around as much and I was drinking more and more. If I couldn't have emotions and sensation, I would take the numbing detachment a bottle gave. Why feel shadows when you knew that they only paled in comparison to the full spectrum? I embraced the emptiness. It was liberating.

Stephen had cleaned me up; he made me go see the campus shrinks and helped me through sobriety. It wasn't pretty, but he'd stayed with me.

When he'd found Petre, I was mad. Sure, I was fucking livid, but not at him. I was mad at myself for growing attached and not seeing the signs. I was dating, hell, I was fucking a gay guy. No wonder he took forever to come. He had no motivation. I could go out and buy the hottest fucking lingerie and he'd stay all limp and sad. I'd constantly been forced to spend the night with my neat little battery powered friend. It was ridiculous. I wanted to go back in time and slap the living shit out of myself.

But now... now it was hard to breathe. I hadn't expected the intensity, the bone shattering weight of it all. My entire body was a live wire and I was being assaulted by the most delectable sensations I could never imagine— I hadn't known that they existed. Fire took over everything; it filled my mind, body, and soul, completely searing away every last trace of the numbness inside of me and replacing it with Him. There was no way in hell that I was letting go of this—University be damned.

Everywhere we touched an inferno erupted, ripping all of the air from my lungs leaving me wanting, needing. I clung to him willing the contact between us to take me away, to give me at least a brief solace from the depravity waiting for me in my thoughts and memories. I'd never known that sex could be so explosive and enrapturing.