the social experiment // haylor au

one // the hypothesis

Hmm. He was beginning to see what Gemma might have been talking about when she claimed he might need to talk through some things.

The door opened, and he quickly stepped in, momentarily distracted by the relief of being inside from the biting cold. Judging by the cloud formations in the dull sky, the chances of rain later on were high, and he was tempted to calculate the actual statistics when her realised someone was speaking to him.

"Harry Styles?" said a warm voice from behind him as he shrugged his hood from his head and the door closed.

He turned towards a blonde who surprised him by almost matching his height, and had an smiling blue stare that immediately locked onto his. By quickly passing his eyes over her, he could gauge that she was probably around his age – if not slightly younger –  was built slim, and had a thing for cats (one of the rings on her finger had cat ears).

"Uh, yes," he brought his hand to shake hers – which was considerably warmer than his. Also a great deal softer. His might have been a bit sweatier though.

"Taylor Swift, MD," she smiled in a way that made her eyes crinkle and her face light up, "it's so nice to get to see you, your sister Gemma was a friend of mine in college."

She gestured for him to follow her, without any further talking and Harry followed her out of what he'd guessed was her entrance hall and into a room leading off of it, that had a long, plush looking couch, across from a large, over-stuffed chair that the doctor was in. As what he now supposed was customary, all her certificates and degrees were hung up on the wall. There was also a desk on the other side of the room and the room was made more comfortable by the shelves of old and new books, trinkets, plants and a few pictures on the walls. There was a small table next to her armchair that had a notebook and a framed picture of a little blonde girl.

Harry might have not been interested in any romantic entanglements, but he could see that Taylor Swift, MD was a very attractive woman by any standards. Her skin was tanned and slightly freckled – he wondered briefly how that was possible, since New York had been almost below freezing for the past few weeks – her hair was a dirty blonde and reached just above her shoulders. She had a kind, delicate face and an aura bright like sunshine.

She suddenly cleared her throat and he was snapped out of his own head, his eyes trained on her as she spoke.

"How are you feeling today, Harry? – I hope it's okay if I call you that," she said with a smile and a small nod as she watched him carefully avert his eyes from hers and look around the room for a moment before he answered her.

"I think, I'm fine," he said slowly, sitting back and feeling a bit more relaxed than he had been five minutes earlier, "I think I'm okay," he said again, trying to convince the both of them.

"Harry, if there wasn't anything wrong, Gemma wouldn't have scheduled you to come and see a psychologist," she said with a knowing smile directed at him.

When Harry didn't respond a few seconds later, she said, "Would you like something to drink?"

"Uh," Harry broke out of his stupor and shook his head vigorously, trying to avert his eyes from all the things decorating the room and back towards her, "No, thank you, I'm good."

"Okay – tell me about yourself then," she said and leaned forward a bit, as if she was beckoning him out from inside his mind. Taylor caught a hint of his cologne – it was strong and unusual, the smell reminded her of cleanliness – how people smelled when they got out of the shower.

Harry found himself mirroring her actions subconsciously and cleared his throat, suddenly regretting not asking for some water.

"I grew up in the English countryside, and I moved to California a year later to study computer engineering and graduated early. I got jobs here and there, at software engineering firms, and moved to New York when I was twenty-seven. That was when we started my firm, Think Tank, which has grown to be one of the most successful in the state—"