black world, cold hearts (larry au)

a/n- new story! bc vampire!louis!!! so yay. updates will be sporadic so. and i'm not promising a happy story. definitely not a love story. (this is not a love story; it's a story about u̶n̶r̶e̶q̶u̶i̶t̶e̶d̶ love. and apparently me quoting 500dos. huh.) here ya go.

oh and external link on the side is the link to this on ao3. i also have another one-shot posted on ao3 which wasn't uploaded here so. you know what to do. 

(ty to cstyles101 for the cover. you should req her to make you some; honestly she's bril)

                                                                                1.

The night is cold and eerie, and Harry Styles feels strangely isolated.

Which is the most bizarre revelation when he is sat on a high stool in front of a bar, the nightclub almost shaking from the loud music (the playing track could be Usher’s, Avicii’s or A$AP Rocky’s for all Harry could care), and there are hot bodies all around him. So rather, it is stuffy, loud and boisterous, and overcrowded.

And Harry has a strange emotion expanding in his chest with every inhale. It’s like, the void claustrophobia, or something. (Oxymoron in its best – and complex – form, ladies and gents.)

He feels tenfold older than his age as he fingers the rim of his glass, filled with enough concoction of vodka and tonic to mark it half-empty. He himself is filled with the concoction of worry and a hunch of something bad is going to happen, leaving the rest of him more than half-empty.

To be honest, everything is half-empty, give or take.

The inflated packet of chips he bought earlier that days was more than half-empty, the sponge cake he’d baked – made to rise with baking soda – was less than half-empty, the hourglass sitting beside his bed would be half-empty, and his life was (less than) half-empty.

Sometimes Harry wishes he could see everything as half-full, but that would mean giving hope to himself, making himself believe there was a way to give more and more until verve flowed over the brim of the glass, and really, it was better to convince himself that half-empty is what every situation was and the glass could easily be drained bare and left nugatory.

Which, his thoughts are positively pessimistic and his drink is completely empty. (More oxymora; boy he is on a roll—and manifestly not in a stable state of mind.)

“Harry,” he hears Liam say, and pivots his head to spot his ex-flat-mate, who, as it turns out, is standing behind him. His cheeks are flushed, forehead sweaty, and his teeth shine just like his whole form with the grin he’s flashing at Harry.

It’s regular coitus that’s done this to him, it has. Harry remembers the reclusive and studious boy he’d met in the kitchen of their three-persons shared flat on his first day of university, having to stay on campus like all the first years had to.

Now, a year later, Harry has his own solitary flat a few blocks away from the academe, and yet he still hangs out with the people he used to share a flat with (Zayn and Liam), and Liam has definitely turned into an exuberant party-animal ever since he met his girlfriend, Danielle, who’s on a scholarship for the university’s dance programme.

“Yeah?”

“Why are you sitting all alone, mate? Half the blokes in here can’t take their eyes off you.”

“Yeah, no,” Harry agrees, already been bought a few drinks in the past two hours. He’s refused them all, though; he’s had an experience with spiked drinks before—nasty, those drinks were. “I just don’t feel like dancing or hooking up tonight.”