limerence (harry styles)

The practise is a cavern of blackness. A void. You enter anyway, breathless with hatred and fear. He's here. He's always here, the only one who stays this late, who can't go home like a normal man. You tell yourself you'll scream at him, but your voice has vanished somewhere between the car park and the door. Everything you are has vanished. You stand in the hallway like a ghost. Then you walk. You feel the walls closing in on you. He's waiting. Of course he is. You half hope he's dead when you get there.

The afternoon slips into evening like it can't bear to stay put. Every streetlight and road sign whirs past the window, washed in dusk, dim and unreal. You know you should turn around, go anywhere but here. But there's nothing else you can think of. Nowhere else you'd rather confront than this, right where he lives and breathes and hides. It's impossible not to picture him, alone in his office, maybe laughing about all of this.

That thought carries you inside, quick and sharp.

Everything is empty, dead silent. No other cars. No other people in the building. The whole place might as well belong to the two of you, a maze of rooms you've trapped yourself in, built from the foundation of this poisonous affair. You've had sex in every office. They're all tainted. Even your own. The quiet rings in your ears. He's done this before, made it sound so empty, only for you to come in and discover the shrill din of his want and presence. You wonder if this time it's worse, because maybe he knows you know.

His wife. His life. Everything he failed to tell you about.

Your pace quickens as you make your way down the corridor, feeling your pulse in every step. Every cell of you is vibrating with rage, a bitter, tangible thing you can taste in the back of your throat. It surprises you, how mad you are. That there's still enough of yourself left for the anger to take root in.

He's waiting in his office, staring at his phone, tapping the glass with a rhythm that you want to crush beneath your hands. That steady rhythm. You remember it in bed with him, the constant beat of his heart against yours. Even now, after you, after his wife, it stays constant. It makes you want to scream.

And then he looks up. His face changes from calm to concerned to outright panic, because you're trembling, you're soaked with rage and despair and tears, and maybe for the first time, you're a mystery to him. He doesn't know how to read this version of you. He doesn't know if he should.

"Y/N—"

You don't let him finish, though it's more because you can't find your voice than anything. You stand there, fury shaking through you, conveying everything with the pierce in your eyes. You wait for him to say it, to tell you what he did.

Harry gets to his feet, moving towards you, reaching out as if he can hold this together the way he has everything else. "Tell me what happened," he tries again, and you're not sure if he's really that stupid or just testing to see how much you've figured out. You grab the fabric of his shirt, stopping him.

"Your wife called me," you finally manage, pushing him away from you with a force that makes him stumble back. Your voice breaks the way you wished it had in Dr. Thompson's office, furious and unforgiving. You don't mean to make it sound like a question. You hate that it does.

He doesn't pretend to be confused. He doesn't even have the decency to flinch. You hate him even more for this. "She called you?" he asks, and his resignation is more devastating than if he'd kept lying.

"You thought you could keep this up?" You spit the words like they'll hurt him more than anything else.

Harry sighs. He's reaching again, this time not for you but the desk, leaning against it, eyes to the floor. His surrender is a miserable sort of victory. "I never wanted you to find out like this," he says, and you almost think you hear real regret in his voice.

Almost.

He moves to you, a man more used to getting what he wants than he'll ever admit, but you're quick to back away. You watch him try and fail to act surprised. "I love you," he says, quiet and desperate and utterly convincing. "I love you more than anything."

"You're fucked up," you say. Your heart believes it even if your brain doesn't.

He shakes his head, his face still all gentle misery. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was going to leave her. I was." He takes a careful breath, every part of him a symphony of regret. Maybe not in the way you hoped. "But Y/N. You're still engaged. I'm not the only one who kept this from you."

It stings, this reminder, the sharp and relentless turn of blame. Matteo's name would hurt less than this, less than the way he lets you fill in the gaps for yourself, forces you to say it. That you're just as guilty. It's enough to keep you from leaving, from running out like he probably expects.

"She said you were happy," you tell him, and your voice wavers but it doesn't break. "She said you didn't have a reason to be unfaithful."

"Do you believe her?"

"No," you admit. "Do you?"

His silence is enough. You start to move again, turning away. But then he's there, faster than you'd like, grabbing your arms and spinning you back. The tightness of his grip, the closeness of his skin, it overwhelms you in a way you hadn't prepared for. You hate him. You want him.

The familiar conflict of it all threatens to drown you.

He pulls you even closer, breath hot against your ear, and for a moment you remember why this felt so necessary. Why he did. "I didn't know how serious you were about ending it with Matteo," he says. "How could I throw everything away if you weren't?"

There's a fragility to him that you don't buy, that you refuse to let be real, and you push back against it, against him, hard. "You're a coward. You never even told me about her. You wanted me to leave him. You wanted me to take the job." You stop and force him to meet your eyes, force him to see what he's done to you. What you've done to each other. "Why did I let you have a say in any of it?"

Harry winces, genuine or not, and lets you go. The loss of his hands on you is colder than it should be. He looks older, somehow. Or maybe just smaller. Like you've taken something from him without knowing. He looks like he might cry.

"Was that all I was?" you demand, unwilling to let him play this part, unwilling to let him retreat behind this wall. "Just some girl to fuck and string along? Call all the shots and then break her like she's nothing?"

"It's not like that," he insists, and you can hear it in his voice that he believes it.

"You're a liar," you say, almost out of breath now.

Harry takes a step back, like he's protecting himself from what comes next. "You never said you loved me," he says, voice quiet, like it might break if he speaks any louder.

"Doesn't mean I didn't," you shout, letting the rage take hold of you, letting it consume what's left of you. "Now I hate you," you add, spitting the words. "Fuck—I love you."

You shake your head, wiping your tears. "I hate that I let you do this to me."

It hangs there between you, every inch of the office filled with it, every inch of you and him. You half expect him to follow you, but he stands rooted in place, speechless for once. That's maybe the only satisfying part of this. You leave, half running, your mind swirling with anger and loss and Dr. Thompson's warnings that you can't see clearly.

That you need time to think. To sort through this mess without him crowding your judgment. Without him owning every waking second of your life.

The flat is a hollowed out shell of what it should be. It always feels this way when Harry's not here, when Matteo's not here, when there's no one to talk to, to look you in the eye and say they love you without saying everything else. It's not as comforting as it should be, this absence of the truth.

But at least it's quiet. At least it's not Harry's voice in your head, telling you to stay, telling you it'll all work out.

You sit down at the kitchen table and fill out the request for leave. You need this. A week, maybe more. You need to untangle what's real from what he's made you think is real. The submission screen blinks back at you, mocking your inability to escape him, to escape this. That he has to approve it. That he still gets a say.

Your time off request is denied in less than ten minutes.