Be Your Everything

After a few minutes of sitting on the edge of his bed thinking about all the things that had gone wrong, Harry decided that moping about it wasn’t going to help. So he got up, pulled a shirt over his head, and began to walk down the hall. But something caught his eye.
Alice’s door was open – and so was the front door.
Knowing just how crazy people could get when going through something as stressful as this, he started to panic. What if she didn’t look where she was going and got hit by a truck? What if she did it on purpose? A whole host of things were hurtling through his brain at a million miles an hour as he threw a pair of shoes on his feet and raced out the open front door.
He sprinted down the stairs and into the lobby of his building, only remembering at the very last second that there would be paparazzi outside. As he stopped running he took a deep breath, trying his best to keep calm. Then he had an idea.
“Did any of you see a girl with red hair come through here?” he asked nonchalantly as he stepped outside. “I need a word with her.”
A few said that they had, and pointed him in the right direction on the condition that he let them take some good pictures first. It was a horribly long process that left him rushing to his car 10 minutes later. She could have gone anywhere by now, turned into any street or store. But he had to find her. As he started his car he thought of the many places she might have wanted, or even subconsciously wanted, to go – a shop? No, too public. A clothes store? Well, she wasn’t the type to shop when she was happy, never mind sad. And then, after half an hour of driving, it hit him hard.
Of all the places in London, the place she’d feel most at home would be a park. That’s where he’d always found her before all of this. Before she’d been abused by her stepfather, before she ran away from home, before she met him. The park was absolutely where she’d be.
He saw her as he pulled to the side of the road. She was sitting on a swing, gently rocking back and forth and staring into nothing. Her legs were dangling and dragging in the dirt and her face was void of all emotion, though as he walked closer he could see tear tracks shining down her face.
“Alice?” Harry moved to stand in front of her, his hands deep in his pockets to keep them from being bitten by the cold.
At first she just stared right past him, as if she hadn’t quite realized he was there. Then she glanced at him and he was struck by the pure hopelessness in her eyes. It was like she had given up completely, like she had been sitting there in pure darkness and he was the first light she’d seen in days.
“Harry,” she spoke for the first time that day and her voice was hoarse. Whether that was from disuse or crying, Harry didn’t take the time to wonder. The second his name left her lips he came forward and swept her into his arms. She didn’t resist, just collapsed into him like a rag doll.
{ Visual }
Harry pulled into his street and, upon realizing the paparazzi were still hanging around outside, drove straight past his building. Glancing at Alice, he saw that her eyes were wide and staring at the group of people with cameras.
“Harry, I’m scared,” she whispered so softly he almost didn’t hear her. Immediately he pulled to the side of the road. Taking her hand in his, he kissed her knuckles.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Everything.”
“Is it them?” He didn’t have to elaborate. She knew exactly what he was talking about.
She shook her head, paused, then nodded. “Partly. I’m a little bit scared of what they’ll say when they find out who I am.”
“So you think they will?”
“Look how close we came less than a minute ago.”
She had a point. “Do you want them to find out, ever?”
Alice finally looked at him, her blue eyes piercing his. “What would happen if they did?”
“They’d wonder why I was living with a girl, and they’d ask if you’re my girlfriend-“
“What am I?”
This question caught Harry completely off-guard and he stared at her with his mouth hanging open.
“I don’t want to be that silly girl who thinks that just because we kissed we’re together, but what the hell am I?”
Her forwardness was astounding. She sounded genuinely angry and that scared him. He’d never seen her as much as frown at him, and now she was calling him out on his bullshit. Really, what was she to him? He knew the answer almost right away, and he was speaking his mind before he could stop himself, “I want you to be mine.”
Evidently she hadn’t been expecting that. “If... if I say I will be... can we keep it quiet for a little bit longer?”
Harry almost laughed with joy. “If that’s what you want.”

Alice was nodding, all the while trying to hold back a big smile. She had made up her mind – she wasn’t going to be the pathetic girl who lost her mother. She was going to go after what she wanted, she was going to earn her keep back at Harry’s house, and she was going to stop bloody moping. She had thought about being discovered more than once, how her life would change yet again if the media got hold of evidence that Harry Styles was living with a girl, that he was living with Alice.
She was still utterly bewildered over the fact that he wanted her – something he had actually said aloud now – and as she sat with his eyes on her she couldn’t help the light that filled her mind. She felt awful being happy so soon after her mother’s death, but there was no stopping it. There was something about Harry, something she’d never come across before, that made her want to climb to the top of a tall building and sing “I’m On Top of the World”.
After almost 2 whole minutes of silence he spoke again. “Alice, are you alright?”
“Not really.”
“That’s okay, you know.”
She looked at him with her eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
“To feel shit. It’s okay.”
A tiny smile graced her face. “I know.”