Harry Styles One Shots

part 2 of Harry is an asshole and Y/N didn't know a prince could be so mean

ii.

It was too hot.

Harry was too hot – too warm; the world around him was foggy...or was it smoky? And Harry was drenched in beads of sweat, his body sucked dry of water. There was an elephant-like rain cloud weighing heavy in his chest, filling his lungs, drowning him – where was he? Why was it so hot? Where was Edgar? Edgar had been there, hadn't he? His brother was mean to him, but he'd rather have him than be alone here, with dancing flames of vibrant reds and oranges filling his vision nearly everywhere he looked. Harry hadn't feared fire before, because fire was good and kept you warm in the cold months, but this was too much. He was too warm.

Was it going to be like this forever? Would he never get out?

Help me!

No sound came from his voice.

Nobody was around him.

He was alone.

Prince Harry!

Who was that?

Wait...who was that?

Harry wakes up with a gasp, filling his lungs with air like he was starving for it. His head swam as it tried desperately to reorient him to reality, away from the damned nightmare that tortures his subconscious most nights. He was sweating like a hog, his hair clung to the damp skin of his forehead and neck, but when he looked over toward the fireplace he saw that it was not burning very brightly. When he looks toward the window, he sees that the door is cracked open and letting in the chilled night air.

Both the fire and the window are telling signs that Y/N had been in his room at some point. Most nights he tasks her with the duty of his bath and bedding (he's found that she does both best, so it wasn't so much for tormenting her now as it was for Harry's own enjoyment of her work), but not every night does he order her to cater to his fire. If she's tending to it, then he usually requests her hour by hour, and she just stays at his side to avoid having to run back and forth from the servant's quarters. He's found, however, that even on nights he doesn't request her, she still comes around to do it. It was like she had tailored it to the state he was in after his dreams.

For this he is thankful, but he doesn't dwell on it. He presses a hand to his head, an ache thrums just beneath the surface of his temple as it usually does when the nightmares are more suffocating than usual. How pitiful to still have such dreams after so many years – he'd been so young then. One would think he'd have gotten over it by now, at least a little bit...at least enough that it wasn't still haunting him.

Harry finds himself leaving his bed before he even really thinks it through, and then there shortly after he leaves his room. In a sleep clouded daze, Harry is not entirely sure where he's headed at first, until he found himself taking the familiar root to the servant's quarters – more specifically, what Harry had learned to be her bedroom. He'd never been in there before, he's only ever caught her right outside of it, but when he'd teased and asked if it was her lover's den she told him it was her room.

Would he just enter it? No – Harry is a prick, but a person's space is a person's space, no matter how small and no matter the position Harry is in above her. So how would he get to her then? Whisper her name until she woke up? He wouldn't want to wake the others if they were asleep. Servants didn't have much time to rest and Harry did not want to be more of a cause for that than he already was.

Maybe he should just go back to his room. What was he doing here anyway? Standing outside the large 10-meter doors that separated their quarters from the rest of the castle, his hand gripping the brass handle. Would he tell her that he had a nightmare and came to seek her out like a child? No – his ego wouldn't allow that. So what was the point of –