Note To Self (Harry Styles AU)

Chapter Twelve.

The weekend passed by far faster than Harry would've liked it to. Friday night slipped into Saturday morning, he went for a jog with Liam and avoided answering his questions about what had happened the night before at all costs. That didn't stop him from asking, though. Liam was nosy and he sensed Harry was hiding something, but no matter how much he asked, Harry wouldn't tell.

Saturday evening was spent studying into the early hours of Sunday morning, when he went to bed only to wake up again a few hours later for church, where he avoided looking in Aubry's direction at all costs. She noticed that and it bothered her.

Sunday evening was spent the exact same way Saturday was, and before he knew it the school week had commenced once again. He didn't acknowledge her in Anatomy class whatsoever, he avoided the hallways he'd learned he normally passed by her in, he sat in the library during lunch just to save himself from having to sit in the same room as her for 45 minutes, and he purposely took a different route to get home in the afternoon just so he didn't have to cross paths with her.

Days passed like that. He ignored her texts when she asked where he was and her offers to meet up for the project. He just figured he'd finish it by himself so she didn't have to bother with him and she'd get the free grade. She began to question why he was ignoring her but those texts also went ignored, which only made her grow frustrated with him.

Thursday afternoon, when he was hidden away in the back of the library snacking on celery sticks for lunch as he worked on some homework to pass the time, she confronted him. She'd figured out that his hiding spot for the week had been at the table in the back corner of the school library, hidden behind dozens and dozens of bookshelves and thousands of books. He didn't see her coming. His eyes were glued to the words on his paper, so when she slapped her books down on the table it startled him so badly he nearly choked on his food.

"Why are you ignoring me?" she demanded, her tone sharp and her frustration clearly showing through.

He shushed her, which only made her grow more annoyed but she was talking too loudly for the library and they'd get in trouble if she didn't lower her voice. She huffed and sat down in the chair across from him before repeating herself in a lower, much calmer and less demanding, voice.

He was still so embarrassed. Despite the fact that it had already been nearly a week since the incident, he still couldn't bring himself to feel any less ashamed than he had the moment it happened. He didn't want to talk about it. He hadn't uttered a word about it since, and he still didn't want to, so he shrugged. He avoided answering and returned to doing his work.

She watched him in disbelief. She'd been so sure that if she confronted him in person, there was no possible way he could've continued to ignore her, but he just proved her wrong. He shrugged her off as if it were nothing, and that made her angry. She wasn't having it. She wasn't about to let him get away with it that easily, so she reached across the table and pulled the paper away from him while he was writing. It resulted in a long line of black ink to be drawn onto the paper and a little bit on the table before he lifted the tip of his pen up.

He looked back up at her with parted lips and she raised her eyebrows at him. "Well?"

"Well?" he repeated. He was a little annoyed she'd just caused him to scribble across his homework assignment.

"Are you gonna answer me or not?" she questioned and he sighed, reaching across the table to try to grab his paper back, but she only pulled it further away before placing it on her lap out of his reach.

He groaned. "Can I have my homework back? I need that for, you know, maintaining my GPA."'

Aubry was a little surprised with hearing him talk even the tiniest bit rude. She'd never heard him speak any way other than kind and polite, and he normally did but he was tired and irritable and definitely less than pleased to be in the situation he was in. He wanted to be left alone, and clearly Aubry wasn't about to grant his wishes.

"Not until you talk to me," she told him, somewhat bribing him with his schoolwork. That was definitely not something she ever thought she'd have to do to anyone.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked, his voice raising to just hardly too loud for the library. It dropped back down low when he continued, "Sorry for getting a boner on you? I already said sorry a thousand times, leave me alone."

"Why do I have to leave you alone? What did I do?" Her eyes scanned his face as she asked and he looked away, not liking the feeling of being inspected so closely.

"You didn't do anything," he mumbled. "I'm just doing you a favor."

"How is ignoring me all week doing me a favor?" she questioned. "How is leaving me to wonder what happened any help to me at all?"

He buried his face into his hands and groaned. He was so uncomfortable. "It just is."

"Why? Because you had a natural bodily response to something?" He groaned again when she said it. She reached over to grab his wrists and attempt pulling his hands away from his face, but he resisted. "Is that really all this is about?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Aubry."

"It is, isn't it?" she prodded, and the fact that she'd caught on made him even more uncomfortable, which he didn't think was possible.

His legs began to bounce under the table in response. "Stop."

She didn't stop. "You've really been avoiding me because you're embarrassed over something as silly as that?"

His hands slapped down on the table and he leaned back in his chair, sliding down to look up at the white tiled ceiling. "Aubry, stop."'

She could see how bothered he was getting, and that's all she needed to confirm her suspicion. She'd certainly never encountered a boy who would go out of his way just to avoid confronting something as minuscule as this was. To her it was minuscule, but to him it was a huge deal. He felt dirty and gross, but she had a better understanding of it than he thought she would. "It's not a big deal, you have a dick. Dicks get hard. It's basic life science."

"It's disgusting."

"Do you have, like, gender dysphoria or something?" she questioned and it wasn't a joke. She genuinely didn't understand his way of thinking, and that was the best thing she could come up with that would explain it.

"I don't even know what that is."

"When your psychological identification as either male or female is opposite of your biological sex," she explained. "So in your case you'd feel female on the inside, but you're male on the outside."

"Oh," he mumbled. "No."

"Then why are you disgusted by your own penis?" she inquired and he really, really hated hearing her reference it.

"Aubry, please."

"Seriously, I don't understand what the big deal is."

He raised his head to look at her and finally caved in and answered her, "Because of the situation it happened in. I don't mind when I'm not in a situation that's potentially humiliating for me, but that certainly wasn't one of them."

"Yeah, but you're the one making it humiliating for yourself," she reasoned. "I told you it was okay, I'm not bothered by it. It's not like I had absolutely no idea what you have down there, I was fairly certain you were a biological male and I have a pretty good understanding of the way male genitalia operates so it's not a big surprise to me. It's a natural thing to happen and you can't really control it, so why get so upset?"

His eyes dropped to the tabletop. "You don't understand."

"Maybe I don't," she admitted. "But I'm not disgusted by you, so I definitely don't think you should be disgusted by yourself."

A few moments passed in silence. He was still embarrassed and wasn't about to get over it that easily, but he also just wanted to move on from it. "Can we just please, please never talk about this again? I'd rather forget it ever happened."

"Fine," she agreed. "But if it happens a second time, don't pull this shit on me again."

"Fine."

"Note to self: Running away from your problems doesn't make them go away, it merely prolongs the inevitable."