Note To Self (Harry Styles AU)

Chapter Ninety Four.

The world still smelled like damp soil and the ground was wet beneath Harry's feet in the silence of the night. Water droplets glistened on blades of grass beneath the street lamps, and his shoes grew dirty when he stepped off the pavement to the extra squishy front lawn of the home just up the street from his own. Bundled in a zip-up sweater, the hood perched on his head to ward away the nighttime mist, his hands were shoved into his pockets to keep the cold from nipping at his skin. It was nine o'clock, he'd had a second argument about his plans for the future after his father had tattled on him to his mother, and he'd snuck out without any concern for the repercussions.

The grass audibly squished beneath his feet as he stepped through, leaving his socks wet and toes cold, and the metal gate into the backyard squealed loudly into the night, a sound that seemed so out of place in the silence. He looked up at the big grey house with dark windows, lacking all signs of life aside from the trickling water of the fountains in the koi pond.

"Aubry," he called, staring directly up at the one window he wished wasn't so dark. His voice was too quiet, even in the night. "Aubry!"

His impatience took over, and he began to scour the ground for something to throw. Rocks seemed too dangerous, pinecones seemed ineffective, but he found a rubber ball wedged between the planks of the fence. He stood with the ball clenched in his fist, staring at the window up above while he contemplated whether he really wanted to resort to throwing things at somebody's window, but impulse got the best of him and the rubber ball bounced off the glass.

Ricocheting off and falling back down to the ground, Harry scrambled to find it a second time. Twice he threw it, until it rolled right back to the spot he'd found it and he stared up and waited for some sort of reaction. The curtains moved, and it brought a smile to his face. He saw her through the glass, confusion written all over her face before the window was dragged upward for her to speak. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Rebellion."

"Did you just throw something at my window?"

He pointed to the ball on the ground, but none of that mattered. He didn't care, nor did she. "I'm going."

"What?"

"With you. I'm going," Harry insisted. "My parents are dead set against it, and I snuck out and I know I'm in big trouble all over again, but I'm going."

Her body settled down on her knees, and she perched her elbows on the windowsill to stare down at him in the sparkling wet grass. "How?"

"I don't give a shit about school," Harry confessed, for once speaking the full and honest truth about how he felt. "I never have. I don't give a shit about the Pythagorean Theorem, I don't give a shit about Christopher Columbus, I don't give a shit about what a fucking verb is. I don't fucking care." Aubry sat and watched him through his rant, her brows pinched together watching the way his shoulders raised when his level of agitation grew. "I don't know what my future is, I know more about the cells inside of a plant than I know about who I am as a person and that's a problem. I don't care about NYU, I don't care to spend more time studying books when I should be studying myself. I can't work toward a future if I don't know what I want it to be."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I'm not going to college," he announced. "I'm not enrolling in any classes, no matter how pissed off my parents will be. I don't care what they think, I don't care what anyone in this piece of shit town thinks, because I'm done living as a people pleaser. I want to live for myself, and I need time to learn how."

Her body shifted in the window, and her chin fell to rest in her hands. "Okay..." She seemed unsure. "But what happens when you tell them that and they flip out on you?"