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New York is an experience. It’s thrumming with energy, a city alive with possibility. Heat rises from the people and the cars and the streets and nothing seems as loud as the masses making life from grit and smog and hope. Everyone is out to make it, barely sparing you a glance when they’re out to make their own happen. It’s a great place to be when you need to get lost.
The thing is, Harry Styles can never truly Get Lost.
In an era of technological marvels, Harry Styles knows he is a Brand. He is a heartbeat on a map, a face on a magazine, a smile to a preteen girl, and a dollar in a pocket. His own pocket, though it often doesn’t feel like he belongs to himself at all. It’s a flash in the pan lifestyle, striking while the iron is proverbially hot, and he knows he has to make it happen. In no time at all, someone will be pushing him out of the spotlight and he’ll be back in a bakery sweeping floors. It isn’t so hard to imagine. When he closes his eyes, it’s what he sees - shopping at Tesco’s, rising at dawn, making dinner in a little flat alone. But it is not his life.
Instead, he sleeps when he can, short fits of it, rarely stretching longer than 5 hours. Some days he is up long before anyone else, restless with this electricity in his veins. He wakes their trainer, boxes and lifts and feels the weight of muscle fatigue anchoring him to the present. There is no life but this one, he remembers, and while this often seems like a dream, this is his reality.
“What’s the plan today, man?” Mark is mixing a protein shake, recovery tasting thick and cold through a straw.
“I’m not quite sure...”
The other lads are headed home, for small plans involving family, friends, lovers. Returning to their tethers, to the ones that keep them from crumbling. Harry loves his family. They’re truly brilliant, smiling and happy and wanting nothing but the best. Their lives are theirs to live, his presence only causing a disruption in their town. It’s a constant production. His friends are upwardly mobile, climbing, wanting, moving. He likes them that way, they understand him and his life more than anyone from home could. But their schedules clash and phone calls lessen and what is out of sight is often out of mind. It’s not worth the jet lag to kiss a friend on the cheek at a party. It’s not enough.
Instead he stays. He has friends in the crew, Lou and Cal, and things will be okay. He’ll be busy. And after all, it will keep the Brand driven and the other boys safer from the lenses. It’s easy to take the heat from fans and paparazzi when he doesn’t mind it like they do. He doesn’t feel the panicked clutch at his chest that Niall does sometimes, the fierce growl in his throat that Louis does, the intense withdrawl that Zayn does, or the barren theft Liam does. It’s nice to be wanted, to be loved so much. Even by strangers. Fame hasn’t taken nearly as much as it has given to Harry. At least not yet.
“Maybe we can play tennis later.” It’s an idle thought, unplanned, unhurried, as much as anything Harry does. Their schedules are so tightly wound, press-recording-soundcheck-concert-traveling-repeat, it feels good to simply let things happen. He eats when he is hungry, sleeps when he can sleep, does what he wants. Harry has always been a bit languid - obvious in his talking and often his thinking - but also in his off time. No doubt, he works hard. But when left to his own devices, he’ll move at his own pace and make time for what he’d like. It runs a hard line with fervent Louis, who controls most of what he can in his life or others’. This suits a friend like Liam, who needs a schedule, needs a regimen to keep him on course. Louis really is a compass, true and often without a single waiver, much to their disdain or pleasure depending on the day.
Harry used to need a compass to sail by. Fans think he and Louis had some great divide, something like a breakup, depending on their often hysterical beliefs. But it was something much quieter, more subversive. He simply found he could make his own course, live in his headspace, be his own anchor. Something changed when his muscles bloomed and body stretched deep within his own composition, a need for separation. He loves them desperately, his bandmate brothers. But their direction didn’t ease the pulse he felt upon sleeping 3 hours at most. Making his own decisions does.
After quick discussions with security teams, it takes eons to leave the hotel. Everything is a production. He’s never sure how it all comes together, just that he has to be patient. Police escorts, hotel personnel, PR, someone calling the paps they like, who knows, he tries not to think about how it all happens. This madness, the screams when he ducks out the door, has become oddly routine, heart racing nevertheless. He’s flushed with adrenaline, hands nearly brushing him, crowd descending, hands beating on the car when he’s ensconced. Their nails tap the paint, fingerprints the only thing they give him pressed desperately to the hood of the car. He feels the thrum in his chest ease, the quick squeeze of pleasure at being wanted so desperately.
It is enough for now, but he wonders how long until he needs more.
-
“Did you miss us too much?” Louis’ mouth quirks, the upward curve sharp and as familiar as his own smile now. His hand is nestled in Eleanor’s soft hair, reclined on the bus on the way to the venue. She is smiling softly content in the cloak of Louis’ love and protection.
“Mmmm, of course.”
New York passed as a glittery black sea of faces, aching for his attention. He spent time with his close tour friends, he broke his phone, he found celebrity acquaintances and new friends to pass the time with. It regularly feels like he is watching himself, a tiny Harry sat upon his shoulders, encouraging him to Make Connections. To Be the Brand. It comes naturally, the cheeky smiles and dimple flashes that make him so easy to love. It’s over before he knows it, the boys returned with their trinkets from home - friends and lovers to ease the stretch of the tour’s middle. He heads to the front of the bus, in need of movement but mainly to let them alone. They’ll be crowded soon enough, Louis is already in trouble for a poorly thought out finger in the air. But he feels fingers at his hip, that familiar smile gone from his best friend’s face. They stand in the corridor, one of the awkward transitional spaces of the bus with words hung in the air.
“Y’alright, mate? You don’t seem alright.”
“I’m just leaving you to El, Louis, I know you all want to spend alone time together,” the words sound gruff on his tongue, separating him from them. Him from everyone. He belongs to everyone and no one at all. Harry turns, headed forward, always moving. The fingers grip again, this time pulling his arm keeping him in place. Louis’ arms wrap around him, face tucked against his neck, warm and solid and scruffy against his skin.
“We’re always here for you. You don’t have to be alone, you know that right? You’re not alone.”
Harry nods, shifting into his arms moving to put his face in the crook of Louis’ neck.
“You don’t always have to do it alone.”
-
That night on stage things seem lighter. The arena is fun, screams loud and crowd electric, fervent in excitement. It’s always great, the fans and the boys and the band. Afterwards, the guys stop him - sweaty hugs and inclusion that had seemed a little far away. It’s not that he was left out before, but things were different.
It’s amazing, because that night, cramped on the way north, he sleeps the whole night through.
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