#Design these over a call with Zayne and that was VERY interesting

[rottenbrainstuff]

Don't you guys love it when I unearth the most random unrelated niche bullshit and then ramble about it incoherently for you all to read?

The latest thing giving me the dopamine hit atm is a silly otome game called Love & Deepspace, details of which mercifully hidden for you below the cut:

A friend of a friend recommended this game to me and it's turning out to be surprisingly fun. I'm impressed by how little content is paywalled or monetized. Like, I wouldn't mind dropping a little money on the game cause I'm enjoying it, and I HAVE spent a couple bucks here and there on items, but it doesn't really give you a huge advantage in the long term over someone who is playing it for free and that’s kind of surprising. (My god though this game is fucking chonky. If it keeps needing to download stuff I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to play….)

Unlike some other otome games where you have very clear relationship paths with the focus on one single person, here you develop relationships with everyone sort of all at once. I know some people like that, but I personally don't prefer it - it seems even in video games I am too monogamous to have multiple boyfriends at once. I started out focusing on Zayne, cause the older and more serious kuudere character is the one I tend to like in the silly games like this, but then Sylus popped up and now I have abandoned Zayne, I'm so sorry babe, it’s not you, it’s me.

Sylus is very much giving me vibes that the devs all had a design meeting and said "oh the girlies really fucking like Astarion from BG3 right now, why don't we make a copy of that, we could make him the tsundere criminal antagonist character or something?" One of the audio stories has the MC teasing him about looking/acting like a vampire and that's so funny, the devs absolutely knew what they were doing. Hilariously, one of the Sylus-specific custom titles you can win is a nickname I used to have back in the dinosaur days when I was in college, and I find that endlessly amusing. I like how he complains you're in the way if you get too close to enemies in combat - I will choose to interpret this as protectiveness, and it suits me just fine anyways cause I can't fucking dodge properly, and prefer to shoot shit from a distance.

Sorrrrry but I find the english audio way too cringe (particularly Sylus' VA?... sorry) so I have been playing it with the japanese audio. (because I understand a little japanese, and perhaps because I want to shame myself for not practicing at all in the last couple years) I'm sure the japanese audio is no less cringey to native japanese speakers, but the point is that *I* cannot tell. And you see, it increases my vocabulary of useless words I will never need to use - for instance this week I learned the word for "gun". I also like to note the translation choices where the audio and the subtitles don't match up, I find it interesting, like little easter eggs. In this case my understanding is the game was released in Chinese first, so instead of comparing a translation to an original, I am comparing one translation to another translation, but I still find it amusing. (Pie the fox is called “six dumplings” in Japanese)

I enjoy the little details... Sylus is very good at the card game and I can almost never win, Zayne is ridiculously easy to bully into swapping cards and I almost never lose. Sylus sucks at the crane game to the point where it's ridiculous (or maybe I just have bad luck???) but Zayne cheats and uses ice and wins a lot - myeh I dunno. It's cute, I'm easy to please, it's making my brain happy.

The fine details of the story are a bit incomprehensible and the interface takes a little getting used to. I do appreciate all the moving parts here, the story and the collectible content and the combat and everything, but it's a little bit humorous how all the bits don't overlap tidily, for instance I am getting event-related texts that are giving away spoilers for things I haven't learned in the main story yet. And Sylus' separate chapters popped up I think after I finished the ... second main story chapter? And it begins with mentions of a serious disaster that happens in the main story that I hadn't read about yet. It's funny though, just funny. I just got access to protocores and now everything is a million times more complicated. I have no idea why dumb shit like this releases the dopamine in my brain but whatevs. I dunno. If you found this post through a tag search feel free to jabber at me about this game, these little niche things I find, I have so few people I can talk about them with. Every once in a while I will holler my thoughts out into the void here. Blah blah blah. Etc.

[nysocboy]

Glamorous: Be as femme as you wanna be, especially when you are surrounded by mega-hunks

Glamorous, on Netflix: Make-up obsessed Marco gets a dream job at a glamour firm, starts a journey of self-discovery, and falls in love with a man. The episode descriptions use "he/him" pronouns, but Marco is played by  -- and based on the experiences of -- trans actress Miss Benny.  So maybe he'll be coming out as trans at some point.

Scene 1: Marco awakens.  He's a boy with a femme girl hairstyle and a room decorated with pictures of high-heel shoes.  Asking himself if "the struggle to be a grown-up is realer than real," he puts on his frilly pink gown and heads for the makeup table -- well, more like a makeup warehouse, puts on his face, and starts talking to his internet followers: "I am a makeup artist and beauty industry professional who works with all the major brands, including Glamorous by Madolyn."  Looks like he's already pretty self-discovered.

But in real life, he has a part-time job behind the make-up counter at a department store, he has minimal followers, and his Mom, whom he claims "helps with my content," could not be less interested. But does that stop the dynamo make-up artist?  Nope. "We're going places!"

Scene 2: Mom has called in some favors and enrolled Marco in a paralegal training program.  Do you need to call in favors for that?  Can't anyone enroll? "But Mom, I already have a job!"  "It doesn't pay anything.  You're 22 years old: start taking your life seriously, and start paying me rent!"   Settle, dude.  You know how many famous make-up artists there are out there?  

Scene 3: At the mall, Marco sees his idol, Madolyn, looking at a display of her own products. She explains that she's doing important research in her customers' buying habits.  It's not just about the make-up, dude.  "I'm a customer!"  "Ok, let's see what you got.  Give me a makeover."  

Marco goes to work, while criticizing his idol's make-up! Smooth move, dude. It's not selling.  Customers consider it safe and banal.  They want fantasy.  "When I do my makeup in the morning, I want magic!  I want to feel like a star!"  

Madolyn is mesmerized.  No one has criticized her for 20 years. "You have some important things to say about makeup.  Want a job?" 

Scene 4:  Marco going to work in a glass-and-steel skyscraper.  At least he gets to wear his high heels and a totally femme hairstyle.  The first assistant, Venetia, introduces him to Madolyn's son Chad (Zayne Phillips, top photo), who is in a meeting while running on a treadmill....with his shirt off....um, his muscles gleaming....um...does he need a personal assistant?  

"Is this the superstar Mom hired from the mall?" Chad asks. Superstar?  I thought he was just opinionated.  Then he criticized Marco for wearing heels: "I'm gay, but I'm not...gay."  The word you're looking for is "femme," as in the Grindr ads: "No femmes, no fats."

Next on the tour: Product Design, and another gay guy, Ben (Michael Hsu Rosen, left), who trips all over his tongue while trying ineptly to flirt.  "He gets like this when he's excited," his coworker explains.  "I don't get like anything when I'm excited, which I'm not," he stammers.  "But I could be."  Dude, are you talking about your penis?

Next up: Social Media Influencer Alyssa, and her assistant Nowhere, a 1960s hippie.  "I'm an influencer, too!" Marco exclaims.  "Yes, but you just have 1,000 followers, and half of them are bots."

Finally Madolyn's office, with all of her awards, magazine covers, mirrors, and make-up.  I'm getting flashbacks to Wilhemina Slater on Ugly Betty. except Madolyn seems much nicer.  Marco the Dope criticizes her again: "You seem very...comfortable!"  "I beg your pardon?  I take chances!  I'm cutting-edge!"

Scene 5: Marco telling his followers about his first week, sugar-coating the slapstick mishaps that we see in a montage.  The First Assistant Venetia discusses with her friend: "He's flopping like a Katy Perry single."  "Good -- then our jobs are secure. If he were doing a good job, we'd have to sabotage him."

Left: Michael Rosen's rear

Scene 6:Madolyn criticizing Super Hunk Chad's ideas for the new line.  "This is exactly what we send to Sephora every year.  We need to be bold -- take chances." 

Chad: "Or we could just sell the company to World-Famous Make-Up Company and be rich(er).  You could even stay on as Creative Director, and I could do something besides sell...ugh...makeup."  Chad's going to be the Big Bad.

More mega-hunks after the break

Scene 7: Marco has the job of picking up the super-important product prototypes and bringing them to the office for the Big Presentation.  He gets into the wrong Uber, and complains to the real passenger, a very muscular Straight Guy (Graham Parkhurst), who takes an Uber to the gym every day, about his various job mishaps.  Straight Guy consoles him.  

Whoops, he left the very important prototypes in the Uber.  There's no way to track them down, since he got in the wrong Uber. Wait -- wouldn't the Uber driver have turned them in at the company office?   Madolyn wants to forgive him, but Super-muscular Chad insists on firing him. 

Scene 8:  Ben, the coworker with the huge crush on Marco, talks to his friend: "Now that he's fired, I could ask him out, but I won't because it would be weird and creepy.  But just in case, do you have his number?"  This is definitely like Ugly Betty, where every straight guy working in an office full of supermodels fell instantly in love with the "ugly" girl.  Well, not Daniel, but they had a "will they or won't they" thing going on for several years.

Meanwhile, Mom tells Marco to fight to get his job back.  The Straight Guy probably picked up the prototypes.  You know what gym he goes to, and the time of day: go find him!  

Left: Straight Guy butt

Scene 9:  Pretending to be a rich white guy, Marco buys a gym membership, with the proviso that he can back out if he's dissatisfied.   Girl, high heels to the gym?  He pretends to work out forever, but Straight Guy never shows up, so he hits the locker room (actually, a lot of semi-private dressing rooms).  And there he is, dawdling at the mirror, wearing only a towel! 

Straight Guy gazes at Marco like he's a pork chop.  "I...um...left something in the Uber yesterday." "I've got something for you right here."  He fumbles with his towel.  Psych!  He's actually heading to his locker to retrieve the prototypes.

"And, by the way, I'm not straight. And here's my number. Bye."  He takes off his towel, flashes his butt, and heads for the showers. 

Scene 9:  Everyone stares as super-fired Marco marches through the office and into Madolyn's meeting to present the prototypes.  Chad scoffs, but Madolyn wants to hear his speech: "I'm not perfect.  I'm bad at math, the oldest movie I've seen is Titanic, and I don't know who Cher is.  But I can learn.  I can grow.  The question is, can you?"  He then criticizes the prototypes as garbage.  Madolyn is impressed; he's re-hired If you want him to advise you on make-up, hire him as a consultant, not a gopher. 

Chad scoffs.  "Curses! Foiled again!" 

Left: Nick Fink, who appears in the cast list but is not in this episodeScene 10:  His first job: fetching coffee and a Vogue for Madolyn and First Assistant Venetia.  Uh-oh, he's sharing an elevator with Ben, the guy with the major crush on him!  He fumbles and stutters until Marco takes pity and asks him out.  Ben melts in ecstasy, then catches himself: "Um..yeah, I guess that'd be cool.  Hit me up." 

Cut to First Assistant Venetia running into Chad in the bathroom.  Venetia is worried that he'll take her job, and Chad, that he'll tank the company with his newfangled ideas. They come up with a plan to "ruin that twink." The end.

Beefcake:  Chad and Parker (Straight Guy), plus a few gym hunks.

LGBTQ Characters: Marco, Chad, Parker, Ben, and -- well, just about everyone.

Femme: No one is bothered in the least by Marco's femme gender presentation.  In fact, it appears to be something of a turn-on to the more masculine-presenting guys. 

Make-Up:  There are a lot of "make-up is the most important thing in the world" manifestos, but we don't actually learn much about make-up.  Why is Madolyn's brand outdated?  What the heck is a gondola?  At least in Ugly Betty, we were told the difference between bad and good fashion.

My Grade: It's rather fun watching a boy be as femme as he wants to be with no kickback, and the hunks competing for his attention are stunning.  I'm just worried that the office-politics plotlines will be a bit old-fashioned.  A-

[emile-hides]

@syalin-deerfox and I are working on a combined OC story called Monster and Man,

Zayne’s Chimera OC, Domino, is the main character, and these are the scientist who created him

Penelope Domingo

Typically goes by Pen or Penny

He/Him

Bisexual

Pen is an ex-convict, wanted for genocide for the complete annihilation of his village and surrounding farming families. But he’s really not a bad guy.

Due to an extreme head trauma as a child, Pen can no longer feel pain or fatigue. He’s incredibly smart, and used his lack of feeling, used himself as a test subject under the wing of doctors in his local village.

When he grew tired of being just a lab rat for these doctors, Pen decided he knew enough to “fix” himself, and return his sense of pain and fatigue. The self-lobotomy didn’t go quite as he hoped. Instead of returning his senses, Pen turned off his humanity, no longer feeling any emotions for the family and friends around him.

However, something drastically changed after Doctor Scylla Phoenix paid Penelope’s bail, and took him into his home high on the hill above the town. Penelope is now full of nothing but love for his son, Domino, and his (not official) husband, Phoenix.��

Doctor Scylla Phoenix

Doctor Phoenix (Pen calls him Pheo)

He/Him

Gay

Doctor Phoenix is a well renown scientist and medical professional. He is the richest man possibly in his entire country, and lives in a large almost castle like house high above a small town.

It’s widely believed the Doctor only paid Penelope’s bail to use the main as a test subject for wild experiments. These rumors only grew after sightings of a strange, beast like creature in the woods surrounding the manor.

Pheonix treats Domino like nothing more than a beast. Though he educates the chimera in science and math, even going so far as to teach Domino sign language so they could communicate, he refuses to see himself as one of Domino’s father, or acknowledge Domino’s human tenancies.

Despite his cold exterior, Phoenix is truly, deeply in love with his house mate, Pen. It probably takes him a long time to realize his own feelings, and even longer to act upon them, if he ever does.

[formulatrash]

what do you think about the whole "stOp the hate f1" account on instagram

I don't think that platforming hateful stuff is an effective way of combating it. people who are saying the stuff that's featured on there - that they hope drivers crash or die - are doing it for attention and reaction and nothing about being called out will deter them.

it's also rather obviously got a pro-RB/Verstappen bias. there's nothing wrong with being a fan of RB/Max but the account itself has a clear agenda to showcase Lewis fans as specifically hateful. so essentially it's just stoking the fires that it claims, in rather hyperbolic fashion, to be combating.

F1 discourse is insane currently. I mean in the sense it is extremely mentally unhealthy; the level of aggression over the smallest things is completely disproportionate and it is not normal or healthy for people to be in this constant combative state.

take the now-48h old beef over whether Ricciardo is featured enough on McLaren's social. no one has any idea what the context of the fact he's not given as much prominence as Lando is - maybe Danny Ricc doesn't permit the team to re-share his personal posts, etc whereas Lando does (I think it's very naff social media to do it in any case but whatever) and with things like his TV appearance, it was that they are sponsored by a rival US network. or maybe there's a huge internal conspiracy at McLaren and they for some reason don't want to use 50% of the marketing opportunity on the two guys they pay obscene amounts but that feels somewhat more unlikely.

anyway, beefing McLaren would be one thing but instead fans are tearing into each other over whether Daniel or Lando is a better driver. which has nothing at all to do with the original point (which was why does Danny have less prominence on McL's social than Lando and which it'd be interesting to actually look into) and is just vicious beefing for the sake of vicious beefing.

innocuous comments are taking insanely out of proportion and fans of one driver are spending more time monitoring fans of other drivers to see things to call them out on. it's not normal sports discourse this is like when I used to run the Radio 1 social media and Zayn had left One Direction. or idk, centrists vs Uncle Jez or even TERF wars. maybe it's because F1 drivers are so much individuals not teams or something but it's very, very unhealthy and does genuinely need to be addressed.

the media has undoubtedly played a major role, especially in the way that the clashes between Verstappen and Hamilton were handled last year. there are also plenty of people (and I genuinely don't think I'm guilty of this, specific, twitter crime but maybe) who'll stoke it with faux insight designed to play to one side or another.

like, take fake water discourse, a new low in things people could reach violent disagreement over. there's just no need for it is there.

second year in a row Valtteri Bottas has had a stuck nut and we haven't even had the chance to properly enjoy it ffs.

[anabsolutetrainwreck]

i can hate you sometimes || h. styles

warnings: pre-covid, mentions of sex, swearing, kissing

word count: 2.2k

summary: you and harry have mutual friends, but that doesn’t mean you two are friends. but when harry gets caught in the rain and you’re the closest person he can turn to, it makes for a much more awkward night...

Though you could respect Harry’s artistic abilities when it came to creating music, you could barely tolerate him as a person. Likewise, he wasn’t at all too fond of you. You shared friends in common, which often unfortunately resulted in many a night out with him and your mutual friends.

Yes, Harry was a respectful man. That was perhaps the one thing you could say didn’t irritate you about him. Everything else, the subtle cockiness he played off as jokes; the incessant need to be centre of attention; the bloated ego, which left him thinking he was above everyone else, all of that stuff, you couldn’t stand. But he wasn’t going to stop you from enjoying time with your friends, so you continued to go out drinking with them or go out for big meals with them or on lavish holidays with them. Unfortunately, he had the same mindset. You were both very stubborn.

Going out with your friends when Harry was there seemed like a difficult task at first. But if you sat at the opposite end of the table or stayed fairly distant in a club, the night tended to run smoothly. The one time you’d been left alone was around a year ago when you and Harry had gone out for dinner with Sarah and Mitch. Sarah had gone to the toilet and Mitch had gone to pay the bill. It had been two or three minutes maybe, but it felt like long, excruciating hours. Days, even. You’d distracted yourself by finishing off your wine and trying hard to look anywhere but in Harry’s direction. He’d busied himself with his phone and trying hard to look anywhere but your direction. But, either way, it had been perhaps the most awkward experience of your life.

And now, on a quiet Sunday evening, you found yourself preparing some pasta. Your dog, albeit too big for his own good, was curled up in front of the fireplace. You had your laptop set up on your coffee table, your classical music playlist floating through your house.

It had begun raining heavily about five minutes ago. The droplets were pelting down on your large windows. You had some candles set up and a glass of wine waiting for you on the coffee table in your living room. It was the perfect romantic evening for one.

A knock on your front door took your attention from the boiling water before you. You quickly jogged through to your hallway, opening the door. And, much to your surprise and perhaps disappointment, you were met with the face of Harry Styles. “Can I help you?” you asked, staring at him expectantly.

He sighed, almost embarrassed to ask, but said, “Can I stop at yours until the rain passes?”

You looked him up and down. Stop at yours? Why did that send your stomach into a state of flutters? “Just get an uber,” you said firmly.

He winced, “My phone’s dead. Can you at least let me charge it so I can get an uber?”

You weren’t a fan of Harry (biggest understatement of the year), but that didn’t mean you were an utter asshole. Of course you would let him stop at yours for a little while. Anyone would, right? You sighed, making sure he knew this was a reluctant decision of yours, “Sure.”

He thanked you as he shuffled into your house. He removed his coat and hung it up on your coat rack. Quietly, he followed you into your living room. “Here,” you said curtly, passing him one of your spare chargers.

The entire exchange was even more awkward than last year’s meal with Sarah and Mitch. Benny, your dog, was quite clearly enthralled about the arrival of Harry. He jumped up at the brunette man, his tongue hanging loose. As you tended to your exuberant pasta meal, you could hear Harry petting Benny.

On the few occasions Harry had met Benny, he loved the dog. But, Benny was a dog after all and it was hard to hate a dog. Especially one as lovable and as cuddly as Benny. Harry’s footsteps became louder as he entered the kitchen, Benny, tail wagging, not far behind. It was only when you looked up did you notice Harry carrying your laptop with him. Your first instinct was to tell him to put it the fuck down; it was your laptop - you paid good money for it. But something seemed to stop you from snapping at the man, who was soaked from the rain, in front of you. Usually, you struggled with biting your tongue around Harry. He was just infuriating. “Can I please put something else on?” he asked, gesturing to the screen, which had Spotify open.

You shrugged. You weren’t that bothered if he wasn’t in the mood to listen to your collection of great classical records. It was his loss. Besides, your pasta was nearly finished and then  you’d dish it up and settle down in front of the tv. “Sure.”

There was a moment of silence after he’d paused to whatever piece was playing. “What’s this?” his voice came suddenly.

You knew exactly what he’d found. And you practically kicked yourself for forgetting you had it. It was your playlist, simply titled ‘sex’. A sex playlist. A playlist for sex. “I didn’t take you as the type to have a designated sex playlist,” he said, smirking.

“Well, there’s a lot you don’t know about me,” you grumbled, your cheeks heating up.

“Clearly. Some interesting choices on here, Y/N. Not as many of mine as I thought there’d be,” he said.

There was none. None of Harry’s songs on your sex playlist and, if he was being honest, it kind of irritated him slightly. The thought of you having sex to his voice was an enriching one. But what most definitely pissed him off, was the sight of a couple Liam Payne songs and a few of Zayn’s. “I didn’t think Sign of the Times was right for the occasion,” you shrugged. “Do you want some pasta?”

“If there’s some going,” he said quickly. “I do have other songs you know. Besides, Sign of the Times is a great sex song. Starts off slow, builds to a climax...”

You turned to look at him. Only then did you realise you were actually having this conversation with him. Still, you pressed on. “All songs build to a climax one way or another. It’s called a crescendo.”

“Yeah, I know what it’s fucking called,” he sighed. “I’m the musician here.”

“And yet you can’t appreciate classical music. Anyway, if you’re so convinced you have good sex songs, name a few,” you challenged.

He spoke as he followed you through to the living room. You set his bowl of pasta (you always had a habit of making your portions way too large) down on the coffee table beside the candles and wine. “Okay, Kiwi.”

You hummed in thought, “What if I want something a little slower? Like, Kiwi could totally ruin the mood.”

He shifted in his seat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his phone light up, signalling it had at least a little bit of power. But now he was eating your fresh pasta and discussing sex songs with you, and frankly, he didn’t want to leave. “Woman? You can’t tell me you’ve never had sex with Woman playing,” he said.

“Well, I can. So I will: I’ve never had sex with Woman playing,” you replied; you liked this game.

“Okay, come on. She is the perfect sex song,” he said smugly.

Now this one tripped you up. Because you’d had sex to She before. It had come on when the guy you were sleeping with asked if he could shuffle his playlist. She had come on second, maybe. And those six minutes had been the best of your life. You told yourself it was just the guy you were seeing at the time, and he certainly didn’t mind the compliment. But, in hindsight, you realised it was probably the fact that Harry was singing about living in daydreams in the background. In that moment, the sex hadn’t even been at the forefront of your mind. It was his fucking velvet voice. “I wouldn’t know.”

He smirked, “You’ve had sex to She, haven’t you?”

“No.”

“You have! I knew it.”

“Piss off, Harry.”

You hoped your nonchalant replies would be enough to deter his attention from the subject at hand. But alas, he didn’t seem to pick up on it. That, or he was deliberately ignoring your tone. You were beginning to regret letting Harry into your house. And you weren’t afraid to tell him so. “I wish I’d just left you in the rain.”

He scoffed, “That’s not very nice, Y/N.”

You rolled your eyes at him, making sure he saw. God, you could really hate him sometimes. “Harry, we’re literally discussing my sex life. It’s none of your business. And a bit personal, don’t you think? You don’t even know my surname.”

You got to your feet and made your way through to the kitchen, placing your empty bowl in the sink. You could hear him behind you, you just wanted to turn around and tell him to give you a moment to yourself. He was like a puppy. Before you had the chance to do so, you felt him lean over, placing his bowl beside yours. He was so close. 

Turning around slowly, you were met with him. He was there, right there. You looked up at him. He wasn’t moving. You were torn between pushing past him, making sure he knew you were angry and staying for a while, basking in the sexual tension that was buzzing around in the air. “I do know your surname,” was all he said.

He was so close, his eyes exploring your face as if he’d never seen it before. Trapped between Harry and the kitchen counter, you’d fantasised about this moment for ages. Harry’s face a mere few centimetres away from your own. You could feel his breath on your face. It was warm, welcoming. “Do you?” you choked out. 

He nodded slightly. The revelation of Harry knowing your surname was almost surprising to you. You didn’t think he paid that much attention to anything that had something to do with you. Up until this point, standing in your kitchen, neither of you daring to make the first move, you’d thought he only knew your first name because he was obliged to. 

You both yearned the simple delight of the other’s touch. All the pent up sexual tension from the last years, longing looks disguised as glares of disgust and the little snarky remarks used as an excuse to talk to each other, all of that began unravelling at the seams. He looked at you and you looked at him, both of you daring the other to make the first point of euphoric contact. “Harry,” you forced out quietly, hoping he’d take that as a sign that he could touch you, kiss you, anything.

“What do you want?” he hummed gently. “What can I give you?”

“Just kiss me.”

You were also embarrassed that, after years of suppressing your enrapturing feelings, you were asking him to kiss you. And still, he didn’t touch you. It was like he was playing some sick game with you. And then the dreadful thought that he might just be doing all of this to give him a means to mock you in the future. If that was the case, he’d have the perfect upper hand over you. “Do you still wish you’d left me in the rain?” he asked, almost taunting you as he left you practically begging for his touch. 

You shook your head, “No, no. God, no. Harry, please.”

“Anything you want, darling.”

“Kiss me.”

“Only if you’re sure you want me to.”

“I do, Harry. Please.”

And when he was sure he had your definite consent, he didn’t waste another moment. He placed his large hand on your cheek, the tips of his fingers buried in your hair. His lips on yours was perhaps the most perfect form of ecstasy. As you wrapped your arms around his neck, tilting your head up to meet his, you were sure you’d travelled to some distant infatuating dreamland you only ever hear about. 

Reluctantly, you pulled away, panting slightly, “Don’t go.”

“What?”

“Don’t get an uber. Stay with me tonight.”

A smile crept its way up into Harry’s features. He tried to hide how elated he was that you’d proposed he spend the night with you. A grin tugged at the corners of his lips, which were parted slightly. All he wanted to do was indulge his need for your perfect taste all night. From the moment the sky went from the most divine lavender colour to the most starry black, to the moment it turned back to the most marvellous oranges and reds in the waking of the sun. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for you to say that to me.”

part two.

[we-are-inevitable]

so i'll try to talk refined // javid (ch. 1)

A/N: this is so self indulgent holy fuck

WARNINGS: implied sexual content, drunken flirting, one night stands

SUMMARY: It was supposed to be a one night stand. One night, one too many drinks, one stupid decision that wouldn't have an actual effect on anything David cared about, aside from giving him a much needed night off.

But, when his one night stand turns out to be a new every day part of his life for the foreseeable future, David has... some choices to make.

For starters: choose to ignore his obvious attraction to the muralist working in his library, or choose to face the challenge head on.

If only he knew how to navigate this plot twist.

Tag List: @tarantulas4davey @oof-musicals​ @panicky-pancakes (let me know if you’d like to be added!)

Read On AO3!

David has never seen someone as gorgeous as the man sitting across from him at the bar.

Maybe that’s a somewhat straightforward statement. David has seen a lot of gorgeous people- he grew up in New York City, for crying out loud; he falls in love with someone new on the sidewalk every day, it seems. There’s just… something about this guy, though, that David is more than a little attracted to.

It’s probably his hair. David has always been a sucker for curls, and this guy’s hair is so curly on the ends- but he has a middle part, and his bangs-but-not-really-bangs are more wavy than curly, and it’s swooped back like some popular guy from the 90’s, or, like... Zayn Malik circa late 2014. Either way, David is loving it.

But that isn’t the only aspect of this guy that he’s loving.

For one, his eyes are the most striking golden brown that David has ever seen, and his tan skin is shining beautifully underneath the gaudy, in-your-face lights in the bar. If David stares hard enough, he can make out freckles dotting the expanse of his face, spread across a sharp jawline and even sharper cheekbones.

Needless to say, David is in love. Not literally, of course- David and ‘love’ don’t really mix well- but he’s never not going to be thinking about Random Guy in the Bar, so it’s kind of the same thing, right?

David almost considers going over to talk to him, but he falters. This is a... regular bar, probably, not one of the many gay bars David frequents, and he’s probably a straight guy with a low tolerance for getting hit on by dudes but, also, it’s 2021, and David is a little tipsy, so what’s really the harm in going over to talk to Random Guy? He might get punched, yeah, but David has taken worse. Much worse. There was that time in high school, when he kissed his boyfriend in the hall and was--

No, no, now is time to think happy thoughts, Tipsy David reminds himself.

Tipsy David is a lot braver than Sober David, and as he stands from his barstool and makes his way over to Random Guy, Tipsy David hopes that Sober David won’t have a black eye in the morning.

He takes in a deep breath as he approaches, but puts on a brave face as he comes up next to the guy. “Excuse me,” He starts, and pauses as the man whips around, eyes widening just slightly, and, oh, God, he’s even hotter up close. “I know this is a shot in the dark, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t tell you how attractive you are,” David says, as nonchalantly as he’s able to, while he leans against the bar counter.

The man stays silent for a few moments, and David can practically see the gears turning in his mind- before he’s flashing a megawatt smile at David and saying, “Thanks, man. That means a lot.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, that accent is thick. It’s classic New York- like, classic classic. Old New York classic. Just this side of a stereotype, but oh so genuine, and David is living for it. His voice is really nice, too; not very deep, but gravelly and kind of rough and hoarse and oh, why was this guy blessed with perpetual perfect morning-voice? He sounds like he just woke up and rolled out of bed, so rough and gorgeous.

But that’s beside the point, because this guy is clearly not picking up what David is putting down. That’s alright. Maybe a bit disappointing, but it’s not like David had any high hopes anyway.

David gives a nod and a smirk, standing up straight. “Just telling the truth,” he replies easily, then slaps his hand gently on the bar. “Have a good one.”

“You, too,” The guy says, staring up at David. He opens his mouth, as if to say something else, but instead he just offers a smile and a nod.

David nods back, turning to walk away, feeling pretty good about the interaction. He wasn’t punched, and wasn’t rejected, and--

“Hey, wait,” The man’s voice stops him in his tracks. David turns with a raised brow, taking in the man’s appearance once more- hair, eyes, freckles, skin, jeans and a plain henley with the sleeves rolled to his forearms- and, finally, the guy speaks again. “You… You ain’t too bad yourself, y’know.”

David blinks, confused, until he takes a slow step forward. “That so?” He asks with a hint of a grin.

The guy nods, then crosses his arms. “‘Course. I ain’t the only pretty boy here.”

“Ooh, pretty boy. That’s a new one,” David smirks, then leans against the bar. “So, pretty boy, answer me this. What would you say if I asked to sit with you?”

“Well, I’d probably ask what you’re drinkin’,” The man responds, then gestures for David to sit on the bar stool next to him. “What would your answer be, hypothetically?”

David’s smile widens, and he makes a show of thinking for a moment before speaking. “Well, if a hot guy asked me what I was drinking, I’d probably say a Manhattan with bourbon,” He teases, taking his seat. “And what would pretty boy be drinking, hm?”

“Pretty boy has a name,” He counters with a playful smirk, “and pretty boy is on his second margarita.”

Before David can respond, the man raises a hand and turns to the bartender. “‘Ey, Racer, c’mere,” he calls out, and soon, the bright-eyed blond is walking over, leaning over the bar. “Bring me two tequila shots, and a Manhattan. Bourbon.”

“On it, Cowboy,” The bartender- Antonio, or so it says on his nametag- responds with a wink.

“Cowboy,” David repeats as Antonio leaves, turning his attention to the man beside him. “Pretty boy, cowboy… You have some interesting nicknames.”

“Technically, ‘pretty boy’ ain’t a nickname. You’re the only one who calls me that, sweetheart,” The man smirks, resting his elbow against the bar.

“What else can I call you, then?” David asks, raising a brow as he leans in a bit closer- far enough away to not be in the guy’s personal space, but close enough to still hear him clearly over the booming party playlist blaring in the background.

The guy shrugs, grinning easily, then winks as he looks back at David. “You could start with ‘Jack’,” He replies.

Jack.

Such a generic name, but somehow, it’s just become the most attractive name in the history of ever.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Jack,” David says with a wide grin, holding out a hand. “The name’s David.”

Jack reaches out to take David’s hand and give it a shake, and, fuck, David swears he feels sparks. He doesn’t really have time to think about it, though, considering that Antonio is back with their drinks, and Jack is smiling at David like he’s the only thing that matters.

***

An hour passes, and David finds himself particularly buzzed after a few more drinks- courtesy of Jack, who has not once left his side. They’re both just this side of tipsy, both happy and bubbly underneath the flashing lights of the bar, and are already on their cooldown; nursing cold waters and a shared appetizer to come back to at least semi-sober before they have to part ways.

Maybe part ways.

Truth be told, David would follow Jack back to his apartment in a heartbeat if Jack asked him to.

Because, well, Jack is seriously attractive. Muscles for days, a laugh that’s to die for, and there’s an underlying softness to him; he’s an artist. An actual artist. He’s a freelancer; he has a dual degree in graphic design and studio art, so he paints and makes logos and designs business cards and does murals all over the city and, wow, David falls more and more in love every second. Jack even mentioned he was going to be doing some mural at one of the libraries in the city, which made David’s heart skip a beat. A literary themed mural, done by a hot guy… David might just have to leave his own little library and venture across the city to find it.

As the clock on the wall draws ever closer to 11 p.m., David bites his lip. He glances over at Jack, who is already looking at him, and when he sees the hungry look in Jack’s eyes, he smirks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“‘Cause you’re hot,” Jack says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, “and I’m wonderin’ what it’d take to leave here with ya.”

David takes in a shuddering breath, licking his lips. “All you need to do is answer a question.”

“Oh?” Jack asks, placing a hand on David’s thigh. “And what would that question be?”

David looks him dead in the eyes. They’re both silent, energy sparking and crackling between each other; Jack’s eyes are dark, dark, dark, and David has to actively resist the urge to give in and kiss him right there against the counter. Slowly, David leans in close, lips barely brushing against Jack’s ear as he asks, “Your place or mine?”

Somehow, between one moment and the next, Jack is dragging David up the three steps into his townhouse, and as soon as the door is shut and locked with a distinct click, Jack has David pushed against the wall.

Distantly, David remembers leaving the bar- one owned by Jack’s friends, presumably, considering the fact that Antonio the Bartender and Mr. Redhead Bouncer Man both whistled when Jack escorted David out by the hand. He remembers walking down the block and turning left, and remembers the weight of Jack’s palm against his own; oddly intimate for the acts they’re about to commit, but welcome nonetheless.

But David doesn’t have time to think about that. Not as he places both hands on Jack’s cheeks and kisses him with all the passion he possesses.

Kissing Jack is exactly what David thought it would be: hot, hungry, competitive, fierce. Jack is strong, but within a few seconds, David has Jack backed against the front door, boxing the smaller man in with his arms.

“Oh, fuck,” Jack gasps as David kisses his neck, gently working the skin with just the barest bite of teeth.

David pulls back, glancing down into Jack’s dark eyes. “That’s the plan,” He says with a smirk, before diving back in to kiss Jack. It’s filthy, it’s fucking amazing, and Jack’s hands are in his hair and on his stomach and reaching around to grope his ass, pulling David ever closer.

“We need to- Bed,” Jack rasps out, but makes no move to leave the position; especially not when he leans up and begins his attack on the column of Davey’s throat. Thank God Sarah has extra makeup at David’s apartment; he’ll need it for work. Hannah might fire him on the spot if he walks into the library looking like a 'harlot'.

David taps Jack’s hip, and Jack seems to get the memo. Without breaking contact with David’s skin, Jack jumps and wraps his legs securely around David’s hips; David moans with the contact, bracing Jack with his hands as he blindly carries the man through the apartment. Had it been any other situation, David would have stopped to look around; he’s always been a sucker for interior design, and Jack has good taste.

But now, David only has one idea in mind.

Jack pulls away and gestures to a dark door, and as David opens it, he’s met with Jack’s bedroom, complete with red LED lights around the perimeter of the ceiling. How fitting, he thinks as he walks forward and all but throws Jack onto the bed. David kneels between Jack’s legs and undoes Jack’s belt with a skillful hand- he’s not at all new at this, he knows what he’s doing- and within seconds, David has Jack’s stupid, threadbare henley up and over his head, tossed precariously to a random corner of the bedroom.

Two things happen at once.

First, Jack sits up, looking more vulnerable than he’s looked during the entire night, and second, David notices the two faded surgical scars on either side of his chest, right beneath his pecs.

For a moment, everything is silent as David’s gaze flicks back to Jack’s face. He looks him again, scans his chest, and his toned stomach, and his hip bones that are jutting out under the waistband of his jeans. He's caught in his own head, stricken by how fucking hot Jack is shirtless, and he must be stuck for a few too many seconds, because--

Jack clears his throat, an awkward little sound, but one that catches David’s attention nonetheless. David looks back down and makes eye contact with Jack, who takes in a deep breath and asks, “This… Is this still alright?”

David raises a brow, and breathes, “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Before Jack can respond, David pulls off his own shirt and tosses it to the side, then leans back down and kisses Jack. His hands fine Jack’s hips and he gives a harsh squeeze, which makes Jack gasp and hurry to undo the button and zipper of David’s jeans.

David doesn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, he pushes Jack down into the mattress, kissing his neck, then moving to his chest, his abs, trailing lower and lower with every movement, until Jack is panting, whining, begging, until Jack is raising his hips, until Jack is pushing his jeans down.

Until Jack is gasping for breath, thighs bracketing David’s head, moaning a mantra of, “God, yes, David, please, more, more, oh, fuck.”

***

“David! Nice to see ya, hun. Did you enjoy your weekend off?”

David looks over his shoulder as he shuts the front door. His boss, Hannah, is waving him up to the front; he walks to the counter and nods, smiling as he runs a hand through his hair. “I really needed it, yeah. Thank you, Han.”

“Sweetheart, if you ever need a break, you just let me know, okay?” She shoots him a pointed look, and smiles gently. “Go clock in, hun. We got a shipment in the back that needs to be sorted and shelved.”

“Yes, ma’am,” David responds with a grin. He drops off his leather messenger bag behind the front desk, then types his number into the keypad to clock in and log into his account. Once he’s done, David walks to the storage room in the back and stares at the piles of books in front of him.

With a smile, he grabs the first stack. Hannah called him a ‘strange boy’ once, for the very same reason. Apparently, her old employees here at Duane Street Library in downtown all hated sorting day with a passion, but David finds it relaxing. It puts him in a good mood.

Not that he needs this to be in a good mood after Friday night.

David’s hands flex around the spine of a book at the thought. God, he needs to get that out of his head. It’s been, what, two days since then, but he’s still thinking about... Jack. He needs to let go; it’s not like he’s ever going to see the guy again, right? David has no plans to go back to that bar; it was nice, but he only went because there was an event he wasn’t really interested in at the bar he usually goes to- a gay bar, with frequent drag shows and performers who know David by name. A bar that has Britney and Gaga blaring at all times, not one with classic rock.

But, well, that bar seemed like the perfect place for Jack No-Last-Name, and Jack No-Last-Name seemed to frequent it, so it’s highly unlikely that David is ever going to run into Jack No-Last-Name again. It’s a big city, and he’s just a guy from a one night stand that David desperately needed in order to give himself a release.

Figuratively and literally, he thinks.

Eugh. Gross.

Pushing Jack out of his mind, David starts stacking the books onto the rolling cart they keep in the corner. He tries to at least keep them organized- first by genre, then alphabetical- and once he has about forty books on the cart, he pulls it out into the main part of the building. He starts shelving the mystery section first; it’s closest to the storage room, and it’s fairly easy to figure everything out. This mystery section is fun; all of the book spines are hidden, as the books are shelved backwards, and the only tell is the initial of the author's name laminated on the shelves.

There is a sign next to the shelf that says, of course, if you’re looking for a specific book and don’t want to search, come find an employee, blah, blah, but for the most part their guests like this little fun thing they do. It is the mystery section, after all; it’s why they hide the titles, it’s why there’s a basket of books wrapped at the end, it’s why the wrapped books only have the author’s initials and a small, vague summary written on the back.

All very Pinterest-y ideas, but fun nonetheless.

Once all of those books are meticulously shelved, David moves onto nonfiction, and then fiction, and by the time he’s finished with A through G, he’s due for another trip back into storage. H through L follows, then M through Q, then R through Z. When he’s done with the actual alphabetized sections, he gets to start on the fun little pop-up sections throughout the library.

BookTok section; the books that TikTok has been raving about, as an effort to foster more online engagement.

Read with Pride; pride month section. Books about being queer, books about queer experiences, books with queer characters- the works.

Black Authors, Black Voices; a section that has been on display for a while, since the head of the Black Lives Matter movement, about anti-racism and being a better ally to marginalized communities.

There are a few more sections like this that he does; editing them, switching out new books in place of books that have lost traction, creating little fliers and informational cards for the tables… It’s all very nice, very niche, and very much David’s little ‘baby’- his special project. It’s why Hannah hired him; beforehand, she had been trying her hardest to modernize this little library, but she hadn’t been able to hit the nail on the head. In comes David Jacobs, a 24 year old college graduate/grad student with social media management experience and generalized knowledge of what ‘the youths’ are liking, needing a job to help pay his way through grad school…

Needless to say, Hannah basically lets David roam free and do what he needs to do. Of course, she checks off on everything he does, but the new layout and new areas and new ideas are all him.

And it’s working.

The activities that he’s coming up with are getting a lot of participation. Since coming in last year, David has been able to boost community engagement- which, in turn, boosted their annual funding, and they’ve been investing that money into upgrades. Better computers for the Media Center, better toys and activities and little knickknacks for the 'Kid’s Korner' section, better decor to make the library look more lively.

Hannah even mentioned bringing someone in to paint the kid’s section, and maybe even do a nice, Instagram-worthy mural in the Media Center, and--

“Oh, wonderful, you’re here early!”

At the sound of Hannah’s voice up front, David raises a brow. He’s near the back of the library now, and only has about ten more books to shelve, so he doesn’t bother going up to the front. He has a job to do anyway, so it’ll be fine. Distantly, though, he hears Hannah and someone laughing together, which makes David grin; Hannah is always laughing, either with someone or at someone. She’s sassy and snarky and kind of a bitch, but God, does David love her. He couldn’t imagine a better boss.

He focuses on the task at hand, deciding to take his time with it, just to let Hannah talk to whoever it is she’s talking to. Eventually, though, David pushes the cart back to the storage room and makes his way up to the front.

David rounds the corner with a smile and some pep in his step, though he stops in his tracks when he sees--

“David, this fine young man is gonna be painting our mural in the kids section!” Hannah says with a wide grin, and turns away from him. “This is David; he runs our Community Outreach programs and social media accounts, plus helps me with, y’know, sorting through the books,” Hannah explains.

She then turns to David, gesturing to the man next to her. “David, meet Jack Kelly. He’ll be in and out for the next few weeks.”

David and Jack finally make eye contact, and David sees the wide-eyed realization on Jack’s face.

“Hi,” David breathes, his hands clenching at his side.

Jack blinks. Hesitates, then raises his hand to wave. “...Hey.”

Hannah grins, and giggles between them as her hands clasp in front of her chest. “Oh, isn’t this just going to be great?”

That’s one way to put it, David thinks to himself, and by the flushed look on Jack’s face, he’s probably thinking the same damn thing.

[justalarryblog]

📄 Hometown by @allwaswell16 (2k) | Not Rated

On the day Harry gets his driver’s licence, he drives through the suburbs, heartbroken that he can’t drive home to Louis.

📄 Overkill by @fivesecondsofmae (4k) | Explicit

Louis was never going to get over how fucking attractive Harry was. How glorious his big, tall, curvy body was. The feeling of Harry behind him, hot and heavy, trapped on the tube after they’d been somewhere during rush hour. His thick hands, full of pretty rings sometimes, handing Louis a cup of coffee, then getting one for himself.

Or Louis and Chubby!Harry are as close as best mates can be and clearly are in love. Time to take it to the next level.

Top!Harry smut and fluff.

📄 New Places, New Possibilities by orphan_account (12k) | Explicit

Harry has always longed for Louis from afar, never sure exactly what Louis wanted, or if they could even have what they wanted. Even though Louis would sneak into Harry’s bed every chance he could, they’d never gone further than cuddles and innocent kisses. But when the boys are finally away from home on their first visit to LA, things finally begin to change.

📄 In All Its Imperfections by @BriaMaria (15k) | Explicit

From: Louis Tomlinson

To: Undisclosed Recipients

Hello!

I’ve asked the front desk and you lovely folks are the ones who are on the same level as me in the car park. I found a to-do list today that looked somewhat important because it has lines of poetry scribbled at the bottom that seemed like they might be for a card project. The stationary has a moose in a canoe at the top of it (and he is quite adorable). Let me know if it’s yours!

Cheers!

“Oh. My. Fucking. God,” Harry whispered, his eyes darting over the sentences again willing them not to make sense. They did, they did make sense. “Oh. My. Bloody. Fucking. God.”

The next thing he knew he was on the floor, staring at the ceiling, with a very concerned Liam hovering over his head.

“What happened, mate?” Liam asked.

Harry just pointed to his computer.

Liam bent over Harry’s desk to read the email. “What? This isn’t bad. Is that your to-do list? Did you finally come up with the inside text for those cards?”

“Leeyum" he groaned. “It’s what’s on the list.”

“Oh,” Liam paused for a beat. “Is it dirty stuff?”

Harry nodded.

There was more silence. And then, “Dirty stuff with Louis?”

📄 If We Have Each Other by @pocketsunshineharry / ishiplouis (23k) | Mature

“When are you going to accept my offer to go out again? It’s been seven years and you’re still saying no to a fun night?” Niall complains.

“A night in with Mads is a fun night for me Ni, I already told you that.” Harry responds while serving a customer.

“You’re infuriating, I just want my best friend to go out with me tonight, is it too much to ask?” Niall pouts but all Harry does is chuckle and prepare the coffee machine for the double espresso the customer ordered.

“Playing the victim, are we now?” Harry is so used to Niall’s techniques. “Well, I have good news for you, Maddie is having a sleepover at one of her friends so tonight so I’m all yours.”

OR AU where Harry is a single father and a one-night stand is going to change his life forever.

📄 In Dreams by @dolce_piccante (23k) | Mature

AU. When Harry moves to a new city, his new flat come with a number of sweet, anonymous gifts and surprises that brighten his days. Could it be a friendly ghost? Another friendly presence in his new building is his tattooed neighbor, Louis, who seems determined to put a smile back on his face.

📄 Love Is on The Radio by @whatevertearsyou​ / perfectdagger (sincerelyste), @star_k (35k) | Explicit

“So Louis, who’s the lucky person that will not only get to see Arsenal and Manchester United facing each other, but will also possibly become your girlfriend… or boyfriend? I mean, that’s a good catch, to ask someone out like this on the radio. It will be hard to say no after this.”

“It’s, hm, his name is…” Oh boy, Harry was about to pass out, he couldn’t bear to hear what Louis would say. Susie was looking at him, worried eyes watching him from the till as she noticed that Harry had simply abandoned his cupcake duties. “Harry. Harry Styles.”

To win a pair of tickets to watch Manchester United playing, Louis may have possibly lied to Nick Grimshaw on the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show, asking Harry, his best friend, to be his boyfriend. Problem is - Harry has always been in love with Louis and so, this Valentine’s he’s gonna see his dreams come true, with a tiny bit of a twist, in order to watch the football team they have loved together since they were kids.

📄 That’s What I’m Here For by @taggiecb (46k) | Explicit

Louis Tomlinson is a dairy farmer on a tiny farm in eastern Canada. His wife of nearly thirty years has left him and his children are all grown up and out of the house. Louis needs help running his business but has no idea where to even start looking. Luckily for him his children know just the man for the job.

Part 1 of Grace, Too

📄 Pinkies Never Lie by @alltheselights (83k) | Explicit

“I just think if we’re both into it and neither of us is looking for something serious, why not?” Harry asks, eyes soft and voice sweet. He pauses and gives Louis a moment or two to answer.

There are countless reasons why Louis shouldn’t agree to this, but in the end, none of them really matter. This will end with Louis in pieces, but he’s been in love with Harry for four years. There was only ever one answer.

“Yeah,” Louis answers finally, hoping his voice sounds normal. “Why not?”

AU in which Louis hates his job and loves Harry, Harry just wants a distraction, everyone else wants them to get their shit together, and Louis learns the hard way that new beginnings are only possible when something ends.

Part 1 of Pinkies Never Lie

📄 Dress you up in my love by @LucyStarkid (103k) | Explicit

Harry is single, and more than anything wants to find love. Agreeing to sign up to a dating website was a bad, bad idea. Niall’s bad, bad idea. Louis is single, but has no interest in relationships. Or so he tells himself. ??Harry is a lawyer, his boss, Nick, happens to give him a bonus, which he decides to splurge on a new work wardrobe. Louis is a frustrated designer, working as a personal shopper at Selfridges. Louis happens to be working on the day a very beautiful, but out of his depth, new customer ambles into their department in need of advice. Louis might have just found the muse he never knew he was looking for.

Featuring: Sophia as Louis’ colleague, with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with his love life, whilst being oblivious when it comes to her own. Liam as the ‘IT bloke from downstairs’ with the mother of all crushes on Sophia. Niall as Harry’s sport’s writer flatmate who spends most of his time making Harry’s life as complicated as possible. Zayn as Louis’ flatmate and lifelong best friend, whose cat, Noodle/Princess/Princess Noodle loves Louis more than it loves him. And Nick as Harry’s boss and one of Louis’ regular customers: is Imelda Marcos reborn.

📄 amaryllis by @hattalove (146k) | Explicit

“Where are we?”

“Um. A little while out of London?” Niall tries, seemingly the only one willing to not be mysterious and provide Harry with information, and. Oh.

“London London? As in, the capital of England London?” he asks, just in case he’d misheard.

“No, the other London,” Louis laughs, low and biting. He comes closer finally, the moonlight just enough to reveal a sharp-cut jaw and pale skin. “Sorry, Pup.”

Nobody’s ever called Harry a “pup”. Frankly, he finds it quite insulting, but he lets it slide to try and comprehend his current crisis.

or the one where harry gets bitten by a werewolf. louis is the mysterious not-quite alpha, liam and zayn have Things going on, niall is their token human, and together, they watch a lot of TV.

📄 This Multiplicity of Powers by @helloamhere (149k) | Explicit

Maybe in another universe he isn’t different. Maybe he hadn’t been given an impossible choice. Maybe he wouldn’t have lost everything and broken everything and then fallen impossibly, irrevocably in love with the first next thing that was kind. Maybe in that universe he doesn’t feel like he’s never breathing, always pretending, teaching the kids even though they all have to learn alone, trying hard not to read the headlines, and so afraid, every day, that he won’t be a good enough teammate to the superhero he can’t live without. He knows that love isn’t supposed to feel this way, slid secret under your skin like a surgical razor, an invisible war held close over the tender vein that keeps you alive. On the other hand, Louis wonders, had he ever known how to do it any other way?

Maybe there’s a universe where he doesn’t have to keep all his secrets on the inside.

But this isn’t that universe.

//an X-Men AU.

📄 Have Faith In Me by @stylinsoncity (183k) | Mature

As the son of Anne Styles, millionaire owner of one of the world’s most luxurious fashion labels, Harry has spent his last seventeen years living in carefree extravagance. And now he’s grown tired of it, along with the pressure from his mum to follow in her footsteps and the constant care given to him by her past assistants.

When his mum’s newest assistant, Louis, moves into the guesthouse, Harry determines to be treated differently. To be treated like an adult. Except Louis is not at all what Harry was expecting…

This is a story about growing up, growing in love and having the faith to make it last.

📄 Built Memories by @fresharold (211k) | Mature

“It was a comet.

The boy saw the comet and he felt as though his life had meaning.

And when it went away, he waited his entire life for it to come back to him. It was more than just a comet because of what it brought to his life: direction, beauty, meaning.

There are many who couldn’t understand, and sometimes he walked among them. But even in his darkest hours, he knew in his heart that someday it would return to him, and his world would be whole again… And his belief in God and love and art would be re-awakened in his heart.

The boy saw the comet and suddenly his life had meaning.”

» where louis and harry after long years start over again. they’re strangers again and introduce themselves, they relearn what they already know and what they don’t know, come with new inside jokes, create new memories and give each other a second chance.

📄 Relief Next To Me by @dolce_piccante (333k) | Mature

AU. What happens when a baker and a graphic designer meet via a very specific Craigslist post? Fate, friendship, food, and maybe more.

✨You can also check my fic tags for more fics! ✨

[falsegoodnight]

HII i loved just a flicker in the dark! do you know any other hl fics similar to that :)

hi! first of all, i’m so happy you enjoyed!! thank you for reading!

as for your request, i tried to find some fics that share similar elements if that’s what you mean because things like atmosphere/dynamic/tone differ from every fic so it’s hard to find similarities there!

but i hope something here interests you:

enemies to lovers + mystery elements + supernatural elements:

✰ written in the stars (that’s you and me) by @fackinglouis | E | 23k

Louis is a funny and bratty psychic and Harry is set on proving he's a scam.

✰ Etched in Salt (is a cathedral of the world) by @helloamhere | E | 24k

Louis asks for very few things in life, and they are: to solve cases, to keep bad people from doing their bad things, to get good coffee, to go home to a spacious apartment with nobody else in it, and to manage his stupid telempathy powers with minimal interference. And now he's stuck in a tiny cabin in a snowstorm in the middle of god-awful-nowhere with Harry Styles. Because of course he is.

✰ Close to Nowhere by @loveletterharry | E | 35k

Louis and Harry are psychics who kind of hate each other. They go to Tennessee to investigate a haunting.

ghost fics + mystery elements 

✰ The Haunting of Louis Tomlinson by @helloamhere | T | 31k

Louis is a plucky Gothic Heroine, Harry is a Mournful Spirit, and Big Country Houses are full of mystery and suspense, as Big Country Houses ever are!

✰ haunted by the ghost of you by @missandrogyny | E | 49k

He’s tall—that’s the first thing that registers in Louis’ head when he spots him, standing with his hands behind his back. Tall, with curly hair, staring at them with the widest, greenest eyes Louis has ever seen. And wait, are those dimples? Louis didn’t know ghosts could have dimples.

Because he’s definitely a ghost, this boy. At first glance he looks normal, standing there pigeon-toed in a band shirt (The Ramones, Louis can’t help but note incredulously), dark jeans, and some boots, with rings on both hands, and tattoos littering his left arm—a sleeve made of anchors and names and roses and other completely unrelated things. But he’s also a little bit translucent; if Louis focuses, he can see the outline of the furniture, the design of the wallpaper through him.

“Hi,” the boy—the ghost—says to Louis. His face shifts; somehow his dimples dig deeper into his cheeks. His eyes flit from Louis, to Niall, to Liam, and finally to Zayn, and his face goes from shocked to elated. “I’m Harry.”

At in that exact moment, standing between three of his best friends and staring at a (quite handsome) ghost, Louis can only think one thing.

Nick Grimshaw was right.

✰ Through Eerie Chaos by @mediawhorefics | G | 102k

Niall lives to prove ghosts are real, Zayn is a skeptical librarian and Harry gets caught up in a century-old mystery and catches feeling in the process.

enemies/exes(?) to lovers + demons + mystery elements

✰ We’ll Cast Some Light (You’ll Be Alright) by @harrybridgers | E | 74k

There’s a standard procedure for this. Scan, track, kill. But with a solar eclipse and a Greater Demon with unfinished business looming, the path to keeping England safe from harm becomes complicated and shadowed by mystery and secrets. For Harry and his team, times have never been harder, especially when a few old friends turned foes show up. Harry is left with just over forty days to overcome the hurdle of tension between them and reconcile their past, and figure out just what Louis is hiding from him before it’s too late.

supernatural elements + mystery: 

✰ Black With Autumn Rain by whimsicule | T | 93k

Harry is a journalist, Louis has lots of secrets and the moors aren't exactly the ideal place to rekindle a lost romance.

and then i’ll just link mine at the end just in case:

✰ just a flicker in the dark by me | E | 57k 

Louis is a struggling witch desperate to prove himself after yet another magic disaster and finds a calling in the haunted house of client Niall Horan. Things get more complicated when he’s assigned a case partner: acclaimed medium and ex-boyfriend, Harry Styles.

i hope you find something here that you’ll enjoy!! let me know if there’s anything more specific you’d like me to find for you :)

[larryfanficwriter98]

Chapter One.

Fake Fiancé/Husband Wanted!

Yes, I know the request looks weird, but I can explain. I work a high demanding job so I can't have custody of my child unless I marry someone with regular hours and a regular nanny on call. I have the nanny, but she is a uni student and can't be here at odd hours. After gaining custody and getting a job with normal hours I am willing to pay you or we can talk about divorce settlements. Preferably someone with a stable job and a liking towards kids. If you have a child, they are welcome to live here too obviously and I will treat them like my own for the foreseeable future. Serious inquiries only, please contact me via email I have made specifically for this.

Thank you.   Louis didn't know why he was on craigslist at three in the morning after drinking himself to death's door knowing Freddie was safe with Zayn for the night. He knew that when he was drunk, he tended to do stupid things and think stupid things. He had been on this post for almost an hour staring at it knowing damn well how stupid and dangerous replying was. That didn't stop him from clicking on the email and typing out a reply. 

To Stranger,

My name is Louis Tomlinson I am a single father of a four-year-old boy. I work as a dramatic arts teacher at Abraham Moss Community. Not the best paying job, but nowhere in your post did you have a minimum annual income requirement. Despite the horrible pay I do love my job and I work at this school for free childcare at the nursery across the street my son goes to. I would like to know a bit more information about you wanting custody before I agree to such a thing. You hear so many stories about fathers taking kids to be spiteful, so I want to be sure that is not the reason.

Louis

****   It was two days later when Louis got a reply from the mysterious guy. He waited until his lunch break before he read it.  

Louis,

You are the first normal person who has shown interest in anything that wasn't money related. For that reason, I really hope we hit it off. I love my daughter so much; she is my absolute world and I video call her every day. It's not me that is the bad parent and I say this as nicely as I can, but her mother is a very absent and selfish parent, and it shows. It's funny you work where you do, my daughter is in Year 1 there.

I gave her mother the money for private school, but she spent it on a new wardrobe for herself and didn't even spent a dime on out daughter. So, she goes to Abraham. I have receipts and check copies, and everything is to prove that I am the 'fit' parent. I have tried to avoid court, but I haven't been able to have my daughter for more than a few hours in over a year. Now her mother is talking about movie to America if her boyfriend gets the promotion at the end of the twelve-month training which just began a month ago. I have a hearing in a few weeks for visiting rights so hopefully if you are still willing after hearing how much drama this will involve, we can talk about everything in person before then.

Your son Freddie, what's his custody like? He is welcome here anytime and if he lives with you full time that's amazing. Obviously, kids make this a bit more delicate, but all the more reason to see if we can try to be something more along the way? We'll discuss this more another time of course, but reply as soon as you are able to and maybe we can get coffee?

 Your (maybe) future husband.

  Louis smiled softly reading about how much the guy loved his daughter. He seemed to want the best for her, and her mother seemed to just want money. He heard about those people and he could honestly say he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe people put themselves first over their own child. Louis had three-year-old winter boots with the soles so worn out that the snow seeped into his socks, but his son always needed new boots every winter and he'd be damned if his son were in pain over too tight shoes because Louis bought a pair of boots for himself. Louis pressed the reply button and wrote a quick response.  

My future husband,

She sounds like the devil. I'd be happy to help you if you don't/haven't found anyone better. I have the same lunch hour every Monday through Friday from 11-12 and there's a small coffee shop around the corner I can make it to for the hour. Then my best my mate has Freddie a weekend a month and then me mum has Freddie for another weekend. Usually it goes me mum, myself, best mate, and myself again. So, to make this believable we have two weekends to have "been together". Freddie is mine solely, I'm a carrier so I had him, and his other father ran out a few months after he was born. Ran off with a younger boy without a child and without a scar on his stomach. Let me know when you're available for that coffee.

Louis

  ***********   Harry emailed only three people Louis, Matthew, and Brian. Matthew and Brian didn't have kids, but they said they liked them. Matthew kept asking about his monthly income which he kept avoiding and Brian asked how big he was and if sex was involved. Harry wouldn't say no to sex of course, but to ask someone's size. He ended up blocking him when he got a dick pic. Matthew then asked how much the wedding would total up to and if they were wearing designer suits, so he ended up blocking him as well. Louis was interested in his reason of doing this and he had a child so knew how real this had to be for kids. He knew what it meant to be a full-time parent and put the kid first. So, he was so far the best candidate and he never even asked about his job or finances. So, after checking his schedule he emailed him and told him he'd be able to meet Thursday during his lunch at the café he knew Louis was talking about.   He got off a rare 38-hour shift Thursday at ten, so it gave him time to make it to the school for a quick minute to see Maddison. He walked into the building still in his pink scrubs and lab coat on as well, but that was because he hadn't taken it off so use to having it on all the time. He headed up to the front desk smiling at Amy.   "Hey Amy, is Maddison available for just a minute? I know she's in art right now."   "She is, however, she's over at the other side in Mr. Tomlinson's room. He's her favorite teacher and she goes there every art class and sometimes when her mother is late for pickup, he stays with her. I can take you to his room."   "Louis Tomlinson?" Harry questioned not believing it for a second   "Well, she calls him Mister Tommy."   "Oh that's- no kidding yeah she told me about him. He gives her candy whenever she gets a good score on her writing or reading." Harry said grinning   "That's him. He seems to be everyone's favorite. I'll take you to him-"   "No, it's okay. Can you just tell her I stopped by? I don't want to disturb her."   "Are you sure?"   "Yeah, it's fine. Thank you, Amy." Harry left the building and headed to his Murano. He waited in the parking lot for a little while as he went through their emails over the past few days. Harry had told Louis his name and that he worked as a doctor. He wanted to get into neonatal care, he already had the training and everything he needed there just hadn't been an opening yet, but the hospital was expanding their Neonatal Ward and Harry had already talked to his higher ups about working there. When he finally got to the cafe, he was only a few minutes later because he got lost in his own head in the parking lot. Harry got out of the car and headed inside up to the front desk. Louis' Gmail account had a picture of himself so when he looked around the cafe it was easy to spot Louis sitting at a booth as he looked down at his phone. Harry grabbed his cup and headed to the booth nervously then set the mug down and slid into the other side. Louis looked up from his phone and smiled.   "Hey." Harry said   "Hi. Sorry I was texting one of the nursery staffs about Freddie. He had a rough night last night so he's having a bad day today."   "Is he okay? Bad dream or something?" Harry asked concerned   "He has a problem of staying asleep, we live in the apartment complex and our upstairs neighbors stay up all night yelling at their game system."   "Melatonin. My mom swears by it when I was a toddler. I had to give mine some when she refused a nap even though she was exhausted a few years ago." Harry told him   "They have melatonin for kids?"   "Yeah, definitely get some for him if he wakes up at odd hours of the night. Also, you know my daughter."   "I do? I know a few Year 1, but not a lot. Who is she?" Louis asked   "Maddison Styles." Louis eyes widen and he grinned   "Yeah, I was just with her. She comes to see me every Tuesday and Thursday during her art class. She has a hard time concentrating in the room, so I took her to mine. I have a free period anyway, so I don't mind."   "Yeah, she's too much like me. Her and I have a sensory overwhelm with too much noise. We also have dyslexia, terrible dyslexia, mine is controlled most of the time now, but she's not doing so good with her reading or writing because she doesn't get at home help."   "Yeah, I figured that out when she wrote her name as Mabbison or Wappison more than a few times." Louis said grinning making Harry laugh nodding   "I had to get five different papers for her birth signing because I was so emotional when I was spelling her name, I messed it up. My mom had to take me to a quiet room and call me down before letting me write again. If was horrible. My patients look at my writing and I can see their confusion build as they try to decipher my spelling." Louis laughed covering his mouth with his hand, "anyway um I know this was meant to be a casual meeting to make sure we're not pedophiles or murders or whatever, but I did bring some copies of things just in case you want to see it. I'm not trying to make her out to be a horrible person, these are just some of the things I had copies of at home."   "Oh, now that I know you're Madison's dad and having met her mother I agree with you. She's a horrible person. I hate her. Today for example Maddison came to school in a dress without a jacket and without leggings. She was freezing, the school wasn't letting kids inside yet, so I let her in the side door to my classroom and gave her some of Freddie's sweatpants I keep in my car. Poor thing is in 3t sweatpants that stop at her shins."   "I have black leggings and a jacket in my car if you can give them to her. I always keep a small totes of season clothes for her just in case anything happens. Usually, the school calls me and tells me if something like this happens and usually, I'm at work so I have to ask someone to bring them for her. A few days ago, her teacher called me and told me Maddie came to school in dirty clothes and when I got there Maddie was in the nurses’ station crying. Apparently, her mother hadn't washed her clothes and that was all she had there. I called her as soon as I left the school and told her is, she didn't wash my daughter's clothes by the end of the day I'd report her to child services. Needless to say, that hasn't happened again, but September hasn’t even ended yet so who knows."   "Yeah, I can take them to her. I don't see how a parent can do such a thing. I always wash Freddie's clothes first then I do his bed sheets then I do the towel then I do my clothes and bedsheets last."   "Yeah, I wash her stuff at my house every two weeks so if I get her out of the blue, she has clean clothes and sheets."   "How long has it been since you last had her?"   "Her mother dropped her off at the hospital when I was working a few weeks ago but she came back right as my shift ended. Maddie was so upset because she thought she'd be able to stay the night. The last time I've had her over night was 16 months ago and I had for her two days because her mother and boyfriend were at a resort for the weekend."   "I couldn't imagine that." Louis said shaking his head, "Freddie is my world. I couldn't be separated from him. I barely manage a weekend away."   "So, does he call you Papa? I know that's the more traditional term for carriers."   "Yeah, most of the time. If he's upset, he'll call me mommy or mama. I am one of the lucky ones able to nurse, at least with Freddie. I heard some can't for their second child or third child. I think with every child the chances get lower. He called me mommy or mama until he was two and a half, so I think it brings him comfort. I don't mind either way."   "That's sweet. I wish I were a carrier. My sister and I had to play mommies and aunties instead of mommies and daddies because I always wanted to be the mommy. I'd shove the baby doll under my shirt and go through labor with my stepdad and everything. My mom held the seat rag to my forehead. We went all out, I demanded it. We were all convinced I was a carrier, then when I was seventeen, I  got tested and I wasn't. I was devastated. I cried so much; I remember convincing myself I was straight for years after that. That's how I got Maddison." Louis laughed unable to help himself   "You're joking."   "No. Not one bit. I thought if I wasn't a carrier there was no point in being gay, so I went straight."   "I was the complete opposite." Louis said, "I was always the daddy, I'm the oldest of five sisters and my mom finally gave me a brother a year ago. Two sets of twins. I demanded to be daddy because I didn't think I was a carrier. I thought I was straight until probably sixteen."   "Really?"   "Yeah, I just never really thought about it, I guess. My first boyfriend was when I was seventeen and we dated until he left after Freddie. I had him when I was twenty on March twenty-first and graduated early. He's turning five next year."   "You had him in school and finished your studies early?"   "Yeah, it was really hard, the first year was terrible, but I got my degree and took the first job I was offered that had the best benefits for us as a family."   "That's amazing. We had Maddison when I was in my foundation programme. I was twenty-four. She was born on May twentieth, so she'll be six two months after Freddie turns five. I started working at twenty-six. Hannah and I split then because I had to work so many night shifts, so she started cheating while I slept during the day. She took Maddie and left. We've been fighting since."   "So, you're thirty?"   "Almost thirty. Still in my twenties for four more months."   "Can't relate. Still got a few years." Louis said smirking making Harry throw a walled-up napkin at him. "Well, you look good for thirty." Louis teased   "Twenty-nine."   "Same thing." Louis said grinning as he watched Harry shake his head grinning as he stared off to the side before their eyes met. Louis knew that even if nothing came from this marriage besides Harry gaining his daughter, it wouldn't be a horrible marriage of convenience. Which made him feel better and he could tell Harry was relieved as well, both glad this wouldn't be a disaster.

 “I’m sure you have a lot of questions for me.” Harry said, “Especially considering how this came to be. I mean I know you see Maddie with her mom, so you understand some of it, but if you want to ask more feel free to do so.”

 “Besides the obvious reasons why go to craigslist?” Louis asked

 “Last resort? It had to be someone my friends didn’t know so I couldn’t ask anyone at the hospital. I tried dating, but it never went past a few texts. Having a daughter that I want full custody of sort of makes men run away. They don’t understand why I can’t just get a weekend a month and be happy with it. I’ve tried explaining the situation, but they don’t get it. Then it’s also my odd hours of my schedule. I’m a doctor at the hospital so I’m off and on and on call a lot. Makes it hard. My schedule is pretty tame, but it’s a pain to get use to and stuff like that.” Harry explained

 “Yeah, I get that. With Freddie…he’s my priority and obviously before I fully agree to anything, he has to like you too, but that can wait a bit. Make sure you’re not a weird murderer or something.”

 “Fair enough.” Harry said chuckling, “So I guess um…why did you offer to help? I know with a son this makes it more delicate, I mean obviously I’m hoping once we settle in, we can try for something real, but why offer?”

 “Any parent who wants to see their child should be able to. I would help anyone who was sincere enough. If you were one of those fathers trying to take their child away from their mother out of pettiness then I’d walk out of this building, but I’ve met Hannah. I’ve seen, I’ve seen the clothes she drops her daughter off in while she’s wearing the newest Gucci purse or whatever. I’ve been talking to school about it since the first day, but there isn’t much we can do. We can record it and file it away incase you ever need it for court, but unless she comes to school with bruises or starving, we don’t have grounds to call child services.”

 “So, Freddie’s other father?”

 “If he ever contacted me, I’d let him see Freddie. I’d talk to Freddie about it first, make him go to the first meeting and if he didn’t want to see him after that? I don’t know. Freddie has asked and I told him the truth, that his other father left a few weeks after he was born. So, it’d be Freddie’s chose after the first meeting and anyone I see would obviously at least respect that. They don’t have to like it or agree with it.”

 “I think people can change if the right person comes along. I hope for Freddie’s sake he contacts you a better man than when he left, but I also hope that if he hasn’t changed that he doesn’t drag Freddie into daddy issues.” Louis cracked a smile and nodded

 “Me too. They’re not fun.”

 “No not really. My biological dad left leaving my mom to feed two kids on one minimum wage paycheck. My stepdad came along and changed our lives basically.”

 “My biological father left when I was born. My stepdad came along and gave me his last name so he’s my dad. Then he and my mom split, and mom is married to Dan now. She just had twin girl and boy two years ago in February.”

 “Awe really? That’s sweet. I’m the youngest out of two kids. I have an older sister.”

 “I’m the oldest of seven kids. Goes me, my sisters Lottie, Fizzy, Phoebe and Daisy are twins then Doris and Ernest are twins and my baby sister and my only baby brother.”

 “That’s a lot of sisters.”

 “Yeah, I’ve had my fair share of handling little girls. I was six when Lottie came around, so I’ve been through it all.”

 “Well then I won’t stop Maddie from painting your nails a pretty pink color when I can’t be her victim in her nail salon. If she’s still into that stuff.” The last part was said sadly as he looked away

 “She is. If she’s done with her art assignment early, then I let her color my nails with markers. It washes off by lunch, but she doesn’t need to know that. She’s great. She is one of my favorite students in that school, whenever we see each other in the halls she absolutely has to shout hi Mr. Tommy each time. My students probably think she’s my niece or something. They call me Mr. T all the time and try to encourage her to do the same however I think she’s too shy to.” Harry was grinning as he played with his napkin listening to him

 “She’s very social. Always has been. There probably isn’t a stranger in the world she wouldn’t talk to. It’s a bad and good thing. I’ve tried to explain it to her, stranger danger and everything and she understands it, but I don’t think she realizes even a little hi can be dangerous in this world these days. Her mother scares me to death, I’ve seen Maddie run right upfront of cars sometimes and I swear my heart stops.”

 “Yeah, I’ve seen her do it too and it’s always the arrival or departure teacher stopping her from getting hit. Hannah will walk her to the crossing way but not to the actual sidewalk so it’s not the easiest thing to watch when I’m on duty. We can’t leave our posts except for emergencies so I have to navigate kids and cars and then watch her and make sure she’s safe. It’s ridiculous sometimes.”

 “Well thank you for doing what you can.”

 “It’s not much, but of course. I’d do it for any kid. Just thinking about Freddie in the same situation I would probably do the same thing you are. So, for now I’ll help, Freddie is what will be the deciding factor.”

 “We’ll talk more and figure it out?”

 “Yeah of course. I should go though I need to get back early today. I forgot today is Pop quiz day, my kids are going to hate me.”

 “Don’t worry about it. Thank you, Louis.” Harry and Louis stood up and walked out together, “My number is in the file I gave you so feel free to text me instead of emailing me if you want to.”

 “Alright. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

 “Bye.” Harry and Louis were luckily enough to have parked on opposite ends of the car park, so they didn’t have to awkwardly walk beside each other to go to their respected cars. Harry grinned as he looked at the picture of Maddie, he stole off her mother’s Facebook. It was on her fifth birthday party; one he hadn’t been invited to or hadn’t even been told about. She was dressed in a flowy baby blue dress and her hair curled and she was half smiling as she sat on a chair surrounded by a few presents. He touched the picture that was hanging about his rear-view mirror before he sighed sadly and let it fall from his fingers before he started his Murano and headed out of the car park.

[meet-me-in-the-kitchen]

Imagine: The Girl Next Door

prompt from this list

In which Y/N is the sweet girl in the apartment next door, and Harry cares for her too deeply to ignore her cries. apartment au

(“I barely know you but my boyfriend just broke up with me and you heard me crying so you brought over ice cream and movies”)

—

Harry had just moved in to the dinghy flat, approximately six nights ago. Despite being quite friendly, he was also a bit reserved in nature. He was one of those people who were quiet and shy at first glance, and then highly talkative once you got to know them. For these reasons, he hadn’t exactly gotten to know the girl next door, his neighbor.

From his questionable breadth of apartment knowledge, he knew these things about his neighbor: her name was Y/N, as their postman, Peter, had fondly called her while thanking her for some baked goods she had offered him during an early shift, she carried a nice, lavender and homely scent which Harry had grown to like and made him want to ask her what detergent she used, and she really fucking loved to bake, hence the perfectly frosted cupcakes she had offered Peter and the entire two tiered mocha cake she had enthusiastically brought by to welcome Harry with on his first day. She was also very kind, bright, and quite pretty. There was something appealing about her.

He’d find himself clicking open his door to check if ‘any mail had fallen from the mailman’s reach, onto the ground’ conveniently when his next door neighbor was getting ready to go work at the bakery nearby. He’d do it just to catch sight of her, and although he hated small talk, he grew used to her greeting him in the mornings and searched for her bright grin. He’d drop by the bakery she was working at, which just so happened to be by his apartment, and order her contribution to the menu: a flavourful pie, filled with unknown ingredients Y/N would whip up after asking if he had any allergies. There was something about her that genuinely interested Harry.

The way she always had that kind smile on her face, how she held the door open for seniors entering the bakery and greeted every child or baby that wandered into the shop with motherly warmth. She had exceptionally high stamina and a quantity of patience so large, it left him baffled. She would never lose her temper, not once when customers took out their emotions on her in a negative fashion, or behaved poorly. Sometimes, Harry would want to throw his ring clad fists at the bastards who came to watch her perversely, glancing down her top when she set down a tray of fries and a milkshake, and cackling on about her uniform. She wasn’t a pushover, by any means. She was just kind, until they were kind back, and reminded them that she had done nothing to receive any form of hate. For fuck’s sake, there had been a grumpy man who asked the question ‘the coffee here is so expensive. do you take refills?’ everyday for a week, and despite knowing the answer, he’d grumble about it everyday. Secretly, Harry would watch behind his paperback copy of Love Is a Mixtape as she’d swing her hips while walking steadily with grace, as per usual, and grab the man’s empty coffee cup and promise to bring back ‘some water’ with a sly wink. When she’d come back and place the cup in front of him, the man would have by then cracked a small smile of his own, sipping tentatively at the hot coffee as Y/N went on with her day.

There had even been a gang of perverse bastards, and one day they’d come back from a rumble all bruised, and Y/N had fixed them up with a tight smile as she had insisted on them sitting while she brought them some ice packs and a first aid kit. They’d sheepishly apologized for their raunchy behaviour, owing it to some tragic backstory, and she’d softly smiled in her own way, stitching the last stitch and reminding them to respect all men and women. The next time they’d come back, they came with a newfound respect for Y/N, referring to her as their sister and glaring at any rude, old dipshit customer during an extra late night shift, from behind gang necklaces and leather jackets, until they gulped and left her alone.

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to open a bakery of my own,” she’d admitted, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, voice soft and all sweet, just like her. “I’m just learning the ropes and taking some classes at uni. and then, one day, maybe.”

All Harry had gotten from her were greetings, and teasing glances once he ordered her pie for the fifth time that day, despite of the feeling in his disapproving stomach, because it was fucking delicious. Other than that, they were practically strangers, neither explicitly familiar with the other. However, the twenty year old young man had gathered something out of character for even the sweet girl next door. He started noticing the bags under her eyes, how her smile wasn’t as frequent and when she did smile it was forced and tight, rather than easy. He had wondered what had happened, but reminded himself it wasn’t his place.

However, after an evening out with his mates, Niall and Zayn, Harry comes back when it’s nearing two A.M., and he’s slightly tipsy from a drink or two, but his alcohol blood ratio had been low enough for him to be designated driver, so, he’s alright. He’s a bit sleepy, yawning ever so often and rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles, tired after avoiding the girls at the bar who tried to get him to comply to them giving them a blowie. All he wanted was a cuddle.

“I’m’na watch a rom-com,” he stated with sleepy conviction, rubbing at his eyes once more. “an’ then, go to bed.”

He grabs the DVD version of He’s Not That Into You (because Netflix was being a shit and trading quality romantic comedy movies for crime shows no one watched), and snuggles into his bed in nothing, but his black boxers. By the time Drew Barrymore is on screen, he’s already in and out of consciousness, but then his ear twitches as he picks up slight snuffling coming from somewhere nearby.

“‘M hallucinating,” he mumbled, moving further back into the warm covers. He shut his eyes.

There were sniffles. And then soft crying. And then sobs.

Harry’s green eyes snapped open once he recalled the apartment they live in had thin walls, and Y/N’s room must have been next to his through the barrier. And if the pang in his chest indicated anything, she was crying and he probably wasn’t going to get much sleep by ignoring it and shutting his eyes. Plus, he’d sort of be a dick if he did so.

He sighs and gets up, throwing on a random jersey he had laying around and some jeans. He’s wondering what could be causing someone as sweet as her to break into cries. He hopes she’s okay, and figures he should give her some time to sort things out. Also, it felt weird of him to show up at her door just to say that he’d listened to her crying, so he decided to stop by the bakery nearby to order something for her.

By the time he gets to the bakery, he startles the elderly woman behind the register, who clutches her heart as she jolts from her slumber.

“Sorry,” he sheepishly apologizes, running a hand through his untamed, messy head of curls. She nods, albeit still a bit alarmed at the stranger who’d come during the night shift.

“Can I please get one of those pies?” He scratched his head, looking inward with a soft, shy expression.

“Sure, just had this one baked, boy,” the woman gestured to a blueberry pie, and Harry shook his head.

“No thank you, do you have one of those which Y/N makes?”

The scowl she gives him leaves him frozen in place, but he quickly relaxes as it dissolved into playful laughter. “I was just teasing, baby... an old woman’s got to have some fun. Y/N’s a sweet girl, ain’t she?”

“Yeah,” Harry smiled to himself. “She is.”

Three minutes later, he’s out with one of Y/N’s mystery pies in a white box, and an insistent subconscious taunting him the whole way up the elevator for going to such great lengths to comfort a cute girl. What’s wrong with you Styles? You hardly know each other and you’re whipped..

He shakes his head and steps into his flat, jogging lightly to grab the DVD version of He’s Just Not That Into You and a tub of ice cream. Once he’s at her flat door, he waits a second and breathes in and out, then raps his knuckles against the hardwood of her door.

A few moments later, the door opens, a very soft looking Y/N blearily looking up at Harry, eyes swollen and bloodshot, teartracks on her pale cheeks, clad in an oversized T-shirt which practically swallows her whole.

“Hi,” she says, wincing at her own voice and how it cracks at the end a little bit. She looks worn out, and his heart breaks for her. He clears his throat.

“I heard you crying..”

“Oh,” she sniffles, eyes widening apologetically. “Did I wake you? I’m so sorry.. I know it’s late, I’ll try to keep it down—“

“Stop,” he raised a hand in order to put an end to her rambling. He stretched forward the box cradled in his arms carefully. She quizzically looks down, mouth forming an ‘o’ as she realizes what it is. “‘M not a dick. I just thought I’d check in on you, make sure you were okay an’ all that.”

He wants to hit himself, multiple times with increasing ferocity, because the sentence he’d practiced in his head the entire elevator ride up seemed quite broken and blunt and awkward, but Y/N seems to be fine with it, because her blank expression morphs into a small smile which does reach her eyes in that way, and he’s relieved he hasn’t made things worse.

“You’re sweet,” she bites her lip, and a rush of warmth spreads throughout his chest like a splash of tea on a crisp linen tablecloth. She pulls the door handle so it is left ajar, and nods him in.

“Come inside,” she insists, taking the box from him and opening it as they make their way into her home, peering in and smiling softly in amusement. And fuck, he wants to scream because how does she look so pretty when it’s so late in the night that it’s early in the morning, even as she’s been crying?

“Is this one of my pies?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I didn’t want to get something you wouldn’t like, which might’ve made you a bit more sad, and all I like to eat are your pies.”

The sentence makes her cheeks warm a bit, when she just begins to comprehend just how considerate he’s being, and how amazing he looks under the kitchen light, sheepish and a bit nervous, all curls and green eyes and long arms, clutching a tub of ice cream and a romantic comedy CD in his left arm. She raises her eyebrow to the paraphernalia in his arm.

“Ice cream goes well with pie, and makes you feel better when you’re sad. Romantic comedies also help,” he explains, and she can’t help, but think of how whichever girl he’d court would be so, so lucky. And tears spring to her eyes as she once again assesses her situation.

“Did I do something wrong? ‘M sorry,” he’s alarmed, to say the least, apologizing and looking at her with a tender expression although he’s confused on what, exactly, he should be doing. He isn’t exactly comforting girls left and right. She blinks back the tears and laughs breathily, waving him off.

“‘M fine. C’mon, living room’s here.”

“You know,” he begins experimentally, watching her face in a careful way. “Strangers happen to be very good listeners.”

“Do they?” She entertains the thought playfully.

“Yes,” he nods with a very serious look on his face, one that gets a slight giggle out of her. “You see, strangers don’t happen to run their mouths much or judge you like they know the situation. They listen and take your side, no matter what.”

She blows a breath out of her mouth tentatively, and he regrets opening his mouth.

“If you don’t want to—“

“No, it’s not that,” she sighs. “My boyfriend... my ex-boyfriend, as of today, was just a total dick. He would constantly pick fights, emotionally blackmail me into giving him money. I wasn’t really anything to him, you know? I was just.. a booty call. My friends told me not to get with him, but I ignored all of the red flags, because I thought I was ready to be in a relationship. He just ended up making me feel like this insignificant, tiny speck. It took me so long to realize it wasn’t right,” she sniffed, laughing a bit, bitterly and in disbelief. “The asshole was cheating on me this entire time, and that’s low. I’ve never..”

Harry’s jaw is ticking, locked tightly as he intently listens to Y/N speak, fingers clenched into fists. Men like this disgusted him. He remembered his sister coming home, locked in her room for hours on end crying for some bastard who had treated her like dirt at the bottom of his soles. And as tears trickle down her cheeks, Harry realized there’s a pain in his own heart and he doesn’t like to see his bright, witty Y/N so sad. Her tears had apparently stirred a creature hiding and watching from the corner anxiously, inspecting the new stranger in their home before moving forward and rubbing his furry, whiskered face firmly against her stomach, an act of solidarity and companionship.

“It’s like.. I know, he was a jerk, but it’s deeper than that. Does love even exists, and am I worthy of it?” She whispered. “And then the fact he cheated on me. Am I not enough?”

“Hey,” he stops her, damning it all to hell and placing his hand firmly on top of hers, gazing into her eyes importantly. “This girl I know is pretty special. She works at a bakery and plans on one day opening her own, gives grumpy old men coffee until they’re smiling, and fixes gang members up when they’re hurt. She’s also very kind, and makes the best pies, and has such a big heart that she cries even for total dicks who hurt her.”

“You’re not an insignificant speck, Y/N,” he stated quietly, but with strong conviction. “Neither are you unworthy of love or less in any category. You’re amazing, and it sounds like this guy was lessening your happiness, rather than accelerating it. You can be happy on your own for a bit, never forget that.”

“Thank you,” she cried, basically flinging herself at his warm chest, and he’s rigid and tense for a while, unsure of where to place his hands. Then, he relaxes, arms swinging around her waist, one palm at her back, gently hushing her. She smells of lavender and home.

“So...” he trails off, arm still holding her to where she’s content, snuggling against his chest. “He’s Not That Into You doesn’t seem like a very good idea, right now.”

She bubbles with laughter, eyes crinkling at the corners at Harry’s remark.

“It so is,” she protests playfully. “Hand over that tub of ice cream, mister.”

He obliges and they both lay back on the couch, warm and happy and definitely not on the verge of tears. She’s snuggled into his chest, and his eyes are slowly blinking, about to shut for an indefinite amount of time when he finally falls asleep. He’s staying awake for her laughs and small smiles and the little exhales through her nose whenever something hilarious happened in the movie.

“You have a cat?” He asks with a yawn, fighting sleep. She nods.

“His name is Balthazar.”

“Balthazar?”

“Balthazar.”

The cat with the powerful name let out an almighty meow, thinking he had been summoned before disappointedly settling on Harry’s stomach.

He held her closer, warm and content with getting the proper dosage of cuddles tonight, just about to fall asleep as the bar owner in the movie realized he was in love with the woman.

“Can I crash here tonight?” He asks, voice mufffled and raspier with sleep. “I don’t wanna impose.”

“I barely know you, but I broke up with my dick of a boyfriend and cried like I was in some chick flick movie, and you brought me pie, ice cream, and films. So, yes, you can crash here tonight, Harry,” she confirms firmly, dropping her hand to his head of curls, tracing patterns and scratching gently at his scalp while he makes a grunting house, because that’s all he really needs to hear, and falls against her chest, hugging her like a very large teddy bear, basking in their shared body heat and how very soft and comfy she was and falling asleep very quickly.

—

MASTERLIST | Requests are open!

[blackfreethinkers]

By Kwame Anthony AppiahOct. 7, 2020

How Black is Kamala Harris? That the question gets posed speaks to the ill-defined contours of an ill-defined concept. Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian-born mother and a Jamaican-born father, has been called in the media “half Black,” “biracial,” “mixed race” and “Blasian.” In online posts, people have ventured that she’s “partly Black” or — for having attended Howard University, a historically Black school — an “honorary full Black.” Others persist in asking whether she’s “Black enough.”

The old British concept of “political Blackness,” the heyday of which stretched from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, would make nonsense of such questions in a very immediate way: Ms. Harris’s mother, by this definition, is just as Black as her father. For proponents of political Blackness, “Black” was an umbrella term that encompassed minorities with family origins in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Africa and its diaspora. That’s not to say it was the sturdiest of umbrellas: It was never uncontested. Yet it may have lessons for us today.

In Britain, anyway, its legacy remains legible. Three years ago, in a public-awareness campaign designed to increase voter turnout among British minorities (“Operation Black Vote”), Riz Ahmed, a British actor and rapper of Pakistani parentage, appeared on a video. “Blacks don’t vote,” he said. “And by Black people, I mean ethnic minorities of all backgrounds.” The year before, the student union at the University of Kent attracted attention when it promoted Black History Month with the faces of six famous figures: Alongside four British people of African descent, it posted two of Pakistani heritage — the pop star Zayn Malik and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.

During its roughly two decades of prominence, the political Blackness movement, taking note of how Britishness had routinely been equated with whiteness, was especially devoted to the “Afro-Asian” alliance. (In Britain, the term “Asian” defaults to South Asian.) During the 1980s, the movement’s inclusive usage of “Black” went mainstream in Britain. The Commission for Racial Equality, a public body established in 1976, decided that “Asian” would be a subcategory of “Black”; other such organizations followed suit. The bien-pensant among the children of empire started styling themselves as Black, whether or not they had sub-Saharan ancestors.

Of course, this broadened sense of “Black” wasn’t exactly a novelty. Malcolm X, in a speech from 1964, heralded Black revolutionaries around the world and explained: “When I say Black, I mean nonwhite. Black, brown, red, or yellow.” Anyone who had been colonized or exploited by the Europeans qualified. And Malcolm X, in turn, was drawing on an internationalist tradition captured six decades earlier by W.E.B. Du Bois. “The problem of the 20th century,” he wrote, “is the problem of the color line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

In Britain, this capacious usage of “Black” scanted the enormous differences among the nation’s nonwhite minorities. But that was exactly its point, and its power. The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall — you could see this elegant figure on British television in those days, with his close-cropped beard and well-fitted blazers, lecturing for the Open University — was always warning against the way “race” presented itself as a natural fact about human beings. Using “Black” as an umbrella term, he felt, would weaken such illusions: It would helpfully emphasize the “immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experience of black subjects.”

In an influential 1988 essay on “black cultural politics,” for example, Mr. Hall celebrated a film by John Akomfrah, whose father (like mine) had been a Ghanaian politician. Yet he also cited the writer Hanif Kureishi’s two collaborations with the director Stephen Frears, “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,” as significant contributions to Black cinema. That neither Mr. Kureishi nor Mr. Frears was of African descent didn’t make the work less Black.

Only such an inclusive conception of Blackness, proponents maintained, could effectively counter an exclusive conception of Britishness. Ambalavaner Sivanandan, a political thinker and the longtime director of the London-based Institute of Race Relations, saw strategic benefits in “the forging of black as a common color of colonial and racist exploitation.” As a young man in the late 1950s, Siva, as he was known to his friends, left behind the ethnic strife of Sri Lanka and went to London, only to witness attacks by white youth on West Indians in the Notting Hill neighborhood. “I knew then I was black,” he would write.

Opponents of political Blackness tended to suspect that Asians were being forced into a template set by Afro-Caribbeans. In the early 1990s, the sociologist Tariq Modood cited a survey that suggested only a third of British Asians identified as Black, and argued that Asians suffered more from racial prejudice in British society than people of African descent did. White working-class youth were drawn to Afro-Caribbean culture, he said, while turning against Asians. It galled him, too, to see anti-racist programs focused on Afro-Caribbeans when most non-white British people were Asian.

And there’s no doubt that the social reality on the street didn’t always harmonize with the high-minded aspirations to shared struggle. Claire Alexander, a sociologist at the University of Manchester, has dryly recalled that when she did fieldwork in the late 1980s about how Black British youth created their cultural identities, “one of my main informants, Darnell, commented, laughing, ‘you know, Claire, Blacks and Asians don’t get on.’”

Yet the various criticisms of political Blackness presented quandaries of their own. Sure, the umbrella concept didn’t give voice to all the differences it encompassed, but it wasn’t meant to supplant the many other sources of identity in people’s lives. Besides, a term like “Asian” itself ignored the immense internal diversity of the group it designated. Among British Asians, Sikhs and Hindus didn’t vote the way Muslims did. Islamophobia targeted Asians but was also promulgated by Asians.

Mr. Hall, warning against the fiction that “all black people are the same,” had no illusions that Afro-Caribbeans were a cohesive group, either. When he was growing up in Jamaica, he recalled, nobody was ever called “black,” but colorism — prejudice against those with a dark skin tone — was rampant: His grandmother could distinguish 15 hues of brown. Social groups, he knew, are fractal. By the logic of culture, creed, color or kinship, you could always split them into smaller groups. So why not lump them into larger ones, too?

In Britain today, the arguments for splitting and lumping — for specificity and commonality — remain unresolved. The Black Students’ Campaign, the largest organization of nonwhite students in Britain and Europe, represents students of Asian and Arab heritage as well as those of Caribbean and African descent. A few years ago, chastened by critics of the “Black” umbrella, the organization decided that it needed a new name and asked members for suggestions.

Those Black History Month posts at the University of Kent certainly came under fire for including people of Pakistani heritage. “Ill-thought and misdirected” was an institutional tweet from Black History Month UK. The Kent student union “unreservedly” apologized on its Facebook page. The offending faces were purged.

When Riz Ahmed appeared in the public service announcement for Operation Black Vote, some people were eager to see his face purged, too. The journalist Yomi Adegoke remarked, “When I’m followed around in an Afro-Caribbean hair shop or newsagent, an Asian vendor forgets all about political blackness and becomes far more occupied with blackness-blackness.”

But there have been voices for lumping, too. “As children in the 1980s,” Mr. Ahmed wrote somberly, “when my brother and I were stopped near our home by a skinhead who decided to put a knife to my brother’s throat, we were black.” Emma Dabiri, an author and broadcaster (“Irish-Nigerian” is how she designates herself), recently called for “the identification of affinities and points of shared interest beyond categories that were invented to divide us.” And, as it happens, the Black Students’ Campaign never found a replacement for “Black,” and the group still includes Arabs and Asians.

There’s a reason that “political Blackness” never gained much purchase in the United States. In Britain, what matters most is whether or not you’re white; in America, what matters most is whether or not you’re Black.

Still, in the United States today, similar debates roil over “people of color” and the acronym now in favor, BIPOC (for Black, Indigenous and people of color). Does such nomenclature suggest that all nonwhite people are interchangeable? Indian-Americans have a household income that’s two-thirds higher than the national median; for Black people, it’s a third lower. Should these groups share an umbrella? Does the language of generality blunt the sharp analysis of racial disparities we need?

Damon Young, the author of the memoir “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker,” calls “people of color” a “valueless catchall that extinguishes identity instead of amplifying it.” Jason Parham, in Wired, has dismissed “people of color” as an “idiomatic casserole of cultures and identities.” If you mean Black people, say Black people, such critics argue. And they have a point.

The hitch is that the term “Black people,” too, is a casserole of cultures and identities. Anti-Black racism can be a useful concept. But it’s equally an umbrella, casting its shade over the fact that in socioeconomic terms, British Caribbean immigrants and their children and grandchildren in the United States have fared better than “native” African-Americans and that those from the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean have fared worse. It also obscures the fact that colorism, even within Black America, can entail another set of disparities in treatment.

And while some African-American critics think “people of color” is hopelessly expansive, others think the same of “African-American.” The political movement ADOS, which stands for American Descendants of Slavery, wants to establish what it considers a properly “cohesive” notion of Black identity, fencing out people like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris as “New Black” usurpers of a native lineage of suffering. (For some of those who take Blackness as a badge of dispossession, Ms. Harris’s father’s elite education makes him a suspect member of the Jamaican comprador bourgeoisie.) Every tribe, it’s clear, contains other tribes. It’s umbrellas all the way down.

Reflecting on political Blackness, then, should encourage us to retrain some of our reflexes. The identity group that we invoke should be “right-sized” to our needs and aims. Sometimes we’ll want to contract a category for purposes of analysis; sometimes we’ll have reason to expand a category for purposes of solidarity. Indeed, if the context is white nationalism and the anxieties of membership in an eroding demographic majority, “people of color” may be an invaluable analytic term. The salient distinction there is between white and nonwhite.

What about the ADOS movement? If ADOS activists flounder — they have fixed their gaze on slavery reparations and are intent that the wrong people don’t get in on the action — it will be because their certain-Black-lives-matter-more approach proves politically misjudged. An ambitious goal like reparations may require broad support, and in turn a broad conception of “Black.” Skeptics might think that, as with the prospectors and fortune hunters of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” ADOS’s determination to keep the rewards for themselves imperils the chances of anyone getting them.

But let’s say you’re concerned about colorism. You might have been among those who were indignant when Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned Black woman, was cast in a biopic about Nina Simone, a dark-skinned Black woman. To talk about such prejudice, you’ll have to insist on one of the ways in which all Black people aren’t alike. You’ll have to split rather than lump.

Getting the identity aperture wrong — drawing a circle that’s too wide or too narrow, given our agenda — can lead to confusion or futility. When we’re told that about a third of Latinos support President Trump, should we wonder whether something has gone terribly wrong with Joe Biden’s ethnic outreach? Or should we wonder whether a demographic category that suggests a similarity of interests between Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may — for these purposes, anyway — be eliding distinctions that matter more?

For these purposes is always the crucial qualifier. One’s purposes can involve coalition politics, cultural interpretation or socioeconomic precision. The point is that none of these identity terms is stenciled by the brute facts of the social world; rather, they stencil themselves upon the social world. Each is invariably a decision — a decision made jointly with others — that arises from our interests and objectives. You don’t like the available identity options? Start a movement; you may be able to change them.

By the cultural logic, or illogic, of race, Kamala Harris, like Barack Obama, counts both as biracial and as Black. Among major-party vice-presidential candidates, she qualifies as the first Asian-American, the first Indian-American, the first African-American, the first woman of color. Identities, of course, are multiple, interactive and, yes, subject to revision. As the architects of political Blackness rightly insisted, collective identities are always the subject of contestation and negotiation.

Political Blackness may have had its day, but we’re still coming to grips with its central insight: Blackness, like whiteness, has never not been political.

[cait-with-luv]

J.JK Soul Ink - Playlist

Previous | Next

¬ Me, Myself & I - G-Eazy ft Bebe Rexha

Oh, it's just me, myself and I Solo ride until I die Cause I, got me for life,yeah Oh I don't need a hand to hold Even when the night is cold I got that fire in my soul

¬ Him & I - G-Eazy ft Halsey

Cross my heart, hope to die To my lover, I'd never lie He said "be true", I swear I'll try In the end, it's him and I He's out his head, I'm out my mind We got that love, the crazy kind I am his and he is mine In the end, it's him and I, him and I

¬  You Don't Own Me - Grace ft G-Eazy

You don't own me I'm not just one of your many toys You don't own me Don't say I can't go with other boys

Don't tell me what to do And don't tell me what to say Please, when I go out with you Don't put me on display

¬Control - Halsey

I sat alone, in bed till the morning I'm crying, "They're coming for me" And I tried to hold these secrets inside me My mind's like a deadly disease

I'm bigger than my body I'm colder than this home I'm meaner than my demons I'm bigger than these bones

¬ Gasoline - Halsey

And all the people say You can't wake up, this is not a dream You're part of a machine, you are not a human being With your face all made up, living on a screen Low on self esteem, so you run on gasoline

I think there's a flaw in my code These voices won't leave me alone Well my heart is gold and my hands are cold

¬Hold me down - Halsey

My demons are begging me to open up my mouth I need them, mechanically make the words come out They fight me, vigorous and angry, watch them pounce Ignite me, licking up the flames they bring about

¬ Without Me - Halsey

Gave love 'bout a hundred tries Just running from the demons in your mind Then I took yours and made 'em mine I didn't notice 'cause my love was blind

¬ Nightmare - Halsey

I've tasted blood and it is sweet I've had the rug pulled beneath my feet I've trusted lies and trusted men Broke down and put myself back together again Stared in the mirror and punched it to shatters Collected the pieces and picked out a dagger I've pinched my skin in between my two fingers And wished I could cut some parts off with some scissors

¬ Now or Never - Halsey

Never pick up, never call me You know we're runnin' out of time Never pick up when you want me Now I gotta draw a line Baby I done, done enough talking Need to know that you're mine Baby we done, done enough talking Gotta be right now, right now

¬ I Walk The Line - Halsey

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine I keep my eyes wide open all the time I keep the ends out for the tie that binds Because you're mine, I walk the line

I find it very, very easy to be true I find myself alone when each day is through Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you

¬  Desperado - Rihanna

Gotta get up out of here and You ain't leaving me behind I know you won't, 'cause we share common interests you Need me, there ain't no leaving me behind Never know, no, just want out of here yeah Once I'm gone, ain't no going back

¬Needed Me - Rihanna

I was good on my own, that's the way it was That's the way it was You was good on the low for a faded fuck On some faded love Shit, what the fuck you complaining for? Feeling jaded huh? Used to trip off that shit I was kickin' to you Had some fun on the run though I give it to you

¬I'm Gonna Show You Crazy -  Bebe Rexha

I'm tired of trying to be normal I'm always over-thinking I'm driving myself crazy So what if I'm fucking crazy?

And I don't need your quick fix I don't want your prescriptions Just 'cause you say I'm crazy So what if I'm fucking crazy? Yeah, I'm gonna show you

¬ Bad Bitch - Bebe Rexha ft Ty Dolla $ign

You're sayin' that your tired of all your empty habits You want something that's deeper 'cause you're over the generics You're fuckin' with them basics when you really want the baddest So come on, baby, get it, 'cause to miss it, it would be tragic

¬ Straight Shooter - Skylar Grey

Married into this family and I'm datin' a bunch of outlaws Even the children drawing guns out of little crayon box Playing with scissors, cuttin' straight to the point Don't need to beat around the bush, we takin' shots to the groin

¬ Yonce/Partition - Beyoncé

Driver roll up the partition please I don't need you seeing 'Yonce on her knees Took forty-five minutes to get all dressed up We ain't even gonna make it to this club Now my mascara running, red lipstick smudged

¬ Or Nah - SoMo (Rendition)

I'm a freaky-deeky lover wanna hit you from the back and other ways That you have never experimented under the covers Roll around the bed with me is something you don't just discover If you wanna get with me you gotta keep it on one hundred I'mma make you scream my name

¬ The Hills - The Weeknd

I only love it when you touch me, not feel me When I'm fucked up, that's the real me When I'm fucked up, that's the real me, yeah

¬ Gangsta - Kehlani

I'm fucked up, I'm black and blue I'm built for it, all the abuse I got secrets, that nobody, nobody knows I'm good on, that pussy shit I don't want, what I can get I want someone, with secrets That nobody, nobody, nobody knows

¬ CRZY - Kehlani

Everything I do, I do it with a passion If I gotta be a bitch, I'ma be a bad one I'm AI with the designs, du-ragging Bounce back game good, why we talkin' practice? Yeah, yeah, yeah Pull up score when I want to Best thing next to Heaven They be tryna count me out though I'm just countin', countin' blessings A real woman 'bout her paper

¬ Good Life - Kehlani & G-Eazy

Raise up a cup up for all my day ones Two middle fingers for the haters Life's only getting greater Straight up from nothing we go Higher than the highest skyscraper No Little League, we major The proof is in the paper

¬ Sucker For Pain - Imagine Dragons, X Ambassadors, Lil Wayne, Logic, Wiz Kalifa, Ty Dolla $ign

I torture you Take my hand through the flames I torture you I'm a slave to your games I'm just a sucker for pain I wanna chain you up I wanna tie you down I'm just a sucker for pain

¬ Do Re Mi - blackbear

If I could go back to the day we met I probably would just stay in bed You run your mouth all over town And this one goes out to the sound Of breaking glass on my Range Rover

¬ Zipper - Jason Derulo

I'ma mark my territory Shawty I'm an animal, slowly digging in to you Spread you like a bad story Turn you to a criminal, let me see you cock it back

¬ Love Me Like You Do - Ellie Goulding

Fading in, fading out On the edge of paradise Every inch of your skin is a holy grail I've gotta find Only you can set my heart on fire, on fire Yeah, I'll let you set the pace 'Cause I'm not thinking straight My head spinning around, I can't see clear no more What are you waiting for?

¬ Beating Heart - Ellie Goulding

Wanna hear your beating heart tonight Before the bleeding sun comes alive I want to make the best of what is left hold tight And hear my beating heart one last time.

¬ Pillowtalk - Zayn

I'm seeing the pain, seeing the pleasure Nobody but you, 'body but me 'Body but us, bodies together I love to hold you close, tonight and always I love to wake up next to you

¬ Dusk Til' Dawn - Zayn ft Sia

'Cause I wanna touch you, baby And I wanna feel you, too I wanna see the sunrise and your sins Just me and you Light it up, on the run Let's make love, tonight Make it up, fall in love, try

¬ I Don't Wanna Live Forever - Zayn ft Taylor Swift

Been sitting eyes wide open behind these four walls, hoping you'd call It's just a cruel existence like there's no point hoping at all

Baby, baby, I feel crazy, up all night, all night and every day Give me something, oh, but you say nothing What is happening to me?

¬ Wrong - MAX Ft Lil Uzi Vert

Wanted to take her back to my place Driving 90, let the cops chase Making that "Damn it feels so good" face Cause she don't wanna wait, no, wait 'til we get home

¬ Youngblood - 5SOS

Remember the words you told me, love me 'til the day I die Surrender my everything 'cause you made me believe you're mine Yeah, you used to call me baby, now you calling me by name Takes one to know one, yeah You beat me at my own damn game

¬ Champions - Fall Out Boy ft RM

Have you ever felt how hard it is to be an anybody To be living, to be breathing, not choosing a dead body Remember, the man told me that this life is a party Yeah, all the glory's so short you should put away the garbages Normal ain't normal, ordinary is a luxury

¬ Crossfire - Stephen

He'd trade his guns for love But he's caught in the crossfire And he keeps wakin' up But it's not to the sound of birds The tyranny, the violent streets Deprived of all that we're blessed with And we can't get enough, no

¬ Revolution - Diplo

Can you see it? The worst is over The monsters in my head are scared of love Fallen people listen up! It's never too late to change our luck

¬ Bad Guy - Billie Eilish

White shirt now red, my bloody nose Sleeping, you're on your tippy toes Creeping around like no one knows Think you're so criminal Bruises, on both my knees for you Don't say thank you or please I do what I want when I'm wanting to My soul? So cynical

¬ Bad Moon Rising- Mourning Ritual ft Peter Dreimanis

I see a bad moon rising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightning. I see bad times today.

Don't go around tonight, Well, it's bound to take your life, There's a bad moon on the rise.

¬ Give It To Me- Agust D

(Same Lyrics, just in Hangul and in English)

아직은 성공의 비법은 몰라도 망하는 비법 잘 알 것 같어 딱 너처럼 놀고 나불대는 게 비법 죽어도 그렇겐 안 살 것 같어

I'm still not sure about the secret to success But I think I know the secret to failure The secret is to play the fool just like you And keep blabbing your mouth But I wouldn't live like that even if I had to die

¬ Jopping - SuperM

You think ya big boi, throwing three stacks I'mma a show you how to ball, you a mismatch Opinionated but I'm always spitting straight facts Throwback, I might throw this on an 8 track Believe me, I'm sight to see Exciting go and drop the beat We get it jopping the party, it don't stop The festival is now starting

¬  Tove Lo - Vibes

Skin to skin Seepin' in Flickering, our eyes go wide You giving me studded sight Painting stars In our hearts Yeah, you know I'm down for you I want you to lick my wounds

¬ Bad Things- Machine Gun Kelly ft Camila Cabello

Am I out of my head? Am I out of my mind? If you only knew the bad things I like Don't think that I can explain it What can I say, it's complicated Don't matter what you say Don't matter what you do I only wanna do bad things to you So good, that you can't explain it What can I say, it's complicated

¬ Home - Machine Gun Kelly ft Bebe Rexha ft X Ambassadors

I been through so much pain And it's hard to maintain, any smile on my face 'Cause there's madness on my brain So I gotta make it back, but my home ain't on the map Gotta follow what I'm feeling to discover where it's at I need the (memory) In case this fate is forever, just to be sure these last days are better And if I have any (enemies) To give me the strength to look the devil in the face and make it home safe

¬ Way Down We Go (Stripped) - Kaleo

They will run you down, down 'til the dark Yes and they will run you down, down 'til you fall And they will run you down, down 'til you go Yeah, so you can't crawl no more

¬ 7 Rings - Ariana Grande

Been through some bad shit, I should be a sad bitch Who woulda thought it'd turn me to a savage? Rather be tied up with calls and not strings Write my own checks like I write what I sing

¬ Don't Call Me Angel - Ariana Grande,  Miley Cyrus & Lana Del Ray

See you here with somebody Dude sizin' up my body Don't you know that I bite when the sun set, yeah? So don't you track 'em around me Might work on them, but not me Don't you know that I bite when the sun set?

¬ Into You - Ariana Grande

I'm so into you, I can barely breathe And all I wanna do is to fall in deep But close ain't close enough 'til we cross the line So name a game to play, and I'll roll the dice, hey

¬ Dangerous Woman - Ariana Grande

Somethin' 'bout you makes me feel like a dangerous woman Somethin' 'bout, somethin' 'bout, somethin' 'bout you Makes me wanna do things that I shouldn't Somethin' 'bout, somethin' 'bout, somethin' 'bout

¬ Seven Nation Army ( Glitch Mob Remix)

I'm gonna fight 'em all A seven nation army couldn't hold me back They're gonna rip it off Taking their time right behind my back

¬  Dollhouse - Melanie Martinez

No one never listens, this wallpaper glistens Don't let them see what goes down in the kitchenPlaces, places, get in your places Throw on your dress and put on your doll faces Everyone thinks that we're perfect Please don't let them look through the curtains

¬ Carousel - Melanie Martinez

Round and round like a horse on a carousel, we go, Will I catch up to love? I could never tell, I know, Chasing after you is like a fairytale, but I, Feel like I'm glued on tight to this carousel

[popunktomlinson]

fall ‘19 rec

re-read:

Pull Me Under - zarah5 (140k)

AU. As the first British footballer to come out at the prime of his career, it helps that Louis Tomlinson is in a long-term, committed relationship. Even if that relationship is fake. (Featuring Niall as Louis' favourite teammate, Liam as Louis' agent, and Zayn as Liam's boyfriend, who just happens to be good friends with one Harry Styles.)

new:

Tell Me When You’re Ready (I’m Waiting) - insufferablelovebirds (17k)

When Harry's love letters to his old crushes get sent accidentally, one of his old crushes, Louis offers to help him fake a relationship but it gets complicated when feelings get involved.

Or an au loosely based off to all the boys I've loved before.

your rainbow will come smiling through - hazkaban (17k)

when harry isn't working at his stepfather's cafe, he's trying to make swim captain and trying to finish all his coursework on time. when he's not doing any of those things, he's talking to the boy he met on the oxford hopefuls subreddit. when they decide to meet, he's elated. he finally gets the chance to meet the boy he's been crushing on! when the day comes to meet his prince, he learns that his online crush is none other than louis tomlinson, captain of the football team and friend of his terrible stepbrothers. now harry has to decide whether telling louis the truth is the right choice or if it's better to just let sleeping dogs lie.

I’m A Man Who’s Got Very Specific Taste - patdkitten (4k)

“Birth control is getting expensive,” Louis repeats aloud to himself, focused on the medical bill he's just opened as he blindly locks back up his mailbox. “I could just stick with suppressants and condoms.” He continued, muttering to himself as he folded the bill back up. “It's not like I have a boyfriend or a mate or anything like that to merit continuing taking them.”

“Do you normally announce your sex life in front of the mailboxes?”

There's a strange alpha in the building that Louis calls home and he thinks maybe he'll make a proposition to the alpha. It goes a bit different than expected.

Love Isn’t Always on Time - messofgorgeouschaos (45k)

Falling in love with your best friend sounds like a good idea, until he comes back from a work trip engaged to another man. A Made of Honor AU.

Sonic Sounds - glasscushion (6k)

"Harry takes a deep breath, suitably embarrassed, “I’m just really...” and he can’t say the obvious. He can’t just say really wet."

Harry loves feeling embarrassed. Louis is happy to help.

Sit Next To Me - allwaswell16 (12k)

Harry Styles of One Direction always gets what he wants. Well, nearly always. What he can’t seem to figure out is why the very fit man who comes to assist Liam’s tattoo artist seems to have zero interest in him. Is Louis Tomlinson the straightest man alive? Or does Louis showing up for every show on tour mean something more is going on?

Howls Like A Beast (You Flower, You Feast) - indiaalphawhiskey (17k)

“You don’t love me,” Louis had said, utterly blasé as he callously fractured the heart of a Harry that was just barely eighteen.

“I do,” Harry had insisted pleadingly, green eyes already watering.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen more of the world,” Louis had teased, pressing a brutally delicate kiss onto Harry’s lovely, pure cheek. “Once you’ve been properly defiled.” He had whispered filthily, delighted by the gasp he heard, the frantic pink blush that had rested high on Harry’s cheeks, the power he had felt at knowing he could make the Crown Prince squirm.

red hands - reveries_passions (132k)

a dystopian au in which harry, an ex-soldier who’s escaped from his government run camp, accidentally stumbles across the biggest rebel movement in the country, and louis, one of the rebellion’s mysterious leaders who appears to hate him, seems to simultaneously have an obsession with keeping him alive. or: harry is wanted for treason, niall hasn’t changed in four years, liam is always smiling, and louis is angry. like, really angry.

My Favorite Word - lightswoodmagic (3k)

“Nah,” Niall replied, typing on his computer and gracefully ignoring Harry’s embarrassment. The grin remained though. “He has a pretty specific...type. You could go help him out, you know. Pretend to be his boyfriend.”

Harry choked on the water he’d just swigged, his face brighter red still when everyone in the library turned to stare at him.

Or, Louis’ ex boyfriend won’t leave him alone, so Harry steps in.

Welcome Back From The Friend Zone - 2tiedships2 (32k)

“As we are both aware,” Louis began. “You are continuously complaining about not having the kitchen appliances needed when you want to make some of those random recipes you find online. And your precious waffle maker died recently.”

“Where are you going with this, Lou?” Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.

“We need to pretend we’re getting married and send out announcements to rich people. Like billionaires who don’t know who we are.”

Or the one where an idea to create a fake wedding with the sole intent to receive gifts from billionaires took a turn no one, but also everyone, saw coming.

No Turbulence Please - wetdandelions (5k)

It's just Harry's luck that his rut hits right before his concert when he's stuck on an airplane with his best friend as the only omega. Luckily, Louis doesn't mind helping him out. All for a good cause, of course.

Stay Forever - allwaswell16 (6k)

For the last year and a half, Harry has spent his coffee break at the same cafe every day, not because he loves their coffee, but rather because of the gorgeous omega behind the counter making the coffees. As a beta, he’s sure he doesn’t stand a chance with him, so he goes online to find as close a substitute as possible.

A camboy au

Into Always - jaerie (4k)

Harry finds his ex's knotting dildo and gets a little curious. Louis is more than willing to help out.

The End Should Be A Good One - bannanasandboots (43k)

It doesn't feel like falling in love, the way it had felt the first time around, easy, simple, almost like floating, wrapped up in a whirlwind of touches and kisses, late nights spent laughing breathlessly into each other's skin. This feels broken, complicated, like every move carries the weight of their past. Like the floorboards beneath them could collapse at any moment. This doesn't feel good.

Or, the one where Harry loses the love of his life on New Years Eve and finds him again, six months later, ready to open some poorly-stitched wounds.

Send Me Your Pillow (The One That You Dream On) - flowercrownfemme (3k)

Harry is embarrassed to realize he's nesting but can't stop stealing Louis' things for his nest.

Hey, Mr. DJ - allwaswell16 (5k)

Harry really, really does NOT want to go out to a club tonight and be hassled by a bunch of alpha knotheads, but against his better judgement, he finds himself alone on the dance floor, barefoot, with an orange in his hand. This is all Niall's fault. At least the DJ is the most strikingly gorgeous alpha he's ever seen...

spice up your life - bottomlinson (9k)

After a conversation with his Uni friends, Harry worries that his relationship with Louis has lost it's spark.

(aka: an incredibly silly modern day love story ft. awkward boners, grumpy neighbours and Cosmopolitan sex tips.)

Falling All In You - dimpled_halo (16k)

Louis wins a contest to meet Harry Styles even though he doesn't consider himself a fan. What he doesn't expect is to win over the popstar's heart.

Floating - Snowy38 (56k)

There's places that you can go to get help. The doctor's, psychiatrists, psychologists and all that run in between. And then there's places that fall on the edge of those recognised institutions. Places that offer the kind of therapy that most medical boards would reject on the ground of ethics. That's the kind of place Louis Tomlinson needs. It's the kind of place he has found. And so he goes. To a sex therapist with an unorthodox way of curing...by actually having sex.That therapist just so happens to be Harry Styles.

Don’t Move In (Don’t Move Out) - 2tiedships2 (14k)

Only one more week and Harry would be living under the same roof. Gone would be Liam’s alpha scent, quickly replaced with Harry’s. All Harry. Louis was going to fucking die. You’d think Louis would be used to it by now, that Harry’s scent would simply fade into the background like Liam’s did. But Louis had a feeling he would simultaneously be living in Heaven and Hell once Harry moved in.

Blockheads (Building a home with you) - bitter_leaf (38k)

Louis is a no-nonsense contractor with a score to settle. Harry is an idealistic interior designer who just wants the world to be beautiful. When they decide to go on The Block, a reality TV show about renovating, they’re not prepared for what else they might build together…

unfinished:

Shake Me Down - AGreatPerhaps12 (206k)

Harry's new to college, fresh out of Catholic school and conversion therapy camp, and Louis runs the campus LGBTQIA organization.

Fall Into Your Gravity - zarah5 (74k)

AU. In which Harry is an overnight pop sensation and Louis steals plants, Zayn pulls Liam's proverbial pigtails and Niall's really just pleased there are more girls for him.

And The a Bit - infinitelymint (159k)

“We’d like to give the fans what they want.” Magee states, placing his hand on the table in front of him and leaning forward. “We want to give them Larry Stylinson.”

[jlf23tumble]

Strong agree with your post but a small point of contention: tbh you wouldn't believe the hand wringing in the Zayn zquad and I'm not saying there isn't fuckery there but to say all is peaceful and calm over there... Nah

Interesting!!! I’m allergic to hand-wringing in general, so the Zayn blogs I follow tend to focus on his accomplishments rather than “what went wrong,” but I do know he had a manager step out and the entire Icarus Falls release was sort of just a RELEASE sans promo. That said, I also figured that could have been by design, like he was very much, “fuck it, i’m done, here you go, zero circus hoops and radio call ins and late night bullshit and anxiety for meeeeeeee, I’m calling the shots, and I don’t wanna do xyz,” which, good for him! But I’m not deep in the zquad, so I appreciate that perspective, feel free to point me to where you think I should lurk

[larriefails]

These very late replies are on this post from over a month ago, for some reason X

There wasn’t a “big larry broke their friendship push” Louis said in an interview with Storyboard (a sort of news source that was published by and on tumblr) that the rumors were affecting how he and Harry behaved in public LINK

That was it... and it was in July 2012. There weren’t “a lot of articles written about it.” There were articles that reported on this. Louis just said what I pasted above. It just rippled around the interwebs after that. And Louis and Harry stayed “BFFs” for a while after that.

Harry didn’t “move out”, they all did. All five of them

The label had rented them apartments in Princess Park Manor in summer 2011, logic will tell you that they had rented them for a year, so in summer 2012, they all had to move out. You just paid attention to the parts you wanted to pay attention to

Zayn

Niall

Liam

Louis

Harry didn’t “move out because of the rumors” and there wasn’t a push that he and Louis weren’t living together because Larries broke their friendship. That’s Incorrect Larry Lore. The Princess Park Manor lease was up, they all had to buy houses, so in the summer/fall of 2012, they all went house hunting and bought houses

Harry bought his current house, Erskine, in September 2012, but he wanted to do a ton of renovations, so he temporarily moved in with a few friends (Ed Sheeran, Lou Teasdale, and Ben Winston). He also spent a lot of time with Nick

He absolutely DID move out. He couldn’t have possibly stayed in Princess Park Manor because... he didn’t have a lease anymore. In fact, not long after they moved out, fans pretended to be interested in renting it and did a tour of the apartment, took pictures and all. I remember because I was in the fandom. No, they didn’t live there anymore

Louis bought his current house in Barnet, Harry bought Erskine. That’s.. that. Larries just say that Harry’s house is too public and he’d never live there, so therefore that’s his fake house, but that’s all you have to go on about how they “definitely live together”. That and that Harry would make jokes about not having a house in 2013. But that’s because he didn’t. Because his house was being renovated. So he jumped from Ben’s attic, to Lou’s sofa, to Ed’s spare room. He didn’t have a house, he made fun of himself. You took that as shade, because of course you did

Harry absolutely lives in Hamsptead whenever he’s in London. He’s ALWAYS spotted around it. This last week alone, he was spotted all around the area. Y’all just live in denial. He had a studio built in that house so he could record there. He actually recorded part of his album there (it’s in the liner notes of his album). He also has an underground garage and entrance, so he’s not bothered when he gets there and leaves (that’s something that fans that walk around the house noticed). According to himself, he redid the whole kitchen, and who knows what else. He obviously put a lot of time, effort, and money into that house that you think he doesn’t live in despite the fact that he’s always around it. Typical Larrie fail

Paparazzi were not stopped from photographing them together. That’s a made up Larrie lie. There are paparazzi pictures of them together at several band events, arriving or leaving. They just don’t hang out outside of the band, so there’s nothing to photograph

They weren’t stopped from riding cars together. You’re talking about that one video where Harry thinks he’s got to ride the car in the front and is told that no, his car is the one in the back. That’s... it. Louis was with Eleanor, even in your made up world, what would be the issue with Louis, Eleanor, and Harry riding a car together? Nobody would’ve batted an eye.. They just had assigned cars and drivers and Harry got confused

Dan wrote sensationalist articles, there’s nothing novel about that and it proves nothing about Larry. Literally no one believes Harry and Louis hate each other. Just like we don’t believe Harry slept with 410 women in a year. We understand that tabloids are tabloids..

They hugged on stage that night because it was the 1D’s last ever concert. They all hugged on stage. There was nothing special about their hug and it would’ve been fucking weird if they hadn’t, when everyone else was hugging each other. Watch in context for yourself

Just because Harry and Louis don’t say they fucking hate you doesn’t mean they’re not bothered by you. This whole idea that print interviews are somehow meaningless is fucking ridiculous. Did you know that you legally can’t print something that the person you’re interviewing didn’t say? You can switch the wording to make the concept clearer but you can’t purposefully misquote people. And Harry has never talked about Larry in print interviews, wouldn’t that be something “they” would definitely do if “they” had the power to do so? Louis has said in interviews that Larries are disrespectful towards Eleanor and Freddie and this is either audio or video, so why you’re jerking off to “it’s in print” is beyond me

On stage they smile at fans. Not Larries. Fans. Because they’re performing for fans. This is why big Larries are so fucking harmful, propagating lies about how they specifically looked at them and smiled at them and because they’re Larries, absolute bullshit. Never proven, in fact, a lot of times it was proven these were lies. They have never sang to each other, let alone “gone out of their way” to do so. All Larrie lies. Using angles to show something that you could see from another angle wasn’t true and ignoring it when it was pointed out

Harry waving rainbow flags has Z E R O to do with Larry, you fucking piece of shit. He never waved a rainbow “always in my heart” flag. In fact, at the Rio de Janeiro concert, where they were selling rainbow flags with that bullshit written on them, Harry LITERALLY checked that the flags didn’t have anything written on them before waving them

Those fucking bears I swear to god. They were done by the crew, specifically by the stage designer Kate Moross who posted this last year on their IG stories

Google their name and you’ll see...

They don’t hate “gay rumors” what they hate is being called liars, having their family and friends harassed, Louis hates that they call the love of his life a beard and his son fake. It’s not about the fact that y’all think they’re gay (which is disrespectful when Louis has told you he’s straight and Harry has told you he doesn’t label his sexuality). It’s about everything else you have to believe in order to believe they’re gay and in a relationship

We all think that they drifted apart because they matured and changed as people with time. But we also know that their friendship was definitely affected by the pressure y’all put on them by analyzing every single one of their interactions, giving them meaning, and then using them as fodder to lie, attack, and harass

You sit in a throne of lies that make no sense @mr-mr-ontheradio

[inthesummerswelter]

recipe for disaster: epilogue

The flickering lights of the television dance across the dim flat, illuminating that patch of wall, this edge of carpet in a haphazard, frolicking manner. The wall is the same shade of worn paint as it was three years and five months ago, the carpet only a bit more ragged, fringe torn off by the late onset of canine teething.

The light skitters on over until it crosses the occupants of the sofa, playing over where an arm loops around a waist here, another around a shoulder there.

They're a tangle of limbs and lungs and fingers under mounds and mounds of fabric.

Head resting on the space where shoulder broadens into chest, Penn huddles closer into the warm body beside her as her eyelids began to droop.

"Duck or lamb?" she mutters, mind still on the same track it had been five hours ago when she began her journey through revamping the menu at work.

Ashton traces a pattern in the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, letting his hand splay across the back of her skull and cradle her head, before he responds. "If I don't have to look at it alive before I eat it, lamb. Never been much of a duck person. Roasted or alive."

"Okay," she mumbles back. The sitcom on the television is a rerun, one they've seen at least ten times before, but she knows that he still finds the jokes funny from the way his chest shakes with contained laughter.

Eight minutes later, she's debating the merits of cutting down the appetizers in favor of increasing the dessert offerings while the bloke on the telly is flailing about with what seems to be a large cod in a public park.

"Y'know, I love sleeping over and all, but I think it’s time we make some, er, alternate arrangements." His voice startles her, half hearing it, half feeling it thunder along through his body.

"Hm?" That’s concerning. Penn looks up at Ashton, the light from the television flitting about enough to catch the hazel in his eyes. He's still looking at the screen, mouth still in the remnants of a smile from the punchline.

"Move in with me."

Oh.

Definitely less concerning.

Tipping her head back down, she gives it a thought and snuggles back in towards him.

"Okay. But how about you move in with me instead?"

She can't keep the terrace greenhouse if she moves out of her flat. Plus Ashton's over at hers more than he is at his anyway. And she likes the way all the windows in the kitchen are perfectly placed to frame the sun when it breaks above the skyline.

A rumbling chuckle reverberates, shaking the quilt draped over her shoulders.

"Okay," he says. And then, "I love you," because the novelty of dropping the in with part two months ago still hasn't worn off yet.

"I love you, too."

(In fact, the novelty will probably never wear off.)

  "Y'know, you've got a lot more stuff than I had thought. I'm not so sure that it's all going to fit."

Penn winces as the edge of a stack of textbooks bites her shin where she's squeezing through the doorway with boxes balanced in her arms.

Ashton sighs dramatically, pausing in stretching out clear packing tape to close up loose seams in the boxes designated to go into storage. The tape has determined, however, that its forever-home is not the cardboard, but instead all over Ashton's hands.

"That's it, we're just going to have to downsize. Cardy, Clove, it's time for you to leave the nest. Go on. Be free."

Two sets of reproachful eyes look up at him, affronted by his socked foot nudging at their bellies.

Penn rolls her own eyes at him and pushes open the slider door to trot back over to her flat. Looking back over her shoulder before her feet hit the concrete of the terrace, her face scrunches up in concern.

"Are you going to be okay for a few minutes while I push some boxes around to make room?"

He laughs, flapping fingers covered in tape at her as Luke pops his head out of the bedroom, reassuring her that he's at least got things under control.

"I'll send him over in a bit with more, Penn."

She waves at him briefly in acknowledgement before heading back over, Clove scampering at her heels.

All in all, for all the fussing and complaining going on about who moves where and what part of which lease applies to which person and something about accidental subletting that she thinks they've finally worked out, Penn's happy with the new arrangement.

Ashton is moving in with her, bringing the total amount of occupants in her one bed, one bath flat to a grand total of four, including the dogs. And, Luke is going to move into Ashton's, a more comfortable one person to one room ratio, she has to admit.

After a few years of saving up money by living with his older brothers and spurred by the necessity of a new place due to said older brothers graduating, the newly-vacated flat perfectly fits Luke's bill.

Which is great, because Penn was a little nervy and not quite comfortable with the possibility of sharing the terrace with someone she didn't know, although Ashton assures her that their new neighbor will still probably be at the library more than at home anyway.

In any case, things worked out for the best in the planning and legalities.

In coordinating the actual moving, however, not so much.

She was able to take the day off to help out, and Ash and Luke didn't have classes. However, Louis and Niall found themselves conveniently tied up at the restaurant, Zayn was predictably out of the country, and Calum on an extended family vacation.

Which minimized their small group of potential coerced laborers to Michael, who said he'd stop by if he wasn't busy.

Which hasn’t happened yet.

But, Penn is pleasantly surprised by a knock at the door while she’s shifting around a potted plant in the corner of the living room to make way for Ashton’s growing footwear collection - one pair of nice leather boots and now he’s a shoe connoisseur - and opens it to a shock of lavender hair and long, tanned limbs.

“Hiiiiiiiiiii,” Michael drawls out with a grin, flapping a hand in greeting as he steps through the doorway. “Wasn’t sure where you’d all be, but figured that you might be here. Or someone might be here. Or Ash. Ash is always here.”

The girl behind him - a girl that she's never seen before in her life - snickers openly. “He’s really just saying that. We came here first because it was closer to the stairs. And we brought bagels!”

She proudly displays the baked goods as Penn helps them navigate the sea of Ashton's things until they can reach the kitchen.

Setting the bagels on the scant free counter space, Michael mumbles, "It's like five fucking flights, okay? Would it kill you to petition for an elevator or something? Oh, and Tal wanted to bring a housewarming gift. On my employee discount, of course."

Tal's rebuttal is cut off by the arrival of a set of plastic storage tubs and Ashton, while Penn leans against the cabinets and tries to remember why that name sounds so familiar.

"Mikey! You made it!" Ash spreads his arms wide after setting down the tubs nearly on top of Penn's feet.

Sidestepping a sweaty hug, he replies, "Not for long! Can't stay to help, actually. Sorry about that, Tal -"

"I'll take that hug," she announces, stepping forward into Ashton's still outstretched arms. "Glad to see things all worked out after all."

Ah. Tal.

Tal of the silhouettes.

Mikey's girlfriend, Tal.

Penn takes a closer look, suddenly ridiculously interested in Michael’s choice of women.

Thin and tall turns into a sharply angled, deeply tanned face. That comes along with an easy, laughing smile, a brilliant white standing out from darker-complected skin. Deep brown eyes are divided by a strong nose and framed by dramatically-arching eyebrows settled on a high forehead.

In other words, a face that wouldn't seem out of place on the cover of one of the friendlier-looking fashion magazines, with a body to match.

She shoots Ashton a meaningful glance - one that says introduce me, goddamnit - as she unpacks the bagels from their cardboard carrier.

But Tal beats him to the punch, calling out, “And you must be Penn! It’s so nice to finally meet you in person, I’ve heard quite a bit about you!”

Penn's hit with that gleaming grin and is momentarily stunned by the light bouncing from it, blinking rapidly as she tries to recover.

Tal fills in the awkward silence without skipping a beat.

"Wow, Mike, didn't even mention that you had a girlfriend, did you?" she says as she elbows him in the side.

Penn regains her words as Michael chokes on a bite of bagel that he's stolen over Ashton's protests that those really weren't his anymore.

"No, no, Ashton told me about you. It's very nice to meet you as well." She smiles, rounding the bend in the counter.

They have time for one enthusiastic handshake before Tal catches sight of the clock in the living room - "So cute! Oh, shit!" - and realises that they should have been at the tube station approximately nine minutes ago.

Leaving as they came, Michael's flash of lavender is the last Penn sees before Tal pulls him into the hallway.

Luke steps in just as the main door closes with a stack of milk crates in his arms, saying, "I found these in the back of your closet - are those bagels? I'm starved."

“Yeah,” Ashton replies nonchalantly, taking one dusted with chocolate chips from the plate Penn’s laid a few out on. “Mike just brought them over. Just missed him and Tal.”

Penn jumps nearly out of her skin as Luke slams his hand on the counter.

“Damnit! Every time, I swear to God.”

And then he goes to the fridge and pulls out a water bottle to chug moodily.

Pushing her shoulder into Ash, where he’s polishing off the bottom half of the bagel with ease, she gives him another meaningful glance that translates this time into a whole set of concerned question marks.

He takes the time to lick off the residual chocolate from his index finger before he responds. “It’s this thing between Luke and Michael. Like, Luke said something about not believing Mike would ever get a girl, and so now he takes Tal to meet everyone except for Luke. Luke doesn’t even know what she looks like.”

The plastic of the bottle is dangerously close to implosion in Luke’s fist, so Penn looks at him with great caution, still not sure that this whole thing doesn't qualify as one hugely ridiculous overreaction.

“Smiley. Very smiley.” Penn hopes this'll be enough to save the water bottle.

It crushes under the pressure anyway, but Luke's shoulders slump. "S'okay, really. He'll break, eventually."

Instead of continuing to try and console a mopey man-child twice her size, Penn turns to the plastic tubs Ashton had brought over, grabbing a blueberry bagel at the same time. Looping it on her finger, she nibbles at the edges as she picks out a battered biscuit tin. The paint is red and chipped, the image of gingersnaps on the top mostly worn away, rust collecting at the rim of the lid. It rattles as she shakes it, sounding as if there were a whole hoard of coins or buttons shifting around inside.

And as far as she knows, Ashton's never fixed a button in his life

"What is this?" she asks, gesturing with it towards him. He doesn't see her though, so she takes it upon herself to prise it open. Surprisingly enough, the top pops off without too much effort.

Bottle caps.

Bunches of brightly coloured, strangely marked bottle caps.

Penn sticks her hand in and scoops up a bunch, marvelling at the sheer number of caps as she lets them slip through her fingers and fall back down into the tin.

"Oh, those?" Ashton seems to have finally noticed, turning away from Luke and towards where she's begun to spread a few on the surface of the counter. "Those are all my gramps'. Well, really he’s my great-uncle, but we always just called him Gramps."

Penn's heard of strange collections, and she understands sentimentality quite a bit - she still pays rent on Gran's brownstone and drops by every couple of days to tend the garden - but still, bottle caps?

He goes on to explain, noticing the look on her face. "Gramp always said that anything worth celebrating everything should be done with a cold beer. Obviously he thought that there were a lot of things deserving of beer, and he kept the cap from every one of them. There's even one from the day I was born in there, but I think it's actually from a hard cider instead."

Ashton thumbs the top of a sunny yellow cap with a logo written in illegible, blocky red lettering before setting it back in the pile and digging his fingers down to the bottom of the tin.

"But the main point was to celebrate all the things in life worth being happy about. I keep these to remind me that life has a lot of those moments, some big and a lot small, and sometimes we just forget to recognise them as remarkable, memorable."

She just takes a hold of his hand and doesn’t say a thing.

  (She ends up picking up a few small shadow boxes from an antique shop on High Street the next day and divides up the caps between them.

They hang on the small stretch of wall just above the kitchen table and glint in the first light of the morning sun.)

  Two weeks after the move and she’s still not used to the way he arranges the condiments in the refrigerator.

Reaching for the hot sauce - normally on the top left, underneath the light and right next to the butter - she brings it all the way over to the plate before realising that it’s not hot sauce.

It’s mustard.

She doesn't even like mustard.

Scrubbing at her eyes with curled up fist, still in the throes of 5 a.m. drowsiness, she tosses the bottle behind her where it lands with a clatter in the sink. Ashton can pick it up later when he does the dishes.

Penn bends down towards the fridge again, closing her eyes to guard against the bright white light of the interior, finally plucking the hot sauce from the bottommost right-hand shelf.

Tucking it underneath her arm, she gathers up the plate and forks in on hand, juggles two mugs in the other, and shuffles her way back down the hall to the bedroom.

He's still in the dazy sort of half-sleep, sheets rucked down to his waist, face partially pressed into the downy pillow, so she sets her cargo down on the side table and climbs back in beside him. Penn snuggles into the warmth of his body, lifting up one outstretched arm so she can wriggle underneath it, letting it settle as a comfortable weight across her shoulders.

She takes his stillness as an opportunity to study him with her own eyes at half-mast, but, within five minutes of memorizing how the ringlets of honey-coloured hair curl around the tops of his ears, his nose scrunches up once, twice, before he cracks a hazel eye open.

"Is tha' coffee I smell?" he murmurs, lifting his head off the pillow to scent the air, and she nods as she brings up a hand to push the crumpled waves off his forehead.

"An' eggs. Made s'me eggs, too."

The arm over her shoulder tightens and curls, pulling her in closer until he can tuck her head under his chin. "G'bless. You're th' best thing."

"Mm, I know," she mumbles back as he presses a kiss to her forehead.

His answering smile is the sunrise.

   ("Y'know, th' food's gonna get cold if we wait much longer."

"'M comfy here, though."

"Slaved over that, I did. Over a hot stove. For you."

"I know, love.")