#and that it's CRAZY to see them coming out of louis' mouth in this decade

[statementlou]

Please tell me you get that all I do is about performing not larry. That metaphorical comparison between performing and addiction is all over Walls: Habit, Aways You, Kill My Mind.

if you think that even one of Louis' songs or even individual lyrics is straightforwardly about only one thing I feel sorry for you, that you are missing out on the number one thing that characterizes his writing style- the clever overlap and interplay of meanings and references in every line- and for him, that his fans are out here completely oblivious to the thing he is, I would guess, proudest of about his lyrical craft, the thing that's his writing SIGNATURE, in favor of just being like "x is just About this and only this that's what he Means period end of". The Way I Do is or can be about lots of things, but that has nothing to do with the fact that for Louis to use phrases such as "it's not one thing it's everything" and "next to you" (and both in a single verse even) that had been catchphrases and slogans basically of the larry fandom for a decade at the time he wrote and recorded that does not exist in a vacuum and is kind of fucking unhinged (and there's literally zero chance he doesn't Know). And the habit reference is used the same as he uses it on Walls; as a fluid is it love or is it addiction is it love of a person or of the fans/ performing metaphor. Of course it refers to that! And that doesn't for one second rule out or even make less likely that it also refers to any number of other things, have some damn appreciation for his CRAFT and subtlety!

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

Drabble challenge 12, Can I be of assistance?

thank you for the ask, anon. I wrote it and it sort of ended up being like, 1000 words, so I'll put it under a cut. or read it here on ao3

“Can I be of assistance?”

The voice shocks Daniel out of his fantasy.  A fantasy starring the very person the voice belonged to.  Armand.  

Daniel blushes red to the roots of his hair.  He’s in the ‘theater room’, a room Louis and Armand have just to watch movies or television.  There’s a television there that’s bigger than any he’s ever seen and furniture so comfortable it’s sinful.  

He’d fallen asleep after watching a movie, and woke up with an erection.  It’s been decades since that happened, so it has to be his treatment.  Increased libido is a side effect.  Daniel tried ignoring it, but his mind kept turning to thoughts of his dreams.

He’d dreamt of Louis and Armand, that first night he had met them.  In the dream, Armand joins them.  He goes back to that shitty apartment with Louis and Daniel.  Both of them fuck him together, stretching his hole so full it burns.  

Naturally, he touches himself.  He doesn’t expect the vampires to be up for a few more hours; it’s early morning and even while Louis is willing to do this interview during the day, he prefers the back half of it.  It’s not something he’d usually do, but he’s half convinced one of the vampires is sending him these dreams to drive him crazy.

It’s a perfect plot, really; Daniel will never bring up the dreams or even admit to having them.  Whichever of them it is can keep doing it without consequence.  

He’d just been imagining Armand on his knees, taking Daniel down his throat will Daniel fucked into his mouth.  His fangs would occasionally graze against Daniel’s dick, and it sent a jolt to his cock to imagine it.  

His cock is leaking in his hand when his grip loosens and he starts to shake.  It’s slow going, trying to stroke off, but he alters the fantasy to match.  Now, Armand is going slow to tease him.  It keeps him hard, but try as he might, he can’t tip himself over the edge.  

Then he heard the voice.  Daniel drops his cock and throws a pillow over his lap.  As if that could hide what he’s doing.  

Armand glides over to him, a vision in white jeans and white silk shirt.  His shirt is unbuttoned enough to expose his collarbones and a bit of chest hair.  The shirt is slightly sheer, and Daniel can just see his brown nipples through the fabric.  And those jeans are tight.  Too tight to wear underwear under.  He’s a wet fucking dream, and it does nothing to help his raging erection.

Armand arches a brow and looks to the pillow in Daniel’s lap.  Daniel feels sick, like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  Armand is an actual monster; he could very well kill Daniel for the disrespect.  

He doesn’t apologize.  Daniel says “I thought you’d be asleep.”

“I heard you calling out for me.”

Daniel figures he could have said Armand’s name in his sleep.  It’s possible.  Or maybe it was some vampire telepathy thing.  “What are you going to do to me?”

Armand smiles and tugs the pillow off Daniel’s lap.  Daniel tries to hold on to it, but he’s no match for Armand’s inhuman strength.  Armand tosses the pillow aside.  His gaze meets Daniel’s. 

“Is your hand giving you trouble?  I can help you,” his says, voice silky and smooth and so, so sexy.  

“What?”  Daniel says, confused. Is he offering to…

Armand’s hand wraps around him.  It’s cool, but his skin is soft and it feels divine when he gives it an experimental stroke.  Daniel’s hand’s grip the arm’s and the chair and he gasps.  

The hand pumps up and down, and Armand swipes his thumb over the head and collects the precome.  He brings his thumb to his mouth and tastes it.  Daniel’s cock jolts with arousal.  The hand comes back around him and strokes over him slow and steady.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Daniel says, but it’s a token resistance and they both know it.

Armand’s hand never stops moving when he answers, “Tell me to stop, and I shall.”

Daniel says nothing.  Armand shifts so that he’s sitting on the arm of the chair while his hand continues to work Daniel.  He leans forward close to Daniel and breathes in his scent, face near his neck.  Daniel turns his head and leans in to kiss him without thinking.  Armand makes a disapproving noise and draws back, just out of reach.  

Arman moves forward and kisses the corner of Daniel’s mouth, his cheek, his temple.  His hand picks up speed and Daniel grips the arm of the chair tighter.  His head falls back against the chair and he swears, “Fuck, you feel good.”

“What were you thinking about?” Armand asks, “When you were touching yourself, what were you thinking about?”

Something in his tone makes Daniel suspect he already knows the answer.  

“About how hard it is to jerk off with a shit hand.”

Armand’s hand stops.  Daniel lets out a truly embarrassing noise.  “Shit.  Fuck.  Don’t leave me hanging.”

Armand tilts his head and looks down at Daniel.  “Then tell me what you were thinking.”

He already knows.  The only thing stopping Daniel from getting off is his pride.  

“Fine,” Daniel huffs.  “You, I was thinking of you.”

Armand’s hand gives a long, slow stroke.  “Good boy, Daniel.”

It shouldn’t turn him on, but it does.

Armand’s hand moves over him with increasing speed and Daniel can’t hold back the noises that escape him.  It’s only a hand, but it’s been awhile since he’d had any hand that wasn’t his own.  And it’s Armand.  

“Fuck, Armand, I’m so close,” Daniel babbles, words spilling from his mouth without going through his brain first.  “You feel so good, baby; don’t stop.  Don’t stop.”

Armand leans down and licks a line up his throat.  His silken voice purrs in Daniel’s head “Come for me, Daniel.”

The orgasm crashes over him as Daniel comes harder than he has from a simple hand job since he was sixteen and a cheerleader stroked him off under the bleachers during a football game.  His entire body goes lax and he sinks back against the chair.  Armand tucks him back into his jeans and does them up.  

Daniel doesn’t know what to say to him now.  He settles for a joke.  “Thanks for lending a hand.”

Armand smirks and Daniel can see a hint of fang.  “Anytime.”

[atruththatyoudeny]

Monthly Reads | September 2020

Happy 28th! All the love for all the authors in this fandom. Thank you for making my days better with your work! ♥ Here are all the fics I read and loved this month: 🍂 Remember Me Fondly | kiddle | enemies to friends to lovers - 1990s - historical - angst - humor - closets - 74k “You’ve told the beginning of the story so many times. I want to hear the end.” Louis laughed, scratching at his chin. “I can’t say I really know when the end happened.” “How about the tour of ninety-five?” “Alright.” Louis took a deep breath. “But it took a few steps to get there. What would you like to know?” Penny cleared her throat. “How did you first meet Harry Styles?” Grunge legends Fearless Doe topped the rock charts in the ‘90s, but they spent the decade kicking Smudge off their heels. From lawsuits to jaw-dropping scandals and a surprising joint world tour, the two bands share a complicated history. Twenty-five years later, frontmen Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles are finally ready to sit down and tell the world their two sides of the same story. Truth may vary.

🍂 you came into my life | disgruntledkittenface | Queer Eye AU - american AU - closeted character - Coming Out - pining - fluff - angst - implied/referenced homophobia - 57k They stand around talking for a minute and then Jonathan starts to ramble, “Has there ever been, like, an unrequited gay love story in here? Like a Brokeback Mountain moment where, like, someone just fell in love and they didn’t mean to?” Louis feels bile rise in his throat as Jonathan’s eyes sparkle, pleading for a yes. He manages to look around and see thoughtful looks on his coworkers’ faces before their heads shake no. “Not here,” Liam says finally. When the Queer Eye cast and crew sweep into Louis’ small town and fire station to make over his best friend and coworker Liam, Louis’ carefully constructed walls start to fall down and he has to face his fears – and the only guy he’s ever been able to see a future with.

🍂 Everything I need I get from you | jaerie | a/b/o - mpreg - strangers to lovers - emotional/ psychological abuse - sexism - unplanned pregnancy - 10k In a world where music and sound are just as vital to health as food, Harry is stuck in a town that thinks professional music is a scam and a relationship he never wanted. One chance event changes his life.

🍂 at last, at last | suspendrs | post-apocalypse - dystopia - cult - mentions of violence - mentions of death - homophobia - internalized homophobia - 41k “Come with us,” Tommo says, stopping at the other end of the gymnasium, near the doors. “Don’t let them make you suffer any longer. Come with us, and be human.” Before Harry has even finished thinking it through, he’s on his feet, gaining the attention of every single person in the gymnasium. What has he got to lose, anyway? Or, Harry is born into a cult in a post-apocalyptic world, and Louis is the leader of the rebel group tasked with the mission of shutting them down. Together, they make a rather effective team.

🍂 give me love | falsegoodnight and soldouthaz | a/b/o - past relationship trauma - past abusive relationship - slow burn - touch deprivation - touch starvation - nesting - angst - fluff - 41k Despite being an omega, Louis’ always had a blatant dislike of alphas. - Or, Louis doesn't feel like a good omega, Harry doesn't remember how to be an alpha, and they figure it out together.

🍂 You, Who Never Arrived | abrighteryellow | Only You AU - strangers to lovers - 90s AU - world travel - soulmates - fluff - angst - Fate & Destiny - 42k “That was him, Niall.” He claps a hand over a disbelieving laugh. “My soulmate – the person I’ve been waiting for since I was nine years old. That was him on the other end of the phone.” “But it can’t–” Niall stutters, unsure of what to do, how to put a stop to this. “That wasn’t real.” “Wasn’t it?” Louis rushes past him, zipping up his fly. He grabs a black denim jacket from a hook near the door. “Then who did I just talk to?” “Where are you going?” Niall demands as Louis pockets his keys and swings his front door open. “I just have to get a look at him. I just have to see, that’s all!” “You’re not serious. Louis, it’s already late.” “He’s at the airport. Fifteen years I’ve been expecting him around every corner, and now he’s half an hour away. I can’t just sit here.” “Bu–” “I’m not going to do anything crazy, I promise. I just–I have to see him. This is my chance. Maybe my only chance.” Louis Tomlinson is days away from marrying a perfectly nice podiatrist when he gets a phone call that changes everything. Or, the Only You AU in which Louis has a soulmate and it's definitely not Harry Styles.

🍂 Shall we sleep, my love? | givelourrylove | angst - emotional hurt/comfort - kid fic - 15k There is so much sincerity in Harry’s voice. So much that says you, Louis, I look forward to seeing you, you and your soft eyes and your petite body, just you, you, you, but Louis forces himself to ignore that. To gulp it down again, sizing up the lump that had formed beneath his lungs, possibly reappearing any time and choking him with everything he decided not to think about for the past year. or Louis loses his job as a teacher, has to move out and find somewhere to live. A certain someone named Harry offers his home to Louis and his son. Pining, crying and reading bedtime stories involved.

🍂 so much I could live for I could die | louisnights | dystopia - trans character - sexual harrassment - friends to lovers - strangers to friends to lovers - no smut - 15k “Sometimes I wonder what’s out there,” Louis confesses, tucking into his second biscuit. “I wonder if what they’re saying is true, about the Thieves, about the other compounds. Why are we not allowed to leave? Go to other compounds?” Lottie gets up, letting out a sigh as she squeezes his shoulder. “You shouldn’t think like that, Lou, it will get you killed.” “They can’t take away my thoughts,” Louis answers defiantly. Lottie pats his shoulder before she disappears to her room, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. or: Louis is a transgender man who escapes his compound after extenuating circumstances, and meets the Thieves, who show him what freedom really is.

🍂 A Road To Hope | he_wants_to_write | historical - World War II - 1940s - farm/ranch - PTSD - emotional hurt - hurt/comfort - angst - mental instability - internalized homophobia - 18k “We’re far from the people and their issues, don’t hold back. Please.” It’s true. They are far away from anything that could stop them, the middle of nowhere being the safest place on Earth for them to fall in love. The sacred land where sacred love is created. However, Louis is certain that even if they weren’t safe, he wouldn’t resist the sight of Harry, his pleading eyes, his warm skin beneath his touch. or In the heat of April, 1944, an escapee soldier lost in a dirt-road stumbles upon a small farm and finds himself recovering from the traumas of World War II in the simplicity of a frugal life, with the help of a little boy's innocent soul, and a farmer's hopeful green eyes.

🍂 With Love's Light Wings | 4ureyesonly28 and reminiscingintherain | Rome and Juliet AU - a/b/o - 1920s - marriage proposals - 12k Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair London town, where we lay our scene... — Or something like that, anyway. On either side of the River Thames live Louis Montague and Harry Capulet, their noble packs entangled in a feud so old, nobody even remembers what caused it. As fate will have it, against all odds, they fall in love. Harder than the bricks that make up their families’ estates and faster than a Duesenberg car. AKA The 1920s ABO Romeo & Juliet AU that we desperately wanted to write.

🍂 The Very First Words of a Lifelong Love Letter | LiveLaughLoveLarry | first meetings - friends to lovers - weddings - no smut - 9.5k The prompt I picked was (lightly edited): "Harry and Louis have been best friends ever since they met through fandom (I picked Critical Role) twitter. Person A (I picked Louis) lives in New York City and Person B (Harry) lives in the UK. They’ve never met in person but they FaceTime and text daily. Person B’s cousin is getting married to a rich American who’s paying for the entire family to travel to The Hamptons for a summer wedding. Are Harry and Louis ready to meet?" ~*~ Harry thought he was just imagining things when the flower girl looked like one of the twins, but -- he’s almost certain that groomsman is Louis. The pictures he's seen haven't been the best quality, granted, but he knows Louis. He does. Harry stares wide-eyed as he walks down the aisle in step with the bridesmaid, taking their places on either side of the stage. As they turn to look out into the audience, Harry’s strong suspicion solidifies into certainty. That’s Louis. He’d bet his life on it. But Louis doesn’t look at him, and it’s not like Harry can wave. He can only stare, mouth still hanging half-open. Suddenly, as much as he loves weddings, he can’t wait for this one to be over.

🍂 promise you'll remember (when the sky is grey) | Anonymous | american AU - summer - 33k "Once you come to this town, you find that it's not so easy to leave," Niall spoke with a fond tone in his voice. "Canyon isn't a place that one leaves behind easily." "I guess we'll be able to test your theory come August," Harry spoke with a small grin, "because I'm set to leave on the twenty-ninth to get back to work in LA." Niall smirked back in reply, "I guess we will, but mark my words, you'll end up finding something to make you stay. We all did." Harry laughed, surprised at the man’s unwavering confidence in his statement. "We'll see." - a summer spent in small town Maine, filled with trips to the farmer’s market, lemonade tailgating, taylor swift, and falling in love at quite possibly the most inconvenient time ever (not necessarily in that order).

[anythingandeverything1d]

Friends

Present day

“(y/n)!” Harry’s voice echoed through your flat and you laughed quietly, covering your mouth with your hand so that your hiding space would not be revealed. It was the first time seeing Harry in almost 4 months, which was nearly a record for the two of you. Unfortunately due to Harry being in LA when the COVID-19 crisis began, your longtime streak of seeing each other at least twice a month had been broken and you had been separated, forced to only chat through text, calls, and FaceTime. It worked....but it wasn’t the same. You missed his arms around you, the way he laughed at your jokes, winked when he wanted to get his way, and of course his dad jokes. Harry had been your best friend for over 10 years now, which meant you had been with him through it all. From the auditions at the X-Factor to One Direction and then his solo career. You were the one thing that was always a constant in his life, just as he was a constant in yours. “(y/n)....” Harry’s voice was quieter but closer, he must've heard you laughing. You held your breath, preparing to jump from the corner of the kitchen as he walked around. His body past the nook you were hiding in, his hair held up with a clip, jogging shorts and jacket on. Harry stood in the living room with a frown looking around. “Where did yo-”

“Ahhhh!” you jumped out, grabbing his shoulders and jumping onto his back with a laugh. “Hey there.” you giggled into his ear.

Harry laughed and shook his head, “Jesus woman, why can’t you just greet me like a normal person?”

“Normal people aren’t fun and you know it.” you hoped off and he spun around arms open. You walked into them with a smile. “I missed you.”

“I missed you to love.” He pressed a lingering kiss onto the top of your head, your cheeks blushing pink and the butterflies slowly taking flight in your stomach. Even though you had been friends for 10 years, only recently in the last 2 years had you realized that Harry made you feel a certain way, almost as if you had just realized that he was no longer a 16 year old boy, but a grown man. Of course, you had never acted on these new feelings. You supported him through relationships and break ups, never crossing the friend lines that been drawn early on in the relationship. You pulled away from him reluctantly, looking into his emerald green eyes. “How have things been?”

“Well...I broke up with Max...” 

“Thank god, it’s about time. He was terrible.” Harry smiled while jumping onto the couch and you just shook your head at him, continuing on.

“Other than that, same old same old. Been waiting for you to come home. It’s been so long, I’ve resorted to drinking with Lou.” you shrugged and watched his facial expression change.

“Ah I did hear that. I’ve received some videos of you two laying around the pool absolutely wasted.” You bit your lip wondering what exactly Louis had sent him. Even though Harry was your best friend, you and Louis had really connected during the days of One Direction and you stayed in touch with him over the years. You could tell him anything, and in fact,  you did tell him everything, including your newly found feelings for Harry. Louis had endlessly teased you days after the confession, but if Harry knew anything, he didn’t let on.

“It’s a good time.” you laughed, letting out a breath of relief knowing your secret was still safe while crawling across the couch to his lap. You let out a gentle sigh as you fell into your favorite position. Your head on his shoulder, your legs tucked up and across his legs. “How are things with you?”

“Well I had to reschedule tour, I participated in some of the protests in LA and then also have been working on some writing and the One Direction reunion and anniversary stuff.”

“Ohh yeah. Louis won’t tell me shit about that. Wanna clue me in?”

“It’s a secret.” 

“A secret?”

“Yeah, can’t tell ya, I’d have to kill ya and why would I ever want to have to do that to my best friend.”

“Ugh...” you groaned. “No fair. I’ve been with you through it all. I feel like I should be the first to be clued in.”

“Well on July 22 at 11:59 pm, you will be the first to know.” Harry gave you a wink to which you just rolled your eyes and focused on the tv. 

“Can you at least tell me if I’m in any of it?” you looked up at him, batting your eyelashes. 

“I didn’t know you were part of the band” he teased.

“I mean, I basically am. I was there for like every major event wasn’t I? I’m the one who got you all through the drama....the interviews....shows....pretty much everything come to think of it.”

“Hmm is that so?” Harry shifted so that you were lounging in his arms, his eyes able to focus on you. 

“Mhm...”

He pressed a kiss to your nose and grinned. “I think you may be right there... but that doesn’t mean you’re involved in whatever it is we are doing.” You wanted to think of a comeback but your brain was a little fuzzy after watching his lips move to your nose. You sat up and moved off of his body, trying to ease your body’s tension.

“Can you believe it’s been almost 10 years since you auditioned...” 

Harry shook his head with a smile. “No I really can’t....it’s been a decade since my life has changed....”

“Look at everything you’ve done in 10 years....it’s pretty crazy.” You closed your eyes, allowing your brain to think back to that day. The day you knew it would all change for him. 

July 23, 2010

“(y/n)?” his voice squeaked through the phone. You could hear the tears and the slight shake of his breath. Oh, no.....he didn’t make it.... You swallowed the lump forming in your throat, waiting to console him.

“Yeah?” you managed to squeak out, your heart aching for the curly haired boy who’s dream was about to be shattered. You had been sure they would say yes. He was an amazing singer and a down to earth person. He was destined to be a star.

“They put me into a group. Simon...he placed me with four other boys. I get to move on with my new band.”

You could almost hear the smile in his voice. He must’ve been crying from happiness, or maybe stress....either way he had done it. You were crying along with him now as well, immensely proud of the boy who worked in a bakery, the boy with the heart of gold, and most importantly, your best friend. “Harry I’m so happy for you! Tell me all about it! How was it meeting Simon Cowell? Did he like your song? Who are your new bandmates? Are they nice? Do the sing well? Are they better dancers than you?” you teased him.

You heard him laugh lightly, making you smile even bigger. “Simon seems cool, it was his idea to place us together. I don’t know about the other boys...I think one of their names is Louis...and maybe there’s a Neil...or Niall...something like that. We all thought we were going to be kicked off. We made it with some yes’ but then weren't chosen and now we are in a band and I guess we will have to see what happens. But they did like my song, Simon was asking me about what pies were popular before I sang.”

“You told them you worked in a bakery?”

“Of course, they asked about what I did.” You laughed, shaking your head and smiling at the goof on the phone. Only Harry would bring up the fact that he worked in a bakery. “I have to go, they are calling all of our names. I think I’m going to invite them to my dad’s house, that way we can get started. Maybe you could stop by?”

“Maybe..just let me know when you’re there.”

“Alright...I will.”

“Oh and Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really happy for you. I knew you could do it.”

“Thanks (y/n). I’ll talk to you soon yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay...bye.”

“Bye Harry.” You hung up the phone and screamed, startling everyone in the park you were walking through. “MY BEST FRIEND IS GOING TO BE FAMOUS!” 

Present day:

“It really is. I’m glad I’ve had you with me for the ride too.” Harry nudged your side before standing up and walking to the kitchen. “So what are we having for dinner?”

“Tacos?” you laughed. Harry would always come over for Taco Tuesday, and it was always a go to dinner for the two of you.

“You’re speaking my language now.” Harry smiled. 

The two of you got to work, pulling out all the stops for taco night. “So...are you seeing anyone?” you asked while cutting the tomatoes for salsa. You didn’t look up, you really didn’t want to know if he was seeing anyone, you wanted to know if he was single.

“Not right now...I’ve just been focusing on me.” Harry answered. You met his eyes and smiled. “There is someone though.”

There it is. The gut wrenching, stomach flipping answer you always received. There was always someone with Harry, and the fact it wasn’t you, just didn’t sit well. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I just don’t know where it’s going yet.” 

You sighed and looked at him again. You always did this, always gave him advice on what to do.”Well, you should go for it. If you like her then maybe...maybe she’s the one.”

“Maybe.” He said thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t want to risk anything.”

“How will you know until you try though?”

“That’s true... maybe I’ll plan my move.”

“Good idea.” you tossed everything into a bowl and stirred, not saying anything. You knew you couldn’t be upset when you hadn’t actually talked to Harry about your feelings, but at the same time you were upset he never even considered you in that type of way. 

You didn’t say much at dinner despite the hundreds of questions Harry was asking you. You just weren't in the mood anymore. You were cleaning up the dishes lost in your thoughts when Harry’s arms went around your waist. You looked up and he smiled. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“(y/n) come on, I’ve been your best friend for 10 years I know when you’re lying.”

“It’s fine..it’s nothing.” Harry rested his chin on your shoulder and waited. “Really. It’s all good.”

“Okay.” He stood up letting go and moving to help finish up.  “So, what about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“What’s it to you?” you laughed. “You never like the guys I date anyways.”

“That’s because they don’t deserve a girl like you.”

“And who does?” you turned and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Harry debated on answering. He was working through the process in his head. 

Instead of answering he tugged you closer and pressed a kiss to your forehead. “Someone. Just none of the guys you have dated.”

You were used to Harry being affectionate. You and him had always been touchy, which is why everyone used to think you were dating. Harry would kiss you nose, forehead, cheeks, head, hands. You would lay on his lap, play with his hair, and even snuggle in bed. It’s how your friendship was and how you hoped it would always be. “Someone? That’s the answer I get.”

“Yeah. Someone.” He laughed and gripped your hand in his. “Now come on, I believe we have a movie night planned.”

“Lead the way.” 

Harry tugged you to the couch, tossing your favorite blanket to you while grabbing the remote. He took his seat and you took yours, snuggling up together while the movie played. You were exhausted, tired out from the emotions and your work day. You kept yawning, trying to stay awake but eventually you ended up tangled in Harry’s body, out cold. 

You were flat on his chest, your legs tangled in his when you woke up. Light was streaming through the blinds and you knew it was the next morning. Harry’s arms were tightly wrapped around your back, ensuring you wouldn’t roll off his body. You tried climbing off him, but his response was a grunt and an even tighter grip. 

“Well isn’t this just adorable.” You jumped up, turning around and finding Louis in the kitchen, making himself a cup of tea. Harry also sat up, confused. You felt your cheeks get hot at the look Louis was giving you. You climbed off Harry and brushed your hair back, suddenly realizing you weren't wearing pants. You tugged the shirt down farther, earning a laugh from Louis. Harry frowned at Louis and tossed you the blanket, allowing you to cover up and run to the bedroom to change.

You got dressed and headed to the kitchen where the guys were talking. “She’s just a friend.” you heard Harry say. You froze, leaning against the wall.

“Well does she know that? You two seem pretty close.” Louis commented. 

“Yeah, of course. I’m into someone else anyway.”

“Whatever you say Harry, just don’t be surprised when she ends up heartbroken because of you.”

“She won’t. I won’t let it get that far.” Your heart fell. He only thought of you as a friend and was interested in someone else. He had basically told you that last night but hearing him confirm it with Louis hurt more. Why couldn’t he just give you a chance. Your phone buzzed and your ex Max’s number popped up. *Can we talk. Please.* You wanted to say no. You had used Max in the beginning and then realized what a dick he was. At the same time, Harry hated Max. If you dated him, maybe Harry dating this other girl wouldn’t hurt as much. 

*Yeah. Come pick me up.* You hit send and walked into the kitchen with a frown.

“Well there’s the princess.” Louis laughed. “Looking awfully unhappy this morning aren’t we.”

You ignored him, brushing past the boys and to the fridge for some orange juice. “What’s wrong?” Harry asked, confused what had happened since last night.

“Nothing.” you didn’t make eye contact with him. 

“Okay, well what are your plans today...I was thinking we could hangout.”

“Actually Max is picking me up soon.”

“What?” Harry and Louis turned to you with surprised looks. 

“You said you broke up with him.” Harry grumbled.

“You said he was a dick.” Louis added.

“Well he asked to talk to me and I figured why not.” you answered pouring a cup.

“That’s a terrible idea.” Louis crossed his arms and shook his head. “Where would you ever get the idea that was good.”

“Well after talking to Harry about him making his move, I figured why not try mine. Maybe Max isn’t that bad.”

“Or maybe he is.” Harry crossed his arms and frowned. “You’re best friend is finally here and you’re not going to hang out with him?” “Maybe you can make your move with the other girl while I’m making mine.” you stated, taking a sip.

Louis nodded, suddenly understanding where this was all coming from. He was aware you had heard the conversation. “Interesting plan. Well I better be going. We are all going out tonight yeah? (y/n) bring Max. Harry bring your girl and I’ll bring El. It’ll be fun.”

You nodded agreeing and Harry nodded as well, glaring at you as he walked out the door. “You’re not really going to trust Max again are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“(y/n).”

“Harry.”

“You can’t-” Harry was cut off by the doorbell.

“Max is here. Can you lock up when you leave?” you weren't in the mood for a lecture from Harry. You knew it wasn't fair to be mad at him but you really were frustrated with the whole thing. 

Harry nodded, grabbing your arm as you walked out the door. “Just remember...you’re worth more than that asshole standing on the porch. You may not realize it, but you’re beautiful inside and out. You deserve better.” Harry let you go, his eyes burning into your back as you walked out to the porch where Max was standing.

“Hey-”  Your mind wasn’t listening to him. It was thinking back to the first time Harry had said that to you.

September 11, 2011:

You were sitting on Harry’s couch. It was a big day for the band. They were releasing their first single today. You wanted to be happy for Harry and the other guys, but instead you were focused on James, your now ex boyfriend. “Penny for your thoughts?” Harry asked, jumping next to you with a grin. You shook your head and wiped the tear that was falling. “Come on (y/n)...something’s wrong...let me help.”

“James broke up with me. He said I wasn’t pretty enough...that I wasn’t skinny enough....” You looked into Harry’s eyes with tears falling down your cheeks. “Why aren’t I good enough H?”

“Stop. That’s ridiculous. You are more than enough. You are beautiful, and you are you. All of those things, the things he said weren’t good enough...they make you YOU. And you, my love, are the most beautiful girl I know.”

You smiled and wiped your tears with your sleeve. “You’re just saying that because you’re my friend.”

“No I’m not. I swear.” He grinned. “You turn heads when you walk through doors. He’s an idiot if he doesn’t see that.” Harry pulled you into his arms and rubbed your back. “In fact, our new single is actually perfect for you right now.”

“It is”

“Yeah, and I’m going to sing it for you.” Harry pushed your butt to the couch and grinned. “You’re insecure, don’t know what for, you’re turning heads when you walk through the door, don’t need make up, to cover up, being the way that you are is enough, everyone else in the room can see it, everyone else but you, baby you light up my world like nobody else, the way that you flip your hair is enough, and when you smile at the ground it aint hard to tell, you don’t know oh oh, you don’t know you’re beautiful, oh oh, that’s what makes you beautiful.” Harry placed a kiss on your nose and smiled. “You’re beautiful (y/n). Don’t let others tell you differently.”

“You’re single is beautiful Harry.” You hugged him tightly and laughed for the first time all day. “I’m so proud of you. Like really, you’re going to go places, and this song, this song will get you there.”

“I’m excited, but promise me you’ll always stay and be part of the journey with me?”

“I promise.”

You and Harry had spent the day watching the song climb in charts, all over the world. The response was overwhelming and again, you were more than excited that Harry was able to live out his dream.

Present day:

“Uh, (y/n)....are we good to go?” Max repeated himself, pointing at the car. You nodded, shaking the images from your head. Harry needed to be put in the past. He didn’t love you that way, not the way that Max did.

“Yeah, sorry. Let’s go.” You climbed in the car, watching Harry stand on the porch and let you leave. If he really wanted me, he would’ve stopped me. He would’ve made an effort to actually let you know he felt more. Max drove off and you sat there awkwardly, Harry still stuck in your mind. “So how have things been?” you finally turned to him and forced a smile.

“Fine.” Max kept his eyes on the road, his voice harsh and cold.

“Uh...later tonight, Eleanor, Louis, and Harry are going out, do you want to come with?”

“Sure.” 

“Okay...” You looked out the window, regretting this decision. Maybe being single was better than this. Max pulled off at a park and got out. You followed his lead, still uncertain that this was a good idea. “So you wanted to talk?” You sat on the bench next to him.

“Yeah.” You looked over at him, he was focused on the tree in the distance.

“What about?”

“I think we should get back together.” He looked over at you and you froze. You knew this was coming and yet, you weren’t ready to give an answer.

“Why’s that?” Now you were the one focused on the tree.

“I miss you. I miss us.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I mean we had some fun right?”

“I guess...” you bit your lip. You and Max had started as a fwb type of thing and then you had pushed him to being in a relationship after saying you no longer wanted that. Now he was coming back saying he missed you? “Do you just miss the sex or do you miss me.”

“The se- well both I mean.” Max gripped your chin roughly, forcing you to look at him and then he shoved his lips to your mouth. It was in no way the gentle kiss that you know Harry would give. This was a kiss that was trying to take control. “God I missed you.” he mumbled against your lips. His hands were already trying to slip into your shirt, his length pushing against you as he tugged you to his lap harshly. You tried getting up, breaking the kiss, but his hands held you tightly, a little too tightly actually. 

“Max.” you pushed back on his chest, breaking the kiss. “Max stop.”

“What? What the hell?” He grabbed your wrist and prevented you from moving, causing you to wince in pain. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“I-”

“No shut the fuck up.” You watched him raise his hand, and closed your eyes. Max had hit you a few times in the past, but usually after getting blackout drunk and aggressive. His hand didn’t hit you, and when you opened your eyes he had lowered it back to your wrist. “Let’s just get in the car.” Max was pissed and you were slightly afraid to get back in his car.

“I-I’m just going to stay here.” you mumbled.

“What?”

“I’m going to stay here.” you said louder and more confidently.

“Like hell you are.” he mumbled, dragging you towards the car. He opened the door and yelled, “GET IN THE CAR (y/n).”

“No.” you tried pulling loose of his grip. “Let me go.” You were pushing against him trying to free your hand. He laughed madly before throwing you to the ground and laying a foot into your side. You cried out, curling into a ball away from him. 

“You’re a fucking whore. You pathetic little bitch.” He spit on you and then laughed. “Don’t ever call me again.”

You laid on the ground as he drove away, tears streaming down your face. You didn’t know what to do, you were now stuck at some random park alone, and in pain. You grabbed your phone, debating on who to call for help. Harry would come and give you the supporting words you knew you needed, but he would be upset at the state you were in, and he would be mad that Max left you alone. In fact, he would be pissed. Louis was your other option. He wouldn’t press but would be disappointed knowing everything that had happened in the past. “Louis.” you cried into the phone. “Can you come get me.” 

You were sitting in the parking lot when he pulled up. You luckily weren’t injured. You’re side hurt from where he had kicked you, but other than a bruise that would form, you knew you would be okay. You had wiped the tears, and tried to look presentable, but the minute Louis walked out of the car, you broke down. He held you in his arms, rubbing your back as you told him everything. Everything that you had heard about Harry, everything Max had just done, and how you were afraid of what else would happen. “Shh, come on love, let’s get you home.” Louis didn’t say anything, he just drove you home and sat with you as you calmed down. 

“Don’t tell Harry.” you looked over at him after an hour of sitting on the couch in his arms. “Please. He will just be upset. Don’t tell Harry.”

“Don’t tell Harry what?” Harry walked into the kitchen with a smile but frowned when he saw you in Louis’ arms.

You looked at Louis and he slightly shook his head. You sat up and sighed, looking at Harry. “That...”

“Go on.” Harry had crossed his arms and was staring the two of you down.

“That she’s not going clubbing.” Louis sat up with a sigh and you looked at him grateful for the excuse. 

Harry’s mouth dropped. “What? Why not? We are supposed to leave in an hour or so.” 

“I’m not feeling well.” “She doesn’t want to go alone.” You and Louis looked at each other after giving opposite answers. 

“I don’t want to go alone.” you stuttered.

“Why would you go alone. Max is in the driveway waiting.”

“What?” you and Louis nearly yelled.

“Yeah...is he not supposed to be?”

“No...I mean...Yes he is. I should go get ready so we can leave.” You stood up, running upstairs and Louis followed.’

“I should help you pick an outfit out yeah?”

You nodded, walking past Harry with your head down. Louis gave him an apologetic smile but saying nothing. You were tearing through your closet for an outfit. You had originally planned on wearing a crop top with jeans, but that wouldn’t cover the giant bruise from Max’s foot. “What can I wear Lou, I mean I can’t just cover a bruise this size.”

“(y/n) you need to not go. You can’t go with Max. You need to fess up and tell Harry what happened.”

“What? No!”

“So you’re just going to go with the guy who just abused you?”

“Yeah.” you tugged on a shirt and looked in the mirror before taking it off and throwing it to the floor. 

“(y/n).”

You turned and looked at Louis with tears in your eyes. “Do you know how hard it is? How hard it is to see Harry with other people and know that you are still in love with him and he’s not in love with you?”

“I don’t think-”

“I’m going. And I’m going with Max.” You stared at Louis, not about to give into that idea.

“Fine. Then wear the longer crop top with high waisted jeans. As long as you keep your arms up, you’ll be able to cover it. You smiled, hugging him tightly and throwing on the outfit earning an approving look from Louis. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks Lou.” You hugged him one last time before meeting Harry back downstairs. He was in a t-shirt with his black jeans, the classic look you had grown to love. 

“You look- wow.” He smiled at your appearance but frowned when Max walked in.

“You look okay, better than earlier. Let’s go.” Harry looked at Max like he was crazy and you sighed, following him out to the car. Neither of you said anything in the car but when you pulled up to the club, Max locked the doors as you were trying to get out. “Don’t try to pull any shit tonight. Nothing like earlier. Got it?” You swallowed the lump in your throat and nodded, jumping out of the car and hurrying to where Louis and Harry were waiting.

The night was going fine, Max wouldn’t try anything as long as you were around Harry and Louis, which you had made a point of priority. You watched Max order two drinks, of course one wasn’t for you, they were both for him. He tilted his head back and downed the quickly before ordering another. Harry watched him with a frown, but pulled you aside while he was busy with the other. “Want to dance?”

“What happened to your date?”

“I decided solo was going to be more fun. Plus we haven’t gone out together in forever, I wanted to spend time with you.”

You smiled letting the butterflies move throughout your stomach while taking his hand and allowing him to pull you out onto the dance floor. He spun you around, his hand landing on your side and causing you to wince in pain. He froze, slightly confused as his hand had barely grazed you. “Sorry I just-”

He tugged your shirt up and his mouth fell open looking at the dark bruise. “What the hell happened (y/n)?”

“Nothing I-I”

Harry shook his head. “He did this didn’t he?” Harry’s eyes darkened and his voice was in a low growl.

“Harry, no stop. Okay? It’s fine.”

“That is not fine (y/n). There is NOTHING about this that is even near fine.”

“Hey man what the hell, she’s my date.” Max stumbled over, slurring his words and grabbing your hand roughly. “Get your dirty hands off my girl.”

“Your GIRL?” Harry laughed and shoved Max backward. “She’s not your girl.”

Max was pissed he ran at Harry, but since Harry was nowhere near drunk, he easily dodged. Louis and Eleanor ran over, trying to step in between the two guys. “What happened?” Louis asked.

“Harry found out what Max did.” you cried. “Harry! Harry please stop.”

Harry looked at you, noticing your fear and froze. A bouncer had rushed in, grabbing Max and halting the fight. “You fucking little whore. You better get your ass in the car. You better give me what I want or your ass will be sorry.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you. Now or ever.” Harry snarled, nodding to the bouncer to carry him away. Harry turned to you, wiping the dirt from his shirt. “(y/n)...” you didn’t even hesitate. You ran into his arms crying, his hands tugging through your hair and rubbing circles into your back until you calmed down. “Shh...come on love, lets go home.” Harry helped you to his car, his hand never leaving yours. He helped you inside and tugged you to his lap where you were finally able to settle down and pressed a kiss to your cheek. “Oh (y/n)....my sweet sweet (y/n)...why would you ever let a man treat you that way and still go back to him.” 

You weren’t drunk, but you had alcohol in your system and you were also exhausted. You yawned, turning into his chest so that he was holding you close. “Because I can’t have the guy I really love” you mumbled sleepily.

“What?” Harry’s hands in your hair froze. His eyes staring down at you.

You closed your eyes, listening to the sound of his heart beat. You were drifting off to sleep but managed to get out one more sentence beforehand, “because I can’t have you.” 

---

Possibly a new series? What do you think?

xoxo

[thedistantstorm]

An End to Opulence

The Shadow of the Earth | Emperor Calus | The Vanguard | The Last City | Character Death

And thus the Shadow of the Earth was slain by Suraya Hawthorne.

-/

There were ashes in his mouth.

There was no way around it, with much of the City on fire. No matter. He had never been much of a solar Guardian, but any kind of energy churned up enough would burn. He could still hear their screams, even now.

He loved it.

It was as delicious as he'd been told it would be, shrill and unfiltered. A treat for his refined palate.

Eventually, all things had to come to a close. He checked his gun. His cloak, violet and gold, billowed behind him with a tarnished shimmer. Looked up, at the great plumes of smoke that rose from the remains of the Tower.

The end-times were upon them.

Besides, he was no Guardian. Not any longer. Regardless of the soft, tragic insisting of his Ghost, who hovered at his shoulder. He would be one of the last, but he too would be purged.

The line between Light and Dark is so very thin...

No. Uldren was dead. Again. And again. Over and over and over. He had died over and over, until his Light had been gone for good. Enough, he told himself. It was time to grow fat from strength, to bathe this planet in the splendor only he could provide.

The Shadow of the Earth had a job to do.

The Emperor had shared his plans. Told his Shadow of the future they would create, before the end. In turn, the Shadow of the Earth shared them with his Ghost, who did not believe in in the Emperor's designs. The Shadow did not share them any more.

It isn't right, he'd said. I don't want to lose you, he'd pleaded.

But they will all lose, eventually. Not even the glorious Emperor in all his splendor can stop Death from coming. This is about feasting upon what remains, living in rapture, engorging upon pleasure right until those final moments.

Ghost does not speak anymore. Not even in those electrical whimpers. Not unless he knew of what the Shadow was about to do.

Here and now, there was no way he couldn't.

The Earth... and its Vanguard... and its people had been given a choice. They would not release themselves of their worldly attachments. That is why a shadow was cast, why he must cull them. 

Very few understand. Those who do fight eagerly, growing fat from the enrichment provided. Those who do not are met with violent mercy. Above all, Emperor Calus inspires his Shadows to be benevolent.

There are no second chances in the end-times. Those who choose to repent, to abandon their tethers to the mundane only under the threat of death will never know the euphoria, the rapture of this enlightenment. That is why they don't deserve it. There is no room here for the unworthy.

The pleading of the Ghost annoyed him immensely. No longer can they communicate through thought, for the Shadow will not have the Traveler's spawn undermine him.

"Be silent," He barked. The Shadow's gaze must be strong, for the Ghost had flinched back, expecting to be swatted. His shell, once bright and polished, is chipped. The once Chosen tsksed. "It wouldn't have hurt if I had struck you."

In reply, the Ghost trembled, shrinking back further. It does not say as much, but this had hurt. It hurts actively. Darkness: his partner emitted it like a muffling blanket, a defense the small bot had no chance of defeating. It penetrated their bond like a pinprick - harmless, at first. But now it feels like the Traveler's Light being ripped from his core to linger. He does it, he will continue to do it. He knows, somewhere in his miniscule circuits that the goodness that once was his partner - that made him the brightest Light in all the universe is still deep down in there somewhere.

It had to be.

He still called upon the void, was able to summon his spear of lightning. Even if he chose to do so rarely now. It had to count for something.

Right?

They ascended the South Elevator, and when it inevitably froze half way up, the Shadow's eyes glowed blue, sending them on their way with an arc pulse. Reassuring, though the Ghost could not voice it aloud from where he hovered quietly in his Guardian's blind spot.

They were all but waiting on the lookout together, the platform above Shaxx's Crucible station, looking out at the world below. Ruined, all of it. By his hand. A testament to the Emperor's lavish designs.

Ikora noticed him first, the void already summoned to her hand with hardly a second glance. She does not speak, but the words blaze in her eyes. How could you, they say. Traitor. Monster!

Shadow. 

Zavala did not move, remained still, his hands fisted atop the railing. Perhaps the gasp of from Ikora's parted lips reached his ears. Perhaps ages of battle left him wise enough to know his fate.

"If it will stop all this, I will die gladly."

A Thorn, black as night, as dark as the death of worlds was pointed at his back.

"You'll be the first," the Shadow said, almost delighted. "You won't be the last."

The scribes had written of acts to come. In many there were errors, discrepancies, waiting to be rewritten. They foretold of Zavala accepting his fate, and yet they assumed Ikora would turn sand to diamonds and alter worlds.

And yet it is Ikora who whimpered when the gun is pointed at her vest, stopping a charging Zavala - willing to die but not accepting of death - from his assault.

Delicious. Calus would find the story decadent, interesting. The plot twists had always been his favorite, after all.

"Ah, ah. Don't make me deviate," He threatened, almost playful. His gaze swung to Ikora, to her eyes of swirling gold with pupils constricted in panic. "She's terrified of dying. Death is coming for us all, you know. You had a choice," He shrugs, almost grandly. "You chose not to rise to the occasion and look where it led."

"This is madness!" Zavala snarled, through gritted teeth. "Genocide! These are the people you swore to protect, and you're having them slaughtered in droves.

The Thorn pointed at Ikora tilted to the side as its wielder considered, but does not waver in its aim. "But I am protecting them. I'm saving them from their earthly afflictions. If they won't embody the rapture, embrace their enlightenment, they will only know fear and hate. I'm erasing that from them. It is the least I can do."

"You're insane."

The words barely sound like the strongest Warlock, but it had been Ikora speaking all the same. He doesn't think about it, whipped out a second cannon and let its shot bite into her shoulder. She grunted, staggered, but did not fall.

Instead, her eyes darkened monumentally, and though her blood dripped slowly on deckplates she did not make any attempt to stifle the bleeding. She looked hateful. Powerless.

As they all would be, in the end. 

The Commander, on the other hand… he would still have to die first. Ikora would die wallowing in her futility, more so watching events unfold, but Zavala was unyielding. He would never let go of his ideals, not even in those last seconds when Death's maw closed around his throat.

Thorn's sight returned to Zavala, aimed at his chest. No amount of armor would shield him from the Shadow's deadly intent.

"Would you like to say your goodbyes? I had given you a day, but clearly you didn't take me seriously." The Shadow laughed, a menacing thing. "I am, after all, benevolent."

Zavala would not speak a word. His eyes were reduced to narrowed slits of hard, angry blue.

"You don't have to do this," A tiny voice intervened. Trembled, his entire body shook with fear of retaliation, but he proceeded. "You don't need to kill them."

"Be silent!" The Shadow boomed. "You do not understand."

"I understand this is wrong." He hovered into his partner's periphery. "You have to know this is wrong."

"How many times do I have to tell you?" The once-Hunter growled, "You do not listen!"

A shiver and shake of his cones leaves him almost wilted and yet his voice comes out resigned, angry. "These are your mentors and you want to kill them. It's wrong. You're wrong," He accused, directly. "It's you who doesn't listen to me, Guardian."

A black-gloved hand stashes his second canon and plucks the Ghost from mid-air. He throws the tiny robot with inhuman strength, letting him bounce and skid across the deckplates, cast aside. "Don't call me that! I'm not a Guardian!"

"No," Came a curt voice behind him. "You aren't."

"You shouldn't be here," The Shadow gritted. "It isn't your time yet."

"I think that's for me to decide." Hawthorne leaned heavy on her left hip, falcon perched on her right shoulder. Her eyes looked like polished stone. "Put your gun down."

"It's his time," The Shadow informed her. "Then hers," He nodded to Ikora. "You'll be… later."

"Enough. Stop with the crazy talk. The Cabal Emperor is insane. You used to tell me that!"

"I was wrong. He is… more."

"He is wrong, and right now, so are you."

"Stop arguing." He trained the sights of his secondary on her, a threat. Louis chirped shrilly in reply, his wings beating as he hovered ever higher, ready to defend her.

When the Shadow's back turned once more, Thorn straightening, this supposedly fated moment upon them, the falcon swooped down like a compact missile.

The shot sounded in a different direction.

A flash of green - the muzzle flash - erupted like a verdant sun. A sharp sound, shrieking. Pained. Another flash - white - followed.

In a single moment, time stopped and restarted. Hawthorne staggered backwards, clutching her chest, taking a knee. Several feet away, the discarded Ghost blinked to awareness, unbelieving of what it was seeing.

There was nothing left. No feathers, not a drop of blood. Thorn was all-consuming. 

"He would have taken that bullet no matter what," The Shadow scoffed, when one of the Vanguard parted their lips, meaning to comment in the following silence. "Better to extinguish him up front than allow him to interfere with my justice."

"This isn't justice," Hawthorne said, shaky, almost. She shifted, moving closer.

"Whatever you're thinking, don't. I'll kill you too." He returned his focus to Zavala, who looked even more furious than before. 

"You just-" The Ghost clicked, hovering warily from its place on the ground in a state of shock. It had seen the flashes, felt it in its innermost places. "I don't believe it," He wailed softly. "It's gone. All of it - it's-"

Are you alright?

He stilled. It sounded quiet almost like it came from… but it was all wrong. That isn't how- "You just..." He looked at her. She appeared more wary than surprised. As if... I-I'm sorry.

Me too.

Hawthorne returned to her feet, gun in hand. "This is your last warning," She said, tone like ice. "I don't want to do this, but I will if I have to."

"Cute, Hawthorne, but-"

"I'm not kidding." Her eyes narrow.

Ghost feels it. He feels it like the sun after a rain, like a campfire in the wilderness. It feels like coming home. And yet it hurt, worse than anything he'd ever known, to realize the truth. "Guardian," He warbled.

"I told you-"

"I know," Hawthorne said, hushed. She blinked and tears fell from her eyes. "I know."

She drew a weapon that glinted white. The Shadow turned then, shaking his head. The antithesis of Thorn was trained on him. "That will never stack up."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Your Ghost." Her eyes glowed, like dull embers. It was the only warning he got.

"Wh-"

Another flash. Orange and yellow, like the sunset, the twilight sky.

She lowered the gun, body ignited in flame.

It hurt her too, Ghost realized without actually knowing anything. He hovered to her tentatively. Their gazes met.

The Shadow gasped, the single shot enough to kill, but not instantly.

"I wish he could have kept you."

The tears steamed and evaporated as they leaked from her eyes, burning her cheeks. She took a knee beside him. His body jerked, his organs recoiling in shock, shouting down. He looked at her, words trying to find their way from his mouth.

With a sad keen, the Ghost touched his once-partner's forehead, burrowed itself against his cheek. "I'm sorry I failed you." The Shadow tried to bring his hands up. Whether to harm the tiny bot or to console him, they would never know. Death did not wait. In the City below, their attackers drew back. 

“Where did you get that gun?”

“He left it with me, a long while back.” Hawthorne sighed, sounding as though she had never been more exhausted. “Wasn’t particularly thrilled about having a hand cannon, but I suppose it did the trick.”

"The Psions were likely aware of his-" The Shadow's Ghost paused, "You know. I think he’d allowed them to link with him, to see his thoughts. They're withdrawing now. Without him, they don't stand a chance."

"Ghost." Ikora's eyes glimmered, both pained and relieved. Her own still did not make any move to heal her. "Is he-?"

Zavala watched as Hawthorne closed the fallen Guardian's unseeing eyes, removing the gun from his waist, ignoring the blackened husk that was Thorn. "His connection to the Light was severed," Ghost confirmed. "When he-"

Ophiuchus emerged immediately in motes of Light. "I told you," He soothed, immediately, healing her.

A gun was handed to the Warlock, grip first. She saw the familiar symbol, the worn etching. "This is-"

"Yours, now." Hawthorne holstered Lumina somewhere on her back, beneath her poncho. No one asked her where she had gotten it, more concerned with the gun in her proffered hand. “Take it.”

She did. They did not speak on what it meant. In many ways, they did not have to.

The City burned for days and days, but its people persisted. Leaders rose to the occasion. Humanity came together, as it had time and time again, to push back the Darkness. And when the remains of the Shadows rallied, seeing retribution for their fallen leader, a Light was cast upon them.

-/

Years Earlier:

“And thus the Shadow of the Earth was slain by Suraya Hawthorne.” The scribe flinched, not expecting the Emperor to be directly behind them. “Interesting, I suppose,” He blanches, “But you’ve forgotten one key element.”

“Yes, your Greatness?”

“My Shadow will not be like any you’ve seen before. They are not yet perfect, but they will be made so by my designs.” He gripped the scribe’s head with a giant palm, squeezing to prove his point. The Psion died without so much as a sound, but all the others heard his anguish telepathically. 

“And when they are, only one as perfect as I will be able to cull them.” He looked around the room at the group of them. Clapped his hands and immediately his cup was full of wine once more. Jubilantly, he bellowed, “Surely one of you must be capable of writing something a bit more imaginative!”

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

The Best Worst Day (a Guardiancorp ficlet)

The second James sees the first box of chocolates creep into the CatCo bullpen, he knows he's fucked up.

Kara sees his expression and deduces it's meaning in an instant. "Oh, no... please tell me you didn't forget your first Valentine's Day with Lena."

"What?" he sputters. "No. Of course not."

Her face serves as evidence towards her credulous disbelief. "Uh huh."

James forces a grin. "Don't you have an interview to get to?"

"Sure do! I'm on my way to L-Corp right now." Her eyebrow lifts in a smirk, and James recognizes it because he sees it so often on someone else. Kara's been spending too much time with Lena. "I'll let her know you say hi."

She departs with a jaunt in her step, and James' heart only sinks lower.

He doesn't even have flowers. He could try to throw money at a florist for a last minute delivery, or send his assistant to the nearest jewelry store, but he dismisses the idea as soon as it comes. What little his money could buy at the last minute isn't the experience he had in mind. Lena deserves better.

When he calls her, in the scant minutes he has between a pitch meeting and a status update with the art department, he gives her the only gift he has: honesty.

"Hey," he croaks, throat rough with dread.

"Hey," comes the reply, her voice warm in the way it only was with him. "Happy Valentine's Day."

James swallows. "Happy Valentine's Day," he echoes. He clears his throat. "That's actually sort of the reason I'm calling. I... I totally forgot."

"Oh." She paused, and James waits for the ground to open up and swallow him. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah! Yeah, it's just been crazy busy, and I had a whole plan in January, but with everything that's been going on-- I just totally flaked. Lena, I'm so sorry."

"No, James, it's fine." James imagines he can hear her smile, but his guilt can't quite let him believe it. "Really."

"Are you still free for lunch? I know we had something penciled in, and I still have an hour free..."

"Actually, I cant. Something's come up."

Oh. Of course.

"But, hey..."

James latches onto the caveat with both hands. "Yeah?"

"If you have time to swing by tonight, I could make it worth your while."

The purr in Lena's voice sends tendrils of desire down James' spine, only to clash with another heavy dose of guilt.

"The art department is struggling to meet the deadline. I want them to get out at a decent time, so I'll probably be here late to get them a leg up for tomorrow."

Silence answers him.

"I'll make it up to you, I swear."

"No, that's okay. I'll check in with you later." This time, Lena's voice sounds tight.

"I'm sorry." Guilt settles heavily in his gut. "I love you. I really do."

"Love you too. Talk to you later."

The day passes agonizingly slow. Lunch comes and goes, spent working alone without food at his desk. He isn't interrupted until an hour later, when Brenda comes in with a look of confusion on her face.

"What's up?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Olsen, but there's a gentleman here to see you. He doesn't have an appointment, but he says he's here on an errand for Miss Luthor...?"

James tries to get a peek through the door, but the man has his back to the office, observing the bustling bullpen that's taken no notice of him. He doesn't have anything in his hands, and doesn't look like a messenger.

"Send him in," James allows. "I'll take care of it."

He finishes up his last email as Brenda bustles out, and hits send just as his visitor comes striding in.

"James Olsen! Just the man I came to see!"

James' stomach flops in his belly as he looks up to see none other than Nathan Poirot grinning at him from the other side of his desk.

THE Nathan Poirot.

"Oh my god. Hi," James blurts, standing sharply. "Mr. Poirot, hi. Welcome. I'm a huge fan of yours."

White teeth flash against dark skin as Poirot's smile deepens. It's clearly a habit of his-- the older man's face is lined with decades laughter, and he does so now with tangible mirth.

"I'm glad to hear that," he returns. "But please, call me Nate."

James mouth goes dry. "Sure. Sure, I can do that. Nate." He swallows. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting your visit."

"Oh, yeah. Miss Luthor mentioned this was a surprise."

"So Lena did send you?" James asks. Confusion niggles at the back of his mind.

Nate nods. "Lionel Luthor owned the Monarchs back while I was still playing. We got friendly, and kept in touch over the years."

"Yeah, I've followed your career since I was a kid. The first black major league pitcher from Metropolis? You were my hero. Man, I felt that rotator cuff injury like it was my own."

Nate laughs again. "And I'm still feeling it! You know, I tried to keep going, but my career ended that day. But, I'm glad for it."

"Yeah?"

"Gave me more time with my family, and got me out early enough that I actually get to enjoy my golden years."

James nods. "And you started The Pitcher's Digest. That was huge."

"It was. But now I'm looking to retire. For good, this time. I'm looking to sell, but to someone who'll take good care of the Digest. When I heard that Lena had purchased CatCo, I floated out an inquiry." Nate grins. "She said you were the man to talk to."

Eyebrows lifting, Jamed can't help his surprise. "She did?"

"I was relieved to hear you're a fan. I can't give the Digest to just anyone."

James blinks, and suddenly the stars faded and he stares at the monumental honor looming in front of him. One he might not be able to take.

He chooses his words carefully. "CatCo doesn't have much market for sports journalism. It's not our demographic..."

"I understand that. But I think it could be. As it is, maybe it's better suited to an older generation. But with CatCo's reach and resources, I think you could change it into something that'll inspire a whole new generation of younger athletes."

"You're willing to let us do that?"

"When I say I'm retiring, I mean it! It's been a long time coming, and I'm not too proud to say I'm behind the times. That's why I wanted to speak with you. I can't give the Digest to someone who doesn't understand what it means to be underrepresented in media, especially in sports. These kids need to see themselves in the pages, to know they can do anything they put their mind to. To know that there'll be someone paying attention when it's their turn to shine."

James nods slowly, rolling the idea around in his head. "Okay. Yeah, we might be able to work with that. I can't make any promises today, but--"

"Don't need one today, son." Nate claps him on the shoulder. "Come on. How about I take you to lunch, and I can tell you all about the time I pranked Howie Louis so bad he refused to use the Monarchs locker room for two seasons."

James grabs his phone and jacket without hesitation. On his way out the door, he shoots Lena a short text.

Sneaky lady.

Her response is swift. What can I say? It's in the genes. Have fun.

He returns to the office full of good food and better conversation, and a promise to follow up regarding the fate of the Digest. He's in such a good mood he nearly leaves early, but when the art director stops in with her eyes full of frenzy, James resigns himself to the long night ahead.

He stays even after the art director finally leaves, determined to catch up on the paperwork he'd set aside in favor of putting out fires.

To his disappointment, his phone remains silent, undisturbed by calls or texts.

"Knock knock."

Lena smiles at him from doorway, a wicker basket looped over one arm. She's in a dress, but one that's soft and casual rather than her usual sharp lines. With her hair fluffed over one shoulder, she looks like a dream.

A dream James greets with an instant smile. "Hey."

"I know you're busy, but I figured you haven't eaten yet. I can leave this here--"

"Only if you stay with it."

James closes the distance between them and pulls her into a soft kiss. When they break apart, their bodies stay flush together, savoring the contact.

"I think I can spare a few minutes," Lena teases. James takes the basket from her, and starts unpacking. They spread a white tablecloth over the coffee table between the sofas, and unpack plates and wine glasses side by side.

When Lena starts cracking open the containers of food, James nearly melts at the aroma that wafts off of pasta and a duck confit browned butter sauce.

"That smells... amazing," he confesses readily. They sit, and James scrunches as close as he can to Lena. "Where's all this from?"

"Casa de Luthor."

"You made this?"

"I do know how to cook, you know," she informs him. "I just don't have the time for it."

At that, James' good mood dims. "But you did tonight."

He takes her hand in his, food forgotten.

"I really wanted to help make tonight special for us. Valentines Day usually feels liks a burden, but this year, it felt like it was going to mean a lot, you know? I had a whole thing I wanted to do, but... I'm sorry. You're amazing, Lena. You deserve better from me."

Lena gazes at him, eyes sparkling in the warm light of the office. "First of all: most of this was prepped over the weekend, so there was minimal effort this evening. Secondly... I'm kind of glad."

"What, that I forgot about Valentine's Day and have to work all night?"

"Maybe not the forgetting, but I certainly understand it. I meant..." She trails off, gathering her thoughts. When she finds the words she's looking for, she shifts closer to him. "When I was thinking of things we could do tonight, I kept thinking of what you've done for me that means the most... which is this."

James smiles, puzzling. "I don't follow."

"The nights you've come to L-Corp, bringing dinner and offering your company."

"But that's nothing!"

"Not to me."

Lena's voice deepens with honesty. James stills, sobered by the sound of it.

"To me, they're everything." She shrugs, a smile playing her lips. "So it's fitting that I get the chance to pay it forward."

James nods. "Okay, then."

A brilliant smile dazzles him, and just like that the soberness lifts. "However, if you let this food get cold, I'm sorry but I will have to break up with you."

With a laugh, James reaches for the wine bottle and corkscrew. "Well, we can't have that."

He pours her glass first, then his own, pretending all the while he doesn't feel her gaze on him.

"Hey," she says softly.

When he turns, cool hands cup his cheeks and warm lips gently kiss him again. For a moment, the world falls away, and it's just the two of them. Together.

"I love you," she murmurs when she does, her thumb stroking his jaw. "And I am so happy I have you."

James smiles, and kisses her again. "I love you too," he promises. "A little more every day."

He reaches for the pasta, and shoots her smile. "You'll never guess who I got to meet today."

[everemmanuelle]

BRAD - Chapter Four

HAVEN

The next day, his break up was all over the news. There was some mention of a girl in a bar but no notion of who she was, no pictures. I quickly circumnavigated the separation news to cyberstalk the other areas of Brad's life. He had a movie coming up, a Quentin Tarantino film with Leo as his costar. That was a little awkward, I thought.

There were the things I knew, or sort of knew. That his real name is William Bradley Pitt. He was born in St Louis. One brother. One sister. Six kids. That he likes to ride bikes, that he's philanthropic, political, a humanitarian.

I started watching his interviews. Older and newer. I couldn't help but be struck by how gentle he was, in interviews and in person. A calm, kind person. And, so goddamn good looking. He's pretty, objectively, with soulful eyes, and those lips that kissed so well. He's had a million different hair cuts and facial hair styles. I liked the current short crop, just a dusting of facial hair.

God, I regretting not trying harder to get him to take me home. I knew he wanted to. I could feel it. I wasn't sure what he was afraid of. Yes, I was. But age is nothing, I wanted to scream. I remembered how he tasted, how he smelled. I remembered what his hands felt like on me. I tried to mimic his touch but it was futile.

Then another piece of news that I couldn't ignore. The house where he'd gone after the breakup with Angelina was known. I had the address in front of my eyes. Maybe it was insane. Maybe the desire for him, so intense, had taken over my mental faculties cause all too suddenly I was showering, changing, ordering myself an Uber (in case of alcohol) and driving to that very spot.

Confidence, I told myself. Stand a little straighter. Slow your breathing. My hands were shaking as I reached over to press the bell beside the gate. Would he even answer himself? Would it be some butler to tell me get lost? It was too late. The Uber was gone. I was there. I had to just press it. Confidence.

I pressed the button. It buzzed. I waited a few moments. No answer. Should I leave? No, Haven, try again. I pressed again. Quickly I heard a "hello".

"Hi..." I wasn't sure who it was. The voice was muffled. It could've been Brad but it also could have been anyone. "This is Haven..."

"Haven?" the voice asked. The way he said my name, I knew it was him.

"I'm sorry. I know this is embarrassing. I'll leave if you want me to," I said. "But if you want me half as much as I want you, then let me in."

There was a pause. Just a few seconds. Then another another buzz. The gate opened just a little. He didn't say anything more. I opened it further, let myself in and closed it again.

There was the smallest of driveways, a bit of a hill which I climbed carefully in my heels. The house itself was modest. Maybe just three bedrooms. Very Laurel Canyon. I reached the door and it swung open. Wow. He was beautiful. And, I was a stalker. All that confidence just evaporated.

BRAD

"Let me in," she said. Where'd she get that power from? I let her in. I had no intention of giving her what she wanted, giving myself what I wanted. What I'd been wanting all day. All the night before too, to be honest. I let out a nervous breath as I rushed to the front door. I opened it before she could knock.

She stood there in front of me in fishnet covered legs, black pointed heels, a tan trench coat and god knows what underneath it. She was every bit as beautiful as I remembered. But she'd scrubbed all that makeup off. Her hair was down. She had that undone natural cool, natural beauty like Carolyn Besette, mixed with this old Hollywood beauty and sex appeal like Marilyn, Liz Taylor, Jean Harlow... It was a breathtaking combination.

"Hi," I said, leaning against the doorway, trying to be just as cool.

"Hi," she said back, her voice had lost all of that confidence I'd heard over the gate speaker. She smiled, nervous.

"Come in," I said, opening the door wider.

"Thank you." She took her chainlink handbag off her shoulder and sat it on the entryway table.

"Can I take your coat?" I asked, reaching for it.

She gripped it tightly. "No, I'm okay."

We walked a little further into the house. She looked around, appraising the place. I wished I'd let that decorator have at it. The place was still sparse. I didn't bring a lot of things with me. It was kind of cold.

We made it to the kitchen. She looked out past the lowered living room into the backyard. "Would you like a drink?" I asked, reaching for a few glasses.

"Sure," she said. "Whatever you're having."

I poured us two whiskeys, threw in a couple pieces of ice and joined her in the middle of the room.

"Thanks," she said, before taking a warm sip. I followed her lead. She twitched her lips a little, not from the whiskey but the awkwardness. I had to take the lead here. She'd already come to me.

"Want a tour?" I asked. The place wasn't huge but there was more to see than this.

"Okay," she said, nodding. She sculled the rest of her drink and set the glass down on the kitchen bench. I kept mine with me, sipping, glad to have something in my hands.

I showed her the kids bedrooms, already made up with bunks and toys. I showed her the upstairs living room. She was surprised by how big the house was. Looking at it from outside, it seemed modest. I showed her the bathroom. And, then we were at my room. We didn't linger at the door like the other spaces, Haven walked right in.

I was happier with this room more than any of the others. It was more homely, lived in. It contained my books, my scripts, some of my art, my record player and all of my records.

"Who are you listening to?" she asked, looking at my collection.

"A little of everything. Frank Ocean, Radiohead..."

"You have an Alexa," she said, pointing out the device on my bedside. "What if Amazon is recording your conversations?"

I laughed. Was she a conspiracy theorist? She smiled, it was a joke. "I know Jeff Bezos," I answered. "He wouldn't dare."

She nodded with a smile but her expression turned serious again. She gripped her trench coat, tightening the tie around her waist as she moved toward the window looking out over the city.

This wasn't it, I thought. "We don't have to do anything," I said. "We could go out to eat if you want."

"No," she said quickly, turning her eyes to me. "I want this. I just lost all confidence the second I saw you again."

I scoffed a little. "You lost confidence? I'm the old man here."

"You're the sexiest man alive," she said.

"Two time sexiest man alive," I correct her.

She laughed again. "Exactly."

"That was a decade ago," I reminded her.

"Fucking men," she seethed. "You just get better with age."

"I feel like a pervert. You're so young."

"Inexperienced," she said, her cheeks colouring. She bit her lip. They were so pink. So full.

"I really want to kiss you," I said, watching as her teeth let go of her lip.

"I want that, too," she said.

I took the three steps between us, gripped her cheek and kissed her deeply. Just as I remembered.

Angelina's lips were too big. She didn't really know how to use them. Haven knows how to kiss. God, I wanna touch her.

HAVEN

I grabbed his waist, running my hands up his hardened abs, between his arms. I put my hands on his neck, pulling him closer. He moved his hands to my back, running down and over my ass to my thighs. He ran his fingers up the pattern of my fishnet stockings, pushing up my trench coat as they made their way past the stocking to the strip of suspender and then my bare ass. His hands fell away too quickly. His lips left me too. He was looking at me with something like concern.

"Are you wearing anything underneath that?" he asked, peering into the cleavage just visible in the shadow beneath my trench coat.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm wearing something."

"What?" he asked, sort of desperately. "What are you wearing?

The way he was talking... the way he was looking at me... I was overheating, ready to take it off, my confidence returning in spades. I put my hands on his chest and pushed him backwards until he was sitting on the ottoman at the end of his bed. I took a few steps back and grabbed the tie at my waist. Brad leaned back, an elbow on the bed, a finger brought to his mouth. His chest rose and fell with his breaths.

I undid the tie and then one button at a time until the coat was open. I dropped it to the floor. I stood in front of him, heels, fishnets, suspenders, g-string, demi cup bra and nothing else.

His eyes travelled over me, his breathing quickened. He leaned forward but I could still see him hardening.

"What do you think?" I asked, lifting my long hair and dropping it back down. Brad leaned back and rubbed at his crotch like he couldn't not.

"Come here," he demanded.

I did as I was told.

He reached up and touched my thighs, gently, like I was some kind of goddess. He ran his fingers up my stomach, cupping my breasts before turning me around. He was appraising me. He whispered an expletive as he touched my ass and then turned me around again. I was breathing just as heavily as he was then. I was getting wet where a dull ache was starting to build, I could feel it between my thighs. I wanted him to touch me there. I wanted him to be just as naked as I was.

I reached out and grabbed the first button of his shirt, undoing it. I got down onto my knees as I undid the rest of them and pushed the shirt off him. Yep, a six pack. My god. And, tattoos, all over him tattoos. I didn't know that before. They were gorgeous. Nothing gaudy or crazy. Lots of script and line work. A tornado on his waist. I ran my fingers over it, lightly. Then I grabbed his belt.

He grabbed my hands. "Wait."

"What?" I asked, rubbing my hand over where he was straining against his slacks.

He groaned. I went back to his belt. Brad's hands dropped, the fight easily left him. "Fuck it," he said, leaning back, letting me undo his belt and his pants. I took out his long hard cock, another beautiful part of him, and gripping him tightly.

I reached between my legs and gathered the wetness there bringing it back using it as a lubricant as I rubbed and squeezed and played. "Fuck..." Brad groaned. "Haven..."

I wanted to put my mouth on him but he grabbed my arms and lifted us both up, dropping his pants and then his briefs as he kissed me. His hands went straight back to my ass, squeezing tightly before his fingers found my lace covered cunt. He rubbed, feeling the dampness there before shifting the material there and exploring the bare soaked skin. He kissed and sucked at my neck. I grabbed onto him, holding tightly as his ministrations started to take their effect. My legs were losing strength as he put a finger inside me curling it, rubbing his thumb against my clit at the same time.

He turned us both, my back to the bed then, and pushed me down. I fell easily and pulled my way up the bed. I tried to kick off my heels but Brad reached out. "Leave them," he said.

I spread my legs as he climbed onto the bed, coming between my thighs, the hard length of him straining toward me. I reached down for it, as his hands went to my breasts, pulling them out of their demi cups, fondling, kissing, sucking. "You're so beautiful," he said.

I bucked my hips a little, rubbing myself along the length of him. "So are you," I answered, in a barely there voice. I wanted his fingers inside, his tongue, too. But mostly I wanted his cock. And, I didn't want to wait for it. We could go back to foreplay after I knew what it felt like to have him inside me.

"Fuck me, Brad," I said, rubbing the head of his cock against my opening.

He groaned a little, more warring inside his head. No, I thought, no more warring. I grabbed his jaw and brought his blue eyes back to mine. I looked at him insistent. "Fuck me now," I demanded.

He nodded, finally, and shifted over me, reaching for the drawer of his bedside table. I undid my bra beneath him and tossed it aside. Brad looked over my bare breasts as he slid the condom on. He pumped himself a few times before bringing himself back down to me. I pushed at my lace panties, trying to get them off but the suspenders kept them in. Brad shifted them aside again but it wasn't enough. "Rip them," I plead. "Rip them off."

"Really?" he asked.

I nodded, desperately.

He grabbed them with both hands, ripping them quickly and pulling them away. The air hit my pulsing cunt and I grabbed at his cock, ready for it. We lined up and then looked into each others eyes. His blue eyes were so clear, so unyielding. His right eye had the littlest bit of brown surrounding the pupil. I reached down, grabbing at his firm ass, pulling him just enough to get him to make the move and push into me.

I cried out a little, no fear of being loud. The house was empty. It was just us. He groaned before letting out a "Holy fuck."

I moved my hands back to his neck, bringing his skin back to me, I wanted to taste him. I licked and sucked at the skin of his neck before he started moving again. I felt myself stretch around him as his arms made a cage around me. His forearms strained, the veins appearing over his muscles. Fuck... had sex ever felt this good? Was it cause it was Brad Pitt? Was it because it was a man with 3 decades almost 4 of experience? Was it because he seemed to fit me better than anyone ever had? It felt next level good, like every fuck before it wasn't the real thing.

I already felt that good tightness, that torturous coiling, I wanted to come. But I didn't want it to ever be over.

BRAD

I brought her legs up, making more room for myself. She felt so tight. So warm. So fucking good. The push and pull as she milked my cock, as I stretched her out, as we moved together, touched, kissed, sucked, over and over, desirous and delirious... Nothing had ever felt so good. Was it because she was young? Because she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen or fucked?

It was going too quick. I was going to come. Too quick. Then, she had to come first. I reached down and pressed on her clit. She cried out a little breathy. I gave her two fingers, playing her like an instrument. She threw her arms back, reaching for my bed head, her breasts bounced beneath me. I bent over and sucked at her nipples, flicking them with my tongue, biting at one of them. I wanted to mark her. I wanted her to be mine, now and forever.

Her body jerked and shuddered beneath me as she came. She let out groans and moans, expletives, my name, over and over, no restraint, no shame. I came next, with my own shudder, my own loud moan, into her ear, shooting my load into the condom as she gyrated slowly, basking in her orgasm.

I let myself fall onto her. Both of us were covered in a sheen of sweat, our bodies hot and fatigued. She whispered something I couldn't hear but I felt her hot breath in my ear. I'd given in. And, it was fucking incredible. What the fuck do I do now?

Continued on Wattpad

[tllthesundies]

27?

Louis’s squealing in the bathtub, a hand over his mouth and hunched over, and a bottle of this hotel’s best wine in his other hand. He doesn’t know what’s funny; Harry’s sitting on the rug outside of the tub, but he’s leaning forward, too, with a hand gripping the ledge, and he’s belly laughing. He thinks it started when Harry kept stumbling over his words, failing to string together a coherent sentence.

They’re very pissed.

“Did I ever tell you,” Harry says, Louis giggling softly against the back of his hand, “about the time that Mitch thought it would be funny to replace all my briefs with lace thongs?”

Louis eyes him.

He’s still giggling, but, slowly, it fades, and he becomes quiet.

“No,” he says. “When was this?”

Harry hums, scrunching up one side of his face.

“Like … ,” he trails off. He wanders off in thought for so long, Louis fears he might have to bring him back down to Earth. “Earlier today.”

Louis rolls his eyes, scoffing.

“No wonder I haven’t heard it,” he mumbles. “So? What about it?”

Harry shrugs.

“Nothing, I guess,” he replies with a sluggish shrug, leaning forward to grab the bottle of wine from Louis’s hand. He throws his head back, baring the expanse of his throat. Louis’s eyes fixate on it; on the alcohol that visibly makes it way down taut muscles and tendons against his pale complexion. Louis blinks a few times, averting his drunken gaze with a thick swallow. “I just think it’s weird. You know? On me. I think it looks beautiful on other men, but it’s not for me, personally. Now, I have to go commando.”

Louis takes a second to blink again, then tilts his head, looking at Harry.

“Mate, you forego pants all the time,” he says.

“I know, but he completely took away the absolute freedom of my choice to do so,” Harry explains.

Louis makes a face.

“You’re such an Aquarius,” he says.

Harry laughs.

It echoes in his head happily, dancing alongside I think it looks beautiful on other men.

Louis blinks, again, and tries to swallow the lump in his throat. “Do you—” He has to keep pushing the words up his tongue to get them out. “Do you, um, think they’d look weird on me?”

Face blank, Harry blinks.

Louis tries again.

“Like. I’ve never worn any before, but—I’ve thought about it.”

They’re best friends; they’re honest like this.

Harry licks his wet, reddened bottom lip, gazing at Louis more directly, something warmer creeping into his irises and digging into the centre of Louis. “You should,” he says, then tips his head back to swallow more wine, but never disconnecting their gazes.

Louis’s brows rise, fingers slightly trembling.

“I should?” he echoes.

Looking away, removing the bottle from his lips, Harry shrugs. “If you want. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, if that’s the issue.”

Louis opens and closes his mouth several times, before looking away.

“Yeah,” he lies. “That’s it.”

Harry gets onto his knees, then, and clumsily climbs into the bathtub. Louis tries to make room, but Harry keeps him caged in, wedging himself between Louis’s legs and cupping Louis’s face in his hands. He leans down to press gentle kisses all over Louis’s face, and Louis just bashfully scrunches his nose, trying not to squirm or disrupt him.

Lastly, he kisses the tip of Louis’s nose, then pulls away, still cupping his face.

“Come on,” he urges softly, “come dance with me. I wanna show you my new moves.”

Louis tilts his head back, meeting his eye. “Aren’t you exhausted?”

He just watched Harry sing and dance for two hours on stage. He complained to Louis not even an hour ago his feet hurt and then promptly took off his shoes, now barefoot.

Harry gives him a smile.

“Absolutely not,” he says, and drops both hands from Louis’s face to reach down for his hands, intertwining their fingers. “Come on.”

Louis tries to sigh, but he’s smiling.

He lets Harry pull him up.

The next time Louis thinks about lingerie is when he’s passing Victoria’s Secret.

He’s in a small mall in America that’s fairly empty on a weekday afternoon. Normally, if it were crowded, he wouldn’t even take a second glance, no matter if something caught his eye. But he takes a pause. A pink, sheer shirt of sorts hangs on a display mannequin, and he glances over at it several times before courage leaks into his feet and carries him over.

He reaches for the tag, reading the Lace-trim Babydoll words.

He doesn’t know what a babydoll is.

But he feels the material with his fingers, despite that, and his eyebrows rise at the unexpected softness. It’s not itchy, like how it looks, and it’s really … pretty.

His hand drops.

Louis starts to back away when his eyes catch a white version of the same babydoll. He thinks he almost prefers that, but it blurs as he looks back and forth, and he has to take a deep breath, looking away as he swallows. He looks around to see if anybody’s watching him, and notices a Buy 3, Get 3 Free sign.

There’s a massive variety of multicoloured knickers both neatly and messily strewn about in white drawers.

He bites his bottom lip.

I think it looks beautiful on other men.

Louis wanders over.

He feels like all eyes are on him. He feels so out of place and like he shouldn’t be here. Like he could crawl out of his own skin.

Maybe he should leave.

“Hi!” a feminine voice chirps to Louis’s right, spiking his heart rate. An uncomfortable rush of blood pools in his chest, trapping his heart, and he doesn’t know what to fucking do with his hands anymore as he meets her smiling face. “Are you finding everything okay?”

“Uh—” He feels like his panic is written on his face. “I’m good. Thank you. Just—just looking.”

He regrets those last two words.

“Okay, well, let me know if you need anything,” she says, then walks away.

Louis breathes in.

He’s going to have a quick look, then go, because he does not want to encounter that woman again, or any other one who works here.

The issue, however, is that he finds a lot of knickers that are tempting — that are made entirely of lace, or have only lace lining; are sheer, cut into unique styles, shapes, cover very little of his arse or all of it. Colours range from deep and rich to something soft and feminine, and they’re so … tempting; his fingers curl with indecision as he just stares at the variety he’s offered.

Perhaps, if he weren’t guaranteed an extra, free three, he’d be more inclined to pass it up.

But they’re screaming at him.

Louis, hesitantly, picks up a palm tree lace thong knicker he sees amongst the other lace knickers, and unfolds it. It’s black, and has this sheer, shiny foil look to it in different areas that feels like nylon.

It’s nice.

He plays with the strappy waist and the centre ring it’s attached to, to figure it out, and finds out the waist can be removed.

Interesting.

He keeps it in his hand, and picks up another black knicker. It’s similar to the one already in hand, centre ring and all, except it has two waist straps instead of one; and it has slight more coverage in the back, so, he holds onto it. He picks up a blush pink floral lace thong knicker, a rich red thong, a pretty sky blue knicker that looks comfortable to lounge in and another pair of it in pastel pink.

They’re heavy in his hands.

Louis neatly lines them on top of each other to form a pile, and folds them in half, trying to flatten them as much as possible in his grip. It’s difficult to be wholly discreet, but he thinks he manages an okay job enough where he can sort of comfortably walk back towards the babydolls he was looking at. No one’s paying him mind, either, so, his legs are easier to control.

There is just as much a variety as there is knickers.

An entire one made of silk speaks to Louis on some sort personal, enchanted level, but he’s not sure what to fucking do. Should he even buy one? How would it look on him? Should he try it on?

That’s probably what he shouldn’t do.

The more time he spends in here, the more his nerves are driving him crazy. He chooses to risk it, picking up a random unlined sheer one that’s either a deep red or pink—he’s not sure, and, quite frankly, doesn’t care—and heads to the till. The person ringing his items up doesn’t look at him in any particularly strange way, but he still doesn’t look them in the eye. He just pays and leaves as quickly as possible.

Come to the show tonight, Harry told him. Begged him. Pleaded with him.

Louis would’ve never said no. He’s never told Harry no the near decade they’ve known each other, and he doesn’t think it’s wired in his DNA to deny him. But whenever Harry requests something from him, he always acts like Louis will. Part of it makes Louis laugh, as well as has the other part of him silently longing. Sometimes he does wish he could shut his devotion off for a moment, just to put it towards someone who could return it, just to see how it feels, but it’s never a lasting thought.

Sometimes nights are easier than others, to calm his yearning.

But tonight is fucking difficult.

After the show, Harry couldn’t keep his hands to himself; and Louis still feels Harry’s imprints on every part of himself Harry touched. As soon as the curtains came down, he darted straight to the stairs and came running towards Louis, wrapping him up in his arms and lifting him off his feet.

“I am carrying uncovered water in this cup, you dickhead,” Louis exclaimed, “you’re gonna make me spill it.”

“Don’t care,” Harry sang.

Louis could only loosely wrap his arms around Harry’s neck.

He actually carried Louis until they reached the very backstage where his black velvet curtains hung all over the walls and then laid him down on one of the settees with the most fragile approach.

Louis’s core melted like ice cream.

Now, he’s sitting on the edge of his hotel room bed, leg crossed over the other, and staring at his black bag packed with his clothes. He promised Harry he would come to his room in ten minutes, but he’s stuck in his head, anchored to the bed by the ghostly weight of Harry’s hand on his thigh. Harry kept rubbing it, dipping his fingers to his inner thigh repeatedly, when they were sat on the settee and, more importantly, right in front of his fucking band.

But each time his fingers crept so close, intimately, the vision of himself wearing one of the knickers he’d bought was so loud and colourful in his head. He wanted Harry to touch him like that without knowing what was underneath.

Louis uncrosses his leg and rubs the nail of his index finger as he stares at his bag.

He’s washed all the lingerie he bought a couple weeks ago, but he hasn’t worn any of it. He packs the same babydoll and blush thong and two others every time he has to travel somewhere, in case one of the nights he’s away he gets the courage to wear it.

He never does.

But tonight is the first time Louis’s wanted to.

He lifts himself just an inch or so off the bed, hesitating briefly, before walking to kneel in front of his bag and lift it open. The lingerie pieces are buried at the very bottom, and he pulls them out. Louis stares at the babydoll, and the only encouragement he gets to stand and move into the bathroom is the memory of Harry removing his hand from his thigh to curl around his waist, pulling Louis right into his lap and wrapping his arms around his stomach to keep him from going anywhere.

Louis removes all his clothes in front of the wide mirror placed above the double sinks, and observes his bare body cautiously in bright, white lights. He gently sweeps his fingers across his flat stomach, some permanent markings painted under his ribcage; he thinks he’s got an all right body, but he really hopes what he sees now translates well underneath the babydoll.

He puts the thong on first.

It’s—comfortable.

Louis turns to the side, eyeing the floral lace that’s wrapped smoothly around his hips and curve of his bum. The blush colour complements his skin so well, but it digs weirdly in between his cheeks.

He tries to fix it.

He spends a long time just gazing at himself; at the thong knicker and adjusting to the intrusiveness. Then, eventually, he convinces himself to stop stalling. His hands are trembling as he slips the babydoll on, and he inhales sharply when he forces himself to look properly in the mirror.

It’s so fucking sheer, Jesus. But it doesn’t look bad.

The top half where boobs would fill it out and underneath covering the ribcage is lined with lace and thin stripes.

Louis sees his body so clearly, and it’s doesn’t look as weird on him as he feared. And the colouring is nice, at least; it’s a light shade of a varying burgundy, and it contrasts with the nude of his thong, but it’s not a horrible mismatch.

It’s maybe, kind of cute.

Britney Spears starts singing at the other side of the room, and his heartbeat picks up at Harry’s signature ringtone.

He walks over, and picks it up.

“Hi,” Louis greets.

“You said you’d meet me in ten,” Harry says, “and it’s been twenty. You’re a filthy liar.”

“Um—” He brings a hand up to his mouth, pressing the nail of his thumb and index finger between his lips, against his teeth. “Could you, like … Can you come here, instead? To my room.”

Harry’s response is delayed. “Sure,” he answers. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Louis lies.

“No, you aren’t,” Harry counters, but it’s so calmly matter of fact; so direct. “See you in two.”

The line ends.

The panic sets in Louis’s throat. They’re on the same floor, separated by a few rooms, so, he has one minute to choose between hiding in the bathroom or under the covers. He’s already thinking this risk he’s taking with their friendship is a regret, and he has to inwardly avoid hating himself and feeling shame as he cracks the door to his room open for Harry to come in, then crawls under the sheets.

He has his back facing the door when he hears Harry’s footsteps in the hall reach his door, his knuckles tapping against the creaking door, and Harry softly calling, “Louis?”

“Hi,” Louis responds, quiet.

The door closes, and Harry comes around, crawling onto the bed until he’s lying next to Louis.

He looks warm in his white tank top and trackies; curls twice as defined from his shower and stray strands hanging in front of his face. Louis has the duvet covering up to almost his entire shoulder, but if Harry were to look close enough, he’d see the thin, red straps of his babydoll, and notice something different.

Louis wants him to notice.

“Hey, baby,” Harry says, voice just as soft as the look on his face.

Louis smiles.

It’s small, but he knows it fills his face. “Howdy, stranger.”

Harry’s smile widens, and he chuckles softly. He brings a hand to Louis’s forearm not tucked underneath the duvet, and gently rubs it with his palm. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

At the weird face Harry makes, he has to play it off with a light laugh.

“What?”

“You’re acting strange,” Harry comments.

“Huh,” Louis says, “so unlike me.”

Harry laughs at his dry tone, and trails his hand farther up Louis’s arm to his shoulder, and Louis’s heart starts to beat harder than it previously was. He can’t say anything nor move when Harry lifts himself up to draw the covers down to get underneath. He just keeps a sturdy grip on his end to keep himself covered, and holds his breath in his tight throat when Harry shuffles closer and wraps his arms around Louis to hold him against his chest.

Louis looks up.

Harry’s eyebrows and mouth twitch, confused, and he tilts his chin down at Louis.

“What are you wearing?” Harry asks. “It’s nice.”

He slides his hand down Louis’s back again, and Louis feels frozen in his hold; his heart is racing, warmth oozing from various directions in his core, locking him in with paralysed nerves. He has to take an unsteady breath before opening his mouth, looking away entirely to avoid Harry’s gaze.

“Um,” Louis hums, hearing how shaky his voice is, “just—don’t make fun, okay?”

“I would never,” Harry says.

His tone is absolute, if a little confused.

Louis knows that, but he still needs to make that clear for his own sake.

Harry lets go as Louis moves back a few inches, and he pulls the trigger by carefully pulling his side of the duvet down and off his body, revealing his entire figure.

He watches Harry carefully: watches his mouth part at the new sight of Louis lying on his side in a sheer babydoll with a lace thong underneath, eyes widening and nostrils flaring. There’s something that grows in his eyes and entire face that Louis can’t decipher — maybe fascination? Awe? Admiration? He feels like he’s reaching, but there’s no repulsion, so, it can’t be too bad, whatever Harry’s feeling.

Louis gently falls back to lie flat, to ease the insecurity creeping into him.

“Louis,” Harry says immediately.

Louis turns his head.

Whenever Harry addresses him by his first name, it’s usually serious. There’s a darker look in his eyes, a slightly deeper change in his tone.

Louis swallows.

“What?”

Harry appears to struggle, lips parting then closing again and again.

“Wow,” he settles on.

Louis blinks.

“‘Wow?’” Louis echoes plainly.

Harry’s already shaking his head, briefly squeezing his eyes shut.

“No,” he backtracks, and meets Louis’s eyes, “I mean—wow. You look beautiful. Why are you … wearing all this?”

Louis’s cheeks burn.

He turns away from Harry, baring his backside to him, and doesn’t say a thing. But it doesn’t stop Harry from moving close to him, from throwing a leg over and pressing a hand into the mattress right in front of Louis’s face to loom above him on all fours.

“Do you mind?” Louis retorts, purposely still gazing ahead.

“Absolutely not.”

Louis rolls his eyes.

“Tell me,” Harry urges softly. “Or don’t, if it makes you uncomfortable. But I’d like to know.”

His fingers touch Louis’s warm cheek then, a tender caress with his knuckles, and Louis’s body eases, melting into the mattress. Harry always has his insides feeling so soft he may as well be floating on a cloud.

Louis covers the hand in front of his, gripping the edge of Harry’s palm.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Only if you wish to tell me,” Harry says.

Louis sighs.

“Yes, or no, wanker,” he says.

“Love when you talk dirty to me,” Harry replies. “Yes, please.”

Louis inhales deeply, letting it sink its claws into his very core, then quietly clears his throat.

“I’m wearing this for you,” he mumbles under his breath.

Harry’s caresses pause, tips of his soft fingers pressing against Louis’s cheekbones, and Louis’s heart breaks out into a sweat at the following silence. The backs of his knees and his palms are overheating, but he doesn’t know how to get out from under Harry without exposing his vulnerability even more.

“Baby,” Harry murmurs then, and Louis’s insides are sweeter than candy, “look at me.”

Louis refuses.

But his innate instinct to do as Harry tells him overtakes him a couple seconds later, and he turns his head, looking up at him. Harry’s staring at him like he wants to devour Louis, gaze heavy, reflecting in every crevice of his features, and as much as it pokes hope into his heart with sharp sticks and fills him with a quiet reassurance that he’s not as stupid as he thought for doing this, it makes him even more shy.

“What?” Louis asks, dumbly.

“Tell me again,” Harry orders. “Louder. Why are you wearing this?”

Louis searches his gaze.

“For you,” he simply answers.

Harry trails his eyes down his face then body, and he’s still touching Louis’s face. He looks back up. “Is this because of our conversation the other week?”

Whatever colour that was dissipating in his cheeks now returns.

“Well,” Louis starts, and stutters, “no—maybe. I just—I just haven’t done this before, and—” He’s having a difficult time getting the words out; he knows what he wants to say, but it’s like all his thoughts clump together and he has no idea what he’s attempting to communicate.

He just wants Harry to touch his waist.

A softness seeps into the heat of Harry’s eyes, and he moves his fingers to properly hold the entire left side of Louis’s face. “You don’t need to be nervous, baby,” he says. “Were you afraid I wouldn’t like this?”

Louis nods.

Harry looks at him, then presses his lower body against Louis’s thigh.

Louis inhales sharply.

His cock is hard against the side of Louis’s thigh, and Louis thinks he can get a feel of it really well, which means Harry’s not wearing anything under his trackies, and that spikes a secret tender spot at the very bottom of his spine, shooting straight to his core and making the tip of his dick throb.

Jesus, when did he become so needy?

“Feel that?” Harry murmurs. “You’re beyond any wildest dream of mine; how could I not like this even a small bit? Every time I see your face, I have to hold myself back. You’re so bloody gorgeous that you make it easy to want you. Even now, it’s taking everything in me not to turn you over and take you right here.”

Louis stares at him with wide eyes and a racing heart, and he blinks.

“You’re holding it together pretty well,” is all he can think to say.

“Barely,” Harry replies.

He ducks down and kisses the corner of Louis’s mouth, and Louis uses the tiny burst of confidence to turn onto his back and press their lips together.

Harry goes with it eagerly; he cups both sides of Louis’s face, moving forward on his knees and hunching over, moving his lips against Louis’s in deep, fierce drags. Louis can barely breathe at first, trying to comprehend every move Harry’s committing and match it, and he gets the hang of it.

But it’s almost like he’s a starving dog and Louis’s his feast.

“Baby,” he whispers against Louis’s mouth, “tell me what you want me to do.”

“Touch me,” Louis whines softly.

Harry pulls back.

“Be specific,” he says, dragging his hand down to Louis’s sternum.

“I—” Louis doesn’t fucking know. He just wants Harry to take the reigns, do as he pleases, and give Louis something he can just as easily take away. “Just do whatever you want with me; I don’t care. I just want you all over me.”

Harry sucks his bottom lip into his mouth as he stares at Louis.

“Whatever I want?” he echoes.

“Whatever,” Louis affirms.

“So, like … ,” Harry trails off, fingertips traveling farther down Louis’s chest to his stomach. Louis’s skin is sensitive, so, it tickles and leaves goosebumps down his arms and legs, and he keeps his eyes trained on the way Harry’s fingers drag to the top of his thighs where the babydoll ends. He shuffles backwards, and bends down to press his lips to the skin where the edge touches, mouth featherlight. “If I were to kiss you”—Harry moves the lingerie up just an inch to kiss closer to Louis’s hip— “all over … that wouldn’t be an issue?”

Louis swallows.

“No,” he says, almost a mumble.

Harry continues to kiss around that area, then he pushes it up more and kisses a trail of gentle, lingering kisses along his hip and towards his stomach. But once he reaches Louis’s ribs, he falls back to his hip, looking at Louis through his lashes.

“I still can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t love you like this,” he comments.

At this point, Louis’s blush is never going away.

“Well,” he mumbles.

“Look at you,” Harry continues, tone marvelled. “You’re absolutely stunning. I’m serious — look down at yourself.” Louis does, gazing at the thin material laying against his body, and the lace that covers his hips and cock. “I’m not even sure what I could say to fully encompass just the way you are. I wanna make a mess of you.”

“So do it,” Louis challenges.

They stare at each other, Louis’s heart beating in his ears.

Harry straightens himself and grabs Louis’s waist to turn him over in one, fluid motion. A little, surprised squeak escapes Louis at the sudden turn of events, and at feeling Harry tug the material of his thong out of his crack, kneading the meat of his arse.

He spreads his cheeks, and Louis feels his skin stretch from the exposure.

“Oh, my God,” he hears Harry softly groan. “You’re all smooth, baby, Christ.”

Louis hums.

He drags his legs up the bed some and arches his back, lifting his bum a few inches off the bed to properly display it to Harry, and what he gets in return is a loud, sharp smack to his left cheek, making him whimper and cock twitch, a patch of wetness soaking into his knicker.

“You like being spanked?” Harry asks.

Louis hums, holding back and biting the inside of his cheek.

“Yeah,” he breathes out on a shaky voice.

He wants to reach inside his knicker and touch himself so badly, but there’s a far more powerful side to him that wants to be a good boy for Harry and come only when Harry makes him.

Soft lips press a kiss to his warm skin.

“We’ll save that for another time, then,” Harry promises. “One thing at a time.”

Louis opens his mouth to ask him what that means, but a high pitched whine is ripped unexpectedly from him when he feels a wet tongue drag up his perineum to his hole, diving right in. Louis’s fingers tightly cling to the sheets as Harry licks the outer and inner skin, sucking and biting eagerly. He feels paralysed with overwhelming sensitivity, hanging his head. He can’t do anything, except let his mouth hang open on silent moans, eyes fluttering whenever Harry’s tongue presses deeply into some of his most tender spots, and whimper and push his arse against his face every time he slows down.

“Har—ry,” Louis says, voice breaking on the first syllable and eyes welling up.

As much as he’d like for this to send him over the edge, because it could if it’s not stopped, he wants the first time Harry makes him come to be while he’s got his cock buried in his arse.

“Angel,” Harry coos in response.

Louis pushes his head against the pillow.

“Please, fuck me,” he begs.

“Tell me what else made you wear this,” Harry says, taking his mouth away from Louis’s hole and replacing it with teasing fingers, “then I might.”

Louis whimpers pathetically.

“Nothing,” he lies.

Harry circles his hole, rubs it, or glides a finger over it, but never pushes in like he knows Louis wants.

It’s driving Louis fucking mad.

“Tell me, baby,” Harry urges kindly.

He bites his bottom lip, keeping silent, and just when he contemplates opening his mouth, he feels the tip of Harry’s index finger nudge inside, and his whole body tenses. Thing is, Harry knows Louis too well; Louis isn’t so straight forward, or so daring, with such monumental things such as this, and Harry knows when he happens to be, it’s for more than one reason.

He’s just gonna keep pushing Louis’s buttons until he gives in.

But Louis’s already weak.

“No, the conversation wasn’t the sole reason,” he bites out when Harry’s finger is fully buried in his arse, unmoving.

“Hm, wasn’t it.”

“If you don’t start fingering me, I’m not gonna tell you shit,” Louis says.

That gets Harry laughing.

It’s a soft, joyous kind of sound that rings reassuringly in Louis’s chest, making the corners of his mouth twitch with a fleeting smile. But it’s forgotten as Harry languidly moves his finger in Louis. It’s not as dry as it would be because of the leftover saliva from his mouth, but there’s still a satisfying roughness to it.

“Bashful and shy, and quick to threaten,” Harry says, and Louis hears a smile in his voice. He feels Harry’s free hand against the side of his thigh, rubbing it in a gentle stroke. “You are the very love of my life.”

It’s so casually stated, but it makes Louis’s breastbone suffocate in heat.

“Shut up, knobhead,” he mumbles.

He lifts his head to look back, and Harry’s still smiling, eyes shining.

Louis’s so in love with him.

“I tell you that often, and you like it, but when I say it during sex—”

“I’m wearing this because I’ve, also, wanted you to fuck me in something like this for ages,” Louis interrupts him, “okay? Jesus.”

Harry doesn’t say anything.

He keeps fingering Louis at a slow pace, but it gradually picks up, Louis whining into the pillow. Harry teases spots where he’s most sensitive, either brushing them slightly, or passing them altogether, and, eventually, he carefully sneaks his middle finger in. It’s a rougher slide, a tough stretch, but it feels so fucking good.

“How long?” Harry asks, suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“How long have you wanted me to fuck you?” Harry clarifies.

Louis moans at the deep thrust of his fingers, arching his back, and stalls a little. “D’know,” he says. “Few years, probably.”

“You know,” Harry begins, fingering at a faster pace now, “you could’ve shown up at my door at any time and asked me to, and I would’ve happily done it, no questions asked. You didn’t need to wait for an opening, baby.”

“I—needed the push,” Louis admits.

Harry takes his fingers out, and then Louis’s being pushed onto his back.

He crawls up Louis’s body to hover over him, and Louis spreads his legs wider in desperation for something to fucking fill his hole again. It’s achingly and uncomfortably empty, and the line of Harry’s cock in his trackies is so prominent, now, it makes him whine a little. He wants Harry to tear him apart with it. He’d normally tell himself to get a grip, but it’s really difficult right now, and because he just doesn’t care anymore. He’d get on his knees and beg, if he had to.

Harry appears to sense that, by the telling way he looks at Louis and drags his eyes down his figure, then gripping his cock through his trackies.

Jesus Christ.

Louis takes the initiative to reach forward and try to pull it down, but his hands are gently smacked away.

“Behave, baby,” Harry says. Louis’s dick twitches. “Do you have any lube?”

“It’s in my bag,” Louis tells him.

Harry moves away from him and off the bed, walking over to Louis’ bag still open and a bit disorganised from earlier, and begins to search. Louis realises too late, then, that he didn’t put back the knickers that had fallen out when they accidentally came out with one he currently has on, and they’re laying on top of his boxers off to the side.

Harry’s fingers drift to them, picking up the black palm tree lace pair.

“Um,” Louis says.

Harry turns back to Louis, eyebrows raised and mouth parted, thong unfolded in his hands.

Louis sighs.

“Look,” he continues, defeated, “when a sign tells you that if you buy three pairs of something that you’ll get another three free, it’s kind of an unspoken rule that you have to buy it.”

Harry smiles, slightly shaking his head. “I think that’s just you, angel.”

“I don’t think it is,” Louis argues.

Harry hums.

He stares at the thong in his hands, and Louis’s about to pitch a fucking fit if he doesn’t get his arse moving and fuck him today, but Harry folds it and lays it where he found it to return searching for the lube. He crawls back onto the bed and over Louis after, and then tugs his clothing off.

Louis bites his lip as he stares at Harry’s cock.

It’s very thick, and even longer when it’s hard, its head a patchy, rosy colour, stiff and curved, and, shit, Louis can’t fucking think.

He just wants it in him.

“Hands and knees, or back, baby?” Harry asks.

Louis tears his eyes away.

“Knees,” he answers without thinking, turning himself over to get into that exact position, curving his spine and arching his bum while keeping his head low.

“Fucking Christ,” he hears Harry swear quietly.

Louis smirks.

“You good?” he asks innocently.

“Fine,” Harry answers.

Louis chuckles silently to himself, pressing his lips together in a smile, and listens to him opening the bottle. It’s a few moments before Louis feels anything, and when he does, it’s to Harry rubbing his cock against his hole. He bites his lip, spreading his legs even farther, and has to avoid thinking about his hard, leaking cock in his knicker. He’s going to end up caving and touching himself if he does, and he wants to last.

Harry pushes the head in.

Louis mewls, tightening his grip on the sheets beneath him.

“Good, baby?”

“Mhm,” Louis hums brokenly.

Harry continues to push the rest in, and it’s such a fucking stretch after being celibate for a long time; it fills him up in a way he had almost forgotten; it hurts him in the best way. He has to take a few deep breaths until Harry bottoms out, and then when he adjusts to the feeling, he chooses to move his hips in a slight figure eight motion.

Harry groans.

“Baby, please,” he says, placing his hands on Louis’s hips and squeezing.

“Whoops,” Louis says unapologetically, smiling.

Harry huffs out a light, amused breath, leaning forward then to press a gentle kiss to Louis’s upper back. He starts slow; they’re shallow thrusts the first few times, then once there’s something he fucks into Louis with his entire length, dragging it against his walls for him to feel every fucking bit of it.

Louis bites his pillow, moaning and whining as the white heat in his pelvic area increases.

It becomes worse, like he’s hanging onto a rapidly weakening vine against a wall, as Harry’s rhythm speeds up and he brushes against the same sensitive areas as earlier before directly hitting them and making Louis arch his back farther in a long moan, mind encompassing only the feeling of Harry’s cock bruising him and filling him hotly. He hears Harry breathing heavily and his own quiet moans and grunts falling from his mouth.

He feels himself slipping two minutes later.

Then, with absolutely no warning, Louis’s spilling in his knickers.

It’s warm and in short spurts, leaving his head and cock in a heady headspace. Harry continues to fuck him through it, even as he feels his hole clench tightly around his cock. Louis feels like he’s still coming even when he’s unable to produce anything else, wiping his teary eyes on the same pillow he was just roughly biting into.

Harry pulls out, leaving him feeling too stretched and empty.

He shifts his bum, trying to adjust to being empty after being fucked, and listens to the sounds of Harry working his hand over himself, moaning as he releases his come all over Louis’s arse.

Louis can’t be mad when he specifically dared Harry to make a mess.

“Are y’all right, Louis?” he asks then, sounding breathless and rough.

Louis sighs softly.

“Perfect,” he murmurs. He pulls a face when Harry wipes his arse with the duvet, and rolls over onto his back. “Seriously?”

Harry shrugs.

Cheeks red, eyes a richer green with a dreamy, glimmer coating, and lips a shade of that only comes from gnawing them — he looks as how Louis feels. He crawls over to lie beside Louis, wrapping an arm around Louis’s waist.

“I’m too lazy to get up,” he says.

He then kisses Louis’s cheeks, and pulls him against his chest.

Louis scoffs, warmth blossoming in his core and traveling throughout the nerves attached to his heart; they trickle in clumps to his legs, feet, toes, and up in his arms, head, back of his mind. But the generator is stationed in his chest, pumping and fueling it.

He lets the minutes pass in silence, but he breaks it when he can’t stop shifting his legs.

He digs his chin into Harry’s hard chest, looking up at him with purposely soft, big eyes. “Do you wanna go again?” he asks.

Harry’s raises a brow. “Again?” he says.

Louis’s cheeks burn.

“This time, I wanna wear the black lace ones that you saw earlier,” Louis tells him.

A beat passes.

“The one with the strappy waist?”

Louis smiles at Harry’s interested tone an the spark in his eyes. “Yes,” he answers, trailing fingers from his chest to his stomach.

“Go change into it.”

Louis kisses him, pulls away, and climbs off the climb to get to his bag.

[avocadolouie]

Any chance for a sneak peak of the final chapter?! I am going crazy waiting on it. Just too excited.

yes, yes! so here is a little 2k sneak peak for you friend! for reference, it’s harrys pov and its pretty early on into the final chapter, as not to give things away, but it’s still pretty sappy i think?? idk but I hope it’ll help you wait for the rest of it 😭😭😭 also uh…I haven’t really edited this so the amount of mistakes could be uh limitless?? lmao I hope not but, it happens haha

They’re almost completely out of breath, slightly buzzed from the ridiculously cheap wine aerating through their systems as they tumble after each other uphill, following along a dewy path well known by their feet. So familiar, it’s like a muscle memory the way their legs just know where to go, where to step next. Harry could close his eyes right now and trust that the next time he opens them, he would be standing in the center of their special meadow.

Although Harry still doesn’t have the faintest idea why Louis suddenly decided to drag them both up here, but he’s repeatedly asked him as much. Each time Louis only answers with a knowing smile or the reassuring brush of his thumb along Harry’s palm where their hands are linked together, refusing any sort of verbal answer. But Harry can’t rightly complain, not when it’s such a lovely spring night outside and he’s holding the hand of such a beautiful boy.

The moon is out tonight, glowing clear and luminescent in the open midnight sky. And as entrancing and awe-inspiring as the moon is tonight, Harry finds himself even more captivated by how the full gleam strikingly catches every bright hue in Louis’ eyes as though he’s simply made of stardust.

“Lou, are you going to tell me why we are up here now?”

“Just one sec, H…” Louis tosses over his shoulder, giving Harry’s hand another reassuring squeeze. He is completely resolute in his determination to pull Harry to a particular spot in the vast field of rolling grass, a spot that only he seems to know.

Harry follows along easily, grinning as an unexpected excitement comes over him. He would follow Louis anywhere, he’d follow him right off of the edge of a cliff if Louis asked it of him and Harry wouldn’t even think twice about it.

They get to a spot in the field that is in prime view of the moon. It’s the perfect spot really, giving off the wonderous illusion that they are somehow closer to the stars above. It hardly even looks real, majestic and breathtaking, like something right out of a dream.

Louis finally turns around to fully face Harry, unlacing their fingers as he takes in a deep breath. And then he smiles, an adorably shy but still hopeful and so very beautiful smile and Harry honestly couldn’t tear his eyes away from him if he tried.

“Ok, so I’m nervous—obviously…and um I know you’re nervous too but…I thought maybe we could come up here and start checking things off of our list. Why waste any more time, right?” Louis chews on his lower lip, fidgeting a bit with his hands. “You said that you wanted to dance to the song, Dancing in the Moonlight, but I’m going to do you one better. That’s why we’re up here, really…” His voice is thoughtful as he looks up at the open sky above them in quiet awe. “Because the moon is so gorgeous tonight and it’d be a shame to waste it and….and I don’t know…I thought that you might like to dance under the actual moonlight while dancing to Dancing in the Moonlight—wow, that’s a fucking mouthful, isn’t it?” Louis sort of offers a small laugh, but it’s masked by pure nerves. “I’m bloody rambling again, aren’t I? Shit…”

It’s the sweetest gesture, causing Harry’s lips to spread into a deeply dimpled smile while his heart begins to flutter in his chest as though suddenly sprouting wings of its own.

“Right well, enough of that then.” Louis properly clears his throat, inclining his head towards Harry with his palm outstretched in question. And there’s that smile again, the one that makes Louis’ eyes begin to crease at their corners, the one that never fails to make Harry’s stomach do complete somersaults. “Harry Styles, would you care to dance with me, love?”

And he’s staring, Harry knows he’s staring at Louis, but how could he possibly look away from him when Louis is looking at him like that, like nothing else could even begin to matter more to him. Like the gorgeous stars above, Louis is a thing of dreams, a vision of absolute wonder. The way he makes Harry feel with only a smile, only a look, only a sweet, nervous gesture, is an experience so rare and utterly breathtaking, Harry continually hopes to god he’s not dreaming.

Harry is nodding his head repeatedly before finding the words to speak, and he just knows he has the fondest, most ridiculous expression painted across his face. But he can’t fucking help it and he doesn’t fucking care because he’s so endeared, so in love,and all he wants is for Louis to know it.  

“I’d love nothing more.” Harry finally answers softly, taking Louis’ proffered hand in his own.

If Harry thought Louis’ initial, nerve-riddled smile was everything, the one he gives Harry next is nothing short of extraordinary, leaving Harry spellbound. He looks bashfully to Louis as the classic 70s’ song that Harry used to listen to on a loop, the song he always envisioned as the perfect song to fall in love to, starts to play from Louis’ phone.

♫ 

And they dance. They dance like there is no one else on the earth apart from the two of them, like time doesn’t exist, like nothing else exists. They dance and they laugh, all while bathed under the welcomed, gentle glow of the moon. While held close in each other’s arms, the nerves seem to float right away with the gentle breeze swirling around their bodies.

There is only them and this moment and not a thing else.

Who know how many times people throughout the years have said that the world always seems to stop when they’re with the person they love, it’s so commonly said, it almost becomes a throwaway sentiment after a while. But Harry feels something opposite from that; his world hasn’t stopped, it’s finally turning as it should, finally filled with life. It’s brighter and richer when looking at it through the spectrum of Louis’ eyes, sharpened into focus. The vibrancy and fullness Harry feels is unparalleled, unprecedented by any other relationship of the past. Will it always be like this when they’re together, even when time has had its effects, when they’re older, wiser, greyer? Right now, they’re in the beginning, the start of a new chapter together, blank pages upon blank pages waiting to be written, and Harry can’t wait to see how much brighter and fuller his life can become with Louis at his side.  

This whole thing, dancing in an open field, illumed only by the moon is so spontaneous and unexpected, but still so very romantic and sweet and thoughtful, far exceeding any expectation Harry could have ever had when he first envisioned it as a part of his quixotic hopes for his future self. Harry’s initial list of someday hopes and dreams have taken on a new form since he met Louis a decade ago. Louis breathes life into Harry’s dreams, life Harry couldn’t have ever imagined, translating his hopes from more than just wishes and dreams, but into realities he never thought would happen.

They dance long after the song fades, still wrapped up in each other’s arms, slowed feet still swaying to a rhythm synchronized to the beat of their racing hearts. Breathless and enamored, they gaze into each other’s eyes, magnetized by the gravity of their growing emotions. Harry’s eyes flick down to Louis’ lips, now only a small breadths away from his own. Louis lifts his jaw upwards and moves in the rest of the way, locking their lips together in a slow kiss.

Harry cradles Louis’ cheeks with both of his hands as their slow kiss gradually begins to grow more passionate. And they each get so lost in it, lost in the moment, lost in each other and it’s not long before they soon tumble down together against the soft bed of grass, giggling happily in between gentle kisses, any and all residual nerves between them dissipated.

Lying together on their sides along the cool, damp grass, legs intertwined and slotted together interchangeably, feels so easy, so natural. There’s such a relaxed air to them now, in how their mouths move against each other, in how their hands roam across the clothed curves if each other’s bodies. It’s unhurried and languid, no sense of urgency. They’re just making out like horny teenagers on a school night and yet Harry could lie right here in this very spot, under the moon, kissing Louis for days and nights on end and not do a thing else and still consider his time wonderfully well spent.

Louis shifts from his side, rolling over until he’s lying on top of Harry, bracketing Harry’s hips with his knees as he deepens the kiss. He pulls back slightly, face hovering right above Harry’s, so close that the ends of his fringe brush against Harry’s forehead. Harry gazes into the crystalline pool of Louis’ eyes, continually amazed by how very blue they still are even when there is hardly any light shining on them.

“I love you.” Louis whispers, his voice stays so soft and comforting, but strong in a way that makes Harry really feel his words.

Harry doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to hearing Louis tell him that, but he knows he will never grow tired of it. And there’s something so incredible about being able to freely express how much Louis means to him, to be able to be completely transparent about how deeply he cares for him. “I love you too.”

And Harry would tell Louis all day and night how much he loves him, just to keep that happily peaceful look on his face forever. Louis nuzzles his face towards Harry’s neck, leaving a few tender kisses near his ear before cuddling up against him.

“All those times we came up here and we could have been doing this.” Harry grins slowly, hands resting on Louis’ lower back, holding him close.

“What a waste.” Louis sighs against Harry’s exposed skin followed by a shiver, entire body jolting against the steady wind that’s beginning to pick up as it breezes through the grassy field.

“You’re cold, aren’t you?” Harry asks, already knowing the answer. He’s not wearing a jacket at all, only a thin white dress shirt and he has a bit of a track record of getting cold easily.

“I maybe didn’t think this all the way through? It was a bit of a spur of the moment kind of thing.” Louis laughs, sitting up with his legs straddling Harry’s hips. He tucks both of his hands under his arms to retain some of his own body heat. “I probably should have grabbed a jacket or something before dragging you up here.”

Harry shakes his head fondly as he sits up as well, shrugging off his own sweater and dropping it over Louis’ head without thinking question. “I’m running out of jumpers to give you.”

Louis laughs appreciatively, burrowing himself inside the warmth of the sweater before draping his arms around Harry’s neck as he sits comfortably in his lap. “In my defense, it is reallyfucking cold up here and I didn’t expect it because it’s the middle of May.”

Harry grins, leaning in for a short kiss. “You really should know by now that it’s always cold at night.”

“Yeah, in the winter, it’s supposed to be spring now.”

“Next time, we’ll bundle you up in a full winter parka just to be safe.” Harry teases.

“Well that’s no fun.” Louis frowns, snuggling half of his face, all the way up to his nose into the neck of the sweater. “How am I going to steal your clothes if I already have my own?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way.” Harry smiles knowingly, still feeling Louis’ body quiver from the windchill. “But for now, we should probably get back inside before you freeze to death. My sweater can only do so much.”

[tentisdacoda-blog]

Blog 6

In chapter 21, many styles of art were under competition in Western Europe. Paris was center for the most well known art but Rome wasn’t far behind. In France, “true stye” or Neoclassical style was becoming very popular and featured art based on the revolutionary movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Behind the neoclassical movement in France, Jacques-Louis David created a oil canvas painting of Napoleon on a horse known as Napoleon at St. Bernard Pass. The pictured showed Napoleon in full body armor trotting through the Alps. The horse has its front legs in the air and mouth wide open, comes off dramatic and aggressive. Napoleon’s clothing and the horse’s maine are look to be blowing in the wind as he points ahead.

One fashion trend I feel that is making a comeback is dad hates. I am not sure if they were called “dad hats” a decade or two ago but simple curved brim baseball caps with a strap. The last decade, it seems like flat-billed snapbacks and fitted caps were what everyone was wearing but I see a lot of dad hats now. The trend is being revived because many well-known artists and icons are seen wearing them. I believe they also brought us the snap backs. At least at our young age, we seem to copy the icons around us and what they wear.

In chapter 22, the Romantic was a large movement that covered Western Europe and the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Romantic works of art were pieces that indicate passages of time. An example of this that the book shares is broken down buildings and sculptures. Artists and the people were particularly interested in mystery and the unexplained. Artists were beginning to be intrigued by the supernatural and insanity as well. I feel like I would have loved this era personally because I’ve always had an interest in journeying into the minds of the crazy. When I was young, I remember reading a book called Inside the Minds of Serial Killers. I was so fascinated on how they think so differently than the rest of society and what was the cause behind their thinking. They can’t feel emotions and I always wondered how empty that must feel. Currently in the US, there is a small movement led by young rappers who have very ugly lyrics about killing people and mental health issues. They also seem to have a large following of listeners and I can’t help but wonder if listening to these song repeatedly could cause acute mental health issues. One of the most well known rappers died last week in Florida when he was shot. There is a painting in chapter 22 that I loved. The artist, William Blake, was from Western Europe. It was called “God Created the Universe.” The painting can now be found in a museum in London. The painting shows God in a circle, bent over, with one hand out creating a pathway of light with clouds all around him. I reminded me of an old painting we had in our Catholic school growing up.

[mattkennard]

Haiti: Creating a Modern Day Slave State

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

I was standing open-mouthed outside the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince 18 months after the earthquake had devastated the city when a man approached selling his paintings. “What do you think of that?” he said, pointing to the collapsed palace behind us. I told him the truth: I was finding it hard to come to terms with the completeness of the destruction. The man, who later told me his name was Charles Renodin, smiled slightly. “Tell the world how we are living,” he requested. “Let them know.” He paused and added, “I live in the camp there,” pointing across the road, where opposite the crumbling presidential palace a vast expanse of tents – emblazoned with the logos of the US, China, Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, all competing shamelessly for brand recognition – spread out as far as the eye could see. “After the earthquake I lost my mum, my dad, one daughter, so I had to move to this camp. I don’t like it, it’s full of corruption, it’s run by gangs, and the little girls have to sell their bodies to eat,” he told me. “Little girls,” he added for emphasis. “Maybe eight or nine years old, getting raped every day. The police don’t do anything about it, the country has no law.” He told me that the Haitian people refer to the palace behind us, which should be a point of pride, as the “Devil’s House”. “It’s full of so much corruption, they don’t care about the people, they just want to make money, when the money comes they take it for themselves.” He was waiting on a house now so he could leave the camp, but he didn’t think it would happen any time soon: “The government has no plan.” In the camps, it was particularly bad news for women: “Because there is no work, women have to sell their bodies just to eat, the only job they have is to have sex for money. Men have to steal stuff – they have no choice.”

Like most in Haiti, Charles had an ambiguous feeling toward the thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in his country. “Some come to help, some come to make money, they like us living like this because they make more money.” It is easy to dismiss such sentiments, but the global “rescue” industry really is big business. There is often a direct and positive correlation between American influence over smaller countries and the crises they experience. “After the earthquake they would give us food, water, but now everything has stopped. If you go inside this camp you don’t see water, people have to walk six miles to get water. That’s why crime is up.” He became more agitated. “Everything is crazy right now, we’re living just like animals. There is no everyday life, nobody has a job.” Haiti has arguably had more US intervention in the last hundred years than any other country in the world – that it ended like this is not wholly accidental. As Doctor Maigot poignantly says to Mrs Smith, an American, in Graham Greene’s The Comedians: “In the Western hemisphere, in Haiti and elsewhere, we live under the shadow of your great and prosperous country. Much patience and courage is needed to keep one’s head.”

The following day, I was driving down a long, dusty and typically bumpy road in the middle of Port-au-Prince when I came across some imposing metal gates. Behind them stood the E-Power electricity plant. The site was unlike the rest of the city, which lay in complete ruin, even a year and a half after the earthquake: it had burnished sheet-steel doors and perfectly tarmacked roads. I was on assignment with the Financial Times and being escorted in a 4x4 by the World Bank, which had its own particular kind of tour that seemed to ignore the massive tent cities whizzing past our windows. Here was the optimistic vision, they told me. In a capital city where electricity blackouts were a nightly occurrence, E-Power was the kind of company the international financial institutions (IFIs) running Haiti believed would lead “reform” – by taking power away from the state-run company, and running the business for profit. My World Bank guide was adamant that this was the way out of Haiti’s tragic past and present. I soon found out the company was founded in 2004 by a group of Haitian venture capitalists excited by the departure of social democratic President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The aim, they said, was to “offer a solution to power generation in Haiti”. Sure enough, some years later, in 2006, the new US-backed President René Préval launched an open bid for a contract to provide electricity to Port-au-Prince. Seven companies took part. E-Power won.

For many in the Haitian business elite, such economic liberalization was to be the model for the new Haiti being built after the devastating 2010 earthquake. “The earthquake created trauma that could have been better exploited,” Pierre-Marie Boisson, board director at E-Power, told me as we sat in the upmarket air-conditioned offices at the plant. “Because of the political process that took place after that, it took too much time.” He added: “Earthquakes should be an opportunity because it destroyed. Where it is destroyed, we have to build. When we have to build we can create jobs, we can create a lot of changes, we can change a country.”

However, Mr Boisson’s cynicism about the slow rate of “exploitation” of the “opportunities” provided by the earthquake was not quite accurate. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the opportunity afforded by the destruction wreaked on Haiti was capitalized on immediately. As the dust was still settling in Port-au-Prince, the World Bank, the IMF and their regional analogues, alongside various US agencies – what became the de facto government in the absence of a Haitian alternative – carved up the society’s different sectors and doled them out among themselves. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) got education and water, the World Bank bagged energy, while the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – a body that will be examined later in this book – gratefully accepted the planned new industrial parks. Alexandre Abrantes, the World Bank’s special envoy to Haiti, told me how it worked: “We basically have agreed that where we have each of us the competitive advantage, we then divide … the sectors among ourselves, and add in some sectors which go together.”

The mass privatization of state-run assets and the turning of Haiti into a Caribbean sweatshop – via an export-led garment production and cheap labor model that the US and the IFIs had been pushing from the mid-1990s through the 2000s – were now distinct possibilities. This could be enforced with minimal push back from a decimated civil society and a denuded government. All the extra-Haitian bodies, particularly the US government, shared this vision. “There is a lot of agreement, so I would say one of the unusual and very positive aspects about this project is that it is really done in partnership,” Jean-Louis Warnholz, a State Department official working on Haiti, told me when I was back in New York. (Mr Warnholz asked not to be named, but Haitians deserve to know the officials who are designing their destruction.) Haiti was to be the next Top Model on the World Bank and IMF catwalk. The “partnership” (in which the Haitian people had no part) believed that rebuilding the capabilities of the Haitian state should play no role in its reconstruction. Instead, the solution to Haiti’s problems lay in the creation of a flourishing private sector. “What’s really going to change Haiti and make this process different from all the previous ones is the development of the private sector, and I think there’s a consensus in that,” Agustín Aguerre, the Haiti manager for the IADB, told me. The bank disbursed $177 million in grant money in 2010 – more than any other multilateral source – to push this agenda. “Private sector is the big difference, it’s what will be creating wealth, creating jobs, not the public sector,” he added. It seemed there was no alternative.

After the election of President Michel Martelly in May 2011, things remained easy for this private-sector-led “consensus”: the IFIs and US not only had their Shock Event, but also their Shock President. Aristide, who was president in 1991, 1993–94, 1994–96 and 2001–04, continues to be the most popular politician in Haiti, but is banned from standing again for the presidency. In Martelly, the US government had found its “Chicago Boy”, a more-than-willing partner for their economic program (“Chicago Boys” is a term which refers to the University of Chicago economists who helped dictators impose neoliberal capitalism in its early stages). All the major business groupings and IFIs I spoke to in Port-au-Prince were effusive in their support for the president. Carl-Auguste Boisson, general manager at E-Power, told me: “I am pleased by what I heard Martelly saying about the importance of private investment, especially when he was campaigning he was talking about things like providing private provision of public services.” Kenneth Merten, the then US ambassador to Haiti, was similarly excited about the new president’s privatization agenda. “A few privatizations of flourmills, but aside from that you haven’t had much of anything in past decades,” he told me. “That’s the element that’s been lacking here, you need a government that understand investment and I think Martelly and his folks do.” For the US, a pliable figure like Martelly had been a long time coming. Despite many decades of effort, Haiti had not completely succumbed to the plans that its major patron had for it. And such recalcitrance had been causing increasing consternation in Washington.

History’s long shadow

In 1990, after the first democratic elections in Haiti’s 200-year history, the US became hopeful of breaking up the corrupt state institutions which had been run as the personal fiefdoms of Papa and Baby Doc, the US-backed Duvalier dictators who had ruled Haiti viciously for nearly 40 years. Private capital would then be able to penetrate deeper into the country, and an economic model conducive to the interests of the rich countries could take firm root. But it wasn’t going to plan. Instead of the US-orientated “reformer” many in Washington had hoped for, a huge mass movement, named Lavalas (“the flood”), propelled the social democrat priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide to a landslide victory. Over the next 20 years, the democratically elected Aristide would be ousted twice with US support, while the democratic hopes and dreams of Haiti’s people would be quashed time and again. Aristide had become a nuisance in the eyes of Washington and so when he was put back in power in 2001 it was under the tacit agreement that he would allow the World Bank, the IMF and the US to institute their plan. It had been 11 years since the democratic elections, and still economic “reform” was slow. Something had to change: democracy was fine, but it had to be of use.

In this period, René Préval, a former ally of Aristide who served as president from 2006 to 2011, seemed to offer some hope for the Americans. “In the context of the developing world, we would most accurately describe him as a neo-liberal, particularly in that he has embraced free markets and foreign investment,” notes one of the US embassy’s diplomatic cables, released by WikiLeaks, sent from Port-au-Prince in 2007. But the leader the US was really after in that period looked more like Haitian-American businessman Dumas Siméus. A resident of Texas, he assured the US embassy, according to a diplomatic cable sent in 2005, “he would manage Haiti like a business”. The same cable added: “Displaying abundant charm and energy, the 65-year-old said he had decided to run for President not only for Haiti’s benefit, but also as a gesture of thanks to the United States.” He was very clear about how he would do this: “The University of Chicago alum pledged to bring the ‘Chicago Boys’ to Haiti and establish a road map for change, promising investors would return.” It was exactly what the US embassy wanted to hear; Siméus was the candidate they had been searching for. The cable concluded by noting that the millionaire Texan was a “potentially viable candidate” who could, unlike Aristide, “govern responsibly and maybe effectively” – code in this case for “in the US interest”. The US deemed Martelly similarly “responsible”.

But in many ways, US exasperation at the apparent reluctance of Haiti’s leaders to sell off their country’s assets and create an economic playground for foreign capital remains hard to understand. From the mid-1990s through the 2000s, the “Chicago Boys” had to all intents and purposes come to Haiti; the process of opening up Haiti’s economy to the predations of foreign capital was well under way. The fetish of foreign investment was firmly rooted. In 1996 for example, the Haitian government had already, as one diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks noted, “established legislation on the modernization of public enterprises, which allows foreign investors to participate in the management and/or ownership of state-owned enterprises.” Moreover, a November 2002 law explicitly acknowledged the “crucial role of foreign investment in assuring economic growth and aims to facilitate, liberalize, and stimulate private investment in Haiti”. The law gave foreign investors exactly the same rights and protections as Haitians. Months earlier in 2002, the Haitian parliament had voted for a new free trade zone law which provided “zones” with fiscal and customs incentives for foreign enterprises – for example, a 15-year tax exemption. In other words, post-Aristide, the government had “seen the light” and embraced the US-led vision for the post-dictatorship Haiti.

But these steps, it seems, were not enough. Only a “Chicago Boy” would do. Another WikiLeaks cable noted that in 1996 a “modernization commission” was set up to decide whether management contracts, long-term leases or capitalization was the best option for each of the companies to be privatized. The commission would also decide how much the Haitian government would retain of each asset, with a cap at 49 percent – a minority stake, stripping the Haitian people of control over their own industries.

This had an immediate effect. In 1998, two US companies, Seaboard and Continental Grain, purchased 70 percent of the state-owned flourmill. Despite this “progress”, a diplomatic cable from 2005 lamented, “Some investments, however, still require government authorization,” adding, “Investments in electricity, water and telecommunications require both government concession and approval. Additionally, investments in the public health sector must first receive authorization from the Ministry of Public Health and Population.” It sounded like a reasonable demand from a sovereign country, but a sovereign country is exactly what the US didn’t want Haiti to be. Two years after Aristide had been spirited out of the country by the Bush administration and the local oligarchs, and just before the victory of the “neoliberal” Préval in 2006, the US embassy noted witheringly: “Since the privatization of the cement factory, privatization has stalled and appears to have been put on hold.” It added plaintively: “None of the major infrastructure-related enterprises (the airport, seaport, telephone company or electric company) have been privatized.” The document continued: “Although these entities were supposed to have been privatized by 2002, persistent political crises, strong opposition from the former administration, and a general lack of political will have delayed the process indefinitely.” The cable then noted a more plausible reason why this massive privatization program had not been enacted quite as smoothly as the US had hoped: ”Some opposition to the privatization of state enterprises continues from groups such as employee’s unions who have expressed opposition to workforce reductions that privatization might entail.” Those pesky Haitians.

By 2008, then, the US embassy was disconsolate at the slow rate of progress and local intransigence. “Despite assurances that privatization is still a priority for the government … we are increasingly skeptical that privatization, in whatever form, will happen,” one cable noted. “Time is running out.” The US, however, remained steadfast. “We will continue to advocate strongly on behalf of privatization and/or private management,” one cable noted. It further advocated using IFIs such as the World Bank and the IMF to bribe the democratic government of Haiti, one of the staples of the “structural adjustment programs” explored later, although it is rare to see it spelled out in such clear language. “[The US embassy] repeats its recommendation … that privatization be a requirement under future agreements with the IFIs … to be negotiated with the new government,” the cable to Washington noted.

The shock

Bribery might prove an effective strategy toward the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but it would still be messy. There was after all a Haitian parliament, populated with nationalist elements, which could continue to stall or even kill the massive privatization program the US favored. But as the US was honing its strategy for its latest push, on January 12, 2010 a huge earthquake hit Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in the history of the world. More than 300,000 people were killed, while millions became homeless. The capital city lay in ruins, including the majority of government ministries as well as the presidential palace. What was left of an already strangled civil society and social institutions was destroyed. Haiti was a blank slate.

The US and its allies in the IMF and World Bank did not waste any time – this was their opportunity to push through the radical neoliberal program from the 1990s with little resistance. The opposition to this privatization program – which had ranged from quasi-nationalist politicians to worker-based collectives – had all but disappeared. Without a government in place to agree or disagree with the US and the IFIs, which were soon running the country, Haiti was ready for the “shock doctrine” – the radical economic prescriptions enforced throughout the world and outlined in Naomi Klein’s eponymous book. Klein’s argument was that these policies were so unpopular among the populations of the target countries that the agents of big capital, such the IMF and World Bank, would wait until there was a crisis “real or perceived”, when people could not organize resistance, to push the reforms through. This is what happened in Haiti.

The first step was to entrench a decision-making system that took all power out of the hands of accountable democratic institutions run by Haitians. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which became the country’s most powerful decision-making body in the aftermath of the earthquake, was the perfect example of this move. The IHRC was set up ostensibly to coordinate the response and spend donor money in the absence of a Haitian government. It had 26 members, 12 of whom were Haitian, leaving them without a voting majority (just as they were not allowed a majority stake in their industries). To those Haitian members, it was obvious they were window-dressing. In a December 2010 letter of protest to the IHRC chair, former US president Bill Clinton, they complained of being “completely disconnected from the activities of the IHRC”, as well as having “time neither to read, nor analyze, nor understand – and much less respond intelligently – to projects submitted”. According to one journalist based in Port-au-Prince: “These twelve board members surmised that their only function is to rubber-stamp, as Haitian-approved, decisions already made by the executive committee.”

That was exactly the perception that the US and the IFIs were trying to avoid. When officials from the US and international agencies in Haiti were interviewed they were at pains to explain how they were “working for the Haitians” and the phrase of the day was “Haitian-led”. It was the same all over the world – the US and its agencies were adept at making their domination be seen as demanded by the victim. In truth, there was, and continued to be, minimal Haitian involvement in the reconstruction (outside the business elite). An article in the Washington Post put it bluntly in January 2011: “There is a dramatic power imbalance between the international community – under US leadership – and Haiti. The former monopolizes economic and political power and calls all the shots.” The financial benefits to the American private sector of this set-up were immediately obvious. An Associated Press investigation found that of every $100 of Haiti reconstruction contracts awarded by the American government, $98.40 returned to American companies. The focus was never on building up indigenous capacity; any work was to be outsourced to foreign companies or NGOs by the IHRC. It was about making money for rich Americans. After Michel Martelly was sworn in as president in May 2011, it took months for the former pop star and former member of the savage Tonton Macoute militia (formed by the US-backed dictator ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier) to form a government, as his candidates for cabinet positions were repeatedly rejected by parliament. By the time his administration was in place in June 2011, 18 months after the earthquake, the coordinates of the economic reconstruction were already in place. Martelly’s hands were tied by the very IFIs which claimed to be subordinate to the Haitians. Though in Martelly’s case his hands didn’t even need to be tied – he was a willing “shock president”.

There were three elements that the US and IFIs wanted to build the “new Haiti” around: high-end tourism; export-processing zones; and a resurgent private sector in control of the previously state-owned assets. It was the racket’s standard playbook. The architects of the reconstruction actually had other countries in mind that they believed could serve as a model. One was the Dominican Republic, the country next door to Haiti, which had long been an oasis for private capital in the Caribbean. In Haiti, using the model of its Hispaniola neighbor, the IADB planned to spend $22 million on a high-end tourism resort near the 19th-century citadel at Labadee, a port on Haiti’s northern coast. Mr Almeida, Haiti manager for the IADB, told me the bank’s money would “provide the means for the private sector to come and invest”, adding that “in [the Dominican Republic] everything they have is all private. The airport is private, the roads are private, even the internal roads. So we could do the same thing [in Haiti].” (In the initial carve-up of Haitian society, the IADB was given road infrastructure.)

The other opportunity that had to be taken advantage of was speeding up the privatization process. The World Bank used the example of Teleco, formerly the national telecom operator, which in 2009 the bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), had helped partially privatize. (The IFC was, incidentally, the brainchild of Nelson Rockefeller in 1951.) Mr Naim, the private-sector Haiti manager for the World Bank, told me that Teleco was an example of what the government should do to the ports and the airport. “[They can] really transform these assets that generally the government handles poorly,” he said, adding that “It’s better for the government to focus on social things” and let these assets be privatized. Teleco itself is now due for complete privatization under the guidance of the IFC. For the poorest country in the western hemisphere, it is hard – possibly even suicidal – to argue with the World Bank. In March 2010, the bank promised $479 million in grants; the IFC put $49 million-worth of direct investment into Haiti’s private sector.

With Teleco on its way to privatization, the IADB had its own plans for the national water and sanitation authority (Dinepa), which had come under its domain in the initial carve-up. The bank soon handed over the authority’s management duties to the giant Spanish company Aguas de Barcelona, which won a three-year contract to train and assist workers, and for which they received millions of dollars. “Many local companies are taking control of small towns’ water systems,” Mr Aguerre of the IADB told me excitedly. This essential commodity and basic human right was now being turned into a for-profit venture. “We are seeing good examples of places where no one paid for water services, and little by little they are paying,” he added. Experts from Aguas de Barcelona became the leaders of discussions concerning the investment needed in Haiti’s water system and the process of opening bids to different contractors for the completion of new pipelines and other systemic improvements.

In education, the IADB’s plans were no different. Thanks to decades of neoliberal policies that prioritized the private sector above the Haitian ministries, even before the earthquake 80 percent of educational services were delivered outside the state (primarily by international bodies or the private sector). As a result, only half of school-aged children in Haiti went to school. For the IADB, this did not prove the folly of their enterprise. Contrariwise, they concluded that it meant they had not gone far enough. “It’s too ambitious to think you can turn it around,” Mr Aguerre said. The IADB settled on a voucher program that will allow the government to retain some “quality control”, but means that education will be completely privately run. To ensure full access, the plan creates a publicly funded but privately run education system. The small print is that this public subsidy will cost the Haitian government about $700 million a year, seven times what it spends now on education. With no new revenue streams evident (in fact, as we shall see, the government’s tax base was being all but destroyed), the obvious implication was that full access was not an aim (or even a hope). When the IADB’s promised $500 million over three years runs dry, more than half of Haiti’s children will still be locked out of the school system. The IADB rationalized this arrangement by arguing that the private sector would pick up the slack – explicitly holding Haiti’s kids ransom to Hollywood film stars. “There are many private actors willing to put money in,” added Mr Aguerre. “Half of Hollywood is interested. Everyone wants their Susan Sarandon School of Arts.” Incidentally, Martelly has been approving of both vouchers and subsidizing private schools as methods to rebuild the Haitian education system.

With the complete privatization of telecoms, water and education, the final piece in the jigsaw for the IFIs and the US became the new “industrial parks” or “integrated economic zones”. These, so the propaganda went, would ensure the economic growth that could put Haiti and its people back on their feet. But two years after the quake, more than 500,000 Haitians still lived in ad hoc camps around Port-au-Prince and 8 million still lived without electricity. The throngs of jobless who lined the capital’s streets are a reminder of the 70 percent unemployment rate. “We need to be realistic and understand that it’s still five years after Katrina and New Orleans is still being rebuilt, it’s 10 years after September 11th and that site isn’t rebuilt complete, the process takes time,” Kenneth Merten, then US ambassador to Haiti, told me, adding, “One of the things Haitians can really do themselves is to move quickly on making a business-friendly climate.”

It might perhaps be hard for the hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in ad hoc campsites to do that. In Haiti, I went to the La Piste camp, a barren enclosure with rows of one-bedroom “houses” on steeples. The owner of one, a middle-aged woman, spoke to me slowly via an interpreter. She was a single mother with three children with no means of income. She was living off money the Red Cross had given her, alongside selling some trinkets, although customers are few and far between. “It’s much better here than the last camp,” she told me. In the last place she and her children lived, like most others, in a tent, which meant they were subject to the rain and animals who decided to look in. “This is a house, it’s safer,” she said, but added that the fence of the camp should be higher, or be turned into a security fence because of the burglaries. She also said the lack of lighting puts them in danger: it is pitch black at night and easy for people to break in. You realize walking around La Piste that these people are completely at the mercy of nature – be that the elements, or their fellow man or woman. There is no security, there is no rule of law, and there is no place to go with grievances; there is merely the hope that someone is looking out for you. Hope cannot thrive in such an environment. “I would like to have hope,” she told me, her face blank, refusing any emotion at all. “I just don’t know who is going to make anything happen.” It seemed rude to ask how she planned to make a business-friendly climate for foreign investors in Haiti.

Therapy

The 30-minute drive to Codevi industrial park from the airport in northern Haiti is the smoothest in the country. In a place famed for its poor infrastructure, particularly its undulating roads, the park and the surrounding area are something of an oasis. Beyond the small bridge and metal gates which divide Codevi from the town outside, there’s everything that the average Haitian doesn’t have: paved roads, a functioning health service, employment and even a (small) trade union – the only one in the country. The 2 million square foot Codevi Park was originally built by a Dominican textile company, Grupo M, on the Dominican side of the border, but operations were expanded to Haiti in 2003 (with the help of a large investment by the World Bank).

“It was created as a vision of expansion that Grupo M had to look for as the Dominican Republic became more complicated competitiveness-wise,” Joseph Blumberg, vice-president of sales for the company, told me as we sat in his air-conditioned office inside the park. “Haiti offered us the competitive edge that we needed in this region to maintain ourselves with the US market.” He added: “It had a labor cost which was the lowest in the region.” The minimum wage in Haiti now is 150 gourdes ($3.70) per day, which is nearly half that in the Dominican Republic. This “competitive edge” – in a layperson’s terms “slave wages” – combined with favorable trading terms with the US had caught the eye of the IFIs in the aftermath of the earthquake. The aim was to rebuild Haiti as a Caribbean sweatshop that could enjoy the full fruits of the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity for Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act, which was passed by the US Congress in 2006, granting tariff-free access for Haitian textile exporters to the US market. This was followed by increasingly favorable terms through HOPE II, in 2008, and the Help Act after the 2010 earthquake.

Parks like that at Codevi are known in the IFIs’ literature as integrated economic zones (IEZs): places where infrastructure, welfare services and other services are provided for the lucky few behind imposing metal gates. The literature justifying their existence argues that prospective foreign investors put off by the decrepit or non-existent roads, electricity-grid and water system throughout Haiti would here have access to a ready-made mini-city. There was already a huge industrial park of this kind near the airport in Port-au-Prince called Sonapi, which is fully owned by the Haitian government and had, at one point, nearly 40 companies based there. But the new IEZs would be under the sole control of its initial investors – mainly USAID and the IADB. This raises the question of what will happen outside these so-called “poles” of economic activity. What would the incentive be for the central government to develop infrastructure and social services throughout the country if they are being built on this micro-scale? And where would the money come from? Alexandre Abrantes, the World Bank’s special envoy to Haiti, admits this is a problem; he told me that industrial parks “may not be sustainable if you were to do it as a policy everywhere”.

Codevi is essentially an “export-processing zone” (increasingly common in the “developing” world) where exports pay no tax to the central government and there is no customs duty on imported materials. “You’re in an extra-territorial concept so that your goods come in and out very quickly without much paperwork,” said Armando Heilbron, a senior private-sector development specialist at the World Bank working on the IEZs in Haiti. Therefore, Haiti’s reconstruction will take place in isolated small “poles”, primarily in the northern part of the country, while the rest of the country’s infrastructure and welfare services will fall further into disrepair.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the industrial parks is the unscrupulous nature of the companies that populate them. The public relations tour of Codevi, with its stops at the local doctor and training facilities, is a relief after experiencing the destruction that has been wrought in the rest of the country. But the tour does not include many of the most important episodes in its establishment. Codevi was originally built on farmers’ land against their will – a process that destroyed the region’s agricultural infrastructure to create sweatshops. It was a parable for the economic reconstruction that occurred after the earthquake. The diplomatic cables recount that there had been a “long-standing labor dispute between Dominican manufacturer Grupo M and workers in Ouanaminthe”. One said: “According to Yannick Etienne, a labor representative, the fight has its origins in the closed-door negotiations that established the Free Trade Zone (FTZ). The farmers were left out of the negotiating process until the day of the FTZ ground breaking ceremony in 2002, when they were told their land was being expropriated. Grupo M eventually published a social compensation plan in 2003, however, it came too late for the farmers whose land was already gone, and whose suspicions of the Dominicans were already aroused.”

Grupo M and its patrons at the World Bank do not, of course, tire of outlining the countless benefits that accrue to the local population because of Codevi. Every program of exploitation has an ideology bolted on to legitimate it to the world – but also to those benefitting: very few people want to look in the mirror and see a monster staring back. When I asked to speak to workers, two were dutifully brought out to give monosyllabic positive comments about their jobs, perhaps wary of the manager sitting next to them. Neither was a member of the union, I soon found out. In fact, Grupo M claims it has no conception of how many workers are in the union. “Very little,” is all Mr Blumberg would tell me. “It’s not part of their priority. They’re happy and when the workforce is happy they don’t mind if anybody is doing anything for them or not.” However, according to the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, the soothing words of Mr Blumberg do not reveal the whole story. “Dominican unions allege [Grupo M] discriminates against labor organizers, fires their members, and has created a fraudulent ‘scab union’ in order to circumvent the legitimate one,” one cable notes.

It is clear that something similar has happened in Haiti. Grupo M did have a stronger union once – before it was busted after trying to exercise its rights. Just months after Codevi opened, the workers began complaining of “exploitation and mistreatment” by the management of Grupo M. Rounds of strikes and violence by union members were followed by a “series of employee terminations by the company throughout that summer”.

Mr Blumberg explained it thus: “When we had the first union, there was a lot of growing pain. They didn’t have the right groups guiding them, there were a lot of radicals, a lot of leftists.” But, he added: “In the end, everything was straightened out and we’re in peace and we’re fine with the union.” The union had been co-opted. Workers’ rights would not be a high priority for the economic model that would design the new Haiti. In fact, the plan was predicated on the lack of rights for workers. In an internal IFC document that was presented to the Haitian government, the administration was implored to amend the labor code in order to “lift restrictions on 24/7 multi-labor shifts” while “streamlining” the process by which night-time salary supplements could be done away with. The plan was also predicated on a lack of tax revenue. Another incentive for the foreign companies was the so-called “economic free zones” (EFZs), which offer companies tax and duty-free rights if they set up operations in Haiti. In reality, these zones do not exist in physical space but rather constitute the whole country. In other words, Haiti would now be tax-free for foreign investors – further disabling the Haitian government’s ability to rebuild any public institutions. In 2011, the Haitian government brought in an estimated $1 billion of revenue, much less than the per-capita rate in sub-Saharan Africa.

The answer to this dilemma for the IADB was the “multiplier effect” whereby companies supplying services to the population would in turn have more income and therefore pay more tax to the government (at some time in the distant future). “It’s on that side that we see the benefits of anchoring in the zones and having these companies come, even if under the current regime they do not pay taxes for a while,” said Mr Almeida, IADB country director for Haiti. The idea essentially is that around the industrial estates other smaller Haitian businesses, such as travel agents and grocery stores, will pick up the slack of lost tax revenue. The problem for the IFIs was that even with slave wages and lax labor regulation it was proving hard to attract foreign investment. In the face of such reticence from investors around the world, Haiti should have focused on building indigenous capacity, perhaps through a massive public works initiative and the construction of state-owned facilities, like Sonapi. Haitians were instead again put at the mercy of international capital and its “race to the bottom”. For the US embassy, the only thing going for Haiti was that its people were made to work for peanuts. “Haiti has the lowest wages in the western hemisphere,” boasted one US embassy cable. To Haitians it was nothing to boast about. Camille Chalmers, a local economist, told the Financial Times that the wages paid in the textile sector, Haiti’s biggest industry, were a “veritable scandal”.

Amid manifold reservations from both international investors and labor-rights groups, the IADB and USAID finished the construction of the flagship project in the economic reconstruction of Haiti: the Caracol industrial park (CIP), just 40 miles down the well-paved road back toward the northern capital of Cap-Haïtien. The CIP was inspired by the perceived success of Codevi, with those designing Haiti’s new-look economy trying to attract investment with the benefits that drew Grupo M into the economy: cheap labor and geographical closeness to the US, the world’s largest market, where its exports are duty-free. It is one of five planned. The US poured millions of dollars into the CIP, but only Sae-A Trading, a South Korean textile company, has been enticed to set up shop in the park (and according to people involved in the deal, Sae-A was promised a rent holiday of four years). Sweatshop-based development had, in fact, never provided more than 100,000 jobs even in the 1980s.

The fact that the US taxpayer is building industrial parks for the benefit of South Korean companies also raised eyebrows. The US may be the most active foreign country involved in the reconstruction, but even its companies are still keeping their distance. “We are professional beggars,” Mr Aguerre, the Haiti manager for the IADB in Washington, told me. The Haitian people would become beggars, too. For example, an internal IFC document on proposed IEZs argues that the reconstruction should be “propelled by private-sector-led development” even though the same document admits that “the existing Haitian Free Zone, Industrial Park and Investment Code policy and regulatory regimes have not been effective in attracting investments that are needed to create jobs”.

“To say that the private sector is rushing into Haiti right now would not be exactly what’s happening,” Pamela Cox, the World Bank’s vice-president for Latin America and the Caribbean, told me when I met her in Washington. So why were these institutions focusing so much on a foreign-investment-led reconstruction, rather than building up domestic and public Haitian capacity? Was the fact that this would not make any westerners rich merely a coincidence?

There are still further complications; namely, that offering generous inducements to foreign companies will adversely impact businesses already in Haiti. Grupo M, for example, is fearful of what the incentives offered for the CIP and other IEZs being planned might mean for it. “[New foreign companies] have to train their workforces, they have to prepare themselves for what is coming,” said Mr Blumberg, vice-president of sales at Grupo M. “We want a level playing field if you will. We understand that [foreign companies] are getting a lot of things via grants and via sponsorships from different sources.” But if investment is not forthcoming or indigenous industries are stifled, as many predict, Haiti will suffer stagnation and destitution for another generation.

Enthusiasm from donors for aid and other forms of sovereign investment is now dwindling as the international community loses interest and the financial crisis continues to bite. The Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF), which aggregates funds from countries and NGOs to fill gaps in investment, has raised $352 million so far, but, “We’ve reached a plateau,” Mr Leitman, head of the HRF, told me. “I think the donors have been cautious and reluctant to contribute new money.” In March 2010, at a major pledging conference held in New York City, $4.6 billion was promised for the first two years of reconstruction. Only $1.9 billion of that ever materialized. “If you look at estimates made about rebuilding Haiti after the earthquake, they were huge, you know $15 billion, even more than that,” Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington DC, told me. “They haven’t come up with anything like that, even a fraction of that. It’s a small country but it’s still 10 million people and so if you don’t clear the rubble, you don’t have roads, you don’t have housing, you don’t have water, you don’t have sanitation, so what kind of economy are you going to get out of that? That’s the real problem.”

The real fear back home in Washington, however, especially among politicians, is migration and drugs. “They feared Aristide was a Castro want-to-be,” Larry Birns, an analyst in Washington, told me. “US policy has never been concerned with building a viable economy. The policies they followed destroyed Haiti’s economy.” On assuming power, Ronald Reagan proposed the Caribbean Basin Initiative to try, in a familiar story, to bring foreign investment to the region. It was a method of regaining control of the region, which seemed to be going on an independent path. Reagan even invaded Grenada on spurious grounds in 1983 to push that effort. The initiative was a failure, bringing little to no investment, but control was exerted. In that respect it was like John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in Latin America, which sought to bring the region away from Soviet influence, under the guise of “development” and “investment”. The prevailing sprit now in Washington is that Haiti is messy, and people will openly tell you (off the record) that Haiti is beyond the capacity to be reformed, a “loser situation”. They favor what they call “keeping it on life support” so that the US doesn’t get too many people coming in (Haitian refugees dying on the beaches of Florida caused havoc for Southern politicians in the 1980s). But what the US never seems to understand about Haiti and elsewhere is that you cannot have a society operate like clockwork when you have for years persistently undermined all credible efforts for that society to function in an effective way. Haiti is now actually well below its per capita income of 1960, the only country in the hemisphere to have made no progress in that period. Ironically, the economy grew from 1960 to 1980 under the Duvalier dictatorships because, despite their brutality, they actually had a development strategy. It wasn’t great but it did move the country forward. This is true for a lot of the region where many countries had more growth under dictatorships because they had more control over policy than they did in a more democratic era when, in the subsequent neoliberal phase, the World Bank and the IMF controlled policy, and nobody allowed them to have a development strategy. From 1991 to 1994 and from 2000 to 2004, in fact, there was a deliberate strategy to destroy the economy, and that’s how they got rid of President Aristide both times. “This is more about power. It’s hard for people to believe this, but the US really does care who runs the government,” said Mr Weisbrot. “They’ve overthrown the government twice, the US, Canada, France, and their allies. 1991 was more covert but it did come out that the CIA paid the people who did the coup, and they also financed death squads in the period after.”

Robinson Deese’s story shows the human side of this brutality. “After the earthquake everything turned terrible,” he told me, as we sat in his bedroom. He lost his home and moved with his four children and wife to Golf, one of the biggest camps in Port-au-Prince on the capital’s only golf course. But he was given a lifeline. The Red Cross – one of the most influential and powerful NGOs working in Haiti – offered him a rent subsidy to move his family into permanent accommodation. The charity gave him 4,000 Haitian dollars toward the yearly rent of 6,000 Haitian dollars. (Prices have ballooned since the earthquake because of the squeeze on supply.) Now he lives in one small and sweltering room with six other people, including his wife, children and brother. Formerly a tailor, his working life was destroyed when he lost all his sewing machines in the earthquake. “We have to manage with this because we have no means to rent a bigger place right now, I have to work for other people now,” he said. “I preferred to take the subsidy because I didn’t have a piece of land where I could build a shelter. I decided the best option would be to start a small business for myself while I tried to save money, maybe get a piece of land.” He was also awarded a $500 Livelihood Grant to start a business, which he said was not going well so far. In these conditions, saving is hard for a family like this, as he has to stump up money for tuition for his kids’ schooling as well as for books and uniforms. The Red Cross has helped countless people this way – it is one of three options they offer to some of the 500,000 Haitians still living in tent cities around Port-au-Prince. The other two are building a T-shelter on a greenfield site, or finding someone who will let them do it. But the program is a parable of the short-termism that has overtaken the reconstruction of Haiti. Mr Deese only qualifies for this subsidy for a year. After that, he and his family are back at square one unless he finds a job, which with 80 percent unemployment seems unlikely. “I can’t say I will have enough to cover next year’s rent,” he admitted. “It doesn’t stress me out right now, I know that I can work, I have two hands to work with.”

No room for an alternative

Haiti is a notoriously difficult country to operate in: its institutions are frail, weakened by years of underinvestment, and the system is riven with corruption. For the economic managers post-earthquake, this was the default reasoning for their reliance on the private sector and “export-led” reconstruction. But there was nothing inevitable about such a program. There were plenty of reconstruction plans that could, most likely would, have created a fairer and more sustainable future for Haitians. The problem was and remains that these plans go against an ideology purveyed by the IMF, the World Bank and the US. For example, the Haitian government could have rebuilt the country’s crumbling infrastructure with a modern-day equivalent of the Marshall Plan from donors, which would have created public-sector jobs for Haitians to construct roads, ports and energy infrastructure which has either been non-existent or in disrepair. Everyone, after all, puts infrastructure as among the top problems for making Haiti work. Some 10,000 jobs could have been created just clearing the rubble. The Red Cross has, for example, created hundreds of jobs for Haitians reusing the rubble to build bricks and other building materials, clearing the city and creating employment. “We’re the only ones doing it,” the co-coordinator of the program in Port-au-Prince told me. “At the moment, now, all the rest goes down the dump, and the cost of processing it is about the same as taking it down to the dump.”

Perhaps most importantly, Haiti could have focused on creating a new agrarian economy, a sector which had been thriving before President Clinton dumped tonnes of US rice in the country in the 1990s, destroying Haitian agriculture by completely distorting trading terms, something that will be explored in a moment. About 60 percent of the Haitian population, or 4 million people, live in rural areas. Promoting community-owned agricultural land would have instantly depopulated the overcrowded capital and provided a sustainable way of feeding its people (with any leftovers ready for export). It was never even discussed.

“Agriculture is still missing,” Mr Naim at the IFC told me. The IFC is yet to make one loan to an agricultural small or medium-sized enterprise (SME), instead training its focus on agribusiness rather than the smallholders that Haiti needs. Likewise, the World Bank has admitted that not enough priority is being given to agriculture. It has put $55 million into a new agricultural program (in the grand scale of things in Haiti, peanuts). “This is our first true agricultural project,”  Mr Abrantes acknowledged. The US government claims it is not ignoring agriculture. The ambassador to Haiti told me the US has invested $200 million in the sector already; but, once again, the focus remains on produce for export as opposed to providing for the Haitian population, large portions of which are starving. The IADB, on the other hand, contends that infrastructure is important but “there are other needs” (such as “investing in the private sector” in order to import seeds). The bank has a plan to get a private company to buy the mangoes, centralize them, distribute them and then send them to the exporters. “We’re changing the dynamics of how we can do agriculture in Haiti,” said Mr Almeida at the IADB. This new dynamic is straight out of the neoliberal guidebook: providing vouchers to small producers so they can buy seeds through imports. With no public or community-held land, such ventures have to date not got very far. “It’s not a big number of jobs,” Mr Almeida admitted.

The internal Haitian market continues to be ignored by all parties, a travesty considering that 90 percent of eggs and poultry consumed in Haiti come from the Dominican Republic, while 80 percent of rice is imported. Changing that state of affairs through publicly funded subsistence farming is not an option. “When I say agriculture I say agribusiness,” said Mr Almeida. The alternative, which is unthinkable in the world of these institutions, is that money is provided to subsidize domestic small-scale rice production.

An emblematic project of this “new dynamic” was brokered by the IADB: an initiative with Coca-Cola which has created a new soda called “Mango-Tango” that will be supplied with mangoes from newly developed producers. A similar deal with Starbucks coffee seeks to transform individual micro-farmers into cooperatives and then supply coffee to Starbucks and market it as Haitian coffee. Critical analysts call this the “sweatshops and mangoes” development model. “They need roads, they need irrigation in the countryside, but that’s the one thing these guys won’t do,” said Mark Weisbrot, the analyst at the CEPR. But the Martelly administration’s agriculture policy has so far followed the export-orientated agribusiness model of the Bretton Woods institutions to the letter. “What I hear from [the Haitian government] is that they want to go into the export mode, including the agriculture,” said Mr Abrantes. In fact, Martelly had pushed the IFIs to go even further. “We were preparing traditional agriculture projects for Haiti which were basically focused on poverty alleviation, on the small farmers,” added Mr Abrantes. “When the Martelly administration came in, they looked at the project and said, ‘We would like it to have a different slant. We would like to have significant components on stimulating agribusiness’, which is quite a different thing from what we had anticipated, and so I think the overall view is, even in agriculture, to encourage parts of the agricultural sector to move into export-production.” Haiti remains a majority agrarian country; it needs an agrarian-based development model that distributes land among its homeless people for community-based subsistence cultivation. The economic managers of the country are not interested. The long-held dream of a Caribbean sweatshop is being born instead. Out of one of history’s worst human catastrophes we have Mango-Tango. The racket’s victory was Haiti’s defeat, but this was no accident.

[blackirisposts]

But I Thought Steve Had It

Summary:  The one where Darcy lent her beloved iPod to Steve with some pre-made play lists for him to work his way through.. and someone else ends up with her “Sweet Baby Jute” and finds more than just her music taste buried in her play lists. Pairings: Darcy x Bucky Word Count: 1454 Notes: fluff, music, mystery? flustered Bucky is adorbs, 

“Huh. Never thought I’d see you with one of those things.” Bucky said, riffling through the fridge for something to devour.

“Hmm?” Steve said, pulling the head phones off his head. “It’s not mine if that makes it any easier for you.”

“Really. Who would trust you with their own electronics?” Bucky’s curiosity rose. “Please tell me it was Stark. If so, I’m deleting everything on it before you give it back.” He chuckled lowly as he put a casserole dish in the oven.

“You know I wouldn't let you do that. And no. Stark and I are better now, but I don’t think he’ll ever trust me with his ‘toys’. It’s Darcy’s. She put a few play lists on here for me to catch up on the music I've missed over the years and to find some new favorites.” He said, holding up the sleek simple black iPod as evidence. If it was Tony’s it would have been much more stylish and showy.

“So what does the buxom brunette have on there then?”

“She has them by decade and she told me to listen to them in order, so that it will ‘make the most sense’ to me. I think she means well. She’s nicer about it than any of the others. Makes it seem like I just hated music for a while instead of being frozen.”

“Hmm. You sweet on her or something, punk?” Bucky questioned, raising an eyebrow at Steve’s fiddling with the cords of the head phones.

“No. I’m not..I ..No.” A shadow fell over Steve’s face, telling Bucky exactly what he couldn't say; that part of him was still hung up on Peggy.

“Steve, relax. It’s just music.”

“You want to look it over? I think I’m done for the day.” He left the iPod on the kitchen table and walked to his room.

“You don’t think she’d mind?” Bucky called after him.

“No. I don’t.” Steve yelled back. “Besides. It’s just music.”

Bucky stared down the iPod for a moment or so. Or at least longer than he cared to admit. Steve had been gone and wouldn't be home for another three days on account of a mission; which is why he left the iPod in its current location on the coffee table. Slowly, he picked it up and started flicking through the play lists specifically set up for Steve and his music ‘needs.’ They were titled in an obvious way that even Steve would know they were meant for him:

“Steeeeve! 50’s Jazz” “Steeeeve! 60’s Pop” “Steeeeve! 70’s Rock” “Steeeeve! 80’s Glam” “Steeeeve! 90’s Grunge and Pop” “Steeeeve! Most Modern Hits and Misses; You’re almost there”

He started listening to the 50’s Jazz that day and immediately fell in love with the sound. It was an easy transition from what he remembered listening to back in the 40’s, before the war, before his fall. The rest of the evening was spent with that play list on repeat.

Throughout Steve’s absence, Bucky burned through the remaining play lists. The more he heard, the more he craved to explore. She had managed to select the most enticing music in each decade; the good, the bad, the iconic, and the lesser known novelties. He was infatuated with what he heard, so naturally, he deviated from the specifically Steve made play lists to all play lists; anything was now game in his hunger. He found the play list for when she was sad, when she needed motivation, when she was tired, when she was stressed, when she was working out, and one that downright confused him at first. It had older songs from Jo Stafford and Ella Fitzgerald to more modern hits like Guns N Roses, Goo Goo Dolls, and Kito Reija Lee. The play list title: “Y.L.S.” He found that he loved almost every song in its inventory. Each one stirring an emotion he long thought dead. Emotions of love, love loss, hope, and even.. glee? How had this selection of music moved him in such a ground shaking, mind blowing way? It was just music. Mood altering, emotion, and thought provoking music, thrown together by a friend that he always wished to be closer to.

Although he adored this play list above the others, Darcy’s use of abbreviations drove him mad. It was the only play list to feature abbreviations. He took it as his mission to figure it out.

“Y. L. S… Y. L. S…” He muttered the title to himself trying to discern its meaning without asking Darcy flat out what it meant. After all, she had leant it to Steve for "educational purposes"; there was no reason for him to know about the play list or its cryptic title.

“Yale Law School? No, that doesn't make any sense. Youth Leadership S… No. Your Loud.. Your Little Sister? What? She doesn't have a sister. Yankee Likes.. No. Your Life Study? Hmm.. Your Level of Service? Ugg.”

His guesses weren't making any sense. Bucky had seen a lot, so random words bunched together usually meant something specific. That he knew. Just what the meaning of it all was alluded him. He would have to ask Steve, tactically, tomorrow, when he got back.

Half way through a quiet lunch with Steve, Bucky’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Now that your back, has Darcy been bugging you about getting her Ipod back? It’s been a few weeks.”

“Surprisingly, no.” Steve said around a mouth full of sandwich. “Did it help you at all? In catching up on music?”

“It did, I was pleasantly surprised. She’s got good taste in music. Did you look at any of her other play lists?” Bucky asked, trying to be subtle.

“Not really, didn’t have time.”

Bucky mumbled a response before continuing to focus on his food while his mind raced.

Steve didn’t know. Great. But how could he? He’s too polite to rummage through anyone’s things unless he feels something is wrong. And there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with Darcy or her mysteriously named play list, that one would only find by snooping in the first place. The only thing that was of concern was the worry of curiosity that bit away at Bucky’s mind whenever he had a quiet moment.

A week later and still no word from Darcy other than to know if Steve was enjoying his musical revival. Bucky had taken, more often than not, to conveniently and casually being in the same room as Darcy whenever possible. His goal, observation and possible discernment of the now internally infamous “Y.L.S.”

Today, Darcy’s sitting and eating with Jane. Coffee, pop tarts, the usual. However, this time they aren’t talking. The two usually chatter away driving others to laughter with their quips and opinions. Today, it’s silent.

Wondering to himself if he’ll ever over hear anything that might give any insight to his latest obsession, Bucky gets up from the kitchen table to leave. As he does, Darcy’s Ipod falls from his jean’s pocket with a clatter. Jane lightly jumps but keeps her focus on her work in front of her. Darcy and Bucky’s eyes fall to the now exposed Ipod.

Bucky reaches for Darcy’s Ipod and hands it to her lamely, keeping his eyes cast down.

“Thanks, doll.”

“But I thought Steve had it.” Darcy’s confusion finding home in the wrinkle between her eye brows.

“Yeah. He lent it to me, too. Thought you wouldn’t mind.”

Ask her! Ask her! Ask herrr!! Screamed a voice in the back of Bucky’s mind, only quieting when Darcy looked up again, her face cracking into a smile.

“You Little Shit. You think you’re so sneaky. I would have found out that you had it eventually.”

“Y.L.S. You? Little? Shit?”

“How-“

Bucky starts to chuckle as the other instances Darcy has called him a little shit come flooding to the front of his mind. It was for him. And, oh how he was grateful for this reveal. The emotions the various songs brought forth from him while he listened to them should have told him all along. His amusement forms into a wicked smirk shot directly at Darcy, making her turn a few shades of pink, blinking hard.

“Would you like to go to dinner with me, tonight?”

“Um, yeah,” Darcy squeaked quietly, nodding her head with a huge smile on her now red face.

“Good, I’ll pick you up at 7,” he said as he started walking toward the door. “And maybe after you can show me some more of your favorite music.” He added with a turn of his head and a wink as he left, leaving Darcy standing in shock in the kitchen.

Y(ou) L(ittle) S(hit) Play List:

Heart break warfare – John Meyers Killing Me Softly with His Song – Fugees Crave You – Flight Facilities Sweet Talk – Kito Reija Lee Hey Na Na – Katie Herzig Talk Like Lovers Do - The Eurythmics Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel Its Been A Long, Long Time – Harry James & His Orchestra, Vocals by Kitty Kallen. Big Jet Plane – Angus and Julia Stone Pompeii – Bastille, Acousitc Live in Paris Ribs – Lorde R U Mine – Arctic Monkeys You belong to me – Jo Stafford Sweater Weather – The Neighborhood Toxic – Cover by Melanie Martinez Crazy – Cover by Melanie Martinez Bulletproof – Cover by Melanie Martinez Too Close – Cover by Melanie Martinez There’ll Be Bluebirds over The White Cliffs of Dover – Vera Lynn You go to my head – Keely Smith Manhattan Serenade – Jo Stafford A String of Pearls – BBC Big Band Orchestra Crying Mood - Ella Fitzgerald Cheek to Cheek - Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald Heat Wave - Ella Fitzgerald Georgia on my Mind – Jo Stafford Trouble in Mine – Jo Stafford Sweet Child O’ Mine – Guns N Roses Come to Me – Goo Goo Dolls Witchcraft – Frank Sinatra Slide – Goo Goo Dolls

[serialfirstdater]

2017 - [First Date] Sir Butter

Guy #17

What? I’m breaking Sir Butter’s story into parts? Yes, yes I am. 

I matched with a guy who had a cute smile on Coffee Meets Bagel. He was supposedly 5′11 (turned out to be 5′10 at best but I let it go since he was technically taller than me), worked in sales for a commercial bank and appeared friendly. We were going to have our date at the hottest new restaurant in the city at the mall. Then I found out  the wait was going to be 3 hours during lineup, so I told him to meet me at another restaurant instead. 

At some point in the beginning of the date, my brain completely turned off. Normally, I’m quite calm and collected. After having gone on so many dates, I’ve learned to restrain from blurting out too many facts about myself that would overwhelm my date. For whatever reason, I was completely flustered throughout this date. I was starting to like him really quickly. Since he was a salesman, he was really good at making flirty jokes. He wasn’t as intense as the Russian (like in attempt to make physical contact immediately), but he was smooth. Light and fun teasing came naturally to him. I like to describe that he was “smooth like butter” to my friends. Of course I’ve met other sale guys that haven’t been as smooth, but each and every one of them had charm and charisma. Hence me always falling for them.

The more I learned about him, the more I liked him. He was into fashion and designer brands. He understood that my drop on a $1.5k Louis Vuitton bag was actually reasonable because that was considered “cheap” for the designer. Normal guys would say how crazy that is for a handbag but you’d understand if you are into designer brands. He told me that his goal was to have a rotation of 8 or 10 suits at all times. If you are into suits, I’m into you. 

Also he was very ambitious and family-oriented. I could tell he was quite generous as well. He told me at one point that he took out his parents to dinner just to show his appreciation towards them. All the qualities that I love in a guy on top of the baseline of being a responsible, respectful and good human being was in Sir Butter.

It was one of few times that I held off on talking about work. Now, if you know me, one of the things I like to talk about is my future and career. I’m very career-oriented and there is a lifestyle in which I would like to achieve within the decade (preferably a lot earlier if possible). However, this has proven in the past to be a turn-off to some guys. It comes off very structured, goal-oriented and too serious. My friends like to tell me not to go into such topics because it would feel almost like an interview. So with this particular date, every time work came up, I would talk about it really briefly before changing the topic. At one point, I even said, “Let’s not get into work right now” and I proceeded to talk about movies or hobbies. 

When it was time to get the bill, I motioned to the waitress to get two bills. She didn’t notice because I did it quietly. Sit Butter waved down for one bill. One bill came and instead of letting him pay, like I normally do if a guy was planning to, I said something along the lines of, “Oh, I thought it was two bills...” The waitress immediately corrected it. 

At that moment, I really wanted to show him that I was an independent woman who could afford to pay her own bill and wasn’t on a date to be looking for someone to take care of her. Although technically, I’m more traditional so it is what I was looking for... But my brain was going haywire and I was getting more and more flustered.

When the separate bill actually came, the cheesecake I got for myself was split onto his bill. I stared at the bill blankly, going “Uhhhh...” quite audibly. He didn’t mind and paid for his bill with half of the cheesecake cost tacked onto it. I was freaking out on the inside.

I had to go to Sephora to see if some items I was eyeing online was available in-stores since I was Christmas shopping. He was cool to tag along since he knew I was trying to get my Christmas shopping done. He noticed that on our way to Sephora, I was eyeing another store because I saw the huge sale sign. I went into Sephora and found out that the products I was looking for was available online only. Sir Butter was buying Caudalie for his mom and told me that I should just go ahead and check out the other store I was eyeing on earlier. I thought that was sweet of him to notice. 

I went but had difficulty paying attention to the clothes and left the store empty-handed. I went back to Sephora to see if he was still there. He wasn’t. I ran back to the other store. No bueno. So I texted him but no reply. I started worrying that he might have just up and left. So I started making my way to the subway. Just as I was about to enter the subway station, his texts from CMB appeared. Apparently he did go to the store after me but I had already left and the messages on the app were not going through. I told him I’d wait for him by the subway station so we could leave.

When we were waiting for the subway to arrive, I was ready to tell him that I had a great time and he could let me know if he wanted to hang again. 

My train was about to approach so I turned to him. “So do you want my number or what??” I blurted out. The moment those words left my mouth, I wanted the floor to just open up and swallow me. I was already thinking about how he was gonna probably going turn me down because I was so awkward.

Instead, he went, “Sure” with a cute smile on his face. In my head, I was already going, “Omg yes!”

The train stopped and I told him I would text him my number. My first date with Sir Butter ended with me trying to reclaim my composure after being overtaken with awkwardness on the subway home.

[momscookingthebooks]

Chapter Reveal

Title: Twenty-Two

Series: Nashville Assassins 11.5

Genre: Sports Romance - Hockey

Author: Toni Aleo

Publication Date: May 22, 2017

Add to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34818243-twenty-two

 #ChapterReveal #TwentyTwo #ToniAleo #ComingSoon #Assassins 

Synopsis:

When Lucas Brooks was traded to the Nashville Assassins over a decade ago, he was a brash, brawling hothead without an anchor. Well, four kids and a smokin' hot wife will weigh you down real fast, but Lucas wouldn't change a minute of his happily ever after. During an epic, end-of-season quest for the Cup, changes appear on the horizon, and suddenly, there's a plot twist in Lucas's fairy tale.

Pre-order exclusively via iBooks: hyperurl.co/6yzzl5

Chapter 1

The Brooks Family

“I want to watch SpongeBob!”

“No! Ariel!”

“Yeah! Mermaid! I wanna watch Ariel!”

Lucas Brooks covered his face with his hands before he yelled from his bedroom, “There are nine TVs in this house! Separate!”

“But she has the popcorn!”

“And he has the milk!”

“Daddy, I want to be with Asher!”

“Why are they eating popcorn at seven a.m.?”

Groaning, he looked over at his wife, who was cuddled deep into the bed, her dark brown hair covering her face as her thick, plump lips pursed out toward him. He almost leaned over and kissed her, but he was exhausted. “I don’t know. Where is Aiden?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the point of having an older kid if he isn’t going to care for the crazy little ones?”

“I don’t think that’s why we had them so far apart.”

Lucas scoffed. “Says you.”

Fallon giggled as she scooted over toward him, cuddling into his shoulder. Both of them knew the real reason for the big age gap between their children, though they never talked about it anymore. In their eyes, they did this on purpose and, really, it didn’t matter because they were happy.

“Mom! Asher won’t give me some milk!”

“Stella backwashes!”

“Mommy! I’m thirsty! Can I have some sweet tea?”

“Daddy, I want tea!”

“What in the hell?” Lucas muttered, staring at the ceiling as Fallon continued to giggle.

“Why are they up so early? The game was late.”

“Who knows? I’m exhausted.”

“So am I,” Lucas groaned, and he was. He felt the pain all over his body from the big win over St. Louis that advanced the Assassins to the second round. His whole body was aching. He wasn’t like his young self that bounced back after a hard-fought game. No, Lucas Brooks needed a good week after a game like the one the night before. It had gone into overtime, and the Blues had been playing desperate hockey. But by the grace of God, Jensen Monroe didn’t let any in, and Vaughn Johansson scored the winning goal. Vaughn had wanted to make his night even better since he had just proposed to his girlfriend and found out she was pregnant. So last night’s win was a biggie for everyone. Though, Lucas wished he had a solid month to recuperate before the next one. But he didn’t. He only had a few days of rest before the second round started.

“But, really, where is Aiden?”

“I have no clue.”

“Text him.”

“That means I have to move,” he complained, and she rolled her eyes before throwing her arm behind her to find her phone. Bringing it to her face, she dialed their son’s number, putting the call on speaker.

“Hello?”

Lucas closed his eyes. Aiden’s manly voice still was like a punch to the gut. His baby was growing, fast, and it was killing him slowly. “Baby, where are you?”

Aiden let out an exasperated breath. “Out front, where I always am. Where are you?”

Fallon looked to Lucas as he looked back at her. “Excuse me?”

“Oh my God, Mom, did you forget I had training for summer league this morning?”

Throwing the blankets off, she sat up. “Not at all. I’m running late.”

“You forgot!”

Lucas laughed as Fallon shot daggers from her eyes. “I did not! I’m coming.”

“If you would let me drive, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Aiden reminded her.

“If you cut your hair, maybe we’d buy you a car,” Lucas called out, and Aiden laughed.

“You’re just jealous I have hair!”

“Hush it, both of you. I’m coming,” she said, hanging up the phone and throwing on some sweat pants. “I can’t believe I forgot.”

“I can’t believe he went after not getting home until midnight last night.” She shot Lucas a deadpan expression. “Okay, I can. I would have.”

“Exactly. He’s his daddy’s son.”

Lucas grinned. “He is.” Then he glared, running his hands along his thinning hair. “I have good hair, right?”

She laughed. “Yes, baby, lots of great hair.”

“He has more.”

“He’s going through puberty.”

He raised a brow. “I think he’s past that.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if we can wait till his birthday to give him a car, Lucas,” she said, pulling her hair up as she glanced back at him.

“That’s all you, babe. I told you to give him mine, and I’ll go get a new truck.”

“He wants a sports car.”

“And I don’t give two fucks. That kid isn’t going to be driving a better car than what I had. He can have a nice Ford and be happy, or he can walk—if his momma would let him.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re overprotective as hell.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

She glared. “But he is a good kid, Lucas.”

“The best, and he’ll be happy with my Ford.”

“Ugh, okay,” she groaned before leaning down and kissing his lips. He savored her for a moment, grabbing her butt.

“Can we make him wait a bit longer to be picked up?”

She chuckled, desire flashing in her eyes. “I doubt you can move.”

He looked sad. “I can’t.”

She laughed as she kissed him again. “Can we give the car to him today?”

“Tomorrow.”

Her brows rose. “Why tomorrow?”

“Because I can’t move, and I have to go buy a new car for me.”

She laughed, smacking his chest, which made him wince. “I’ll be back.”

“Be careful,” he called as she headed out of the room just as Emery ran right into her.

Picking up their youngest, Fallon kissed her loudly on the lips.

“Be good.”

“Me?” Emery asked.

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because you want cake at sissy’s birthday, don’t you?”

“Oh! I’ll be good!”

Fallon rolled her eyes, placing their daughter on her feet before waving back at Lucas.

Emery ran to him, jumping on the bed and breaking his bones further. He groaned out as Emery cuddled into him, and he closed his eyes. “Daddy.”

“Yes, love?”

“I love you.”

He smiled into her hair, kissing her temple as his arms came around her, holding her tight. He’d never known he could love any child as much as he loved Aiden. Lucas could still recall the first moment he saw his son. Outside of Fallon’s house, begging her for a chance to reconnect after seven years of separation, but then Aiden walked out, and Lucas knew. Aiden was his son, and boy, did he fall in love. Head over heels for the kid. Lucas never thought any kid could come close to his love for Aiden, but then Asher came.

His spunky, dry-humored little geek. The kid was always on his computer, always busy making something, and damn smart. Asher was great on the ice, though Lucas didn’t think he’d go far with it. He was too obsessed with computers and rebuilding them. His first love wasn’t the ice; it was making things tick. But Lucas was proud nonetheless, especially considering the fact that Aiden’s drive to make it to the NHL was enough for the whole family.

In all reality, Lucas had been set with two great boys. But then, by the grace of God, came Stella. His little diva. She looked just like Fallon, breathtakingly stunning with big brown eyes and thick brown hair. She had her momma’s looks, and God help him, her mouth too. Those two went at it daily, mostly about clothes and hair, but his little girl had his heart, and of course, he was wrapped around her finger.

That was it...until Emery came. She was a complete surprise, but in a way, she was the missing piece in their lives. Their family had been off-balance and needed her quirky little brand of badass. While Emery favored both Fallon and him physically, she had his demeanor with Fallon’s mouth. It was a bad combination because while she was ruining your life, she was making you feel right about it. Unlike her sister, Emery didn’t care about hair or clothes. She cared about being a fairy princess, which, for an almost four-year-old, he figured was logical.

But she was daddy’s princess.

Holding his sweet baby, he couldn’t help the grin on his lips, though he was aching in spots he hadn’t even thought he could ache. He had taken a hard hit into the boards, coming down and slamming his head on the ice. Thank God for a helmet because his brain would have been scrambled eggs if not. But he was feeling every bit of it now. Though, he couldn’t think of that. All he could think about was how much his life had changed. He used to be a lonely bachelor, living life in the fast lane and enjoying the NHL. But when he moved to Nashville, everything changed. Fallon happened. And now, Lucas couldn’t imagine his life without her and their kids. Between playing and being his kids’ biggest fan, he didn’t see any other point to life.

Oh, yeah, and loving Fallon.

But that came naturally.

That woman was his world.

Everything was great in the Brooks household. Now, if only his body could stop hurting and aching, things would be grand. Oh, and if his kids could stop growing. And he needed the Assassins to bring home the Cup.

Yup, then Lucas Brooks would be a happy man.

“I love you too, love bug.”

“Can I still have cake if I’m bad?”

“What did Momma say?”

She pouted. “Do you love cake, Daddy?”

“I do.”

“Me too.”

He smiled, kissing her head. “I know, love bug.”

“Can we watch Ariel?” She sat up, her eyes wide and gray like his. She had Fallon’s lips, though, and the shape of her face. Her hair was in pigtails with big pink bows in them that he was sure Stella had put in. “Please. You’re my favorite daddy.”

“I’m your only daddy.”

She nodded. “And my favorite.”

He smiled. “Do I have to move?”

She thought that over. “No.”

“Then, yes.”

***

Pulling up in front of Aiden’s private school, Fallon hit the brakes, slamming forward as she looked over to where Aiden was standing, shaking his head. Gone was her baby, replaced by a hormone-driven monster with long hair. Actually, he was the greatest kid in the world and she loved him more than anything, but God, she hated his hair. He looked like a damn fool, especially with that stupid man bun. But boy was he handsome. Just like his daddy, he had a strong bone structure, thick, dark brows, and dark gray eyes. He was beautiful, and if she didn’t know he was a good kid, she’d lock him up.

Opening the back, he threw in his bag. “Hey, Mom.”

“Hey, honey.”

“Hey, Aiden.”

Fallon about broke her neck trying to see who was calling her son’s name. She saw a pair of girls standing beside the stairs in what she felt were too short skirts. Sure, they were cheerleading skirts, but still. Fallon glared as Aiden turned, tipping his chin at them. “Hey.”

“Are you going to the dance on Friday?”

“Probably not, I’ve got a game.”

One of them puckered her lips. “Can’t you come after?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll let you know. Have a good practice.”

“Okay, I’ll save you a dance.”

When he flashed her a grin, his dimples shining in all their precious glory, Fallon shook her head.

There was Lucas Brooks reincarnated.

“Cool. See ya.”

Closing the back, Aiden walked around, and she swore he had grown another inch or so.

Opening the door, he climbed in and looked over at her. “You know, being the oldest, I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be forgotten. Emery is.”

Fallon glared. “Shut up. I’m exhausted. It was a late night. How did you even get here?”

“Brayden’s mom drove me, like you asked her to at practice.”

Fallon paused as she moved the shifter of her van into Drive. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he said dryly, throwing his legs up on the dash as he started to play on his phone.

“Hmm. Hey, at least I got that far,” she decided, hitting the gas.

“Thank God.”

“Practice was good?”

“Great. Coach is happy with me.”

“Good.”

“Heard Bellevue is looking at me.”

Fallon glanced over at him. “From whom?”

“Coach.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, he said I should talk to my counselor.”

“For what?”

“I have enough credits to graduate this summer and start over there if I wanted.”

Fallon’s heart stopped. “You just turned seventeen.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want that?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, looking over at her. “Mom, I want to go to college so I can go into the draft. The Sinclair brothers all went to Bellevue. I need that exposure before I enter the draft.”

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Too much. This was her baby. Her firstborn and he was ready to go.

He was itching for the NHL. He wanted to play like his father. He wanted to live his hockey dreams, and all she wanted was for him to go back to fighting hippogriffs. “Talk to your father about this. You’re making my head hurt.”

Aiden laughed. “Mom, I’m getting older. I’m practically a m—”

“Shut your dirty mouth, Aiden James Brooks.”

He laughed harder as she turned down the main road. “Where we going?”

“Audrey’s.”

“Why?”

“I gotta get some donuts she made for your father for winning last night, and then I gotta approve the cake she’s making for Stella’s birthday next weekend.”

“Do I have to go to that?”

She flashed him a dirty look. “You mean your sister’s birthday?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course you do. You’re the damn crab, Sebastian.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No,” she said simply. “I hope the costume fits.”

“Oh my God.”

“I even hired a photographer. So when you’re in the NHL and they need those pictures of you growing up, I’ll have that one.”

“You’re horrible.”

“I try.”

He scoffed, and she grinned over at him before pulling onto the road that held Audrey Jane’s. “So, who were those girls?”

“Addy and Melissa.”

“Your fans?”

“Everyone is my fan,” he said, waggling his eyebrows, and she laughed. “I’m practically a hockey-playing god, Mom.”

“All right, pump the brakes there, mister. You’re no Vaughn Johansson.”

Aiden laughed. “JoJo is amazing.”

“He is, but he’s cocky as all hell,” she said simply, pulling into Audrey Jane’s and

parking beside her baby sister’s car. Getting out, they went inside just as Fallon’s niece, Penelope, hollered out, “Welcome to Audrey Jane’s!”

Fallon beamed as Aiden ran after Penny, gobbling her up and tickling her before Audrey came out of the back, a grin on her face. “Hey.”

“Hey, you,” Fallon said, kissing the back of Penny’s head.

“You’re here early.”

“Yeah, I forgot to pick my kid up after practice, so here I am. Where is Philippe?”

“With Tate. He didn’t want to come in.”

Fallon nodded. “How’s Tate feeling?”

Audrey exhaled loudly since the subject of her husband, the Assassins’ starting goalie, Tate Odder, was a touchy one. He had a serious groin injury and had had surgery about two months ago, but he still wasn’t recuperating from it well. An infection had spread and knocked him down some more, long after the doctors had assumed he would be back on the ice. So it was easy to say the Odder family was very tense. “Lots of pain, but I guess he’s getting better. He doesn’t talk about it. He mainly asks me to make cupcakes. He’s pissed he missed last night.

Thank God Jensen did great.”

“Right?” Fallon agreed with a nod. “Well, hopefully, he’ll be up and at it soon.”

“I don’t know, Fal, I just don’t know.”

“What does that mean?” Aiden asked. “Uncle Tate’s okay, isn’t he?”

Audrey faked a grin. “Of course. Come here. You want a cupcake?”

Aiden laughed. “You know, I’m seventeen, you can’t distract me— Whoa, are those cookie dough?”

Audrey smiled happily at Fallon as she shook her head, and Aiden took the cupcake.

“Come on, I’ll show you the cake for Stella, and your donuts are right there.”

Aiden looked at the donuts. “Can I have one?”

“Save one for your dad.”

“Okay,” he said with a mouthful as she followed Audrey to the back.

“Kid has a tapeworm, I swear. He’s always eating.”

Audrey laughed. “He’s always been an eater. It’s not fair.”

“Agreed.”

As Fallon followed her into the kitchen, Audrey looked back at her sister. “I think he might have to retire.”

“Who? What? Tate?” Fallon’s eyes widened. “Never.”

“Yeah, he is grief-stricken about it and things are bad, but he can’t seem to get better. I don’t know. I told him he needs to decide.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s not good. We’re fighting a lot, and he’s withdrawn because he feels like a failure. Shit’s so bad, he started to go see Wren Lemiere, the team’s therapist.”

“Good for him,” Fallon said, exhaling hard. “I hate that for him, though.”

Audrey nodded as she turned on her computer. “Me too. At least you don’t have to worry about that. Lucas’s got at least nine more years in him.”

Fallon shot her sister a wry smile. “He creaks when he walks. I’m waiting for him to tell me he’s done.”

“He won’t.”

“I know, which makes me nervous.”

“Yeah, but you know, Lucas would be okay. Tate...he’s not, and I just want my happy husband back. I’m worried he won’t be happy without hockey.”

“No, he has you guys. He loves you three. So much.”

“I know he does, and he is the best father ever. Sucky in the husband department right now, but I get it. We’ll be okay.”

“You will,” she said, wrapping her arms around her sister. “Don’t worry.”

“Thanks.” Audrey hugged Fallon back as the computer came on. “Okay, so here it is. The best Ariel cake for my niece.”

Fallon grinned as she took in the perfect seven tiers of Ariel-themed cake. “She’ll flip her shit.”

“That’s my goal.”

“It’s perfect.”

“Awesome,” she said, shutting her computer lid. “I’ll be over next Saturday morning to set everything up.”

“Cool.” Fallon leaned her hip to the counter as she met her sister’s gaze. Audrey had changed so much over the years. She used to be obsessed with her weight. Now, she stayed healthy, even if she was rounder than she used to be. Kids would do that, though. One thing was for sure. Even with all the shit going on, Audrey had a grin on her face that Tate and the kids had put there. Her sister was complete, and like she’d said, she would be okay. Fallon just knew it.

But Fallon was pretty sure she was going to have her own mini heart attack. “Aiden told me his coach said he could probably graduate early and that Bellevue might want him.”

Audrey’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you say?”

“For him to talk to his father!”

Audrey laughed. “Fallon.”

“What?”

“It would be great.”

“He’s a baby.”

“He’s seventeen. He’s a great kid. Smart and talented as hell.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think I want him to do it.”

“If it’s going to be what’s best for his career, then he has to, you know?”

Biting her lip, Fallon nodded. “We’ll see what my husband says. If he can even move.”

Audrey smiled. “He’s sore today?”

“Yes, bless him. I don’t know if he’ll make through the whole series in one piece.”

“He is old now.”

“He isn’t a spring chicken, for sure.” Fallon grinned. “Except in the bedroom.”

“Ew!”

Fallow snorted as Audrey shook her head and then smiled. “I think they’re going to go the whole way. I feel it.”

Fallon nodded. “I do too. Rumor is, Elli was in the locker room crying last night. She’s so emotional.”

“Think she’s pregnant again?”

Fallon laughed. “Lord, I hope not!”

“Right? She’s already so damn busy.”

“I know.” Fallon shook her head. “Are you going to Lucy’s baby shower next Sunday?”

“Did you not check the group?”

Fallon just looked at her. “Obviously not, Audrey.”

“It’s been postponed until further notice.”

“Why?”

“Because of the play-offs.”

“That’s dumb. Why plan it around the play-offs, then?”

“I don’t have an answer for that, but they called me asking to hold off on the cake.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Which is good ’cause I can focus on Stella’s cake.”

“This is true. Ariel needs all your attention anyway.”

Audrey grinned as she leaned into her sister. “You know, you can come by more.”

“Same for you. Or come to the winery, and I’ll get you drunk.”

Audrey beamed. “That’s a plan.”

“Mom! Let’s go! Penny is going to make me fat.”

Penny’s giggles met them in the kitchen, and Fallon laughed. “Kid couldn’t get fat if he tried.”

“Right?” Audrey asked, shaking her head. “And what’s up with his hair?”

“I don’t know. I want to cut it, but he won’t let me.”

Audrey laughed as they went out of the kitchen to find Penny feeding Aiden cookie after cookie. “Mom,” he whined, and Fallon laughed.

“Hey, boogey butt—”

“Audrey!” Aiden complained, and they all laughed since he hated his nickname. “I told you about calling me that.”

She feigned hurt. “You are my baby, and I will call you that if I want. Even when you’re a big, hotshot hockey player, I’ll be in the stands hollering, ‘That’s my boogey butt!’”

“Mom,” he groaned, and Fallon just kept laughing.

“Anyway, if I throw gum in your hair, will you let me cut it?”

He glared. “Stay away from me.”

“It’s so long. And dirty,” Audrey said, coming toward him, and when Fallon saw the scissors in her hand, she tried to stifle her laughter.

“I washed it like ten minutes ago!” he said, slowly stepping back from his aunt.

“It’s ugly. Let me cut it.” She went for the bun, but he deked around her, running to Fallon and hiding behind her. Which was pointless since he was practically seven times her size.

“Leave me alone! Mom! Tell her to leave me alone.”

“We’re leaving.” Picking up the donuts...well, the three that were left, Fallon shook her head. “Bye, Penny loaf,” she called to Penelope.

“Bye, Auntie!”

“Bye,” Audrey sang. “I’ll get you later, Aiden James.”

Going outside, Aiden looked over at Fallon. “You won’t let her cut my hair, right?”

“I mean, if she gets to you before I do, I’m sorry for ya.”

“I look amazing!”

“You look like a damn fool,” she said, opening the door. “But I love you.”

He shot her an exasperated look. “Do I really have to be Sebastian next weekend?”

“No,” she laughed, shaking her head. “Asher is Sebastian. You’re Flounder.”

“Mom!”

With a grin on her lips, she got in the car.

But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t worried about Aiden.

Or Tate.

Or even her dinosaur of a husband at home, who might or might not make it through the play-offs.

About the Author:

My name is Toni Aleo and I’m a total dork.

I am a wife, mother of two and a bulldog, and also a hopeless romantic.

I am the biggest Shea Weber fan ever, and can be found during hockey season with my nose pressed against the Bridgestone Arena’s glass, watching my Nashville Predators play!

When my nose isn’t pressed against the glass, I enjoy going to my husband and son’s hockey games, my daughter’s dance competition, hanging with my best friends, taking pictures, scrapbooking, and reading the latest romance novel.

I have a slight Disney and Harry Potter obsession, I love things that sparkle, I love the color pink, I might have been a Disney Princess in a past life… probably Belle.

… and did I mention I love hockey?

Author Links:

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Web: http://tonialeo.com/

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5255580.Toni_Aleo

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Toni-Aleo/e/B005SSZGTY