#except sometimes it does because i DO love it when dave is a prick that cant help himself when it comes to terrible women.

[vriskabot]

saw you rbed that shipping bingo a while ago so you dont have to answer this but davris?

i woke up got on tumblr immediately and saw this. i will never not answer a question about davris.

[morganaspendragonss]

this is the part where the silence takes hold

in which i say fuck the sparrow academy and dump 1300 words of angst because i’m not over it. 

spoilers for season 2 in case the tags don’t filter it

ao3

Five days after Ben saves the world, there’s a knock on Klaus’s door. He hasn’t really left  his room since they got back to 2019, sometimes venturing out for food or another bottle of Dad’s booze, but he hasn’t spoken to his siblings. 

They’re all staying at the Academy for a while, save Allison who went back to LA to see Claire as soon as she could. Diego and Vanya will probably be leaving soon, too, and then it’ll just be Klaus and Luther and Five. 

He should be happy. They saved the world twice over, all in one fell swoop. Everything is back the way it was. He finally has some peace and quiet - something he’s been searching for his entire life.

Thing is, Klaus kind of hates the quiet.

Quiet means Ben is really gone. He forgets sometimes, and goes to say something, a, “Hey, Ben,” slipping from his lips before the silence drags out and Ben is gone.

So he gets drunk. He plays loud music and ignores his siblings because they don’t get it. How could they? They did their grieving thirteen years ago, or seventeen, depending on how you look at it. 

Five days after Ben saves the world, four days after they come home, there’s a knock at Klaus’s door. He doesn’t answer, hopes whoever it is will go away, but the knocking just becomes more insistent, driving spikes into Klaus’s head.

“Klaus, open the damn door,” Diego calls, impatient. Klaus rolls his head to stare at the door but doesn’t move otherwise. Easier, he thinks, just to wait for Diego to let himself in.

A minute later, he does. He raises an eyebrow at the empty bottles scattered around the room, at Klaus slumped on the bed, but doesn’t appear otherwise surprised. Maybe Klaus would be offended by that if he could even feel anything right now.

“Come on, Klaus,” Diego says, voice unbearably soft this time. “Dinner’s ready, and you haven’t eaten and - Jesus, Klaus, have you just been existing on booze since we got back?”

Klaus shrugs. Turns away from Diego. “Just leave me alone.”

“I’m not leaving until you get your ass out of bed,” Diego says. His hand lands on Klaus’s shoulder and for a second Klaus can pretend it’s Ben. But the hand is too heavy and too big and the grip too tight as it tries to pull him up and out, and Klaus tries to fight against it. 

Problem is, Diego is far stronger than Klaus. He yanks Klaus into a semi-upright position, scowling at him now. “You know,” he comments. “Ben wouldn’t want this for you.”

And Klaus sees red. “Fuck you, asshole!” he yells, summoning all his strength to shove Diego away. “You don’t know what Ben would want, you don’t know shit about him!”

There are tears stinging Klaus’s eyes and Diego looks like he just slapped him across the face. Klaus would feel bad, but now his anger is draining out of him, leaving his chest yawning and empty. Ben’s disapproving face mocks him in his periphery, but Klaus blinks and he is gone, really gone, Ben is gone.

Klaus sighs and slumps against the wall. “He would be so pissed at me,” he says quietly, just as Diego turns to leave. “You know I was sober for three years back in the 60s? Fell off the wagon just after I met Allison.”

Diego half turns towards him, body still tight with anger. Klaus can’t blame him for that. “Oh yeah?” he asks, voice carefully controlled. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know,” Klaus says airily, waving a lazy hand. “Lost love, 60’s homophobia. The usual.”

Diego doesn’t seem to know how to respond, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. “The sucks, bro,” he gets out eventually. 

Klaus scoffs. “Yeah.”

“And…” He shuffles awkwardly, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “I’m sorry about Ben.”

Something breaks in Klaus’s chest, an overwhelming pain erupting in his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut and curls into himself, tears beginning to slip down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, too,” he chokes out. “I shouldn’t have said he wasn’t there, I should have - I could have manifested him.”

“What?” Diego breathes. 

Klaus nods, a sob escaping him. “All those years we were together, he missed all of you. He hated being a ghost, hated that I was the only one he could talk to. I think he even hated me sometimes.”

“Klaus -”

“He was right to,” Klaus interrupts. “I was an asshole, and he was too, that was why I didn’t say anything. I wanted to get back at him. But now he’s gone, and he never even got to talk to you all, and it’s my fault, Diego, why did I do that?”

Diego is silent for a long time, so long that Klaus begins to suspect he’s left. Normally, he relies on Ben to tell him these things, but that’s the point of the silence, isn’t it?

“Well…” The floorboards creak, making Klaus jump as Diego comes to sit next to him. “I got to talk to him, you know? When he was -”

“Possessing me, yeah.” Klaus sighs again, looking up at Diego. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

Diego frowns. “He - What?”

“I didn’t want him inside me,” Klaus explains tiredly. “Can you imagine, having your body violated so...thoroughly? And by your dead brother, no less? I let him in for a little while because I felt bad for him, you know? The guy just wanted to talk to a girl, but then things got weird and you showed up, and I told him to get out of me but he wouldn’t. Fucking hell, Diego, it hurt.”

Diego looks suddenly guilty. “I told him to stay inside you,” he whispers, horrified. “Shit, Klaus, I’m sorry, I- Is that what happened at the bar with Dad?”

“Yeah, except he didn’t warn me that time. Asshole.”

“Ben was always the nice one,” Diego says. “When we were kids. Hard to believe he would do that.”

Klaus shrugs. “Not really. Being dead did wonders for his personality.”

Diego’s got that look on his face - not-quite guilt, not-quite grief, but somewhere between the two. “He sounds like a prick,” he says after a long while. 

Klaus laughs, mixed with a sob. “Yeah. Yeah, he was,” he says. “He would have fit right in with the rest of us.”

“Yeah.” There are tears in Diego’s eyes now, and Ben smiles in the corner of Klaus’s eye. Then Klaus blinks, and the smile is gone with the rest of him.

“How do you do this?” he asks Diego. He waves his hand - Goodbye - and hopes Diego will understand. 

“Do what?”

No luck, then.

Klaus chews on his lip, fingers tangling in his bedsheets. “You know. Move on. Say goodbye. I’ve never… Not even with Dave, but I’ve never had to - you know - with Ben. He’s just always there. And now…”

“Now he’s not,” Diego finishes quietly. He takes a trembling breath. “Man… I don’t know. It takes time. But we can help you through it. If you come down for dinner.”

Diego stands and holds his arm out to Klaus. Klaus stares at him in disbelief. “You’re a dick, you know that, right?”

Diego shrugs. “Makes two of us. Come on, you can’t change what we did back then, but maybe you can make up for it by telling us all about Ben.”

Klaus hesitates. He eyes up Diego’s arm, then glances at Ben’s corner. It’s empty, but of course it is.

Ben is gone, after all.

Klaus waits a second more, letting the hurt overwhelm him for a second, hurt over Ben and Dave, both dead, both gonegonegone. Ben is gone to a place even Klaus can’t reach, and he’s not sure he could summon Dave if he tried (and, oh, how he’s tried), and all he’s got left is memories. 

Ben’s smile. Dave’s laugh. 

Ben’s bitching. Dave’s embrace. 

Memories. His to keep. His to share. 

He takes Diego’s arm.

[autumnblogs]

Day 1: A Young Man Stands In His Bedroom

I don't expect Day 1 to be too eventful, but I'm also pretty wordy.

https://homestuck.com/story/3

Homestuck has this sort of weird relationship with the idea of "Started just now, but always was that way" that I think probably is pretty important to the way it tackles cultural narratives overall. Growing up, cultural narratives have a huge effect on our day to day lives, but we're not really cognizant of them until they are right up in our faces. That's my thesis, by the way, or at least one of them. Homestuck is a story about stories. That's not the only thing that Homestuck is about, and it might not even be the most important thing it's about, but that is one of the things that it's about.

Or maybe I'm full of horseshit. Wouldn't be the first time. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/4

I like Homestuck’s character intros. They’re cute. Instead of actually characterizing these characters much, they have a pretty strong tendency to sort of create the background radiation of the comic. Like, I don’t think that John and Karkat ever bully each other about the fact that they’re mutually bad at coding, which would be hilarious, but there are loads of weird programming gags in Homestuck that I think are a part of the universe because John is bad at programming as much as they’re there because Andrew was into Comp Sci at this time.

https://homestuck.com/story/6

The first of our funky gaming abstractions. Homestuck is a story about stories, and the kind of story that it’s often about (when it’s not about highly abstract cultural narratives) is the video game. Especially the point and click adventure game.

There are a lot of weird things about Homestuck’s story and themes only because it engages with video games the way it does. I’ll come back to that. As long as I’m writing, this, I might as well take a minute to say that I think this whole sequence of screwing around with puzzling and slightly irritating gaming abstractions loses a lot of people on an archival read. It lost me a couple of times before I was able to get past it and lose the next eight years of my life to Andrew Hussie. Nowadays though, there’s something endearing about it. I like watching John scramble around.

https://homestuck.com/story/12

I’ll never get tired of Dad Egbert. Is he the Platonic Ideal of Dadliness? Maybe. Dadliness, and more generally, Manliness, is a lens we can look at a lot of John’s character arc through. His room, as we’ll see in a few panels, is full of Manly dudes, and I think he cares a lot about being a manly guy - a romantic lead, a badass, maybe some day even a Dad himself. Maybe.

https://homestuck.com/story/16

This one is a new train of thought for me.

Back when this was written, I gather the comic was still being written pretty much entirely off of prompts, and I think it’s probably just part of Andrew’s playfully antagonistic writing style, at least in a Doylist sense. I wonder how much, though, retroactively, we can read the narrative’s general aggression toward John as being his own self-criticism? Sometimes the Narrative in Homestuck is Andrew Riffing. Sometimes it’s a character’s own internal monologue. Often, I think it’s probably both.

 Maybe I’ll keep a tally of how often it happens.

https://homestuck.com/story/26

Our first sign of Dave. I think it’s funny how people glom onto some things and not others. Apple Juice has become practically Dave’s Trademark Favorite Food if you look at some peoples’ perception of the character. I don’t think people think nearly as much about how much of a surly jackass John is to his pals in early acts. He’s a little mean. Is it early installment weirdness? It certainly adds character to him.

:(

Poor Dave. Maybe I’m reading too much into this. I probably am.

https://homestuck.com/story/42

These don’t really exist any more. GameBro is one of those things about Homestuck (like John remarking on Black Presidents) that really makes it a period piece. It is, as another commentator put it, aggressively contemporary. I remember drooling over gaming magazines when they were still in print but never really buying any due to a lack of allowance funds. My friends and I shared a moment of silence when Nintendo Power went out of print.

https://homestuck.com/story/63

Rose appears. This is a character I’ve got a love hate relationship. I think out of everyone in the comic, Rose is the one I’m the most like. We’ll come back to her later. Not a lot to say here except “A Weakness for Insufferable Pricks” is a collection of syllables I’ve always enjoyed. And that Rose knows her friend’s quirks well.

https://homestuck.com/story/78

The narration is, once again, weirdly aggressive to John. (Also the Peanut Gallery thing is a cunning bit of wordplay.)

https://homestuck.com/story/82

I like this page. It’s weird and eerie. If anybody has a good take on what it means, I’m all ears. (The other houses in John’s neighborhood have always made me wonder things like, what is John’s neighborhood like? Does he have any other friends? Any neighbors who are important to him? It never comes up, so I think the answer is probably no. What about School? Does he go? He never mentions any school chums. John is a pretty lonely kid.)

https://homestuck.com/story/90

Teenagers are little shits. I certainly was one, although my general shittiness didn’t flower until I was probably between 16 and 18 years old. I was at least well behaved before that. Anyway, I think your relationship with your parents can be adversarial at the best of times when you’re John’s age. That’s always been my interpretation of Strifes, but maybe there’s more to it. John’s is pretty mild. Some of the later ones, less so.

https://homestuck.com/story/103

The Narrative gets weirdly aggressive toward John again.

https://homestuck.com/story/109

Maybe I should watch some of these movies at some point so I can be in on the joke. I don’t think I’ve watched any of John’s favorite movies, actually.

https://homestuck.com/story/132

John and Rabbits are related to John in at least two ways - magicians pull rabbits out of hats, Nic Cage puts bunnies back into boxes. John’s a bit flighty like a rabbit too. Like the legendary lapine hero Elahraira, one of John’s main strategies as the Heir of Breath is avoidance - he runs away. There’s kind of a basic tension between that and the fact that, as a self-styled manly dude, John is also, at times, pretty confrontational.

https://homestuck.com/story/153

I’ve always had an interest in like, the specific way Homestuck characters talk - getting a feel for what words they use, what words they would probably never use. Rose goes for a plethora of multisyllabic words, and then occasionally peppers her pesterlogs with Buffy Speak and profanity.

https://homestuck.com/story/154

I think they’re elegant too, Rose.

https://homestuck.com/story/171

Of all the kids, Rose uses fuck more than any other profanity. Karkat uses it more than Rose does, but a higher percentage of Rose’s curse words are fuck compared to all the curse words she uses. Just a fun fact.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Rose is the only main character to definitively end up in a stable romantic relationship by the end of the main comic. Girl has fornication on her mind.

As long as I’m on the subject of romance and fornication, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to bring up the other theme I’m going to riff on in my exploration of Homestuck a lot - Reproduction. Shipping is a bit part of the Homestuck fandom, and not for no reason - all these kids have finding a mate on their mind, and the idea of each other as potential romantic partners is one of the very first things anybody brings up - it’s the first thing Dave talks about in his very second conversation with John.

:)

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy pretty much any time John and Rose talk to each other? I am not a Grimdorks shipper, but I’ve always been of the opinion that John and Rose are closer with each other than they are with their other respective relationships. Besties.

https://homestuck.com/story/199

More narrative aggression for John. 

https://homestuck.com/story/217

It is a matter of critical importance to me that Rose’s Room is messy and her bed is unmade. We learn quite a bit about the aesthetics Rose is going to bring to the story here, but my favorite is that Rose’s room is a fucking disaster.

Anyway, I think that’s about all from me tonight. I’m about an hour out from the end of my shift. I’m largely going to be doing these while I work, since I’ll be at my computer anyway, waiting for jobs to come my way. 

This is Cam signing off, alive, and not alone.

[hazkiwislutt]

chapter 5: building up, the first fight, and reassurance

{ hey friends!! here’s chapter five, and i’m not going to lie, this was a whole mess, but the next chapter will be better hehe! i hope you enjoy! }

There comes a time in every relationship that leads up to the First Fight: the first one of many (if the couple makes it through) that’s filled with hurtful words and intense emotions, a buildup of pain, sadness, annoyance, jealousy, and any other ugly feeling you could conjure. It’s the first fight that makes you realize the person you’re with is real, and tangible, and three-dimensional. It makes you realize the person you’re with has more sides to them than the one you see in the honeymoon phase. It makes you realize they’re human, and they’ve got some sharp bits to them, but if all goes well, you realize you don’t really mind that they do.

Y/N certainly doesn’t mind that Harry has some sharp bits. She figured she should find all of them and prick her fingers if she wanted to keep Harry around for a long time, which she so desperately wanted to do.

But things had been hard, lately, and Y/N couldn’t help but be frustrated with Harry, her lovely, caring, sweet boyfriend Harry, who she’d been dating in secret for nearly five months.

Living as a celebrity wasn’t easy and living as a celebrity dating another celebrity was even harder. They had been meticulous and careful about not letting their relationship reach anybody else’s ears except for Niall, Andrew, Hannah, and Laura.

It made the near five months they’d been together so far a joyride. Both of them were on downtime since they were still both working on their prospective future albums, which meant there was a lot of time in the studio by day, and a lot of cute dates and cuddles by night. Y/N couldn’t believe she was able to come home everyday to someone so amazing, but she thanked whatever universal force for letting Harry be her person.

Except, it was hard to see your person in public, and have them pretend to not know you.

They were attending a fundraiser event that was raising money for LGBT kids in need of aid that was put on by a mutual friend in the fashion industry. Y/N and Harry had gotten ready in a flurry at his house after an impromptu lovemaking session (“Bloody hell, we’re going t’be late, love… How… How did yeh panties get stuck on the fan?”) but had left and arrived at different times.

He’d arrived twenty minutes before Y/N, wooing the crowd and making everyone in the room swoon with his charisma, but as soon as he felt her presence, he’d screeched to a halt mid-conversation and was baffled by her beauty, as if it were the first time he were seeing her all over again. She wasn’t wearing anything terribly fancy; it was an elegant maroon turtleneck paired with black leather pants and high heels, but Harry didn’t care.

His attention was turned back to his conversation as the person he was talking to cleared his throat (Dave? Ben? Or was it Jeremy?), and he stumbled to finish his response. Y/N had caught him gaping at her, and lightly giggled as she flicked her hair and shot him a small smile before disappearing into the crowd of guests.

…

Y/N hadn’t seen Harry since she’d arrived. She’d greeted the hostess and went to go stack her plate with food (Harry had tired her out) before engaging in conversation with a few models that had been in her music video a year ago. After situating herself with a drink, she decided she’d go find him and see what he was up to.

Y/N padded around the hall, glancing around the room but not having any luck in spotting him. She decided to finish her drink and check her appearance in the bathroom, but upon turning the corner into the small alcove that led to the bathroom, she was motionless as she took in the sight of a pretty red-haired woman, who she could’ve sworn was a model, draped over Harry.

Her head was on his shoulder and she had an arm wrapped around him, clinging to him like saran wrap. Her lips were dangerously close to his pulse, and she was giggling a little too hard at something Harry presumably said. His lips were set in a straight grimace, his eyes looking up to the ceiling, and he stood rigid, but she took no notice. He stiffened even more as his eyes landed on Y/N’s, which were wide as saucers.

“Hi!” Harry breathed, forcing a smile as he gently shrugged off the girl’s arm. He knew better than to rashly lunge for her and hold her, telling her it was alright and that she was the only girl that mattered, which was more than a hundred percent true. The girl–Marissa– was just someone he’d hooked up with a year or two ago, but only because he was sad, and lonely, and drunk.

“Hey,” Y/N said weakly, lifting up a hand as a wave. “Sorry to interrupt, I was just looking for a friend.”

“Yeh weren’t interrupting anythin’, love.” He said it casually enough, but he hoped she got the message, especially with her name attached to the ending. Y/N nodded, before excusing herself.

Harry felt nauseous as Marissa kept her face buried in his neck; it was all sorts of wrong, since Y/N was the only girl allowed to do that.

“Know her?” She purred, probably trying to sound appealing, but to Harry, it just sounded sickening.

“No,” he whispered, “But ‘ve gotta go.”

…

“Love,” Harry started, crawling onto his bed slowly, as if any sudden movement would cause Y/N to run away. She was simply laying in his bed, reading a novel. She hadn’t said anything about the fiasco when he’d come home. She’d left before him, and he’d found her just getting out of the shower, greeting him with a cheerful, “Harry!” He didn’t like it one bit, because he knew what she saw rubbed her the wrong way a little bit. He knew it would do the same to him.

“Hm?” She hummed in response, brow furrowed as she chewed on her lip, immersed in thought.

“About earlier,” he continued, but was stopped by Y/N rolling over and pressing a finger to his lips. She shook her head adamantly.

“Don’t. It’s fine. It’s what we agreed on, baby.”

She rolled back over and continued reading her book, sighing contentedly as Harry slipped under the covers and spooned her.

…

It wouldn’t have been terrible if something along those lines had only happened once, but it happened again, and again. Several times, between that first time and tonight, which had gone so terribly wrong. She’d meant what she said that first time; they had agreed on keeping it so tightly under wraps, but after so many recurrences, she began to feel frustrated. She didn’t dare say anything to him, though. She didn’t want Harry to think she was being difficult.

It was another party, celebrating Niall’s charity hitting a fundraising milestone. Y/N had arrived before Harry, with Andrew and Hannah in tow, because they’d insisted on a day out and Niall had jumped at the chance for them to join in the celebration.

“Does this shirt make me look funny? I love Koda to death already, but he’s really doing a number on my body.” Hannah pursed her lips and huffed, smoothing her hands over her bump that was in full bloom. She was a week late, and when wasn’t in the studio or moping over Harry’s negligence of her feelings, she was driving between her house and Hannah’s, always wanting to make sure that she was okay.

“You look fine. You’ve got pregnancy glow. I just look like I rolled out of bed.” Andrew retorted, grimacing as he caught a glimpse of himself in the car window next to her.

“You’ve just got the perpetual college student look,” Y/N laughed, pinching his cheek as she shut her door and locked her car.

“Hey! Hannah’s in college, too,” Andrew griped, yanking himself away from her grip and patting his cheek.

“The pregnancy glow cancels it out,” Hannah stuck her tongue out playfully, before looping her arm through both of theirs and beginning to walk up to Niall’s front door.

…

“Andrew, mate, we’ve gotta get a beer in yeh or summat, yeh look like shit.” Niall had bellowed happily when he answered the door, bringing them all in for a big hug and patting Hannah’s bump affectionately. He had an arm heavily slung around Andrew’s shoulders, guiding him to the kitchen before he could protest, and waving farewell to the women.

“I feel like Andie works himself too hard,” Y/N mused thoughtfully, watching as Andrew’s tall, lanky frame seemed to droop under the weight of Niall’s arm.

“I try to tell him, but he doesn’t listen to me. He wants to be an engineer so bad, but I just want him to take a breather,” Hannah tutted in dismay.

“We can talk to him about it. Maybe double-team him. How about you? Your professors treating you okay?”

Hannah had refused to drop out of university when she found out she was pregnant. Kyle was older than her by a few years, and had already graduated. They’d always wanted kids early, but Koda had come along unexpectedly. Hannah was only a few months older than Y/N, after all. But, she refused to drop out, and continued her studies, even with her pregnancy looming above all of it, and Y/N quite admired her best friend’s drive to plow forward.

“Oh, yeah. They’re all fine, and they were going to give me an extension on some projects, but I just turned them all in early. Just ‘cause this baby’s on the way doesn’t mean everything else stops.”

Y/N had to hand it to Hannah; there was no one else she knew with as much grit as her.

Just as she was about to respond, a collective greeting arose from the crowd, and Y/N turned toward the front door, where Harry was coming in. He was wearing his floppy newsboy cap, plaid slacks, black loafers, a white shirt, and a coat to shield him from the winter air. People clapped him on the back, and shook his hand, and he was more than graceful in receiving and returning all of what he was given.

Hannah reached down for Y/N’s hand, prompting her to look back toward her.

“Why don’t we get a drink, hm? Koda wants water… Oh, and whatever that gal over there is eating. He says it smells good.”

Y/N rolled her eyes, before following her toward the kitchen.

…

It was sometime later during the evening when Y/N and Harry found themselves in the same circle of people. Y/N had been talking to a friend who decided they wanted to catch up with another friend, who happened to be talking to Harry.

“Eileen, I haven’t seen you in a quick minute!” Y/N’s friend, Loren, squealed, before dragging Y/N across the room to greet Eileen. Y/N didn’t know her well, but she knew that she was also a singer.

“I know, it’s been a busy few months. This is Harry!” That’s when Y/N registered the fact that Harry’s wrist was clutched tightly in Eileen’s well-manicured hand, and as she looked at his face, he gave a drunken smile with glazed over eyes that crinkled merrily.

“Lovely to meet you, this is Y/N! I don’t know if you all know each other?” Eileen shook Y/N’s hand with her free one, before stepping back and leaning against Harry.

“S’nice to meet yeh, Y/N.” Harry’s voice was a little slurred, and Y/N knew he’d drunk a little more than he needed to.

“Likewise,” she replied tightly.

“So… What’s going on here?” Loren wiggled her eyebrows mockingly before gesturing to Eileen’s hold on Harry.

“Oh, just a bit of fun, you know,” Eileen giggled, shooting a coy glance at Harry that Y/N was surprised to see returned by him. Eileen turned her face into his shoulder to stifle another giggle, which Harry mimicked.

“Right, s’nothing serious,” Harry agreed. What the hell was going on?

“I, uh, I just remembered I needed to check on my friend, she’s like… she… she’s pregnant,” Y/N stuttered, walking backwards and hurriedly waving at the group.

She felt her frustration tug on her heartstrings, but the way Harry didn’t seem to care about her departure absolutely severed them.

…

“You about ready to leave? I’m tired.” Y/N had found Hannah in the smaller living room, who had somehow managed to convince Andrew to give her a foot massage.

“Sure,” Hannah replied, stretching leisurely and playfully shoving her foot in Andrew’s face, which caused him to grunt in disgust and surprise, “Just let me use the bathroom first, yeah?”

Y/N nodded, helping her up to her feet. “I’ll go with you. Andie, you mind driving back? My head hurts.”

“Anything for my girl,” he said, standing up from where he kneeled on the rug and ruffling Y/N’s hair. He went to find Niall to say his goodbyes before he went out to start up the car.  

“You’re… sad,” Hannah noted, as her and Y/N walked through people to get to the bathroom hall.

“Just… It’s hard to see your person in public and have them act like they don’t know you at all.”

“I know, girlie, but it’s for the best, isn’t it?”

“I know, I know… But there’s always another person on him, and it’s like just because I told him it was okay, and that we signed up for this, he does it without thinking of me. Wouldn’t he at least set boundaries?”

They’d reached the main bathroom, only to find that it was occupied.

“My bladder is about to burst. You think Niall would mind if we went to the upstairs one?” Y/N shook her head no, before backtracking down the hallway and starting with Hannah up the stairs. She held Hannah’s back, helping her ascend.

“You can’t just let him push you over like that, then. I know you hate confrontation, but with a relationship as complicated as this, you have to talk to each other otherwise it’ll never work.”

“I know, it’s just… I don’t want him to think it’s childish of me to lay down rules because I can’t handle things. Does that make sense?”

“Makes dollars.”

Y/N and Hannah had made it to the end of the hall at the top of the stairs leading to Niall’s master bedroom and bathroom. Y/N pushed the door open, leading Hannah in, before halting abruptly.

“Oh! Y/N! Sorry, we were just talking.” Eileen chirped, smoothing her hair and giving a small wave. Her and Harry were sitting atop Niall’s bed, a reasonable amount of space between them. His eyes were glazed  over and his cheeks rosier than they had been earlier, so Y/N knew he continued to drink. Y/N also knew Harry wouldn’t do anything more than allow people to be cuddly with him, but suddenly, Eileen just being cuddly with him seemed like the end of the world.

Why would he allow himself to be isolated with a girl that was so obviously trying to make a move, when his own girlfriend was at this event too?

“Hey, Eileen. It’s alright,” Y/N said weakly in greeting.

“You guys mind? Pregnant lady with a peanut bladder coming through.” Hannah’s face was set in a scowl as she looked at the two on the bed, and her glare seemed to sober Harry up.

“Uh, sorry, love.” Harry apologized, staggering to his feet, pinning Y/N with his gaze, before sliding past them and out of the room.

“He’s a proper cutie, but he kept going on and on about how he was unavailable. Wouldn’t tell me who, though. I’ve been trying to crack him all night.” Eileen huffed out, standing up as well, before bidding them goodbye.

…

When Harry woke up the next morning, he was in his bed, but something felt wrong. Maybe it was the fact that he had a bit of a headache from last night’s festivities, or the fact that Y/N wasn’t next to him. He’d guess it was the latter.

He got up and stretched his joints creakily, trying to piece back the events of last night. He figured his driver probably took him home, and he had a fuzzy recollection of stumbling into his house, and Y/N helping him into bed.

He dragged himself out of bed and began to walk down the stairs, wondering if she was still here. She seemed angry last night, and Harry knew why, but it was for secrecy’s sake, wasn’t it? Having girls at parties cling to him playfully meant nothing; he only had eyes for Y/N, but he couldn’t let anyone have even a glimmer of a thought that Y/N and him were linked. It was for their own good.

He reached the kitchen, where he found his love sitting on one of the barstool’s at his counter. She was rigid, and Harry felt a bead of guilt in the pit of his stomach.

“Yeh’re still here,” Harry said, his morning voice gravelly and catching in his throat. He cleared it before padding over to situate himself next to her. Normally, he’d nuzzle into her side and give her a kiss, but this morning felt different. It felt wrong.

“I’m… I’m frustrated, H,” Y/N replied softly, fidgeting with her fingers.

“With wha’, love?” Wrong answer, he thought in his head. Of course he knew why.

“You… you’re hurting me a little bit,” she sniffed, tears dotting her waterline as she tried to blink them away rapidly.

“You keep letting people get so close to you, which is fine, but I’m yours and you’re mine and I’m the one that can’t be close to you.”

“We agreed on it, love. Yeh said it yourself.” Harry didn’t want to hurt her, but he valued his privacy. He always valued his privacy.

“I said it, but I never agreed that I’d let my boyfriend prance around with other girls in front of me with no regard for how I feel!” Y/N snapped her neck to face him, eyes ablaze.

“Well, yeh gonna have to agree to tha’ because no one can know about us!” Harry’s voice began to escalate.

“How does that make it okay for you to let other girls get so close to you? It wasn’t just one time! It’s been a handful of times. Am I not enough? I don’t understand why this is so hard!”

“It doesn’t have to be hard f’yeh just calm down.”

“I won’t just let this blow over, Harry. I’ve let it blow over for long enough!”

“I can’t lose yeh,” Harry erupted. He let his head hang, and for a moment the only thing he could hear was Y/N’s sniffles and his shallow breathing.

“I know yeh hurt. I would be too, if I saw other blokes doing the same thing to yeh. But I can’t let anyone have even a fleeting thought tha’ I could be linked to yeh because then I will lose yeh. We don’t live lives tha’ will make this easier. We’ve only been together five months, an’ it’s only going to get harder from here, an’ I’ve never felt like this for anyone, but bloody hell, I really think I love yeh, an’ I don’t want to lose yeh, but if anyone finds out… People will tear us apart, an’ we won’t stand a chance. S’the worst part about living this life. Nothing is yeh own. I want yeh to be mine, an’ only mine, just like I’m all yours.”

Harry was breathing hard now, and Y/N had begun to cry, but for a different reason, because Harry had just told her he loved her.

“I love you,” she whispered, reaching out to grab his hand. He squeezed her hand in his.

“I’m sorry I hurt yeh, love,” he said, “I’ll be better. I’ll be the best for you.”