harlowcharlton

[harlowcharlton]

TEXTING: POPPY

Harlow: Happy Birthday, Poppy! Growing up mighty fast on me, aren’t you? Enjoy your break from tour, take a step back and take it all in. And eat lots of cake today, little Miss.

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: @ivy.rogers @raffreyes I was thinking more Wannabe, but sure!

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Dusting off this old thing.

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: Do you know any Spice Girls?

↳INSTAGRAM: @raffreyes uploaded a photo:

Dusting off this old thing.

[harlowcharlton]

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You can always tell when Miss @annabellebaxter has paid us a visit to the stables. Don’t our girls look lovely?

[harlowcharlton]

At Raff's words, Harlow's eyes widened a fraction. If Rafferty Reyes was a closed book, Harlow was, on the contrary, wide open. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey if you got him going, especially when it came to the things he loved. And Harlow loved horses, had done since he was a young boy and had been allowed to lead his childhood horse, Starlight, around the paddock by her reins, despite being about six years old. His Momma and his Daddy had always trusted the kind temperament of the horses on their farm, and made an effort to make sure Harlow treated them with a healthy dose of respect, rather than fear. Dogs might have been a man's best friend, but Harlow figured horses were his. Still, he had no idea when he'd been whittering on about all of this, Raff had even been listening.

"Yeah, like me and my horses, I guess." he laughed, rubbing the back of his neck, an awkward tell of his. It also was funny to think that Rosie took after Harlow in any capacity, "Still, she's so much like her Momma."

Raff's sharp tone brought a blush springing up to his cheeks. It was clear that he didn't see himself as a Father figure in any sort of capacity to the young woman. But truth be told, Harlow was rather close with Ivy, probably a lot closer than he let on. Whilst he was sure most men his age - men cruder and more lecherous than he - would brag about a thirty-one year old warming their bed, the teasing did nothing but make Harlow squirm with embarrassment. Truth was, despite the nearly twenty year age difference, Harlow just really liked the girl. She was more of a friend than bedfellow, making him laugh and showing him all the secret spots of the city only she could uncover. And they talked a lot, about life, about work. He was sure Raff would be surprised to learn how favourably she talked about him when her guard was down.

"Naw, you're good for her. She likes you a lot. You didn't hear it from me though, alright?" he chuckled, preoccupying himself with the bottle infront of him, the label already peeling with persperation.

A yip of surprise was startled out of him, the sound of the smashed glass drawing the attention of not only him, but various other patrons. He doubted a little broken glass was an uncommon occurence in a place like The Black Dog, but people looked up, the flow of conversation seemed to stop as everyone's heads spun this way and that, looking around for the perpetrator.

"Shit, sugar, are you alright?"

Harlow straightened up abruptly, kicking his chair back and sending the beer hurtling across the sticky countertop. He briefly heard Laurel's laughter ringing like bells in his ears. Clumsy oaf, she'd chide, all fingers and thumbs. He doubted any of Laurel's sweet words would be enough to placate Raff now, who was looking at him with a face like thunder, standing amongst the shattered remnants of the glass he'd dropped. His earlier words had meant to be playful, but they had seemed to have the adverse effect, sucking all of the air out of the room.

This wouldn't be the first time this had happened to him, a proposition gone sour. Not that Harlow had been propositioning Raff, not really, he'd just... gotten too comfortable. Fallen into the trap of closeness with the other man. He winced, remembering the way the pet name had fallen from his lips, suddenly finding himself at a loss for words. He'd never taken Raff to be the kind of guy who would be... so malicious when flirted with by a queer man, but the way he'd rounded on Harlow had the palms of his hands sweating and his throat dry.

"M'sorry." he babbled, hands dancing uselessly mid-air as he found himself torn between the desire to run away, and help clean up the mess. "You weren't. I guess, I was flirtin' with you a little bit, and I got carried away."

Something soured in his stomach at the harsh spit of Raff's words, feeling like a damn fool. The other man looked like a spooked horse, nostrils flaring and ready to rise up on his hind legs. Harlow took a step back, his feet trying their hardest to stick to the floor as he grabbed for his coat, a sorry look on his face. Raff was straight, he was married, and he was decidedly not interested.

"I know. Damn, I'm sorry." he murmured, voice low with shame and panic. "I'm not one of those guys, I swear."

Clutching his jacket to his chest, Harlow anxiously added, "I'm gonna just, head off - alright?"

“Takes after you then, huh?” Raff said, perhaps too quickly, when Harlow spoke of his daughter’s love of animals. He didn’t know if that had been too much of a tell or not, all but admitting that he’d paid more attention to Harlow’s own interests than any mention of his little girl. Awkwardly scratching the tip of his ear, he gestured vaguely in Harlow’s direction. “You with your horses and all.”

He doubted that Harlow would take much offence to Raff’s behaviour, the man’s cookie-cutter kindness being one of the most startlingly blunt and unchangeable things that Raff had ever come across. It seemed that he had a nice thing to say about everyone, even grumpy bartenders with shaggy hair and persistent scowls. Raff still wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, no matter the amount of times he found himself face to smiling face with the other man, who looked near-enough pleased to see Raff on every one of those occasions. Not even Ted had been as content to be in Raff’s company time and time again. All in all, Harlow Charlton was an enigma that quite honestly made Raff feel sick to his stomach sometimes.

At least he was capable of saying things that annoyed Raff though, proven by his comment about Ivy.

“How I am with Ivy?” he frowned, not quite understanding. He wrinkled his nose at the thought of being, in any way, something akin to a father in Ivy’s eyes. He was sure she would also meet the suggestion with a revolted, full-body shudder. “Maybe you’ve been drinking too much.”

When it came to Ivy, Raff thought that he had a solid understanding of how their relationship worked. She would delight in getting under his skin, her youthful grin always bordering on more of a smirk as Raff once again tried and failed to hide how much her wicked sense of humour irritated him. The only comfort their dynamic brought him was that it was one of the few constants in his life, Ivy’s presence as a thorn in his side, one of those failsafes that he doubted would ever be upended and turn into something he should be more concerned about.

Something that felt a lot like satisfaction sparked  in his chest when he saw the way Harlow smiled as soon as Raff presented the new beer bottle. However, that same sensation continued to swell until it almost hurt, Raff realising that he had been the reason for the other man looking so happy. It had been a simple act, meant to cheer Harlow up, not act like this. Like Raff had handed him the last bottle of water in the whole damn desert.

Looking away quickly, he busied himself with cleaning up other empty pint glasses when Harlow’s words floated over to him.

“You wouldn’t be flirting with me now, would ya, Raff?”

He dropped one of the pint glasses and winced even before it smashed on the floor. It wouldn’t be the first time a glass had ended up shattered into tiny pieces on the floor of The Black Dog and he doubted that it would be the last, but it was definitely the first time it had happened and it be Raff’s fault. He was more careful than that, prone to shaking his head and cursing under his breath in annoyance when Richard’s frequent clumsiness had Raff ambling towards the cleaning cupboard for the bucket and broom yet again. 

His head flipped up to narrow his eyes at Harlow, checking to see if he’d been wrong this whole time and the kindness of the other man that he’d been internally praising was actually some ruse. He couldn’t see any traces of mockery on Harlow’s face, but the panic and embarrassment that Raff felt at that moment wasn’t helping him be gracious enough to grant the other man the benefit of the doubt and he scowled once more.

“Why would I be flirting with you?” he asked, bluntly, malice licking at his tone the way it often had when Ted would bite back at hecklers after a show, the ones who would throw slurs their way just because they were two men singing together. As if only men who took it up the ass as they had shouted could sing songs as a duo. It hadn’t mattered to Ted that what he and Raff got up to late at night was much more of a condemnation than getting up onstage to sing a song they’d written together, he’d always seen it fit to react with violence anyway. Raff wasn’t going to throw a punch Harlow’s way, wouldn’t dream of it and the thought made him feel nauseous. But he knew how he must look at that moment: wild-eyed with an ugly sneer on his face, like he could blow up at any moment. He was familiar with that because it was how Ted had often looked. Raff hadn’t realised just how much his late friend had rubbed off on him.

“I’m fucking married, Harlow,” he spat under his breath, immediately turning to grab the broom from the closet in the hopes that the burning of his cheeks would die down quickly enough.

[harlowcharlton]

JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN as JOE KESSLER The Boys S04E03 "We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here"

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: God bless the soul who was on hand with a camera!

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this will literally never happen again btw best thing that’s ever happened to me!!!!

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow liked this.

@howdyharlow: Gorgeous!

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get u a girl that looks at u the way i look at miss marley fr

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: I hope you know I can’t show my face in Whisk & Wonder anymore!

↳INSTAGRAM: @ivy.rogers uploaded a photo:

september recap anyone? 1) @maxhayashi16 is obsessed with me what can i say? 2) got a pie made for @marleybosswitch 3) the man in question @howdyharlow 4) @chessythrifts is just sexy idk 5) new book??? @loudenverauthor 6) new dress 7) stole max's jersey because he said it looks sexier on me (and he's right) 8) literally no reason 9) this pic actually made me cry btw 10) @wardowrites lowkey best til last i kinda popped off w this pic?

[harlowcharlton]

Harlow already knew that young Miss Marley had a set of lungs on her, given the way she commanded a room with her booming voice and her loud, infectious laughter, but it was still a shock to hear just how her sobs travelled across the bookshop's floor. Marley cried with reckless abandon, as though her heart were fit to break. It was the kind of crying you only did when you were in immense pain or the world was ending or you'd been listening to Linda Ronstadt on repeat for the past hour (Okay, perhaps that particular situation was only applicable to Harlow himself, and at the end of the day, not that entirely dire). Various heads lifted to dictate the source of the hollering, torn away from the paperback they were perusing or the Americano they were enjoying, faces etched with surprise or concern and in some cases, annoyance. Over the top of Marley's blonde head, Harlow scowled at those people, saving his rarely-brought-out mean mug for only the rudest of the rude.

Squatting at her side, he tried his hardest to comfort both a tear-stricken Marley and a fussy Bucket, both who looked as though a proverbial raincloud had been dumped over their heads. Bucket fussed to be by his owner's side, the young woman chewing on her bottom lip in an evasive manner as Harlow waited for her to answer. If Harlow knew anything about parenting, he knew young ladies were never forthcoming when you pushed. There'd been various occasions when he'd tried to coax Rosie into telling him about a problem at school or a boy she liked, only to slam her bedroom door in his face. Laurel, however, who always waited for their strong-willed daughter to come to her first, always got answers.

"Sick?" Harlow echoed, the corner of his mouth tugging down into a frown. Sick was never a good word, and the way Marley said sick even less so. When she clarified, the frown on his face quickly evened out, his mouth falling open into a soft 'o'. He didn't know what kind of addiction and he wasn't going to press, but mentally he was already sorting out the various things you could be addicted to onto a sliding scale of bad to worse. He tried his hardest to shake those thoughts free. There was no scale you could measure human struggle on.

"I'm real sorry to hear that, sweetheart." Harlow breathed, instinctively leaning forward to unstick a wet strand of hair from her tear-stained cheek, tucking it swiftly behind her ear. "I'm glad to hear your Daddy's getting the help he needs."

Harlow's knees beginning to ache, he slowly lifted himself into the seat opposite her, making a scuffing sound with the chair leg as he pulled it closer to Marley, so their knees almost touched. His stomach plummeted at the thought of Marley in a shelter - he knew women's shelters were good places, but he also knew just how many people could be crammed in there with such an array of problems, and whilst he hoped all of those women were getting the care and attention he deserved, he also knew the state of the US government and the funding for those kinds of places.

"You got no other family to stay with?" he asked, trying his best to keep his tone neutral, impassive. "So, you're what, you and Bucket gonna stay with Billy?"

He chewed his bottom lip, pondering over that solution, wondering just how many people had let Marley down before she'd made her way to Billy.

"You not got an auntie? A cousin?" he asked. He thought briefly of Marley's close friends, remembered Diego was on tour. "I know Billy would love to have you, honey, but is he really the closest family you got?"

How it had managed to reach this point, Matley didn’t know. Growing up, she’d always been commended for her relentless optimism, her teachers declaring her a joy to have in class, not because of her average grades but apparently because of her leadership skills and the way she would rally her classmates whenever they needed a pep talk. She would joke like the class clown she was until everyone was smiling and her professors, even in high school, always spoke highly of her and the bright future she had ahead of her.

She doubted they’d had this in mind for her, sobbing in the middle of a bookstore with her dog at her feet and nowhere to lay her head that night. She didn’t want Harlow to see her like this. More than anyone, he was the one person she found herself trying to make smile the most. Right now, all she was good for was making a worried frown appear on his face.

Tears blurred her vision as she continued to cry out her frustrations, knowing that she was making a scene but being unable to stop herself. Normally, she didn’t care if all eyes were on her. She acted in a way that often commandeered the attention of a room; what kind of stand-up comedian was she going to be if she couldn’t handle the limelight? This wasn’t some routine she had been working on though, but an impromptu breakdown she couldn’t quite control and her shoulders heaved once more despite the futile attempt to suppress her sobs.

“Harlow, it’s - I can’t.” She shook her head as if trying to refuse his comfort, but the minute he pulled her into a hug, she couldn’t help but collapse against him. Marley wept against his chest in a way she hadn’t since she was six-years-old and had tripped up in her rollerblades, scraping her knees in such a painful manner that she’d burst into tears almost immediately. Her loud caterwauling as the neighborhood boys laughed at her had attracted the attention of her dad who’d come running out of their ground floor apartment to see what all the fuss was about. He’d spotted Marley sprawled on the sidewalk and had immediately rushed over to scoop her up so she could cry against his shoulder. If Marley was remembering correctly, and she had no reason to believe she wasn’t, that was the last time her dad had ever held her like that. Near enough two decades had passed since then and she somehow found it just as easy to wilt against Harlow instead, a wet patch spreading across the front of the man’s shirt.

When he led her over to a table, she had no choice but to comply and sit down. Bucket followed, because of course she did, and she wanted to sob all over again when she realised that he was going to be so confused when she wasn’t around for him to follow. 

Crumpling up the tissues that Harlow had given her, she blew her nose into one of them, the noise ugly and loud, but she’d never pretended to be a lady, has she? Gaze dropping down to her lap, she bit her lip when Harlow pressed for details, bringing up her dad in such an innocent way, she couldn’t find it in herself to lie.

“I’m not living with my dad right now,” she admitted, voice husky and raw from all the crying she’d done. Her cheeks felt sticky-wet from tears and she sighed. “He’s away for a bit, he’s… sick, I guess.”

She knew that saying that would only make Harlow worry, probably conjure thoughts of Marley’s dad in a hospital bed. It didn’t make it any easier for her to tell the truth, but she knew that she should and so she eventually lifted her head and gave Harlow a small what-can-you-do shrug.

“He’s in rehab.”

Bucket’s wet nose pushed itself into the back of her hand and she took comfort in scratching her dog between the ears, trying to ignore the fact that it would be the last time she’d be able to do this for a while. She knew Billy would probably let her visit him whenever she wanted but Marley, who was convinced that people’s affection for her never went without an expiration date, didn’t want to put herself in danger of frequenting his home too much, just in case Billy tired of her prematurely.

“I’ve uh, been staying at this place, this shelter, I guess,” she explained, wiping at her eyes as she fought to regain her composure. “They don’t allow dogs and I thought I could get away with it but then this morning they found Bucket and…” She gave a sad quirk of her lips. “Well, we broke the rules so they kicked us out.”

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: This did make my heart melt, Si. Family above everything, you know?

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got to hang out with the prettiest girl in the world today 💓

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: Always worth getting up early to see my darling Marley first thing!

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got a ride to work this morning, 5 big fat stars on uber, outstanding door to door service. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 @howdyharlow

[harlowcharlton]

MAURICE (1987) dir. James Ivory

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: Tsk, tsk. Poor Ives. You wanna hang out soon, honey?

↳INSTAGRAM: @ivy.rogers uploaded a photo:

category is: looking so hot it forces you to blur the lines between friendship and sex (i haven’t had sex in 3 weeks somebody fall in love with me quick)

update: nvm i got my period we’re all good crisis over

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: This is mighty lovely, Raff.

↳INSTAGRAM: @raffreyes uploaded a photo:

Old photo of Ted.

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: @ivy.rogers You flatter me, little lady.

↳INSTAGRAM: @ivy.rogers uploaded a photo:

sorry this is actually the hottest any man has ever looked

[harlowcharlton]

@howdyharlow: @ivy.rogers … Who is they?

@howdyharlow: @ivy.rogers What words are you saying right now?