#I’m writing and randomly remembering SHIELD doesn’t exist anymore

[shokuto]

Bendis really screwed over Ultimate Marvel disbanding SHIELD. Like, most of everyone is already dead, why would you erase one of the most distinct parts of the setting that advanced so many different plots?

[thewildheroine]

Fly Away |Twenty- Nine|

Warnings: Child injury/death

Word Count: 3.5K

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

A/N: I just started school this week and it’s already killing me so I’m sorry if I don’t post very consistently or if my writing is bad. I hope you guys enjoy and if you like it please reblog loves!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

|Masterlist|

|Part Twenty-Seven|  |Part Twenty-Eight|  |Part Thirty|

____________

I stand on the sidewalk, droplets of rain running past my cotton shirt and the black and blue flannel that is two sizes too big on me. My hair has turned three times darker than usual. The weight of water filling my locks is enough to make the back of my neck ache. Parents and students make this already loud corner of the world even more chaotic. I feel my brain go into overload as I try to focus on one thing.

Instead, a giant wave of wind blows right into my face. The air, thick with water, blows straight into my ears and the noise around me grows ten times in volume. I sigh and bow my head. Droplets of icy water beat right against my nape, pushing fatigue further on me until I feel like dropping onto the sidewalk.

“Hi,” a beautiful voice says, abruptly drawing my attention away from all the obnoxious noise. I’m taken aback when I turn to face the kindest face I’ve ever seen. Her cinnamon lips drawn back on her find face to show me a smile. Hands the color of honey are holding onto each other. She holds her head high, seemingly unfazed by the rain. And her eyes, little orbs of purple that are gleaming with light. She keeps up her chin and extends her small hand towards me.

“You’re Y/N, right?” she wonders. I narrow my eyes and nod slowly, untrusting of anyone who comes up and talks to me so randomly. “I’m Heather. I’m in Mrs. Binford’s class too.”

My arms curl around my torso, this place that I’ve appeared in somehow both hot and freezing at the same time. This place vacillates between the two extreme temperatures as I wander around, unsure of where I’m going exactly. I actually don’t even know where I am for that matter. All I know is that this entire plain of existence is pure, blaring white. For a moment I try to shield my eyes, but the light attacks from all directions, and I defeatedly drop my hand back onto my side.

I continue watching the girl in front of me, who I infer is Indian based on the familiarity between her and the second-grade teacher next to our class who speaks with her native accent proudly and will occasionally pass out embroidered silk in history so that we can all inspect it. My hand raises and I shake Heather’s hesitantly. My sleeves are pulled past the base of my fingers so she can’t feel the thick scars lying just beneath.

“Are you waiting for your parents?” Heather asks and looks at the crosswalk as well. I study the way the rain rolls down her tan cheek. Little white freckles are sprinkled gently under her eyes and across the bridge of her nose reminding me of stars. For being just as young as me she seems otherworldly, and although my dad has never encouraged me to believe in anything besides magic, I know she’s an ancient just from the look of her. She had to have lived millions of lifetimes before this if she can hold her head that high and has such a sing-song voice.

“I’m walking home, actually,” I inform her matter-of-factly and start crossing the street. I’m glad for the constant noise of parents picking up their children disappearing. But Heather follows me, her brown lace-up boots that aren’t meant for the rain splashing into puddles.

“I have to walk a little too,” Heather says while catching up with me. She has to widen her steps to keep up, each pace of mine is a little more than one of her normal ones. “Not home though.”

I cock an eyebrow, surprised to hear that someone my age walks home alone by themselves too. Having become so used to the worried glances from other parents I figured no one else did it.

“You too?”I question. “Your parents let you walk home alone?” Heather laughs abruptly, revealing her pearly white teeth that are all perfectly set into her mouth, not one straying from where it should be. She hikes her backpack up on her shoulders to keep it from falling off.

“Your parents let you walk alone,” she remarks, the bite one would expect in a comment such as that non-existent. The only thing I can find in her whole soul is pure compassion. A love that feels more like family than anything I’ve ever known. “Anyways,” Heather begins and casts her gaze up to a sleek black crow that caws on a telephone wire above us, “we’re not walking alone anymore.”

My fingers dig into my sides, desperate to provide more warmth. I can feel bruises forming under the intensity of my grip so I force my hands up to my face and breathe into them. As I’m doing so an idea pops into my mind. I focus my thoughts and prepare to conjure my magic, only there is nothing to be conjured. All I find within myself is a void of what used to be there. An immortal black hole that looms within, simply waiting for the best moment to take the rest of me away.

I drop my hands enough to stare right at my scarred palms. The angry mark that stretches across the skin to serve as a reminder of what I used to have. Of what I used to be. All I can do is wonder what I am now.

“Oh.”

I nod, my thoughts racing through my naturally anxious mind. Mine and Heather’s eyes stay connected a moment longer before I look back down at the sidewalk. The water has become much less of a menace and even the rain doesn’t seem so troubling anymore. I start walking with Heather, this time slowing down so we can walk side by side.

“So,” I drone awkwardly, still very much unsure on how these “social cues” and “conversations” work, “if you’re not walking home then where are you going.” Heather points forward, not once stopping so she can point out a giant brick building a little way down the road. I eye the giant sports fields and the tall black gates. A blue and yellow flag whips around in the rain wildly.

“My brother is waiting for me there. Midtown high school,” she tells me, the topic already making her excited. “It’s a school for super smart kids. It’s called a ‘STEM’ school.” I think on that for a second, my eyes still fixated on the building.

Tears sting at my eyes now. I feel the need to drop onto the ground and let the chaotic temperature shock me to death. My feet stop moving and I stand in the middle of this infinite wasteland that is nothing more than an abyss to me. I feel my fists shaking by my sides; something that would’ve let my magic loose minutes earlier.

Or has it been hours? I try to think of where I was last. My head to turns to see where I came from but all I see is the white slate. Maybe it’s been more than just hours. I might’ve been wandering this vast place for days, weeks, months. Maybe I’ve been here for years. Maybe all I am is a distant memory to the people I once cared about. Maybe… they’re all already gone and I’m the last one left

“Do you want to go there?” I ask Heather, genuinely curious and not just acting on the few pleasantries I’ve learned. Heather’s smile grows and she nods ecstatically.

“Yeah!” she exclaims, her voice becoming a melody. “I want to be one of those cool hackers like in the spies movies I watch with my dad.” Heather turns towards me and grabs my shoulders all of the sudden. It’s like the joy coming off of her in waves radiates into me, making a smile of my own appear. “What about you? What do you wanna do? Maybe science? I think you’d be good at chemistry. My brother hates that class, but I think you’d be awesome. I quickly become overwhelmed because of her pure curiosity and excitable attitude. My mouth opens then closes, and then I look back at the school.

“I like making stuff,” I reply, thinking off all the things I’ve conjured with magic. Machines, and animals, and plants. “Is there anything for that?” Heather’s smile widens even more.

“Engineering!” she shouts loud enough for the entire block to hear. “You could totally do that! We can go to Midtown together and you can make the machines and I can put the computer stuff into them. We could be a spy team!” I watch as Heather explains what we will be doing the next ten years of our lives, a strange adoration I’ve never known lighting up everyone neuron in my brain.

I run my hands through my tangled hair, yanking some strands out of my school with a soft snapping noise that I can only ignore. Tears begin to fall from my bottom lashes and onto my hot cheeks. My eyes snap around wildly, hoping that if I look hard enough some sort of exit may appear before me. There is nothing though. Just a void for me to lose my mind in. A process that is nearly complete already.

I sit on the creaky swings with Heather. Her raven hair is blown back by the intense winds, revealing how her lavender eyes have focused on something far in the distance. There is a thick book in my lap. One that my teacher recommended that I didn’t read since it was so advanced. My eyes aren’t on the text though. They’re on my best friend of seven months who has not spoken a single word throughout the entire day. I huge feat for her.

“Y/N?” Heather murmurs her first word of the day. I can barely catch my name before it’s taken away by the wind. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

A crow caws somewhere. My head lifts upwards and I shoot my bloodshot eyes around to find the source. The tears stop falling and I finally have a moment to breathe in and out, accepting the air that has somehow turned to a consistent temperature of about twenty degrees. A smile spreads over my lips as I stare towards an invisible horizon, prepared to see a beacon of hope in a place that I believed sucked hope dry.

I’m immediately taken aback by Heather’s question. My eyes study Heather whose brows have been knitted together as she gazes at the hazy horizon with clouds building over every skyscraper in sight.

“I guess so.” I remember when I first met her. How I automatically knew that she was an old soul by the way she held herself and spoke. To this day, I’m still a firm believer of that fact. “Why are you asking?" Heather bites the inside of her cheek, asking herself whether or not she should answer.

“Last night my brother said that it was all a lie. My religion,” she informs me. I twist the chains of my swing further so I can face her entirely. “He said there is no Kali or Ganesha and that there definitely isn’t reincarnation. He said it’s all a big fat lie to keep me from being bad.” I see the tears rimming her gleaming purple eyes. It takes every ounce of control I have in my small body to keep my panic from revealing itself.

I push myself forward on the swing, taking my time to think of an honest answer for Heather because that is what she deserves. “I think he could be right,” I answer, “but I also think that you could be right. I don’t think we’re meant to know for sure if there is someone special out there watching over us.” I bite my lip and shrug, taking a moment to close my book. “That wasn’t very nice of him to say that though, and I think that’s what made him wrong. No one knows that truth for sure. We just have faith. Some people have faith that there are gods, others have faith that there is one god, and some people have faith that there isn’t. We can only have faith in what we believe is right.” I watch the skyline too now, the beauty of the sun dipping below the buildings unbelievable.

The caw grows louder and I can hear the beating of wings as my friend approaches from wherever she may be now.

“You are allowed to believe whatever you want to believe and no one can take that away from you,” I reassure before taking her hand in mine and looking back at the schoolyard where other kids play.

Then we’re silent again. Heather’s raven black hair is blown backward by the wind. We both swing back and forth simultaneously as to not put any strain on each other’s arm.

“I’d like to be reincarnated as a crow,” she mumbles randomly. “I like crows. They’re pretty and smart.” I smile and look at my best friend.

“You’d be a really good crow,” I say back, confidence lining each letter. I think of what I’d like to be reincarnated as. I’ve never taken too much of an interest in most animals until Heather began pointing them all out to me, calling them by both there scientific name and short names. I think if I wanted to be reincarnated as anything, I’d want to be Heather’s sister.

Heather purses her lips, a habit I had noticed her mother doing when she would occasionally pick her up from school. She turns towards me, the chains holding the swing up creaking quietly. “Do you believe in magic, Y/N?” she asks. Her eyes lock onto me. I look down at my muddy shoes as I swing forward a bit, the only thing reminding me not to go so high I could fly away being the strain of Heather’s hand holding mine. Once my feet rub against the wood chips again, sending them flying to the sides, I look around.

“Icarus!” I shout, my voice cracking with every syllable but I find that I don’t care. I can hear my friend coming to me. Her wings flapping as hard as possible to reach me.

I twist towards Heather again, this time an intensity has settled into my eyes. “You have to promise not to tell anyone, okay Heather?” My friend gives me a confused look. “You need to pinky promise you will never, ever tell another soul about what I’m going to show you. Do you pinky promise on your life you won’t?” Heather glances around, almost looking for confirmation of what I just said.

“Yes?” she whispers back, the response sounding more like a question than a promise. I accept it though and pull my hands away from the metal chains. Hesitantly, I cup them and place them against my lips, beginning a simple conjuring spell. I watch closely as the young me executes the spell completely and places her two closed hands in Heather’s open ones. Slowly, she opens them, revealing a tiny butterfly.

“Icarus!” I try again. My hair whips over my face as I turn quickly, the direction fo where the noise is coming from still hard to decipher.

Heather’s jaw drops as she looks at my creation. I can’t help the smile that spreads across my lips as she raises the butterfly to inspect the small thing. I giggle lightly and raise her hands into the air, releasing the butterfly so that it may fly somewhere where it will be safe from the strong winds.

“So,” Heather drones as she watches the dark blue creature disappear, “you’re like a witch.” I chuckle again.

“I guess,” I confirm. “I like to think I’m a good witch though.” Heather’s grip on my hand tightens and she pulls me closer, nearly yanking me right off the swing.

“You’re like Glinda,” she yelps joyfully. “Glinda the good witch!”

One last screech is released into the void, the noise reverberating all around me. Then the beating of wings finishes and I’m left to wait and see if what I heard was real and not just me going mad.

All of the sudden I feel a pulse of energy behind me. I don’t dare turn around out of fear of what it could be. My father, done tormenting me and finally collecting me from this place so that he can take me to his "utopia". Dormammu, who has broken his promise and instead trapped me here with him so he may torture me with my own deepest fears. My friends. My family, standing around me, all of them dead because there was never any hope of us all surviving in the first place.

“Hey Glinda,” a melodious voice says behind me, shocking me straight from my imagination. I dare not turn around as I track the familiarity of the voice. I think of how every syllable sounds like a ballad, how there is a natural trill in her voice one would believe took years to master. I think of her voice, an eternal hymn that people sing on their holy grounds. My heart skips a beat, then another, and then it starts racing again, the realization dawning over me like the sun rising over the New York skyscrapers.

I walk past the alleyway next to our deteriorated apartments. It takes me only a second to sense something wrong before I turn down the dark street. Then I see them. My father and Heather. She has her hands weakly raised above her head, fearing and preparing for the next blow.

I stand and take a deep breath before finally turning to look her in the eye. Her pale purple irises stare right into mine, unafraid to look at me after so many years of being apart. She has developed a natural wave in her once entirely straight, obsidian hair. It dips just past her shoulders. Her smile is glowing with pure white teeth, the sight of something so sincere so striking in this strange place.

He doesn’t go for her head though. He conjures a blade in his hand instead and thrusts it straight into her abdomen. And then everything's a blur.

My magic thrumming inside as I use it to throw him away from my best friend. My sister. He flies ten yards and then collides with a brick wall. Even though I have stopped him I know I haven’t won because I see Heather gasping for air. Her entire face coated with her own dark blood, her hand reaching towards me, and the beautiful purple I love more than anything in the world, the strange and lovely mutation she was named for is fading from her eyes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

All I can do is cry as I drag her to the hospital, praying that she’ll get the chance to be reincarnated as a crow.

I take one step forward, then another, and then I feel as though I’m floating towards the girl who has, despite the four-month difference, grown slightly taller than me. She waits, patient as ever while I approach, fearing deep in my heart that if I go to quick she may disappear like she did all those years ago. All of the sudden, I’m standing right in front of her. My hand lifts without my permission and brushes against the skin of her shoulder, testing to make sure she isn’t an illusion.

“Heather?” I ask finally. Her smile grows wider somehow as she opens her arms to embrace me.

“I'm here,” she begins, "and you can always call me Icarus if you like that better." And then I’m hugging her tight. Tighter than I’ve ever held anyone. Heather laughs happily and pulls me against her as well, and suddenly all the pain of carrying her quaking body into the hospital emergency room fades. I can no longer feel the way her blood felt coating my hands or the way she whispered my name as the nurse brought her to the emergency room.

And there are so many questions I could ask. How long has she been with me for? Did she plan on falling into the courtyard that day or was that a simple coincidence? How many times did she come back? How many times until she finally came back as the crow? As my Icarus?

I find no reason to ask though. Heather’s here now. My sister, who was the first member of my peculiar family is holding me against her no longer petite body, her love for me rolling from her heart in droves and warming up every aching muscle in my body. As she and I are clinging to each other I think of every crow I ever saw after her death. I think of them all as Heather. Heather watching over me every day like a guardian angel. Heather coming back over and over again as her favorite animal, becoming my own personal flock to protect me no matter what.

____________

A/N: First thing first, Heather is based off a character in the book I’m writing. Secondly, she’s going to be really important to the story line if I decide to do my really stupid thing! YAY❤️❤️❤️

If you would like to be tagged shoot me a message in my inbox or comment below. Please reblog if you guys enjoyed to let others know about the story.❤️❤️❤️❤️

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[drewkatchen]

Twenty years ago it wasn’t novel to have a really specific opinion about Jawbreaker, the little three-piece punk rock band that everyone personally owned until they no longer did. It was all glowing praise, outrage over their calculations and callous indifference toward your thoughts of their career ambition or anywhere else on the spectrum, and most people fiddled with their bangs or barrettes while telling you this stuff over a bean burrito. 2017 is no different. I’m guessing that anyone from say college age to wizened old forty-something, maybe with a tattoo or several, bike owner and drinks shitty beer through a chipped tooth whether because of financial restraints or for posturing, you have likely given a piece of your mind to someone within earshot about the state of reunions and where you fall on Jawbreaker returning to a stage. Maybe it was to the Internet or to your wife or your husband or your kid, and maybe they know what you’re talking about or maybe they just think you should feed the cat. At forty, it could be gauche or off-putting to have opinions about old bands because maybe it makes you seem out of touch, and rightly maybe you’ve moved on to talk about the evils of gentrification and new construction or neighborhoods with good schools, but Jawbreaker is still something else entirely and you will share what you think.

Maybe you’re really happy because, like me, you spent the better part of the nineties in remote corners of the country, unable to find a ride to the show a hundred miles away on a school night, and you missed the chance to dance up against your buds in your Dickies to ‘Shield Your Eyes.’ And you think about how life conspired against you. Maybe having ample chances to see Jets to Brazil just left you a bit cold, like observing someone in the wrong relationship or what from the outside seemed like the wrong relationship. Or maybe, in the reunion-saturated circus that is now (are we living on a planet with more reunited acts than new acts?) you’d hoped that they would be the one group of individuals who just wouldn’t sully the enduring image you had of them, whatever your enduring image is. The acrimony that seemed present at their dissolution, certainly you could rest assured these were the guys that wouldn’t be tempted. You may also not care, but then again, if you don’t care about the band, then you’re probably not reading this either. But it doesn’t matter because my opinion isn’t as strong as that damn mighty group, still fortified all these years later with the power to beguile, that first popped up again for me last month on Chrissy Piper’s Instagram feed, her announcing to the world again something was happening when singer Blake Schwarzenbach, a totem of some kind of endurance, was leaning against a tree and having a smoke before a secret show, a post that absolutely took my breath away.

And my opinion about them coming back to life may not matter, but I have one and so do some of my friends, and they’ve been through zits and bad bands and lack of sex and then sex and then edge-breaking and then shit jobs and then good jobs and then weddings and kids with this band. We’ve grown, moved laterally, dipped and emerged with Blake, Adam and Chris. They don’t know us and we don’t know them, but we know them and we know ourselves in relation to what they’ve created. And I wanted to hear what my friends had to say because they’re funny and insightful and this stuff got to them all when their cement was still wet and for better or worse is in them for good.

But I’ll go first.

Jawbreaker were a band above most others, as far as I was concerned. From a distinct community of musicians that went on to have a global footprint, but best I could tell they were their own scene. This wasn’t my friend’s band; they weren’t kids from the high school even though they knew the kids from the high school started bands to sound like them. Accessible but also off-kilter, lyrics that used a bunch of common words to tell heartbreaking and affirming stories of love and house parties and untapped potential. They were the band my straight edge friends and emo friends and skater friends and pop punk friends could all agree on. There was a universality to their narratives that could speak to you if you let them. What was their party affiliation anyway? Beer? Books? Trains? Sadness? Effortlessly them and if you wanted to find yourself in their lyrics then you could.

I can see myself, a doughy Catholic high school teen in 1993, in different rooms and in the cars of different friends. My mom couldn’t stand Frankie and his dyed hair, but he opened up my world when he lent me the Chesterfield King record, the cover evocative in what it showed and in what it hid. I gripped it tight before putting it on my crummy turntable, allowing the titular song to really warm my ears. Who was the singer in the cool pants? Why was his face hidden? Why was he playing his guitar that way? Who was on the back cover? Were they in the band?

To me (and as it turned out, thousands of others), the song sounded like love. A love that I had never experienced and love I may never realize. Sweet, wooly, woozy love, and listening to it on my bedroom stereo, I imagined what it would be like to be held. The singer's rasp, appealingly like shredded glass and smoke, somehow sounded like romance or aching. Did I understand the lineage working? Did I know of Westerberg and Mould and Richard Butler? Maybe, but no, not really and it didn’t matter. As a teen, Blake Schwarzenbach was my Westerberg. I’d found succor in the pointed frustrations of Ian MacKaye and Ray Cappo, but what I most wanted was a boyfriend, to have someone there to buffer the family chaos tornadoing around me and to play with my hair. I didn’t have that but I imagined being the love interest in this singer's world. Did I notice then he used a pronoun only once or twice unless he was describing the ‘toothless woman’, a tableau affording me the chance to picture two men together on a couch, tracing lines on palms and clinging together in outerwear. The words in the song painted an image of proximity: of a protagonist close enough to, however odd, smell his love's thoughts. It sounded like heaven; it made me feel warm. This was my introduction to Jawbreaker. ‘Chesterfield King’ was a song I first experienced alone in Goose Creek, South Carolina, and it followed me all the way to this year, where it still sounded like love when it played during my wedding reception in a cozy bar on a winter day in Jersey City, New Jersey.

---

As far as them being a band now, I don’t begrudge anyone trying to make money and keep their lives afloat or even just being together with their friends. These guys were talented enough to write and record winning lottery tickets they could cash in decades down the road and now they are smart enough to take it. Good for them. Maybe I was concerned about my own relationship with the band in the current moment. Did I even have one? Did I need to? Aside from putting on their records at home or on my phone for the morning commute, how much did I really care anymore? How much did I need to care? I no longer sit and worry about things like relationships and affection when my legs are on my husband's lap, the TV or turntable on near us. That they have sounded good at every show they have played this year is great and it's inspiring to see their determination to make it sail. That they are around in 2017, existing in the face of nuclear nonsense and terrifying natural disasters, calms my jitters just that much. So I thank them for that as well. I didn’t travel to Chicago because my husband and I are saving our pennies for a home but just know that Jawbreaker breathed life--real, concrete life--into my half-lived youth and helped me understand my heart a little bit better, and I owe them a real debt of gratitude for it. And if, as Schwarzenbach says, there’s a 95 percent chance of a show in New York City, then consider me camped out for it already.

But I think I speak for everyone when I say this: no new music, guys.

And now my friends:

Tommy, in his early-forties, college professor

“Trying to Take Its Form”

Most of us remember when we heard that Jawbreaker had broken up. It followed soon after the release of Dear You [Jawbreaker’s final album, released in September 1996], or the moment when most of us felt Jawbreaker had broken up with us. In hindsight, the punk underground’s bitter rejection of Jawbreaker and Dear You seems petty and self-righteous at worst, naïve at best. On one hand, we might see the subsequent redemption of Dear You and Jawbreaker’s long afterlife as a confirmation of all of that. On the other hand, we might also recognize the profound, almost inexplicable, attachment people must have had to a band to feel so spurned by their career decisions and to cherish them so many years after they were gone. That kind of attachment is what comes to mind when I think of the many, many hours I spent with Jawbreaker after I discovered them in 1992. My first encounter was through a friend whose older brother had an enviable record collection. He had been in the right places in the late 1980s and early 1990s to acquire some absolute gems. His record crates held first pressings of Jawbreaker, Jawbox, Fugazi, Samiam, and virtually every New York hardcore LP and compilation. From those crates I randomly drew the New Red Archive’s Hardcore Breakout USA Volume 1 double LP. The second song on the first side is Jawbreaker’s “Rich,” which I am guessing by the date and sound was recorded during the same session as Unfun [Jawbreaker’s debut record, released in 1990]. The guitar tone, Blake’s scratchy, but melodic vocals, and the relentless drums made me think the Lookout Records pop punk I had feasted on for a good year was suddenly outdated.

“Rich” slots in neatly with other material from Unfun; it doesn’t aspire to the experimentation or darkness of Bivouac nor does it exhibit the stripped-down pop and lyrical mastery of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy [Jawbreaker’s third album, released in 1994]. It is a minor song, minor enough not to make an LP that few would claim as the band’s masterpiece. But man, did that fucking song cut its way into me; it sunk into the surface of my skin and gave me goosebumps. I never, ever wanted to listen to it in the company of other people. Jawbreaker became that intensely personal band, one you use as a measurement of other people, but don’t want to share with anyone else.

I was a 16-year-old punk kid in small town South Carolina when I found that song. Climbing into manhood was usually signaled by sexual conquests (my score card was comfortably and securely at zero), athletic prowess (flamed out in little league), or outdoor activities that involved shooting animals before arriving at school. Guns seemed weird and I hated the “hunt before homeroom” kids enough that I never wanted to be identified with them. Punk offered some refuge from those models of masculinity and their suite of expectations. I learned pretty swiftly how to say “Fuck you” to most of those people. But crawling out from under those pressures didn’t lead to much else. You could, it turned out, be righteous in your refusal of everything and still alienated. Like other people in my small punk circle, I dreamed of getting out, of fleeing to neighboring Columbia, a town which seemed by comparison metropolitan, diverse, culture rich, and home to a vibrant punk and hardcore scene.

Enter Jawbreaker’s “Rich.” I don’t know the story behind this song or what compelled Blake to write it. I do know that I heard it as a fucking promise:

“A Dream rising. Trying to take its form against the norm. A goal, hard to hold. Sizing up itself against the world. Don’t push, it’ll come. Everything is gonna be alright. Steady now, don’t fall apart. Keep yourself upright.”

No one ever said any of that to me when I was a struggling teenager. They didn’t say it because I never relayed how much I hated going to school or how much I hated everyone there or how hopelessly narrow my future prospects seemed. I wanted something else, somewhere else, but had no reason to think I deserved more. Black Flag and Minor Threat had taught me how to internalize music. I could close the door to my room and make those voices screaming on the other end of my headphones scream for me and scream with me. It was a survival strategy. Jawbreaker’s “Rich” spoke to me immediately and intimately. It was okay to want more, to have outsized dreams, and even to feel crushed by the weight of them. “Everything is gonna be alright.” It is the simplest of lines; it could also be among the most trite and cliché. Those words would have been meaningless if anyone else had ever uttered them to me. But from Jawbreaker, they felt honest and shockingly new. The rising of Blake’s voice at the onset of that line signaled confidence, understanding, and, fuck it, I’ll say it, love. I spent hours alone listening to that song over and over.

Several months later I was punished for standard teenage punk antics: not coming home on time (or not at all in this case), getting blind drunk with friends in the woods, and driving 70 miles to Myrtle Beach at 4 in the morning because it seemed like only thing left to do. Housebound and on restriction for weeks, I took those Hardcore Breakout and Unfun records into my room and lived with them for days on end. At some point, I was allowed a trip to Manifest Records (southeastern record store chain) and the cashier handed me an advanced copy of Jawbreaker’s Bivouac on cassette. I was obsessed. That month’s issue of Maximum Rocknroll contained an ad announcing Jawbreaker’s summer tour and Columbia, SC was on the itinerary. I was granted early release due to good behavior just in time for that show and it was everything I needed it to be.

If you were a teenager when Jawbreaker started releasing records, there is a very good chance that you grew up with the band. Blake’s lyrics and storytelling became increasingly complex and mature; the direct appeal of “everything’s gonna be alright” blossomed into narratives of entangled love, unshakeable regret, and the pull of places near and far. In other words, teenage angst evolved into the intense emotional swings of early adulthood. And somehow, for me anyway, those first three albums never lost their power to give form to experience. They still haven’t lost that power.

If so many of us were furious when Jawbreaker “sold out,” it was because they taught us how to feel our way through worlds that didn’t want us to feel; they told us we could leave places that didn’t want us to escape. We could hold out for a little longer because it would be worth it.

Todd, late thirties, works with computers, lives in Washington, my former roommate

I came across Jawbreaker in the spring of 1995 while doing a radio show at WRUV in Burlington, VT my junior year of high school. My friend Mike called in and wanted me to play “Ashtray Monument,” [a song from he 1994 album 24 Hour Revenge Therapy] so I played it and fell in love with the song, so I "borrowed" the CD from the radio station for the next week and listened to it pretty much non-stop. The latter-half of that album in particular became the soundtrack to the end of my high school life; I would listen to Do You Still Hate Me? and West Bay Invitational over and over again obsessing over the heartbreak and joy found within each song, but it wasn't until 1996 when I bought a copy of Bivouac that I really got into them.   Bivouac always felt like a very odd album to me. There's still such a contrast between the first three songs on that record (”Shield Your Eyes”, “Big” and “Chesterfield King”) compared to the rest of the album -- those songs are light and poppy compared to the density of most of the later tracks (although "You Don't Know What You've Got" and "Pack it Up" break that mold.) I was super into Orange Rhyming Dictionary [an abum by Jets to Brazil, a band that formed after Jawbreaker with Blake Schwarzenbach as singer], but quickly was disappointed by Jets to Brazil. Four Cornered Night killed me with that "I love my piano" song, and while Perfecting Loneliness was much more decent, it never could capture that frenzied energy that Jawbreaker managed to contain. I remember getting a copy of a live show of their's at Mad Hatters on VHS from Rick Ta Life [singer of New York Hardcore band 25 ta Life] off eBay when I lived with you in Boston, and the camera operator is standing on Chris' [Bauermeister, Jawbreaker bassist] side of the stage so the recording is insanely bass-heavy. They rip into “P.S. New York is Burning” and for the first time I really heard what was going on in with the bass line in that song. This was right after 9/11, so there was some poignancy to the song title at the time as well, but it just felt heavy and cathartic at the same time. “Parabola” and the eponymous Bivouac follow that line as well; they're songs of release.

This was also the time when I realized that what made Jawbreaker so amazing wasn't just Blake's lyrics or guitar or Adam's drumming or Chris' bass, but rather the interplay of all of them together and how they worked off each other to create something new. I never got the chance to see them -- they broke up way too quickly after I discovered them and never played anywhere close enough to Burlington to be able to catch them live.  

Vincent, Has a really adorable daughter, lives in North Carolina with his awesome wife, wrote for HeartattaCk, has a nice voice

How did I find Jawbreaker? Memories attached to them? Did I see them? What do I really think about JTB? What song of theirs really meant something to me? What do I think of the reunion?

"The Boat Dreams from the Hill" reminds me of a late-80s maroon Volvo. I was in a classmate's car when I heard it, and the rest of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy for the first time. Most memorably, I remember every passenger in that tank belting the chorus to "Boxcar," ("1-2-3-4 / Who's punk / What's the score?") while trucking around Hillsborough Street.

That weekend, I went down to Schoolkid's Records and picked out 24-Hour Revenge Therapy and Farside's Rigged. I brought both to the clerk, and asked which one was better. He admitted to knowing nothing about Farside, but took one look at the Revelation Records logo and said, "Do you like heavy stuff? This one is gonna be heavy." He held up the Jawbreaker and said, "I can definitely tell you that this album's great." And, boy, it was. (I got Farside's 'Rigged' a few weeks later, and that, too, was also great, but definitely not heavy).

While most retrospectives stake out Jawbreaker as a monument to emo, in their zeitgeist they were lumped in with pop punk and the East Bay scene. Where pop punk stayed within the confines of a three-chord, verse-chorus-verse formula, Jawbreaker veered into extended instrumental jams, moody, white noise textures, and irreverent samples. Where pop punk's attitude was basic and bratty, Jawbreaker's demeanor was literary and melancholy. They appealed to kids that matured from fart jokes to irony. Like J. D. Salinger, I think Jawbreaker speaks to post-pubescent angst really well. In particular, hyper-sensitive and brooding young males like myself. We're a lot of fun at parties.

I saw Jawbreaker on November 2, 1995 at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina. The openers were The Smoking Popes and Eagle Bravo. If a kid were born on that day, they could legally drink now. Whoa. This show was notable for a number of reasons: 1. Like most ambitious punks, I did a zine at the time. I reached out to Jawbreaker's publicist at Geffen Records, thinking they were too big for some 15-year old kid with a zine that had a circulation of about 500 copies. Nope. Geffen was cool, set me up with a couple of hours with the band before the show, and put me and a friend on the guest list.

2. Since it was for my zine, I took photos. I had just gotten a fully manual SLR from an uncle and taken a photography class here and there, but definitely had no idea what I was doing. I shot black and white and developed the photos in the hallway bathroom. They didn't come out great, but it started a long tradition of photographing live music that I still partake in today. 3. My +1 couldn't make it, as he fell ill on the day of. It was something pretty serious, as Jawbreaker was one of his favorite bands. I got him a Get Well Soon card and had the band sign it. I remember that Blake wrote "Be well soon," to which I thought he was real learned and shit.

I followed the hype around Jets to Brazil enough to pick up Orange Rhyming Dictionary, and saw them a couple of times. They never grabbed me in the way Jawbreaker did, and I'm already bored writing this sentence, so that'll be that. [Editor’s note: So shady, Vincent].

There's only a couple of bands from my impressionable and developmental days that aged with me, and Jawbreaker was one of them. In the way that a song might have meant something to me at 16 years old, but take on a totally different meaning when I was 25. "Donatello" off Bivouac was like that. Over the years, I related to various interpretations: my relationship with my parents, living in suburban North Carolina, racial expectations, but it was never a love song to me. One random memory: there was a period in my life where I started making "normal" friends, stepping outside of the murky underground music scenes, and navigating parts of Chicago I had initially avoided. I ended up falling in love with a lady, who is now my wife. She threw a party once, and, for music, just plugged in her iPod and hit random. "Kiss the Bottle" was on there, a track from a mix CD a college friend had made her. While everyone was out back having some epic Flip Cup tournament and talking about the Cubbies, I was on the couch with a union cement pourer, taking Jameson shots, hugging as Jawbreaker fans do, and yelling every single word to that song at the stereo. He and I had casually talked records before, but I think that was a moment we really connected.

The reunion? I hope they make a million bucks. They deserve it. I already witnessed them endure the purist wringer when they signed to a major, and that seems so moot in 2017. However, I won't see them at Riot Fest. I lived in Chicago, but never went to Riot Fest, and have a million thoughts about it that aren't relevant to Jawbreaker. The one that does: there's a certain kind of performer that can create enough spectacle out of their music to entertain a massive audience in an outdoor venue. I don't think Jawbreaker is one of them. But, I also have never been around 60,000 people screaming "1-2-3-4 / Who's punk / What's the score," so what do I know?

Doug, teacher, has incredible hair and a preponderance of nice shirts, is someone I care about a great deal

My relationship with Jawbreaker is so intimately entwined with my coming of age that it is never really clear to me where Blake Schwarzenbach’s lyrics captured perfectly the fumblings and hurts of growing up and when those lyrics shaped my thoughts. If it is difficult for me to delineate this now, it was impossible for me when I was 19. At that age I was studying American literature in college, had my first band of any importance, fell in love and had my heart broken, and had what I thought was full control of the vices that would later haunt me. Dark secrets burn their vessel, it has been written, but at that age you can save them for later. It would be a few years until I fell from the wagon to the night train.

Fiction, reading and writing, was always more truthful to me. Looking back, it was because I wanted to write myself a better story. As a teenager I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. Like many of us in those awkward years, that drove me into independent bookstores and record shops. Although it felt iconoclastic in my suburban Boston town, like most angsty teens I fell in love with poetry, really and specifically, Beat poetry. I tore through the novels of Jack Kerouac, reading his blend of truthful fiction at the same rate as his prose. Carrying around a battered and dog eared copy of Howl one day while in Newbury Comics is how a conversation started with the clerk filing CDs. She recommended Jawbreaker’s Bivouac, Crimpshrine’s Quit Talkin Claude, and Leonard Cohen’s New Skin For the Old Ceremony. A pretty solid haul.

Beats spoke to me, but they never felt that they were of my time. Schwarzenbach’s lyrics however, contained an urgency and quality that made Jawbreaker songs feel like they were happening to me in the moment. And he made it clear that he/we were drawing from the same well. And because I believe in desperate acts, the kind that make you look stupid, I desperately tried to start a band like Jawbreaker from there on. That took a few years, though. I had to wait until I was in college. Until then Jawbreaker was a constant soundtrack, with “P.S. New York is Burning” copied onto countless mixtapes and the band’s albums passed around like samizdat. To be accurate, I spent too much time hanging out with my very small circle of friends, drinking coffee, with just cigarettes to fill the gaps in our empty days.

The band I formed in college was in retrospect a little too overt influenced by Jawbreaker. We were punks, sure, but with the local scene enamored with The Overcast and The Ducky Boys, I often felt like I should apologize from the stage, saying something like “Sorry we ain’t hard enough to piss your parents off.” But again, Blake’s lyrics felt like he was writing my soundtrack. His being open with the struggles and politics of the East Bay punk scene was writ large what has happening in my very tiny little world (is there anything smaller with bigger stakes than your hometown punk scene?)

Hell is definitely sitting in a van with seven punks for countless hours on the road. Unwashed and unkempt, four in the band and the rest “road crew;” the smells, the boredom, and the lack of space would crack anyone. And it was the greatest time of my life. Booking a tour pre-internet was no joke (Book Your Own Fucking Life, RIP) [Ed note: BYOFL does seem to exist in web form] and a cross country tour when you have two seven inches out, one of them a split, is the kind of undertaking left only to young and foolish punks. Of course, we didn’t make it far. We broke down at the top of Massachusetts. Shows were off, it was pretty heavy. Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life. Like Sal Paradise we kept trying until we were able to cross this vast continent. Driving seven hundred miles to play to fifteen angry men is disheartening - except! - when you can turn on Jawbreaker’s “Tour Song.” In the van after load out, listening to 24 Hour Revenge Therapy I could realize that there was nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.

Out in Berkley, having finally made it to the storied Gilman Street venue [a place the subject of this essay series played many times] for a show, was the beginning of the end for my band - although at the time it didn’t seem that way. The drummer, a prolific zine pen pal and all around social mover of the group, was able to bring in more people than a relatively unknown touring band would normally. It was people from bands and labels, the good ones, plenty of stunning children, so before I went on I felt the swell of making it. Here I was, about to go on the stage and witness the scene that I had so romanticized. The set was over quickly and, after, I stood outside in the East Bay industrial park drinking a beer and feeling the chill of fall. It was one of the rare moments of contentment and I didn’t grasp that the moment was fleeting; more temporary than I could imagine.

Of the end that was about to befall my band, it had eerie parallels with the crack up and break up Jawbreaker. Their signing to a major label caused major rifts in scene politics and it felt like one had to take a side. We weren’t offered the storied million bucks that Jawbreaker was but we were offered more than we had from the large indie label that was taking bets in the post-Green Day landscape. I guess I’m not the gambling type, since it didn’t quite make sense to me to take the deal, but I was a minority in the band. Even at that level moving units and tracking charts seemed like a fool’s errand. However, the scene chafed and I grew so goddamned tired of fighting against the chains. I was able to play guitar a little better, and piano a little better too, so why not make better music?

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them. All the talk of musicianship and the tensions of (very minor) success is really just a cover. I was drinking too much at that point. After our LP was released to far less impact than we expected I had a moment in one of the rare times we sprung for a hotel room. I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I quit the band that night.

Truth is, now, years later, all I really need is hot good coffee, and a good, good book. Jawbreaker is reuniting, and I get it. Sometimes the past needs to be reckoned with in the present. Or maybe they just want to make some bank. The politics, optics, and aesthetics are debates I’ve left behind. I won’t go to the show because it will be familiar faces and still none to recognize. But I haven’t completely given up on nostalgia; I’ll still put on Jawbreaker records and bounce around with a foolish grin on my face. After all, it’s not that bad. I still have pictures. I look back.

[maggieisalarrie]

Titles: T

take me for what i am (who i was meant to be) by howlouvely (8k)

Too late, he realizes that the handsome stranger spoke to him and Louis has yet to respond. He puts on his most dazzling smile before speaking. “Why yes, I must be. Are you one of the lovely people competing for my affections, then?”  

Instead of confirming his suspicions, though, the man laughs in a way that is both inappropriately loud and extremely endearing. “Unfortunately not,” he gets out through his chuckles. “I’m Harry. I’ll be your host today.”

Louis is dealing with heartache. Niall signs him up for a dating show to help him move on.

take my hand (and lead me home) by tumsa (13k)

AU in which every time a person falls in love with their soulmate, a red line, like a tally mark, appears on their wrists. When their love is requited, the tally mark turns black, and turns into a scar when the one they love dies. Harry with no tally marks falls for Louis with all of his tally marks scarred.

take my hand (and my heart and soul) by bananasandboots (46k)

Harry feels nauseous when he opens his mouth. "Hey. Um, hi. It's me," he mumbles before realizing with a jolt that Louis might not have his number anymore. "It's Harry... Styles," he tacks on, screwing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. This was a terrible idea.

There's silence on the other end for a long time. Harry understands. He shouldn't have called. He tries not to let the static swallow him whole.

"I – yeah. Hi," Louis finally answers, slowly, awkwardly. "I um. Sorry. I heard about your accident. You're alright?"

Or, the one where Harry hasn't spoken to his best friend in sixteen months and can't remember why.

Take Off Your Running Shoes by polkadotpeacoat (55k)

AU- Harry is the fit supermarket check out boy. Louis wants to sleep with him. Summer romance ensues.

take your time rolling up your sleeves by aniloquent (5k)

“Lovely. Could you whip us up a strawberry shortcake with a message on it?” Harry nods again, drawing his notepad from one of the pockets of his apron and waits for the message. “‘We all knew the cat was going to leave you for something better.’” Harry sputters while the raven-haired boy elbows his friend harshly.

“Louis,” he chides. “You’re such an absolute dick, you know that?”

Louis shrugs as a little scowl pulls at thin lips. “What the fuck am I supposed to put on it? ‘Sorry me and Zayn threw the fucking mutt out into traffic during a trash wrestling match and it decided to take a fucking hike?’” Zayn, he presumes, hits him again. Harry blinks.

-

Based on the twitter prompt "I work in a bakery and you keep coming in and asking me to write you weird messages on cakes"

taste on my tongue by bethaboo (78k)

Louis Tomlinson, second place winner on TXF four years ago, is looking to reinvent his career.

Harry Styles is a baker who is desperate for a bakery of his own.

Louis doesn't bake. Or cook. Or know how to use an oven.

Take Louis. Take Harry. Add in a heaping cup of sexual tension. Another cup of delicious (and not so delicious) food. A smidgen of competitive spirit. A dash of hopes and dreams. And you get Kitchen Wars, a TV show that promises to be the must-watch event of the fall.

Tell Me What You Want by stylinsoncity (11k)

"Harry is looking for a new roommate after Liam moves in with his girlfriend. After a few bad dates he’s done with men for the moment and wants to concentrate on school. That’s why he’s looking for a female or a straight male roomie. When Niall tells Louis about the free room he leaves that little detail out. Louis, desperately looking for a room, pretends to be straight, thinking it would be easy, until he discovers that Harry likes to be naked at home. His best female friend posing as his girlfriend doesn’t work very well either."

The Art of Reading Tea Leaves by evelynegrey & fortunefavorsthebrave (29k)

"If he were such a good person, he'd be in here," he smiles jokingly. "You know that house elitist stuff doesn't make sense, right?" It's a comfortably old debate, one they both know the outcome of, and Harry takes it gratefully. "Harry Potter was Gryffindor, is all I'm saying," Niall argues easily and Harry opens up his books again. "And Voldemort was Slytherin," he fills in with a smile. "But Romeo was a Montague, you know. A rose by any other name and all that." "What?" "Never mind."

Hogwarts AU where Harry decides to take Divination without his friends, Niall wants to get laid, Liam and Zayn are the dream team in Potions and Louis has a secret. He also happens to be a Slytherin.

the beast you made of me by Ashtarok (5k)

The bell tinkled, and Harry froze as an overpowering scent, musky and thick, crisp and slightly sweet, yet utterly masculine, delightfully tickled his senses. Harry's eyes slowly slid up to see the source of this wonderful scent, and his breath was taken away at the sex god before him, all muscled and compact and utterly screaming of Alpha. Icy blue eyes stared him down, set off by sharp cheekbones, a stubbled jaw that looked yummy enough to nibble on, and caramel hair, which was lazily gelled, a few pieces falling over his forehead. His skin was tan, his hands strong and steady, his biceps still clearly visible even through his jacket. Every fiber of Harry's being stood at full alert.

The one where Harry's a vanilla-sweet Omega and Louis walks into his bakery one day.

the boys of fall by godgavemelou (21k)

“And everyone, this is Harry Styles. He’s going to be our starting quarterback this year.”

Louis looks at him, the tall and lanky Harry Styles, and takes it all in. He’s got hair to his shoulders that curls at the ends, tattoos all down his arms, and a bright smile on his face as the team cheers him on. He’s lean and fit, and absolutely beautiful, and Louis hates him to the core.

OR an american football au where the boys play for the university of tennessee, and harry and louis quite hate each other.

The Dead of July by whimsicule (117k)

Being an Avenger means continuing to be Captain America and smiling and being honorable for the public and Harry does his best. But it doesn’t give him time to figure out who he is supposed to be once he takes off his uniform and puts the shield to the side. Just being Harry had always involved Louis, and Harry fears he doesn’t know how to exist without him.

or: Harry is Captain America, and Louis’ been dead for 70 years.

Part 1 of Avengers

The Finish Line (Is A Good Place For Us To Start) by LoadedGunn (122k)

Louis Tomlinson, one-time Formula 1 World Champion, is looking forward to the 2013 season. He’s got Zayn in his garage and Liam in his ear, he’s got Cowell Racing backing him despite former indiscretions, he’s got experience and the best race car out there. Not to mention he’s the only racer they have, after Oliver dropped out late last year.

It hasn’t occurred to him that Oliver would have to be replaced by February. That is, until he finds himself at a party celebrating Harry Styles leaving Ferrari for Cowell. Harry hotshot Styles, who broke a record last year and is probably looking to make a big splash. Harry Styles, who is talented and somewhat intimidating. Harry Styles, who left Ferrari for reasons unknown and seems kind of lonely and harmless in person. Lonely, harmless, hot as fuck. Whatever.

The first thing Louis does is take him under his wing. From there it’s nine months of slow-burning romance, the past catching up to them, turning into the human puppy pile that is OT5 and a lot of feelings until, of course, reaching the finish line.

The Flatmates by Centa0592 (47k)

Harry is a cheeky Alpha who vows never to settle down.

Louis is a hurt omega whose Alpha died just before they could bond officially.

Zayn is an artistic Alpha who doesn’t understand privacy, or personal space.

Liam is a curious Beta who is convinced the world is going to end.

And Niall is a drunk Beta who keeps falling asleep randomly without finishing his sentences….he might also suffer from narcolepsy. None of the lads know for sure.

Or

The story where five lads all respond to the same ad about an available flat and move in.

Part 1 of Life as we know it

The Fragmented Veil by missberrycake (28k)

In which Louis gets attacked one night in the dark. It changes his life, just not in the way he expected.

The King of Spades by hazmesentir (109k)

Undercover Metropolitan Police officer DC Louis Tomlinson has worked his way up the ranks of a prominent London crime family without raising suspicion, but when he finds himself pitted against a rising crime boss with a police background and a favoured employee by the name of Harry Styles, everything starts to unravel. Finding himself in the middle of an escalating war between two bosses whose bad blood runs deep into a violent past, Louis has to be even more careful where he steps in case his big secret catches up to him – and if it does, he knows he won't survive it.

Not to mention he's falling for someone he can't have – whose earnestness and honesty is a bright spot in a dark world – he can't sleep because his nightmares haunt him and he's in way over his head, but it's just a game, always just a game, and if Louis plays his cards right he might just make it out alive.

The Melody You Never Heard by bananasandboots (30k)

It's one last adventure. One last chance to be young and carefree. One final weekend before they take up their internships, their corporate positions, before they enter the real world, fresh out of university. Niall's his best mate. Liam's been there for him since they were lost, little freshmen, trying to find their ways through an overwhelming first year. Harry can't disappoint them, even if it means enduring four days with Louis.

Louis, who he does share a history with, a history he's never told anyone about, not even Niall, a history he hasn't brought up in three years because it's stupid and embarrassing and confusing.

Or, the one where Harry gets roped into a four-day camping trip with the boy who kissed him and never called back.

The Stars In Your Eyes Light Up The Sky by andthensusays (60k)

Once again, Harry’s life was on a fast track into seriously uncharted territory. He had known from the moment he’d woken up on that horrible morning that he would have no choice other than to come out. Publicly.

Harry Styles, the first publicly gay Prince of England in British History.

That would be his luck.

Or,

The one where Harry is a prince forced out of the closet and Louis is a boybander forced in. When they meet, everything changes.

The Sweetest Incantation by smittenwithlouis (41k)

Harry has been alive for decades, and yet he's never been as confused and dumbfounded. He's a witch, for God's sake. Can't get much weirder than all the magical things he's experienced throughout his lifetime. Never in a million years, however, would he have expected to be mere inches away from a hybrid.

Or: Harry is a witch who's still working on developing his powers and Louis is a werecat who falls into his life and turns it upside down.

The Things I’d Do To Wake Up Next To You by dirtymattress (36k)

AU. Harry wakes up to a pregnant Louis Tomlinson and a wedding band on his finger.

These Constant Stars by stylinsoncity (31k)

Louis’ career has nowhere to go but up. He’s living at the height of New York City on the precipice of an epic promotion. Life is good and only getting better. And then one day, things turn disastrous.

This is a story about life, death, and punk rockers turned guardian angels.

Title inspired by "Fool's Gold" by One Direction.

Part 1 of Guardian Angels

These Roads We Stumble Down by onewasturning (18k)

He’s completely drenched, not one millimetre of him not covered in rain, and the old sheepskin cover over the seat is probably going to stink afterwards from the damp. But even with what seems to be a constant tremor shaking his body, brown hair plastered to his forehead, and a blue tinge to his skin, he’s still probably the most gorgeous person that Harry has ever seen.

Or, Harry picks up a hitchhiker in Oxford, and it's a long ride to Glasgow.

This Road Leads Where Your Heart Is by LittleLostPieces (15k)

Alright, so Louis has a bit of a type is the thing. And as fit as his supermodel flatmate (Harry) may be, he isn't what Louis is looking for in a potential partner. That’s all. He’s not Louis’ type, with his miles of lanky limbs and his bright, boyish eyes. His impossibly tight, little body and infectious laughter are not what Louis wants. They're not. Really.

Three French Hems by 100percentsassy & gloria_andrews (20k)

In which Louis is a designer at Burberry and Harry spends December wearing Lanvin… and Lanvin… and Lanvin.

through the wire by Awriterwrites (11k)

“Mate. He’s like. I don’t know how to describe it.” Liam’s voice was on edge, a tremble in it that indicated he was either very nervous or extremely excited; unsure of what to do next. It was probably both.

All Harry could think about was LouisLouisLouis. He needed him so badly his body ached with it. His skin was crawling and his entire body felt explosive, ready to ignite at the slightest touch.

“Ok. Li? This is what you are going to do…” Louis took a deep breath, the intake of air audible through the wire, as he prepared to guide Liam through what was probably going to be the strangest most erotic, and possibly most awkward experience of his life.

trusting things beyond mistake by sarcasticfluentry (10k)

"Is that even possible?" asks Harry.

All of them stare at him for several seconds, and then Louis says, "What, coming untouched?"

"Christ," Zayn mutters, throwing his hands up. “This fucking band, I swear.”

...or, Harry wants to see if he can come without touching his cock and ends up getting more than he bargained for.

Truth Be Told (I Never Was Yours) by JustForTommo (77k)

Harry watches Louis as he scrunches up his nose and bites the end of a pen in concentration. He’s been working on seating arrangements for the past hour and getting more frustrated by the minute. Louis huffs out a breath and glances down at Harry with a soft smile on his lips before he returns to the task at hand. It’s easy, right then, for Harry to let himself believe that they’re planning a seating chart for their own wedding and bickering over who is going to sit where from a list of their own family members. He can let himself daydream about a white picket fence and a dog that they could have within the next year.

It’s like a cold slap in the face when Harry looks to the top of the page to see “Aiden and Louis Grimshaw” at the head table, and Harry has to mentally remind himself for the thousandth time that Louis is not his. Never was, really. He’s just the wedding planner that’s been in love with Louis since he was sixteen.

(or the one where Louis and Harry have a complicated past, Louis is getting married to someone that’s not Harry, and the universe has decided to have a laugh and make Harry the wedding planner.)

Tug-of-War by cherrystreet (63k)

Louis' husband dies suddenly and he is left with nothing. Well, not really nothing. He has Harry. And a St. Bernard puppy named Link, whom his late husband left behind for him. Louis takes care of Link and Harry takes care of Louis. Everything is okay until suddenly, it isn't.

Two Sugars, No Cream by loveyoulou (orphan_account) (8k)

Harry's a young, successful, and rich music producer under Simon Cowell. Louis' a college student, working part time at the local coffee shop while studying to be a pediatrician, just barely making ends meet. He has no idea who the cute boy is that keeps on popping up at his school and work is, or what Harry has in store for him.

Last edited: September 6, 2017

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