#also like. he's been touring the states for DECADES how do his people not know at this point what is and isn't available there lol

[oacest]

Sorry this is long, but I saw one of your tags about “if it’s not goats milk, Noel’s not having it” & I wanted to share bc I didn’t know that was an actual thing. Last summer I worked at a concert venue backstage as catering staff & Noel & the HFBs came & I honestly didn’t really know or care who he was at the time but anyway, I worked the day of the concert & it was probably Noel’s production manager (they’re all typically assholes) but someone made the supervisor in charge of setting up the dressing rooms cry because we didn’t get the right goats milk. Typically if you can’t find the exact brand you just get the closest, fanciest replacement but I guess the tour wasn’t having it & was going off on her. Pretty sure someone was scrambling to find it & when you looked it up, it wasn’t even something you could get in the United States lolol.

anyway, my older sister was a supervisor there but I don’t think she worked that day so I went & told her the story & was like “look at these assholes freaking out over goats milk” & my sister was like, “you know it’s the guy from oasis” (she’s from the 90s, I am not) but I didn’t care, & then “you should really listen to the whole what’s the story/wonderwall album, it’s really good” & so i did & that’s how I essentially became an oasis fan. bc of that little freaks goats milk obsession.

BRO LOL OH MY GOD!!!! thank you for sharing, this is so fucking funny. huge mood, i too would be furious at my past self, even though like. obvs what can you do lmao. that little freaks goat milk obsession 😌😍

[ivalice-tifalucis]

Jason.

Suddenly I want to talk about Jason (it's a very long talk).

I realize I never talk about this here, but I often compare him to Queen's John Deacon. There are few similarities. The "silent" one, the underrated one, the one who prefer tea when the others would prefer wine, the one whose lyrics always about life, the dark horse, the one who is not confident with singing, the one who left the band and never be seen again.

The thing about John Deacon is that I never feel sort of bereaved, longing, or sad that he is no longer in Queen. I am a Queen fan since I could barely speak english thanks to my dad and the moment I learn that he left Queen so many years ago I was like that's ok. That's because even though Brian and Roger are the spine of Queen, the heart and soul will always be with Freddie and Freddie died 32 years ago. New fans had their hard time accepting it when they searched for Deacy but they quickly realized time has gone long and he has been living a peaceful private life. It's easy for us to let go of Deacy, because Queen regardless how good Adam Lambert is now, is over the moment Freddie died. There are no what ifs when talking about Deacy leaving Queen and public life. His statement is also clear and undeniable that he left because he thought there should be no more Queen after Freddie.

But the thing about Jason Orange is that he left at the height of Take That fandom. They just had Robbie back and they released Progress and it was very very success album and tour too. Three years later, people expect something but Robbie's not coming back and so did Jason. It feels anticlimactic for fans even though it may not be for him. There are no impromptu. Unlike the rest of the members, Jason doesn't have social media but he also didn't do or say anything leading up to that day in 2014. Take That was perfectly fine ship and suddenly one of their longest standing member at that time jumped the ship without lifeboat that could help him return. He swam to the nearest island and not planning to swim back to the ship ever again. Sure he made a statement through Take That's PR but it's just a thank yous. Something is not told and as fans we left to wonder why did he leave. What had gone wrong in the background??

Toxic fans would often like to think it's because of Robbie because Jason didn't like Rob in the 90s and, while often written off in newer documentaries or autobiographies, was the one who propagated to kick Robbie Williams out of Take That (as stated by the man himself in Look Back, Don't Stare). It's easy to make Robbie Williams a scapegoat, isn't it? However, Jason himself said back in Progress era that Robbie came back to Take That was the final piece of puzzle. Gary in his book A Better Me also said that Jason always wanted Robbie to return and felt like his job is done when he got to see all his boyband friends in the same room again.

However, it still doesn't answer the question to why did he leave? I have a habit of wondering over unimportant things and sometimes, especially now, my mind wonder about Jason and why exactly did he leave. I have some theories, it might not satisfy you but bare with me.

Here's a gif of Jason so you won't get too tired reading this post lol

First theory: tax evasion scandal. I'm not gonna pretend to be a foolish fan and not know that sometimes in 2014, Take That faced a huge backlash thanks to this scandal. Those annoying 40-50 something British guy who love to make this tax evader joke to state they never like Take That to look manly can never escape me every time I go around social media about Take That. Even though it rarely talked about among Thatters, I feel like if they are not known more now than they are a decade ago it's because this scandal still affecting them in the eyes of UK public, who are their major target market. I could also argue if only they make another big break this scandal will be gone from people's mind but sad to say they haven't done anything bigger than Progress even until now, not that I don't like III, Wonderland, and This Life, I do. But me and all of you (roughly 30 people around here) and I'd estimate less than 2 millions most royal Thatters out there who are interested are not enough. Back to the tax scandal, it is a fact that Gary, Mark, and Howard are part of the scandal but not Jason because his finance always managed by his twin brother, so I heard. I wonder whatever went behind the scene could might affect Jason's decision to leave.

Why? Because if it is true that he left because Progress is enough, he could have stated he would be leaving since after Progress or any time between 2012 to early 2014. Why did he have to wait and drag this for too long? Also, I wonder if this is why they are so sensitive about Jason leaving at first. Remember in Robbie's autobiography when they were really angry at Rob for accidentally blurted it that Jason would leave before official statement?

Second theory: anxiety, illness, physical problem or other health problems. I often wonder about this too. Progress era is the ultimate era especially for old school Thatters (lol sorry to the actual ultimate era). Who would have thought that "I'm rich beyond my wildest dream", the greatest britpop star living in private mansion in Beverly Hills with around 10 entourages including his gf, Robbie Williams, could ever reunited with Take That? I can only look this like history book and only recently realized how crazy it is. It happened. In his Netflix documentary, even his management didn't believe this that he'd rather earn so little yet did so much effort for Take That rather than earning another hundreds of millions of dollar doing another solo tour. But it happened, he needed it, the rest of Take That needed it, and we're glad it happened. And then, imagine Never Forget. One of the best Take That song ever, made in 1995 but released when Rob had left, so before 2010 this song had never been performed by Robbie Williams. The moment that all Thatters had been waiting for, to see all five members of Take That perform this song life, without others backing the others, as the original single intended. The only era where they can do this, and it only ever happened once (1). And then Jason...

And then they never did it again. Throughout Progress live tour, Jason didn't sing a single note by solo. His part in Never Forget was covered by Gary. You could even argue that his mic was never on during any of Progress live performances and I would believe you. So much downgrade than The Circus Live where he did an entire section singing two songs with his guitar. What was going on??

Why? He stated few times he was never confident in singing. Even Nigel Martin Smith berating him in the 90s for being the one with the worse singing voice (arguable though because he actually has decent voice). I'm glad Take Two era gave him the confidence to try albeit shyly. However, maybe eventually his anxiety won sometimes between 2012 to 2014. Plus the fact that we know he can't do breakdance forever. He was in his 40s at that time. Even current Take That dance lesser and lesser than they were in previous era. Maybe Jason thought there should not be more dancing in Take That. Maybe he thought his body would no longer able to. Maybe he's not strong as he used to be. He's ill? Idk, only Jason knows.

Third theory: settling down in private. It could be just my headcanon but think about it. We always joke he might as well marry to the bench because he's always photographed alone in his own thoughts. Some people even randomly thinking is he gay? He has that swag though, but I don't think at least he himself think that he's gay(?).

Lol this iconic pic

But what we never talk about is that he did have girlfriends in the past. He has been photographed by paparazzi in the past with "mystery" women (yes women as in plural) which I will not share here. He had a public relationship with Catherine Tate after all.

I genuinely think Jason is the kind who would drop everything to keep his family safe from public. This is after all the same guy who despite the height of his career barely show his family to the public, except his mom probably, but then again all TT moms always have media presence since day 1. Being in kdrama fandom and see korean actors and actresses who literally just dropped their career for their family and their privacy, I can see Jason would do just like that. Why not? He has achieved and experienced everything there is to know about being a celebrity. He doesn't feel the need to. And I feel like his relationship with Catherine Tate, since she also a public figure, was so gobbled down by media that maybe he thought this isn't right to have people judging his partner. If one day Jason appear with a wife and a child, I won't be surprised at all. I would be exploding in happiness that this theory is correct though.

Also I'm happy to see Catherine Tate returns to Doctor Who with David Tennant. I just know then that she actually is known for being in Doctor Who. I had no idea who is she outside being in Happy Now music video 😂

My theory outside Jason leaving:

Take That (and their management) know where and how Jason is (to some extent). In the interviews often Gary, Mark, and Howard would be asked about Jason to which they would say they didn't contact him for ages. Or joke that they tried to email him but then maybe he only have flip phones and doesn't even have a computer to answer the email. Look, he can be a hermit but man living in first world country and doesn't have even a smartphone to answer email in 21st century is ridiculous. I believe they still talk or see each other once in a while, especially with Howard, who tweeted that he met Jason in 2018. Hell, I feel like even Rob has seen Jason at least once between 2014 to now. I don't know, just a hunch.

His privacy is protected by Take That management and also by most of public. Continuation from previous bullet point. Yes. Because do you remember when there was George Michael's art auction in Manchester and some celebrities who came there are photographed clearly. But not Jason. It's hard to find that picture again but I found it and that's just the only the bigfoot sightings of Jason Orange that I know of because it happened after I know Take That deep enough. Between 2014 to 2017, how many sightings that I didn't know? Where if other celeb would have crystal clear pictures taken but not him on the same occasion? I wonder. Also many people claimed that they met Jason in public space in around London or Manchester, but mostly Manchester. So he is not as hermit as they would like you to think. Maybe if you go around there and if you just lucky, you might come across a wild Jason Orange.

Goddammit this guy.

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A post shared by Jag Chohan (@jaggslife)

At the end of this post, thank you for reading this until this part, guys. I really miss Jason like all of you. He is truly an enigma but no matter what would always have special place in every Thatters' heart. Awww...I cringe a little when I wrote that.

Regardless my theory, I can only wish he lives a good and happy life. If you have something to say, you can also add here in the reblog or reply, or dm me, let's chat.

Also I put all Jason sightings on my tumblr with this tag called The Bigfoot Sightings of Jason Orange (because he is as blurry as bigfoot sightings).

[starlene]

1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11 and 37 for the musical theater asks! (no need to answer them all if I picked too many, I just couldn't choose between them)

1. How did you first get into musical theatre?

Depends on when I decide I really became a fan. Could be any of these, really, depending on how I look at it:

I saw Grease on TV when I was a kid and really liked it

I loved ABBA as a tween, and then, the Mamma Mia! world tour came to Helsinki

My mom started pestering me about going to theatre when I was a teenager, since I had only ever seen one play as a tween, and she thought going again would be educational for me (seeing Mamma Mia! in an ice rink didn't count as real theatre for mom); I decided I wanted to see the then-current Finnish production of Cats

4. Who is your favourite musical theatre composer?

Fredrik Kempe. I hope he'll keep giving us new musicals to love and cherish for decades to come.

5. Who is your favourite musical theatre lyricist?

I don't know if I really have one.

I enjoy thinking about and looking into musical libretti, in the sense that I want to find all the information within, and I do enjoy a bit of clever wordplay every now and then – but I'm one of the least poetic people you'll ever meet, and in general I don't really vibe with lyrics as a form of poetry. I know why, say, Sondheim is so revered, but I don't feel it very deeply myself when I listen to his songs. Does that make any sense? Since I'm not a person who feels lyrics with all their heart (like I can feel music, sometimes), I just don't feel comfortable choosing any lyricist as a personal favourite.

6. Who is your favourite musical theatre director?

Jakob Höglund. The absolute MVP of the Finnish musical theatre scene, for me.

I don't always go see his shows (I always prioritise interesting subject matter etc. higher than the director when I'm choosing which shows to see, no matter how much I like the director) – but whenever I do, I'm always in awe. He's also a choreographer, and he has a very unique, beautiful way of adding movement to the musicals he directs. It's a style that definitely wouldn't mash well with every show out there (and with the way many musicals are licenced and strictly superwised by their rightholders, I'm sure there are many musicals he'll never be allowed to touch) – but with the right material, his style absolutely shines. His Så som i himmelen was the most beautiful production I've ever seen, and likely ever will see, on Helsinki's biggest musical stage.

Tbh, I think without Jakob Höglund, I'd feel a lot more pessimistic about the current and future state of Finnish musical theatre than I already do. The musicals that he directs aren't just good versions of the source material – they're always new and different, not for the sake of being different, but simply because they're so uniquely and recognisably his. It's a vibe I don't get with many musical directors, and I love to see it.

The day he'll tackle either The Great Comet or Hadestown... that'll be a happy day indeed.

7. Who is your favourite musical theatre actor?

Alexander Lycke.

He's been a part of my musical enthusiast journey ever since I really kicked my musical madness into high gear with the 2010 Finnish-Swedish production of Les Mis, with him as Valjean. There are many other musical actors whose work I enjoy, but no one that's involved with so many different shows and experiences and memories as Alex. He's important to me in a way no other musical actor is, or probably ever will be.

Besides, he's the only performer whose Bring Him Home I actually and truly enjoy instead of only tolerating it. Without him, I really wouldn't think such a feat would even be possible.

11. What is your favourite overture?

I always love a good overture! Let's say Chicago's, simply because it slaps. Honourable mention to Så som i himmelen's as it exists on the cast recording, because it's absolutely beautiful... but also nothing like the onstage version, so it doesn't really count.

37. Is there a musical lyric, line, moment, etc. that lives in your head rent-free?

"Ze Führer wasn't a mousy little mamma's boy! Ze Führer was BUUUUTCH!"

Ask me some musical theatre questions for old and cynical musical theatre fans

[critterfloozy]

Critter Gen Week Day 3 - Cross Campaign

For Cross Campaign, I'm posting the first part of my upcoming Delilah Briarwood and Delrta Thelyss work! Unbetad, also don't have a name yet. But will be posting this on AO3 by the end of the week!

(I also had things for day one and two, but I'll post them on day seven - life kinda got in the way)

785 PD.

Delilah Briarwood first arrived in Rosohna as a newly minted member of the Cerberus Assembly with little fanfare. Archmage of Antiquity was neither a role with potential trade implications like the Archmage of Industry or Diplomatic Union, nor to be watched the way the Archmages of Civil Influence, Dysology, or Domestic Protection. There was always the chance that some Luxon historical artifact might be found within Dwendalian space, but barring the unearthing of some new great fallen city in the next few short decades, Deirta had little hope.

Still, respect must be paid, if only to keep the other Western wizards in line. And thus, a grand tour for the little mage.

Deirta, as a point of fact, thought little of most wizards. She’d fought wizards, a near millennium ago, and still remembered all the ways to get around their little tricks. She recognized Da’leth as a dangerous and pretentious fool of the old sort, and could only hope that his bizarre machinations brought him down sooner rather than later. In the meantime, he was a pretentious fool with an army, and they were aiming for peace.

The newest archmage looked painfully young, wide eyes taking in the Lucid Bastion and a precision in her step that seemed artfully designed to hide any sort of nervousness. Everything looked to be exactly put into place, just so, standing as if her spine had been put into a vise.

Perhaps one day she’ll learn that the best way to show power is to appear to relinquish some of that control. Or rather, to make it seem effortless, just so. Perhaps she wouldn’t.

“Is Leylas Kryn a title, also? Or an honorary name?” Archmage Briarwood asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Forgive me for being blunt - but while I realize that I am new, and young by your standards, we do have recorded history. I made a point of studying all of them, and have found most- if not all - mention that the ruler’s name is Leylas Kryn. She is a drow in the most recent accounts, but the first encounters between our Empire and yours mention a tiefling.” She smiled. “We may be short lived, but we do jot such things down.”

Archmage Briarwood looked smug behind her polite facade, as if she had caught the Kryn out on some sort of grand lie. She had no idea that she’d just revealed her complete ignorance to the entire group. How little they had to fear from Dwendalian spies, if they did not even know the secrets of consecution?

Part of Deirta pitied her, maybe. Or maybe it was to gloat. Or maybe it was that the Umavi Mirimm was in hospice and not around to stop her. In any case, she said, plainly. “Leylas Kryn has undergone the right of consecution and has been reborn.”

“Ah, how interesting! It’s always a pleasure to learn about other people’s beliefs!” Archmage Briarwood said, though her fellow Archmage and diplomats shot her quelling looks. Perhaps she had not been properly briefed. Deirta focused more on the others, who seemed more worth her time. She’d done her part to be polite to the ignorant condescending mayfly.

In that moment, Briarwood showed no more interest in prolonging life. But she had been so young at that time, and youth always confers the illusion of immortality. Deirta shouldn’t have expected her to stay dismissive.

799 PD.

Deirta received a sending from the Archmage Briarwood a few days before the Dwendalian delegation was supposed to arrive. A somewhat covert meeting request - slip away for a few minutes. The stated purpose of this trip was renewing discussions of trade routes over the Ashkeeper Peaks - nothing the Archmage of Antiquity should have been needed for.

The new northern discoveries had already some intriguing results, perhaps they’d found something they think Leylas Kryn would be willing to negotiate for.

Deirta decided to take the meeting. Leylas seemed less patient these days, less willing to think of the long term consequences, and Abrianna wasn’t around to stop her. It wouldn’t do to bargain away half of western Xhorhas on the promise of some Dunamantic scraps.

And she’d remembered stories of Aeor from her childhood. Yes, they had a duty to spread word of the Light as far as possible and to see if there was any knowledge to be scraped away from the wreckage, but it seemed opportune to her to let their rivals take all of the risk first.

“That’s the story we’re going to go with, yes - I’ll try to sweet talk you into some baubles, you’ll call my bluff and shout a little bit, and nobody will think anything more about me going on this trade talk,” Delilah said breezily, in one of the small suites created for semi-private dalliances in the Lucid Bastion.

“You know this isn’t actually private, yes? The Lens monitor each room in this building. It would be very inconvenient to me if you caused a diplomatic incident.”

“Not a worry,” Delilah tapped an anti-scrying amulet around her neck. Typical wizard - overlooking the nonmagical means of achieving a goal. “But also, your side is not the one I’m worried about. I fully expect that you’ll need to discuss this with your Queen.”

Oh, well, that was intriguing. Deirta chose to let that show. “Why are you here, really?”

“Consecution,” Delilah said, and then stared up at Deirta. She truly was short for a human. “I need to know how it works.”

Deirta kept her voice steady, doing her best not to betray any irritation. “The mysteries of the Luxon….”

“Are saved for the most devout, or richest, or specialist, I’m sure.” Delilah cut her off with a wave of her hand. “I only wish to know how it works.”

“I see. And what will you give us in return?”

“Full access to the Aeorian ruins. I’ll find a reason to step back. Ludinus wouldn’t be happy, but he’ll live.” She took a deep breath. “My husband is dying. We think it may have come from the north - it appears incurable.”

Deirta made a show of considering Delilah for a few seconds, gauging how desperate she was.

“I’ll discuss this with the Bright Queen when she is next able to grant me private audience,” Deirta said, and then respectfully bowed before leaving the room.

Deirta met Leylas for brunch the next day.

“Do you think they’ll truly cede the ruins over to us?” Leylas said, sipping her drink.

Deirta snorted. “Almost certainly not. Or at least not for long - Ludinus would find a way to dispose of her, and anything she said would be erased.”

And, again, she didn’t really mind the Dwendalians spending their soldiers and agents getting destroyed in the ruins.

“But you still think it’s a good idea.”

“I think she doesn’t realize the true asset being offered, and that makes it a fabulous idea.” A thankful Archmage, one asking to to be indoctrinated - one who knows the secret workings of the Dwendals and of Da’Leth - would be a significant catch indeed. Even if she’s resistant at first, there’s always the husband. Or simply waiting for their next life - a childhood growing up in the light of the Luxon has a way of changing loyalties.

Leylas sighed. “You still haven’t forgiven House Dwendalos, have you?”

“We could have had it all! They were in line for the throne! All they had to do was stay quiet, maybe murder a few choice people -“

“- Their siblings in that cycle -“

“-Or simply give us the information that could have helped us!”

“They chose to not commit treason and betray their birth family,” Leylas said a little playfully. “Most would say that it would be a good thing.”

“A little treason would have been nice,” Deirta muttered, but it was mostly for show.

Leylas gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. “So what is your plan with your new Archmage?”

“I’ll let her know that you have agreed that we might share information, so long as we start seeing the retreat of Dwendalian agents away from Aeor. But - you will also not blaspheme, and one must be a true believer to be Consecuted. The Archmage Briarwood and her husband would be expected to go through the entire catechism before Consecution.”

Leylas waved one of the servants over to take their dishes away. “I do think Abrianna would keep us from proceeding if she were around.”

“Well, that just means we would have to succeed before she comes back.”

[tortue-blanche]

Фрагменты из пере��еденного интервью Мартина Гора для немецкого журнала Alert Magazine (апрель, 2003).

Наверняка, это интервью Мартина из далекого 2003 года довольно известное. Но на самом деле оно не теряет своей актуальности и значимости! Тем более там есть любопытные высказывания и детали для понимания самого маэстро и творчества Depeche Mode. В том числе в некоторых своих ответах он говорил о Дейве. Причем в ту пору их отношения, мягко говоря, были крайне напряженными. Дейв хамил в интервью и любым способом пытался привлекать его внимание (на мой взгляд). Мартин его просто игнорировал, не брал трубки, не общался какое-то время. Однако, кстати, концерт его посетил. Но обратите внимание, как говорит Мартин о Дейве в том апрельском интервью 2003 г. в рамках своего Counterfeit².

In the film The Last Waltz, Robbie Robertson famously states, “You can’t live the life on the road forever—sooner or later it will destroy you.” Depeche Mode sell out stadiums wherever they go, year after year after year. Do you sometimes think about quitting the life on the road?

M.G.: First of all, Dave is clean and sober now. He lives in a completely different world than he used to. I really sometimes can’t believe how he managed this change in his life. I pay the biggest respect to his self-discipline. Dave is just an incredible man. He can walk out of the dark realm of the dressing room onto the stage facing 20,000 people—and he gets this adrenaline kick. Believe me, even if many things on a tour are a daily grind, you cannot help but get highly emotional when you are standing in front of huge audiences like that. Always. And after the concert, Dave straightaway heads for the limousine that is waiting for him backstage and immediately drives to the hotel. That’s the end of any evening for him. Maybe, in his hotel room, he still reads a bit in a book or he goes to sleep. I envy him for that discipline. I couldn’t do it like that. I always say: Every world tour with Depeche Mode takes five to ten years from me. It’s not a healthy life. But that’s the way it is.~

Или другие фрагменты из этого интервью:

Aren’t you annoyed by the fact that every kind of solitude and melancholy has already been articulated?

M.G.: I can assure you that I simply don’t care what other people have or have not done prior to me. I only care about the things that I’ve already done as I don’t want to repeat myself. Then again, Dave [Gahan] once said this brilliant sentence: “Martin has built a two-decade-long career on one single theme.”

And? Is it true?

M.G.: Maybe? Most of the songs I write for Depeche deal with various aggregate statuses of relationships. These are good songs because they always have a twist—an unexpected ending or shift. That marks the difference compared to other pop songs. But I admit it can get difficult when people start to expect a certain kind of song from you. So, I guess that’s what you call craftsmanship when it comes to songwriting: How can you write something that is truly you without becoming formulaic? That’s probably one of the main reasons we always pause for so long between Depeche Mode album releases.

The way you tell the story is very entertaining. But Dave Gahan almost became a deadly victim of this lifestyle. He overdosed in 1996 in Los Angeles. How did this moment change your life and the way you look at your past with Depeche Mode?

M.G.: For all of us this has been a very tough time. Especially as we didn’t know how to communicate with Dave anymore. I mean, Dave is a difficult personality, no matter how you look at it. And we all knew that he had serious drug problems. But you can’t really help a person if he doesn’t want to be helped. When it happened I started to also look at my own life with different eyes. I can only say that I was lucky that I was never drawn into such a mess. In that sense I’ve never been in a situation that constrained me to radically change any of my habits.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Why is Louis relationship to alcohol and drugs so blacklisted in this fandom? I find his public promotion of it questionable. I don't wanna assume too much either because I know we don't know him personally. But just considering what we get to see about him and his life during tour for example I feel like this whole topic is weirdly untouched and kind of ignored in our fandom. Just to make it clear what im referring to here: we know for a fact that he drinks on stage, before and after the show, broke his arm twice and implied it had to do with a drunk state of mind, we see him at a pub all the time. He says in interviews that he lives very unhealthy. In almost every picture of him he either drinks or smokes. And this is not me making things up in my head. Louis himself talks about how much he drinks and that he does it to calm his nerves before a gig. He doesn’t hide it at all. At jimmy Fallon he had a vodka bottle backstage, too. He has vodka Red Bull during his concerts, a fan once managed to get his half empty cup after the show from stage and confirmed it. We see his behavior and we see his appearance and how he’s changed in the past 5 to 6 years. The guy from the snuts said in an interview how impressed he was by Louis and his drinking habits and that he just wouldn’t stop taking shots in on tour. If you know just a little bit about the consequences of long term alcohol consumption it’s hard to oversee it at this point. Of course we lack information because we don’t know him but I do think it's reasonable to talk about it more and to be skeptical especially since his fans are really young and impressionable. I just wanna say, I think we should be more open and more skeptical toward things like that and question things more even if it goes against of what we think of Louis and what we love him for. I think that should be possible since we have no problem to endlessly discuss his sexuality and romantic relationships, either. I already kinda expect that you either gonna ignore this or just gonna tell me that nothing of this is reasonable to do as a fan. But I just wanna give my thoughts. I do think it’s a serious problem. I don’t worry as in I’m scared for him, I just find it weird that it gets either downplayed or entirely denied by his fans for the most part.

Oh anon - I don't really know where to start with this. Anyone who thinks Louis' fans don't discuss his alcohol use haven't been paying attention to my anons, who bring this up quite often.

I struggle to respond seriously to an anon that contains the idea'we see him at a pub all the time' as a reason for concern. Both because we don't. And because it shows a lack of curiosity of drinking cultures and the roles pub play in culture. Even if we saw in a pub multiple times every week I'd find your comment really, really odd.

But I'm going to try and answer. Even if I'm also, ultimately going to say exactly the things you expect me to say. But the question that I'm going to answer is - what would it mean for fans to have serious and realistic discussions of alcohol and drugs.

The first thing I'm going to say is thatimagining Louis' fans as young and vulnerable and therefore somehow at risk by the fact that he drinks alcohol is an entirely unserious framing. It needs to be dismissed out of hand. The idea that popstars or other celebrities need to either live a constrained life or hide part of their life to avoid being a bad influence is an incredibly reactionary one.

I think the starting point of any discussion has to be touring. The reason that there's a high level of drink and drugs among touring musicians - isn't because of some kind of intrinsic decadence of the industry. It's that touring has very specific stressors and a structure that allows people to maintain a functional life while dealing with those stressors with a lot of drugs and alcohol.

There are risks with dealing with the stress of tour drugs and alcohol, and people who use drugs and alcohol in all kinds of way can realise that what they are doing is making things worse. I think we can say with some confidence that Louis is dealing with the stress of tour with alcohol (and probably drugs). But being able to say that doesn't actually tell us what impact the alcohol and drugs are having on his life.

If you're in an industry where drugs and alcohol is a common way to deal with stress, then those who are at risk of addiction are much more likely to become addicted. But it's important to underline that addiction is a much bigger and harder thing than using alcohol and drugs to deal with stress. And one of the biggest predictors of addiction is trauma.

The new documentary on the BBC about Matt Willis from Busted really underlines that. He is an addict and he is very committed to staying sober. But as a band they all drank a lot - one of his bandmates tells a story about throwing up in Matt Willis's suitcase. That guy was like 'I didn't realise how dark things are were for you' and still has alcohol on his rider today. To an observer Matt Willis and his bandmate would have looked the same - but they weren't fucking their life up in the same way. You can't tell an addict from how much you see them drinking - the whole point of addiction is a combination of compulsion and shame.

What does understanding all this mean for how we think about drugs and alcohol and 1D members? The first thing we need to do is acknowledge how high risk they all are. Any study of boybands will show that it's a profession with a very high risk of addiction.

To take that risk seriously is to acknowledge that it's always a possibility. There's always a possibility that they're in active addiction. There's often a possibility that they're recovery - when people disappear they might be in rehab (and if that was true that's really great - because obviously when people go to rehab it's better than the alternative).

To take the risk seriously means not to talk about it in a 'ewwww gross drinking won't anyone think of the children'. But instead: 'Addiction is really hard to deal with, and trauma is a huge contributor. I hope that any 1D member dealing with addiction has what they need'.

To take the risk seriously is to acknowledge that to say something is a risk means to deal with uncertainty. We know that they're at risk. We may learn more (and I think we have at times), but in the meantime all we can do is sit with the knowledge of the risks of the industry for people like them.

[anthonybialy]

Looted Loot

You have too many dollars.  Your total decadent pile size is irrelevant, as it’s always excessive.  Give away unnecessary lucre to politicians who know how it should be spent for communal bliss.  Doing so is not a request.  State funding will fix everything, according to people who fix nothing.

Throwing compulsory cash is not merely toxic in application, although the economy has been a toxic waste zone for as long as Joe Biden has pulled its levers.  His replacements replicated his muscle memory, which shows how continuity isn’t always a blessing.  The very notion of expecting a politician to seize and correct poisons human nature.  Sanctimony isn’t has helpful for fixing as you’d think.

Getting enough funds to buy what seems worthwhile is for ordinary thinkers.  Believe in the power of cash falling from the sky.  The magic trick doesn’t even take learning a spell.  Heck: it doesn’t take politicians who can spell.  Believers in sleight of hand consult the same mathemagicians who try improving the economy via dividing by zero.  It’s easy to have lots of money by making it worthless.  Stacks of bills suddenly don’t make the possessor rich.  Democrats insist on showing how little they know about creating wealth.

Outrage at lack of funding is perpetual.  Liberals wouldn’t know what to do if they didn’t have things they curiously classify as injustices to fume about.  Utopia is always just one step away.  The perpetual Democratic dream of taxing success just a little more is an uplifting reminder to keep pursuing dreams even if they’re uncannily never reached.

Helping others could be remedied in a very easy way which isn’t simple for personal misers.  Doing so themselves takes using their own funds, which gets so expensive.  The committed refusal to admit aid can happen without a mandate is popular amongst the same ones trying to get rich without all that toiling to make something anyone else would want to buy.

Governmental spending is much like charity, which they also refuse to support voluntarily.  You may sense a pattern.  We ought to be doing things together, by which they mean letting people they vote for take money from people they hate to buy what they want after they’ve been bribed by politicians who’ve taken their own cuts.  There are no inefficiencies like in cruel free markets where greedy goons rip off customers by pleasing them.

Determining jut how liberals precisely don’t grasp money’s nature might seem academic.  But thinking about how they don’t think helps establish why they don’t help.  The debate about whether they think the money is free or just seized from the Monopoly guy helps isolate delusional lunacy.  The prototypically wealthy jerk wants more rent just because he improved the property.

Neither politicians nor government itself can break the rules, according to those entities.  There’s some federal department that creates cash.  Your toured it with your family after traveling 17 hours in a station wagon.  They can print it at will just like you saw behind glass.  They’re actually trying it right now.  Results did not create as much prosperity as hoped unless paying 93 dollars for a sack of potatoes makes everyone feel grateful.

Incessant handouts were supposed to make everyone wealthy enough that we could tax each other.  Next would be real prosperity.  We could really be coasting now if mean Republicans didn’t prohibit assembly of the perpetual energy machine.  Getting something for nothing is party policy.  The Democratic path to prosperity resembles how they think a car emits nothing but love if it’s plugged into an outlet.  Science is as consistent as dolts’ misunderstanding of it.

Curing drunkenness with gin only works if you sip enough martinis.  Troubles will certainly be fixed by legislatures finally being compassionate enough to spend into oblivion.  The very crises are actually caused by them, but society’s healers are immune to irony.  They contribute to your mirth by claiming their notions always need just a little more currency.  It’s uncanny how present funding levels are insufficient for making liberal goals a reality.  Like Randy Marsh chasing the dragon, we never catch him.  

Planning schemers can’t even conceive of a world where inhabitants interact freely.  The purportedly open-minded remain stubbornly unaware of the notion that a peddler and customer could both end up happy.  Lack of empathy is revealed by claiming to be overflowing with it.  You’re micromanaged by narrow-minded aspiring autocrats who are unable to imagine how they’d feel if they didn’t have breakfast. 

Force is the surest way to show what a good person you are.  At least, it better be, as liberals are ineffective phonies if the truth is otherwise.  Anything not mandated is a sign of cruelty by people who never use free will to help.  Government’s role is to protect us from themselves, according to its affiliates who protect us from being rich.  The classless ruling class couldn’t imagine being productive any more than they could helping others without compulsion.

Self-proclaimed enemies of greed think money fixes everything.  Of course, they won’t do anything to generate it.  Money brings out the worst in people, according to people who think making money is the worst.  Finances are based in merciless fate doled out by a malicious cosmos and denied to others by demonic financiers.  The universe’s savageness means your president needs to take just a pinch more of what you selfishly use to barely survive another week.

[scentedchildnacho]

The pastor asked me if spoke to my family so I said no I haven't spoken to them in over a decade....a common book about astrology just read my relationship house is better under non attachment.....people do need around me to come and go as they feel like....its like a tour of duty...to be westernized all the time so quite frankly I don't see more in my relationships then people trying to express right dialogue but would prefer safer experiences

So I admit with people I actually have been kind of intimate with I'm a little shocking about just needing to be reminded they exist sometimes I just want to forgive and forget

I have sometimes suspected people of just being very vain and wanting to find me not ego worthy but I list psychological attributes and I don't think my life was that abnormal I think they were people and people can withstand some things somethings saint John shows mercy about because that is really difficult

She told me it would be cold so I said that's good though the homeless population will reduce when criminal privilege seeking goes south and austerity allows poverty some peace

San Diego was the most violent I have seen homelessness become.....if people ever give anything to those criminal groups police follow them everywhere and try to turn anywhere they go into fema virtual cages

Some of those criminals were really obscene hard core drug addicts and should never ever have asked poverty to host them or afflicted people as innocent as poverty with their war with police

That's the mistake there....they tried to force poverty to host them

That and Columbia Venezuela was at emigration issue so for ever attempting migration rights like refusing to support trane unions by sleeping at the beach and trying to protect it from lack of beautification....they threw at us light radiation out of death rows it was just unconscionably bully terrifying and animal poop disgusting

Its men it's women while we have been gone reducing reliance athletics has really positived itself and it was trying to hit us with bikes with jogs with cars I mean all chaos to hit us with

I tolerated it because I have a punisher that stalks me from my birth town and he for really any sexual liberation would batter me obscenely in jails and try to sex slave me in some of the most to blame of ways or only six away in relation to dugas

So to me I took enough radiation in my skull to make jail no longer necessary for the research.....my case starts becoming a death penalty

Los angeles is like a hub for serial killers so it was all sorts of noise torture with tool schiele you have to be pornographized to truly exhibit the housing and privileges off hacker work terrorism but chicks laying out to sun bathe is the worst noise environ I have ever seen if San Diego

Its really really pornographized there and I'm glad I got my obligation to indigenous studies over with....i think the united states military has used it a long time for veteran dream pensions and that has produced people like Richard ramirez so

The pale face athletics sometimes was feeling trapped in a black lives matter school film journalism of cops so up on steroids they threw a child around on everything till he was maybe murdered...battered his body against everything and that appears to be the battalions in San Diego also it's women jogging till they almost kicked a little pale girl like a football

And that's why Selby with Berkeley scares me the most it's people who realize they won't escape a pale segregation and want to control us

Weiner how humans use human beings

I watched Anthony King and the guardian because only uk news explains that those are riot battalions and they view any attempt at say moving a garbage square somewhere else as an act of warfare and they have shields and clubs and all sorts of things so I don't know what their going to do

From what I saw compared to southerners their not that big and bully.....and southern black capability is very negative and not apparently bothered by the western condition the way it really afflicts me

People who act like their bigger bullier and more positive then others meet things bigger bullier and more financially positive then them like big brother and his black allies

[vaovalis]

And so one more step has been taken.  I took Greylocke up on his proposition of a trial run, so that I could see for myself how this all works by endeavoring into a dimension that a previous team had already concluded their body of investigation upon. Maude’s intuition on all of this is not something I’m willing to ignore, and so I was doing my best to channel Maude’s skepticism about all of this.  I still wish to introduce her to Greylocke, though all he said about that was that he’d find some time in his schedule and let me know when that would work for him. Good enough for now. It’s a reasonable deferment, but if I get the vibe that he’s trying to be evasive about it, I’ll just see about bringing her with to some meeting of ours if I can and he can then show me how he deals with such surprises. The dimension I toured is one that his records have labeled as ‘E-111′, and the team leader that did most of the write-ups about it had taken to calling it ‘Orwell Earth’. I’ve only recently read the book ‘1984′, so the reference is altogether fresh in my mind, and boy howdy was that team leader right - that dimension of Earth doesn’t seem to have metahumans, but what it does have is an extreme degree of authoritarian micromanagement governing the lives of the people. Just about everywhere I went, armored police, surveillance cameras and propaganda of every imaginable variety were constants, and the people of the city of Bangkok were shuffling through what looked to me like a fearful pantomime of living.   Many of them maintained the appearance of having lives of their own, but it took me almost not time at all to verify the previous team’s descriptions of the social fabric and its functional states.   Appearing to be happy and content was a legal requirement.  Not demonstrating the kind of mandatory satisfaction that the government there wished to see was interpreted as critical rejection of the authority’s effectiveness, and was deemed to be a criminal offence.   It looked to me like what the United States of Primal Earth would like to be if they thought they could get away with it - absolute control to every extent that threats of deprivation and violence can acquire and sustain it. I was also able to verify another of the prior team’s observations that the United States did not and had never existed in E-111; the North American continent was regarded as the Colonial Territories under the reign of the English Empire. So, it seems that in E-111, the United States never happened. I didn’t linger long enough to investigate all of the other substantial differences that the prior team documented.  The formal term for those things is apparently ‘Divergences’, so if I’m to do this, I’ll have to start adapting to the proper nomenclature.  The divergences they noted were numerous, and their conclusion ultimately landed on determining E-111 unsuitable for association, low risk and with what I guess is an extremely good ‘quantum stability coefficient’.  How QSC values are arrived at, I don’t yet have a clue, but I will get several before I’m done asking all my questions.  Greylocke briefly explained that it’s a cumbersome process evaluating numerous prongs of data acquired primarily by instruments left in dimensions by such teams as I would become and then monitored over time. The QSC apparently describes the stability of one dimension relative to one’s dimension of origination, and sound like a measurement of how easy or difficult it is expected to be to maintain a connection between the two for purposes of monitoring and travel. Further, a rating of 0.0 is apparently perfect, and also unheard of in Greylocke’s opinion. He said that anything between 0.01 and 0.10 is very stable and as reliable as connections between dimensions is going to naturally get.  He also said that his own customized portal technology has enabled vastly superior capacity to access difficult waveforms than Portal Corp’s allegedly archaic and decades-old capacities allow for, and that this was a small but ‘admittedly relevant’ reason for his departure - Portal Corp sounds like it is mired in corporate budgets to a degree that make it very difficult to consistently upgrade their very expensive tech without getting permission from hundreds of people that sound like they never agree on much, especially when it might cost them something. E-111 is a ghastly world that looks like something I’d call as horrid as the world I grew up in; a dystopian nightmare of a very different nature, but not less dystopian or nightmarish.   Greylocke suggested to me that I should get used to that, as many dimensions thus-far documented are objectively worse in many basic, colloquial manners than Primal Earth is.  I asked about that as well, why the title of ‘Primal Earth’ was what it was. He said that it was a Portal Corp and a metahuman community tendency to give such nicknames to various dimensions, and I can relate to how that makes sense - I named my dimension the Crapsack Shithole Dimension, after all. Such monikers make it easier to have a conversation. He agreed, and said that he didn’t know who exactly coined the term ‘Primal Earth’, but he never preferred it as it promoted an arrogant conceit that he didn’t care for, and he exposited a bit on the importance of intellectual refrain from such biases in a truly scientific environment. Frankly, I agreed with him - what he described sounded like a much more fair and unbiased way to collect and keep information.  Titling Primal Earth as ‘E-1′ was as far as said he was willing to go with preserving the egotism inherent in the nickname, and only there because one must begin counting somewhere, and it wasn’t an unreasonable bias to start where one was. He briefly described other rating systems that he keeps and applies to each explored dimension.  Ratings for the state of the environment, the state of civilization’s development and a host of other things are apparently big parts of what he calls his ‘data processing job’ that he does while operator teams place all the instruments and put all the boots on the ground to gather said data. He was quite keenly interested in my observation that E-111 didn’t feel like there was any magic anywhere I was.  He said that he’d been eager to get someone on board that could identify and ideally pinpoint data about such things, as he’s thus-far found it difficult to collate a useful degree of information regarding the state of magic in any of the dimensions prior teams have explored. He also found it interestingly exciting that I didn’t feel like -my- magic or powers were at all suppressed or modified in E-111.  He told me quite a bit about how that kind of ‘temporal suppression’ was standard, and that both he and other minds in the portal industry had long been finding little but repeated confirmation that it was like a law of thermodynamics - basically invariable under the same applicable sets of conditions. Those laws don’t seem to apply to me.  Greylocke’s scanning devices had suggested that I might not suppress like people should do according to that functional law, but that E-111 didn’t suppress me in any way at all was apparently also a test of that.   My magic worked just fine there. I flew around the world without any more difficulty than I did on my Earth or that I do on Primal. My Fire was in no way affected that I could feel.  I didn’t get into any fights or really stretch at all and test such things, but if feeling alone is any indication as Greylocke says it probably would be, I wasn’t affected. Greylocke described the feeling of suppression as stifling and, the longer one remains in a state of being suppressed and distorted by time and space continuously trying to ‘correct’ you, the more of a psychological effect it is likely to have.  He used the example of perpetually having one of your arms kept numb and useless at your side, and I can easily enough envision how that could be quite vexing to the point of driving certain types of people nuts, especially over long periods of time. Frustrating, to say the least.  It’ll require more testing to see if perhaps I’m simply resistant to this suppression or if I’m actually outside of that law altogether, but I’ll keep it in mind as something that I could encounter in the course of this manner of thing. I’d hate to get cocky, assume myself immune and then learn the hard way one day that that assumption was needlessly foolish, after all.  I’m not that stupid; I’ll learn about it and what steps should be taken to work with and around it just in case, and because I expect I’ll have to know all about this if I’m ever going to work with others in a capacity such as this. All in all, it was a worthwhile endeavor of the past few days, and altogether informative. So far, so good. Working with Greylocke seems more, rather than less, like a viable option going forward because of these events.

[writermuses]

Not wanting Mia to be judged by the gaggle of people that had swarmed around him and were all in various states of inebriation or seeking to be, Blaine gently led Mya through the house as they caught up. "Was that good for you?" He studied her and was immediately aware of how clear her eyes were, how much color was in her face. It also made him acutely aware of what he probably looked like. There was a reason no one looked at the singers of the greatest rock bands a few decades into their career and talked about them being haggard (if they were even still alive) and Blaine was no different. His plan had always been to be around for a good time, not a long time.

"I always look good." Blaine playfully leaned away from her and lifted up the hem of his shirt, exposing well defined muscles and tattoos. "You know me, if I'm not in the studio then I'm on tour. Burning the candle at both ends doing everything I love. This is still a pretty typical night off and Cash is around supposed to be babysitting me, but I give baby bro the slip pretty easily every time." He leaned against the wall but kept his hand on her waist. "If you're clean though, why come to this shit. I don't want you to do your pretty head in. We could get out of here, catch up more... unless there's someone at home that would be pissed about us walking out together."

Once upon a time, Mya would have revelled in the pulsating energy of this environment, seamlessly riding the waves of chaotic revelry and indulging in libations with abandon. But time had wrought profound changes in her, etching lines of introspection upon her brow and casting shadows of remembrance upon her soul. She cradled her drink with newfound reverence, the clink of ice against glass a soothing comfort. Mocktails had become her solace, their gentle allure offering respite from the throbbing ache of hangovers past. Her heart fluttered as recognition dawned, a fragile hope blossoming within her chest.

"Hey, sweetheart," she whispered, her voice a delicate melody in the tumultuous symphony of the crowded room, as he drew her into his embrace. The warmth of his touch stirred memories long dormant, a bittersweet ache threading through her veins. "I... I've been to rehab," she confessed, the weight of her words hanging heavy in the air, a fragile admission of vulnerability, usually she shone with pride that she had turned her life around but tonight felt different. "It has been a while," she mused, a wistful longing tingeing her voice as she contemplated the passage of time, its elusive grasp slipping through her fingers like grains of sand.

A blush crept across her cheeks at his compliment, the warmth of embarrassment suffusing her being like a gentle caress. "Thank you... you look good yourself," she murmured, her laughter a soft, lilting melody that danced upon the air like a whisper.

"How have you been?" she inquired, her gaze lingering upon him with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. The scent of alcohol wafted from him, a heady miasma that threatened to engulf her senses. She almost broke out in a light sweat. Mya hadn’t been in a room with this much temptation in a long time.

[littlemisslipbalm]

“it’s not that important”

Summary: Y/N is in Harry’s band and one night they have a drunken hook up. One thing leads to another and they find themselves engaging in a friend’s with benefits type of situation. spoiler: it is important

AKA: A friends with benefits to lovers story :) with some angst in there

This is for @stylesharrys fallinharry10k celebration so my trope is friends with benefits! prompt is “you have no goddamn idea what you do to me. when i’m around you, i have no control of my emotions or my thoughts” and the tenth picture ^ i kinda just used it in the beginning to descripe what he was wearing - i got really carried away with this story but the prompt is in there !! lol, not proofread tho but would love your feedback !!!! :) love y’all very much 

oh boy i’ve had this done for agesss but i hadn’t written the smut until today so now we’re here i dont even remember what happens - i vaguely remember not loving the end but I hope yall enjoy

Word Count: 15.4k (longest fic to date) | Warnings: smut, angst, fluff, alcohol consumption? i dont remember but i dont think theres anything too heavy in here.

-

“Hey Harold!” You smile as you easily hop over the side of the couch and settle beside your bandmate.

Harry groans, yet can’t keep the small smile off of his face when he sees it’s you. “How many times have I told you to never call me that?”

Your eyes narrow at his faux glare. “And how many times have I told you, I simply do not care?” 

You reach a hand out and tousle his already disheveled, unstyled brown hair. Despite his lack of styling, his hair still looked perfect. His chestnut hair fell into a middle part when he did nothing to it and you found it endearing. It made him look far younger than he truly was, like a boy you might have pursued when you were in your early days at college. The waves slightly framed his prominent cheekbones and chiseled jaw that was sporting a tiny amount of stubble.

He moves his arm from around the back of the couch to pat at his hair, trying to put it back in its nondescript position you had just messed with. After he’s satisfied, he uses the same hand to push up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. They’re chestnut brown Gucci frames that match the natural highlights in his hair. You can safely assume that’s why he bought them. The lenses are clear, but you know they don’t hold any prescription. He looks incredulously at you from behind them still.

“Nice glasses,” you mention offhandedly as you reach out to the coffee table to grab the drink you had left there earlier.

Before Harry had arrived, you had been taking up residence on the couch, in the spot he had actually taken up. You had ventured to the restroom for a moment and gotten held up in a conversation when asked your preference for the Beatles. Having to defend your staunch stance for the Beatles and against the Rolling Stones, you had gotten swept up into an argument with Adam. He believed that because the Rolling Stones toured for longer warranted them the title of best rock band. While you countered that despite their long touring and production of music, the Stones had a rotation of members. The Beatles maintained the four of them and held such a large impact even though they were barely together for a decade. They were one of a kind, or at least the first of their kind, you’d allow. You weren’t really in the mood for intellectual conversation tonight, so upon seeing Harry taking up your seat, you had told Adam you’d continue the discussion at a later date and returned to your spot.  

“Thanks,” Harry mumbles as his gaze flits around the room. He wasn’t sure if you were actually complimenting him, but he would take it as one either way.

The rest of your friends are all up and about, drinking, talking, dancing. It was the usual house party scene: a relatively intimate gathering, music you all actually liked, some friends of friends feeling slightly out of place. There was no pressure in this type of gathering but still Harry wasn’t necessarily in the party mood tonight. Usually, Harry was the one instigating these types of get-togethers with his friends and bandmates. He liked to be the life of the party, but as the tour loomed closer and closer, he felt some tinge of longing for quiet and solitude. He knew he wouldn’t have much quiet while on the road, which mostly didn’t scare him. He loved the stage and the high he received from performing and the gratification he felt from all the people in the room being there to see him. But there was also that other part of him that liked the quiet, the privacy. As the lack of alone time nudged itself around the corner, he had been hoping to enjoy solitude, or at the very least peace before he was on the road. Some sort of blissful state before technical chaos ensued. When Charlotte, the host of tonight’s soiree, had texted their group chat about tonight, Harry had politely declined. Then came the slew of private texts from Charlotte giving him all the reasons he should come tonight. He tried to say no again, but had shown up after the continued begging from her.

His appearance mirrored his expression, choosing a not perfectly fitted white t-shirt and random trousers rather than picking something he really loved, like usual. You could tell something was up and as his friend you were wondering what was wrong with him.

“Don’t sound so excited, Harry, someone might mistake you for somebody who’s happy to be here.” You stick your tongue into the side of your cheek, gauging his reaction.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re not very funny?” He quips, green eyes flashing to meet yours.

Your banter is probably how the pair of you communicated the best, never really falling into the whole serious side of friendship. You never shared those late night talks about the future or your fears. It was a fun friendship, so you didn’t fancy yourself one of his closest confidants. When it came to music, you and Harry were a bit more serious which formed a sort of paradox because the music you would share with each other gave a far greater insight into your souls than you probably realized. As a member of his band, you would discuss his music and what was going on with that sort of business part. But the sharing and discussion of other music that you did was part of your friendship, even if you didn’t see it like that. Because of the countless albums you had recommended to each other and the specific songs you had made note of, Harry and you knew each other much better than you thought you did. Music connects to something deep inside yourself and you have to like it enough and know the other person well enough to believe that they will also enjoy it to recommend it. As much tongue and cheek that you partook in with Harry, deep down, unbeknownst to either of you, you were that friend he shared his hopes and fears with, through the way he knew best, music.

“No, most people find me hilarious...”

You take a sip of your drink, trying to cover up the sting that his remark actually left. Most of the time you were great at keeping up with anyone’s banter, especially Harry’s, but tonight you weren’t feeling it. His tone had sounded so harsh it almost sounded like he meant it. His features soften when he sees the way your face falls, despite your sarcastic tone.

“‘M sorry. I’m just not in the best mood tonight. Didn’t want to come, but Charlotte…” He shifts to face you, arm retracting slightly around the couch, landing his hand at the edge of your shoulder. His fingers fiddle with themselves absentmindedly, he turns his rings around his fingers and they ever so slightly brush against your shoulder. You don’t mind, you know its his nervous tick that he did whenever he didn’t have something to clink them against.

“Yeah, same here, actually.” Your tuck an out of place hair behind your ear, returning your gaze to Harry, who’s tilting his head at you curiously. “But might as well make the most of it, though. After all, this is our last week before tour starts.” You raise your glass and tilt it towards him before taking a sip.

You really didn’t have a plan, you were just trying to make him feel a little better. It was seldom you saw him so solemn at this type of gathering. He usually was the one bouncing from group to group, entertaining everyone with his dazzling charm and quick wit. Sometimes he would bring a date and spend the night with them in the corner, but that was usually at bigger parties than this. At these types of gatherings you often found yourself talking with Charlotte for most of the night. You were both new additions in the band and you had clicked immediately. You would travel in a pair between different groups and talk with everyone. Sometimes you would tell a humorous anecdote about your life and everyone would laugh wholeheartedly. Your ability to retell a story and make it hilarious every time seemed to be your secret talent. You could make any experience into a ten-minute retelling and it always sounds like the funniest moment of your life. It ranged from your embarrassing audition for Grease as a tween to your supermarket run in with an old acquaintance or B-list celebrity the day before. It didn’t matter what it was, it just always had the entire circle of people laughing and wiping their eyes with joy. You’d laugh a little with themselves, but usually you just had a triumphant smile on your lips for the rest of the night.

He nods, sipping his own drink for the first time since you had settled down beside him. “Well, I’m all ears.”

“What?”

“Give me your suggestions on how to make the most of tonight.”

“Drinking, mostly, was my plan,” you laugh nervously as Harry continues to stare at you intently.

“Mostly?”

“I mean, what do you want me to say? I didn’t think to pack my bouncy castle, my bad.”

He bites back a laugh but lets some air escape his defined nose, before staring with a deadpan face at you.

You like to tease him. You simply liked him. Harry was different from other men you knew. You were pretty sure most people could say that though. Harry was just different. It seemed like no one could not have some sort of affection for him. With the playful friendship the pair of you had, you always skirted the edge of flirtation. But you also didn’t particularly ever want to cross any lines with him. He was the employer of you, technically. He had brought you into his backing band and you wouldn’t do anything to harm that position. As well, at the end of the day you knew Harry. His tendencies and the choices he made.

When you were around him at parties like this, you had to try really hard to keep him at an arm’s length. Because on one hand, you would drink and suddenly the boundaries you put up didn’t seem that important, instead his lips started to look rather inviting, but on the other, you knew that he was extremely emotionally closed off to any relationship that was more than either friendship or a one night stand.

Harry doesn’t give you a response, just swings back his drink. The pair of you sit and drink in silence. Before you know it, Harry and you are five drinks in, finally talking after the second. The pair of you decide to move to the balcony outside and continue your conversation there after the third. After the fourth, you're getting really handsy and by the end of the fifth, Harry’s arm is wrapped tightly around your waist and you're laughing breathlessly into his neck. It looks like he’s just shielding you from the cold night air, but both of you seemed to be enjoying each other’s embrace for other reasons.

Finally catching your breath, you lean back and pant softly as you meet eyes with Harry. His pupils have blown out from the alcohol and dark light. The emerald green barely surrounds the black and you swear there’s flecks of gold or maybe brown in them. Your brows scrunch at the revelation and Harry asks what you’re thinking. You don’t respond, too entranced and drunk to even hear him.

“Oi,” he bops your nose, “What is goin’ on in there, little lady?”

Your hand reaches up and widens Harry’s eye manually. His inebriated state has no qualms about you doing such an odd thing. “Why’s your green not actually green?”

“What?” He asks before moving your hand away from his face, it instead falls to his chest. The pair of you shift until your caged between his body and the balcony’s ledge. You pout as you stare up at him. His skin looks soft and taught over every inch of his face and neck. The urge to kiss him keeps nagging at the back of your mind. The idea keeps creeping up closer and closer and the drunker you are the less likely you are to suppress it.

“Do you want to fuck me?” You blurt out.

“Sure.” Harry isn’t taken aback. He had been thinking about asking for a while, so he was glad you had asked first, made it easier for him.

“Okay, let’s go.”

He takes you back to your place, the pair of you catching a cab the short distance between yours and Charlotte’s flats. No one blinks an eye at the pair of you leaving together. Everyone watched the pair of you sulk all night about being there and only enjoying the other’s company, so they weren’t keen on either of you staying. Charlotte was simply glad the pair of you had stayed for as long as you did.

The two of you walk casually until you’re inside your bedroom. Once inside, Harry throws you on the bed and fucks you. Hard. He’s got you spread out in more ways than you had ever thought possible. He’s got you saying things you had never even dreamed of saying. And he’s got you cumming and screaming more than you could have ever wanted. He enjoys himself as well. He loves the way you feel around him and the way your eyes look up at him while he fucks you straight into the bed. He loves the way you sound whispering dirty things and screaming his name. He loves the feel of your soft skin all over your body as he pushes deep inside you. He loves the way you’re able to rip a guttural moan from him every time he cums. And he cums three times that night. While it wasn’t quiet, he did find that blissful state he had been in desperate need of.

After the third round, Harry feels spent. He brings himself into a sitting position, legs hanging off the edge of your bed. You’re lying in your bed, completely overstimulated, cumming at least twice as many times as Harry. He scratches at the top of his head, his bicep bulging as he folds his arms around himself.

“That was fucking good, Y/N. Just what I needed.”

You can only hum in response.

Then he takes your blanket and lays it over you. After that he begins to stand up, getting ready to grab his things and go.

“You don’t have to go…” your voice raises when you realize what he’s doing.

“Yeah, I do. This was just a one time thing, yeah? I enjoyed it, but you know...”

“Erm, I guess?” You rolled to fully look at him, he was pulling his t-shirt back on now, his marked chest disappearing beneath the white fabric. “Do you really not stay over at your one night stands?”

He thinks about it as he begins with his shoes and his glasses at the same time. “Yes? Usually I don’t know the person and I don’t particularly want to sign an autograph when I leave in the morning. Best to leave immediately afterwards.”

“That was exactly why I wanted you to stay...Shit! No chance you’ll give me an autograph now? Could sign my tit, right next to your hickies.”

He laughs, automatically in a better mood after the catharsis of having sex. It was also a relief for him that you didn’t seem to be weird about the hook up. “Shut up!”

“You’re a twat, Harold.” He groans instinctively at the annoying nickname, not caring about the ‘twat’ part. “But be my guest, you can freeze your arse off while waiting for your cab outside at this hour.”

“Rude..” He mutters, standing in your doorway now. “You wouldn’t actually make your employer stand out in the cold at this time of night. I haven’t even got a jumper. Could get a cold and ruin my voice. ”

“You’re the one who says it’s best to leave immediately. Get on it, mister.”

Your hand makes a shooing movement, but he doesn’t budge. You sigh as he makes a puppy dog face - eyes wide and a puckered pout with his flushed cheeks and lips - playing into your actual kindness, that he knows is somewhere. Your sweetness that you were keeping hidden from Harry right now. Nothing was serious between you so it made sense that you were trying not to let your innate ability to care show as he’s about to walk out on you.

“Ugh, fine. Stop looking at me like that. Just grab one of my coats from the bottom right, they’re all oversized so one should fit.” He doesn’t relent on the face. “And you can stay inside until your cab comes.” You sigh and throw one of your pillows at him. He catches it easily and throws it back, much softer than your throw. “Also never pull the employer card on me again when I’m naked in the bed you just fucked me in,” you call as he looks through your closet.

Returning with a patchwork coat you had thrifted tight over his shoulders, he looks at you seriously, “Yeah sorry about that part. Definitely wasn’t trying to exert my power over you, it sounded better in my head. Meant more like you could ruin my voice and both of our jobs.”

You nod and chuckle slightly, finding how inarticulate Harry could be as an endearing trait. His explanation didn’t actually make it sound better. “The jacket fits.” You say, choosing to move forward from Harry’s weirdness, knowing he didn’t mean any harm from his initial statement.

“Yeah, thanks. I think my cab is here,” He glances at his phone, “So I’ll go...See you?”

“I’m sure.” You smile, “We do in fact work together and will soon be touring the world. Would be a bit weird if I didn’t see you.”

“Right.” He nods and adds a peace sign before he walks out of your sight. You know he’s gone when you hear the door click shut. What an interesting night.

-

Love on Tour had just started and Harry couldn’t lie. He couldn’t keep his mind off of you. You were both his most recent partner and the best he had had in a while. He found himself rubbing over the spots on his neck and clavicle that you had given particular attention to during the night you had shared together. When he went to bed it was your body he pictured to get himself off. So, after the first show he’s beelining to you at the beginning of the after party. He’s got an adrenaline high and he needs a release. You’re the solution. He’s whispering in your ear, asking if you’d like to meet him in his dressing room. Your eyes study his face when he pulls back and they widen slightly when the realization of what he’s implying dawns on you. Then you’re nodding and excusing yourself from a random conversation five minutes later.

Inside Harry’s dressing room, you find Harry already unbuttoning his shirt. He grabs your face and shoves his lips onto yours once you lock the door. As he kisses you he tries to make one thing very clear, “This doesn’t mean anything.”

“Got it.” You begin to finish Harry’s job of taking off his shirt.

He pulls back to look you in the eye, “Are you okay with that?”

“Jesus fuck, yes, Harry, just shut up and fuck me senseless again!”

He listens to you and begins to kiss down your jaw and neck. His open-mouth kisses leave a searing trail across your skin. He settles on a spot at the base of your neck and begins to suck and nip at it with vigor. You set to work on finishing his job of unbuttoning his shirt. Then you pull off your own shirt, reaching behind you to untie the bows at the back. The new skin exposed grabs Harry’s attention and he moves down to suck over the cleavage of your tits. He’s happy to be back with his ‘bosom friends’. You smack his head when he says it and he chuckles darkly, only sucking harder on them causing you to moan louder than you would like.

Once you’re both in only your underwear, you find your back pressed up against the mirror behind the dressing room counter. Harry’s body is nestled between your spread legs as he kisses down your skin. His fingers dance along the line of your thong as he looks up from beneath his lashes for position, you only push his head closer to your heat in response. He laughs mischievously before tugging them down off your hips.

“Missed this pretty little cunt...All I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout,” He mutters as he begins to latch onto your dripping core.

Your brows shoot up at the thought that Harry’s mind has been stuck on you for the past week. You definitely had thought about your drunken hook up a bit, but hadn’t thought it had left a lasting impression on Harry, you assumed he had that lovely of a night with every person he chose to spend intimate time with. These thoughts are forgotten when Harry’s warm tongue is lapping at your swollen bud. You’re already panting for Harry and now you’re heaving with moans and whimpers leaving your mouth with every lick and nip of his expert mouth.

“Fuck Harry, feels so good,” you whine as his tongue travels down your folds and swirls and dips into your hole.

He moans at your words and the way your legs squeeze at his head. His hands move to spread you open wide to maintain his control and he smirks at the way your body rolls due to the friction of his voice against your pussy.

“Be a good girl f’me,” he growls still pressed against your wet heat.

Your body rolls again as you get closer and closer to your first release. Your bite your lip trying to contain all of the sounds that are trying to escape your mouth. Harry notices the new silence and glances up seeing how you’re trying to behave. As much as he likes you obeying his words, he also wanted to hear how he was pleasuring you.

“Tell me how you feel, princess,” he demands.

“So-so good,” you hiccup as his fingers caress over your folds now as he looks you in the eyes, his lips wet with your slick. He kisses you hard, his tongue diving into your mouth and you kiss back passionately, loving your taste on his tongue.

He pulls back and your hands trail down his chest, swirling around his familiar tattoos and hair that grace his lower torso as you move. He grins, enjoying the feeling of you on him and how he was affecting you.

Soon enough, his cock is finding its way back to your glistening folds, wet with your own liquids as well as his saliva. His mouth waters at the sight. He only pushes into you a few times like this. Then he catches sight of himself in the mirror in front of him and can’t resist. He pulls out and flips you over, your squeal leaving your mouth before you can stop yourself. His dick finds your entrance once again, not wanting to be without the wonderful warmth for any longer than he must.

“Ahhh,” Harry groans when he slips back inside.

Your head throws back on your neck, the feeling of him as well as the sight of him gripping your hair in one hand and your fleshy hip in the other. His rings dig into the skin as he’s able to slam more forcefully in this position. You gasp and whine at his motions. The sounds coming from between your legs are turning you on even more and they seem to make Harry happy too. He picks up the pace and drops the grasp of your hair for a second. Your head falls down as you try to keep yourself up on your elbows.

Gripping both of your hips, Harry growls, “Look at me while I fuck you. C’mon now.”

You moan in response and tear your eyes open to see your reflections in the mirror. One hand goes up to hold onto the mirror to give yourself more traction, causing your back to arch even more. The new position has Harry’s cock slamming into you deeper.

“Fuck!” Harry practically yells and can’t keep himself from landing a harsh slap on your ass. You jump forward at the sting but his other hand keeps the pace steady. He keeps burying himself into you all the way to his base, his balls slapping at your now slick spread thighs. He rubs over the red handprint he had just left on your ass. You whimper and bite your lip, truly enjoying the sensation.

Still staring into the mirror as Harry commanded, your eyes water slightly and Harry makes eye contact with you through the mirror. You smile widely and he grins back. “This feels so fucking good. Your pussy takes me so well. Fuck…” Harry babbles, still pistoning into you. You had noticed how vocal he was the first time you had fucked, but thought it had just been the alcohol. Apparently not. But you didn’t mind, you much preferred it to partners who barely spoke or didn’t even moan. Like how were you supposed to know what was going on in their minds? With Harry, you knew he was having a good time.

A few more heavy thrusts and you felt yourself nearing the edge. Your panting was getting faster, exceeding the speed of Harry’s thrusts and he could also feel you were close. Your cunt began squeezing him tighter so he hooked a hand under your knee and brought it onto the table. He hunched over you slightly and snaked his hand to your clit. “C’mon darling, I know you're close. Can feel that little cunt putting a choke hold on my cock.” He rubs at your clit with the vigor of strumming a quick paced song on the guitar. It’s enough to overtake your senses and the laugh that had bubbled from his words turns into your orgasm moan. You try to muffle it into the arm that is holding you against the mirror to avoid a full on scream because it feels that good. You felt like you were having your first ever orgasm, it felt that new to you.

A few more thrusts and you’ve come down from it, but Harry still hasn’t finished. It’s your turn to be the partner coaxing the other to get off. “Faster, Har. Want you to cum too.” He grunts, picking back up the pace. He had slowed to let you ride out your stay. “That’s it...want you to cum in me. Your cock feels so fucking good.” You whine, meaning every word. He smiles again at you and closes his eyes, focusing on chasing his high. You watch as his smile widens to that open mouth grin, “Fuck,” he almost whispers. And there it is. There’s a twitch in his hips that mirrors his expression and then he’s pulling out and cumming on your back. His voice is now even lower and raspier than before as he babbles how good that was and how tight your pussy was. It was sweet nothings, but extremely explicit and you sighed heavily, feeling a small orgasm wash over you again. His final thrusts and voice pushing you off the cliff again easily.

The two of you take a minute to bring your breathing back to normal and Harry goes to clean your back off.

“So..how do you feel about maybe doing this regularly?”  Harry asks sheepishly as he begins to pull his pants back on.

“Like a friends with benefits kind of thing? Or bandmates with benefits, rather.” You laugh breathlessly at your not really funny joke, but you’re now truly exhausted. From the show and the fuck, you felt thouroughly worked out.

“I guess that’s what it is, yeah.”

“Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”

“You’re honestly so chill, Y/N. It’s fuckin’ hot.”

You laugh and flip your hair dramatically. You’re only in your bra and panties right now and Harry licks his lips, finding your playfulness to be a turn on. “What can I say?” You laugh.

“But like I said before...it’s just sex.” He’s buttoning up his shirt and looking at your reflection through the mirror now. He watches you slip the pants you had been wearing back on.

“Oh, Harold, I know.” On cue, he groans and turns around to face you after fixing his mused hair in the mirror. Interrupting yourself, you turn your back to Harry, “Can you tie this, sorry it’s hard for me to get the -” Harry walks to you without any hesitation and begins tying the silk ribbons on the back of your shirt. “Thanks. Anyway,” you turn to face him when he’s finished and you place both of your palms on his chest. “Trust me, I know you’ve got your issues and I’m not looking to be the girl that tries to change you. I know what this is. I only ask that you let me know when you sleep with other people, because once you do, you won’t need me.” Harry nods and you pat your hands against him. You both smile and go your separate ways when you leave the dressing room.

-

Harry and you fucked almost every night on tour. Sometimes it was right after, on the counter in his dressing rooms. Sometimes it was later in the evening in his hotel room or yours. He stopped leaving immediately after your hook ups. He never kicked you out of his room so he decided it was fine for him to stay in yours. Especially because you weren’t a stranger who would be weird with him in the morning. He also didn’t like trekking through the hotel halls late at night.

The first few times you stayed in the same bed, the two of you stayed on opposite sides of the bed, not touching after you were finished engaging in your sexual endeavours. Rigid bodies against the edges of the mattress. Then one particularly long night, filled with multiple rounds, Harry was so exhausted from his performance on stage and off that he collapsed on top of you. He fell asleep there and you didn’t particularly mind. It felt nice to be slightly compressed and held. He shifted in his sleep and when he woke up he wasn’t upset to find you nestled into his side with his arms wrapped around you. After that, cuddling sort of became part of the routine. After you were done having sex, Harry or you would get up to clean up and bring back waters. Then you would settle in his arms. Sometimes in a spooning position and sometimes you cradled softly into his chest. You didn’t talk about it, it just happened.

One night it was your head directly on top of his butterfly tattoo, one leg thrown over his lower torso and your arm snuggly wrapped around his middle. He liked to pet your hair when you laid against his chest in that way. His fingers would fiddle with the strands and you liked it because he usually took off his rings before he would do it and his hands felt so soft and delicate against you. Harry liked the way he felt when he would hold you afterwards. It was calming to fall asleep against your soft skin and feel your fingertips trace lyrics to songs he wasn’t sure the name of against his own.

No one knew about how your friendship with Harry worked. To the rest of the world, you seemed to be someone who had become another close friend in the band. You were similar to Mitch in many respects. Except for when Harry winked at you during a show, it wasn’t a friendly wink, it was a ‘this song makes me horny and I can’t wait to relieve the pressure by fucking you later’ kind of wink. You knew this because Harry had gone over and whispered it in your ear during a quick break, when you had only looked at him weirdly after he did it.

Before the show tonight, you pulled Harry aside, “So what are we thinking tonight? I feel like I might want to ride you...Haven’t been on top in a while.” In the darkness of the backstage, you crane your neck to take Harry’s earlobe between your teeth. He groans softly and grips your hips to guide them against his for a second. “Sounds fuckin’ fantastic, love.” You twitch back, releasing him immediately at the word. You always told him not to call you that and he tried to reason with you, that it was just something he called people. But you disliked it a lot, adding it to the growing list of rules the pair of you had for the do’s and don'ts of being friends with benefits with each other.

“Harold,” you groan and he steps back at that pet name. While he hated this, you refused to let him put it on the list because it didn’t cross any lines with your physical arrangement. Not that there was any physical list to put it on, it was more of a theoretical list that the two of you would speak of occasionally.

“Sorry.” He says eventually, “Didn’t mean it.” You both laugh.

You think about how other relationships were sometimes desperate to hear their partner express their love for them and you believe you’re grateful for the simplicity of your arrangement. The term relationship regarding what you and Harry were doing was also in the ‘don’t’ category on the list. If either of you were being honest, there should be no need for a list and you should be questioning yourselves why you felt the need to set boundaries if one part of it was physical and the other part was your friendship and job. If it truly was just physical why were boundaries constantly needing to be set and followed? But right now honesty was not in the cards.

-

After the show Harry gets delayed with press or fans or something that you don’t really care about. You barely read the text that he sends, only caring about the ‘sorry got held up’ and the ‘be there in thirty’.

You let yourself into his room and wait on the bed, flipping through your phone, completely unbothered by the rest of the world. When you hear a knock on the door, you don’t think twice about getting up and opening the door. You only realize your terrible mistake when it’s Mitch and not Harry standing at what you’re also just realizing isn’t your door, but instead Harry’s.

“Shit!” you say under your breath as Mitch looks at you confused.

The room is dark behind you because Harry would have just entered and gotten down to business. He might turn on a side lamp, but you hadn’t felt the need to have light on while you waited. Forgetting all of that, you had just gone to the door and opened it.

Mitch tucks some of his hair behind his ear as he stares at you. “Is Harry here?”

“Er..No?” It comes out as a question. You rub the back of your ankle with your foot, feeling nervous.

“Is he actually not here or?” Mitch trails off, narrowing his eyes at you.

“No, no he’s really not here. I’m waiting for him, too.” You rush your words, but try to remain calm.

“You have a key to his room. And you’re waiting in the dark.” He says. They’re not questions and you’re not sure just how guilty you look.

“Yeah!” You try to come up with a non suspicious response, hoping there’s a way to still salvage your’s and Harry’s secret, “He gave me his key because he wanted to talk about something and I kept it dark because my eyes always hurt after shows. Kind of like a migraine.” You scratch at your head and smile, trying to convince Mitch. He seems to believe you as he nods slowly and opens his eyes more.

There’s a little bit of an awkward silence and Mitch shifts his weight between his feet, looking at you still. Just as you're about to invite Mitch to come wait inside with you, Harry steps out of the elevator and begins to walk down the hall. His key card is already in hand and your eyes widen. Harry’s expression mirrors yours when he realizes Mitch is standing outside of his door and that you are standing with him. “Mitch!” Harry says, placing his hand on Mitch’s shoulder and sliding his key card into his back pocket with the other. Mitch turns to Harry without seeing him put away the other key card and you look at the pair of them.

“I was just telling Mitch how you gave me your key card so we could talk about...that thing.” You interject, flicking the lights on in Harry’s room as casually as possible. Harry shoots you a look about how you couldn’t come up with an actual reason for being there. You shrug your shoulders helplessly.

Mitch looks between the two of you and feels some weird tension and he’s not sure if it's always there and he’s just noticing or if something is going on right now.

“Yeah, well, I came to stop by to talk about the riff in Canyon Moon. Something is wonky with it.”

“Oh! Sure,” Harry nods to Mitch and then glances at you, “Y/N, we can talk about that other thing later. It’s not that important anyway.” His tone is so casual and nonchalant. You stare at him, thinking he can’t be serious. You had been almost sure he would send Mitch away, but instead you were being kicked to the curb. When he doesn’t say sike or anything of the sort, you nod. “Okay,” then you mumble a ‘good luck’ with figuring out the problem with the song. Mitch walks in the door, but Harry’s eyes stay fixed on your figure retreating down the hallway. He watches you disappear and is only pulled from his thoughts when Mitch calls his name from the couch in the room.

After reaching your floor, you key into your room and get ready for bed. Just as you’re about to drift off to sleep, completely alone for once in a long time, there’s another knock. This time you check the peephole, a habit you realized you were going to have to get better at. It’s Harry. You open the door and walk away immediately once he’s entered the room.

“Why are you here?”

“Thought we could still...” He follows you into the room, trying to make out your face in the darkness.

“I’m not in the mood anymore.” Your tone gives away your annoyance. You couldn’t hide that you were mad at Harry for sending you away. It made you feel weird. The way he did it so easily made you feel like you were extremely disposable and unwanted.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs as he lays down beside you. You turn to face him when he places a hand on the small of your back. You’re face to face and your noses are almost brushing. It’s not really possible to see each other’s features, but after months of hooking up you knew each other’s faces pretty well. You could reach out and pinpoint all of Harry’s freckles and moles on his face and neck right now and be correct. He could likely do the same. The theory is proven correct when he reaches out and his hand dances down your cheek. “Just thought it would be less suspicious if I didn’t get rid of him. Couldn’t make him wait either…”

“I know,” your voice is small and soft, just above a whisper, “I forgive you.” You scoot closer to him and Harry instinctively wraps his arm around you, bringing you tightly into him. You sigh into his neck and he shivers at your warm breath on his slightly clammy skin. When you lick your lips, they brush lightly against his skin. He laughs at the feeling, so you decide to press an intentional kiss to the hollow in his neck. In response, he presses a kiss to your hairline, his lips slightly chapped after the concert.

The kisses are tender, filled with that thing neither of you dare attribute to anything the two of you did in the dark. The word you told him time and time again to not call you. So is just about every touch and word that has been exchanged in this room since Harry entered it. You fall asleep wrapped up in his arms, a soft smile resting on both of your faces. Neither of you seem to mind that you didn’t actually have sex tonight or anything even close to it.

-

When you wake up you feel especially well rested. You shift around and realize your bed is empty besides you. It depended on the day, but it was always a toss up between Harry being there when you woke up or not. However, lately, you had found it was usually the former. You would linger longer and so would Harry in each other’s rooms, lounging in each other’s embrace under the soft glow of the morning light peaking through whatever windows the room had. Today you were cold at his absence. Then you look up and realize you aren’t completely alone. Harry is standing at the end of your bed, staring down at his phone, smiling.

“Hey.”

You wait for his reply, but he doesn’t look up from his phone. “Hey, Harold,” you repeat. His head snaps up, a grimace on his face at the name. He slips his phone in his pocket and ruffles his hair. “Hey.” He finally responds. “I’m gonna head out.”

“Okay.”

Neither of you seem to find it necessary to talk about what happened last night. Harry definitely seemed a little off to you this morning, but you try to shake it from your thoughts. There was no reason to be upset with him being quiet. He didn’t owe you anything, you hadn’t even slept together last night, so if anything it was weird he stayed as long as he did.

It was the second night at the Forum in Los Angeles. This means no travelling necessary. No day off either, tomorrow you’d have a day off before the third and final show at the venue though.

Harry and you were talking normally at the venue, mostly about the setlist - him and Mitch had changed something for whatever reason last night, which was fine. Your banter was to a minimum, but you were trying to convince yourself that nothing was off. Even though it felt like something was different, you couldn’t place your finger on what it was, so you thought it was best to ignore it.

When Harry is about to go out on stage, you don’t pull him aside and when he introduces the members of the band to the audience, he doesn’t say anything fun or silly about you. He doesn’t wink or come up to you at any point in the performance. It’s so unusual the rest of your bandmates are giving you funny looks. Charlotte looks at you from across your keyboard in a way that she’s asking if you’re okay. You shake your head at everyone trying to signal that you’re fine.

Mitch goes over to Harry and whispers in his ear to check in with him, Harry looks at him with a bright smile on his face and says “of course, why wouldn’t I be?” Mitch looks between the pair of you, thinking back to last night and how weird the pair of you were being then. Maybe it dawns on him then what might be going on between the two of you, but if he did, he wouldn’t mention it for a long time.

You falter a bit on your back up vocals tonight. You’re trying to give it your all, like always, but for some reason your voice isn’t sounding the way you want it. About halfway through the show, when your voice comes out the exact opposite of how you would like, Harry finally gives you a second glance. His face practically emotionless, save for the single arched brow. He’s concerned, but not concerned enough where he would go over to you. He just doesn’t understand why you keep missing the right note tonight. You make a shake of your hand to say I don’t know either. He just shrugs and turns back around to continue the show, his lively smile returning while he turns his head.

After the show, Charlotte, Sarah, and you are all checking in, going over what had happened during the show in general. They’re both worried about your voice and you’re simply trying to tell them that it was just an off night. Nothing was wrong. As long as you told everyone else that, then it might turn out to be true.

“It’s fine, maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” you fib, having gotten more sleep last night than most other nights on this tour. They both nod, seeming to take that as a reasonable answer.

Then Charlotte gets quieter as she whispers to the three of you, “Did you guys notice anything weird with Harry? He was super lively, but he barely interacted with you, Y/N, which is so unlike him...”

Sarah nods while you look skeptically on. Sarah adds, “He kept looking up to the boxes, too. More than usual at least. I don’t know though…” She trails off and you cross your arms over your chest, not really enjoying the conversation topic. “I mean, what do you think, Y/N?” Sarah adds.

Your eyes dance between the two women, your fellow bandmates, your friends. You sometimes wished you could share with them what you were doing with Harry. The secret was fun, but it’s also nice to be able to share with your girlfriends about the guy you’re seeing, even if it is a casual thing. The friendly gossip of it all is something fun to share, but sadly that was another thing you couldn’t do. You sigh, “You never really know what’s going on in his mind, y’know. He’s just Harry.” Your response is half-assed at best. You figure they’ll both give you shit for the non-answer you just supplied, but instead someone else speaks for them.

“I am in fact, just Harry.” He says and you swivel around to find yourself almost chest to chest with him. Charlotte laughs while Sarah simply smiles. Your eyes are huge as you stare up at him and you hope your blush doesn’t come out too strongly after being caught talking about Harry by himself. “Enlighten me on when I was being ‘just Harry’ though?” You bite your lip and take a step back from him, forming more of a line with the other women. He shrugs when no one offers a response, laughing lightly.

“Oh and Y/N, I can’t talk about that thing again tonight, I’ve got-”

“A date?” Charlotte asks, trying to understand why Harry was acting a little different tonight still. The part that Sarah had mentioned about him looking up into the boxes had given her the idea that he might have plans with someone after the show. Harry scratches his head, his hair slightly wet with sweat right after the show. He’s taken off his coat so he’s just in the almost completely unbuttoned, sweat soaked shirt he had been wearing underneath. It sticks tight to his skin and you can make out all the muscle lines that hide beneath the fabric that you usually get to caress. Your eyes flit from his body back to his face when he speaks again.

“Erm, I wasn’t going to phrase it like that...but yes, I suppose, it’s a date.” He says finally, he avoids your eye contact and you look at him very confused, trying to hide the hurt. He shoves his hands in his pockets trying to look and sound as casual as possible and ignore the strain he sees on your face. Is that what had held him up yesterday? Making plans with someone else? And he hadn’t told you until now? The past twenty four hours stung a little bit more now that you knew why Harry was being so distant. It simply felt icky finding out this way and it didn’t even seem like he was going to tell you it was a date.

“Okay,” you say simply and walk away. You hear Charlotte asking him details about his date, but you try actively not to hear any of it. Sarah watches you walk away and sees the way you wrap your arms around yourself to comfort you. She feels a twinge of sadness as she watches the scene unfold, seeing something she hadn’t realized was there before.

Harry doesn’t text or call you that night. You hang out with everyone else for a little while in Charlotte’s room before heading to bed, saying you think you need an early night tonight. Before you’re able to walk out of the door, Mitch stops you. “I heard Harry blew off whatever conversation the two of you have been trying to have again. Just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.” You try to smile but it comes out as more of a grimace. There is no conversation Harry is blowing off, it’s simply you. “It’s fine. Like he said yesterday, it’s not important.” Mitch nods, but still looks at you with concern. What he had seen last night, then on stage today, and what Sarah had told him about your interaction after the show it all strung together in his mind. It didn’t seem unimportant at all. But he didn’t know how he could tell you that. He felt like he should talk to Harry about the way you looked when you left Charlotte’s room tonight, but he didn’t know how to bring it up to him either.

You don’t realize you’re crying until you're in the elevator, and it’s slowly rising to your floor of the hotel. You’re only one level up, but it feels like an eternity in there. You already weren’t a fan of elevators, but this ride felt impossibly worse. The walls are all made up of mirrors and you see yourself in the reflection, but you don’t exactly recognize the girl in there. Your eyes are tired from the show, dark circles already formed. Your hands are aching, clenching and unclenching on their own accord. Your body is slumped against the back wall, likely leaving a slight imprint from the smoke residue and dust on your clothes. Worst of all are the tears running down your face, smudging at your makeup, the black mascara you had applied dripping down in sinister raindrops against your skin. The sad girl stares back at you as you sniffle slightly, confused at what you’re seeing. “Why are you crying?” you ask yourself, your voice creaking and then breaking at the end as you struggle to get out the word ‘crying’ before a sob wracks through you. You roll your eyes when your reflection offers no explanation for itself. You laugh at your own patheticness and try to shake the feelings you’re experiencing.

Inside your room now, you flop on the bed and stare straight up at the ceiling. Your arms spread to your sides and your legs lay limply below you. You think about every night before last, every night since the tour started. Every night where you weren’t alone, where you were with Harry. Your mind flits to last night, how Harry’s lips had ghosted over your skin after his apology. How you had told him you forgave him and it had felt so peaceful, so simple. It was all so easy. Thinking about him and the things the two of you did together brought a smile to your face, unbeknownst to you. When you realize it’s there, your face drops immediately, deciding not to think about Harry.

But trying to not think about Harry makes you only think about him more and what you think about him now most definitely doesn’t bring a smile to your face. You’re thinking about him out on his date with some person you chose to learn nothing about. Maybe out of fear of what is happening right now. By knowing nothing about the person, you can’t compare yourself to them. Can’t see what’s different about them that would make Harry go out on a date with them. But it doesn’t matter who they are or what they look like because at the end of it all you know one thing for certain. They’re not you. You correct yourself, you know two things actually, because you also know that Harry chose to be with them instead of you tonight.

You fall asleep with tear stained cheeks that night and absolutely nothing positive on your mind. You want to sleep but know it only brings whatever is bound to happen tomorrow, which doesn’t seem very promising.

-

It’s noon when you wake up and you wake to a knocking on your door. You grumble and throw a sweatshirt over your body to hide the underwear you slept in. Not remembering your new habit, you swing the door open without any hesitation to find Harry. He looks wide awake and happy, the way he almost always looks, a fresh beautiful flower of a man. You look at him groggily, “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t answering your phone.”

“Because I was asleep?” You tilt your head and look at him incredulously. “What about this,” you gesture to your appearance, “looks like I just went for a 3 mile jog for fun and I love the morning?”

“Can I come in?” He ignores everything you just said and enters the room when you leave the door to get back in bed. You often did that with him, you don’t know why, but when he asked to come in the room it was just simpler to let him in then say anything. He knew what you meant.

He sits at the edge of the bed as you reclaim your spot in the middle of it, tucked slightly under the covers, but still sitting up. “How was your date?” You try to sound nonchalant and it seems to work. Harry doesn’t notice your tense figure, but you notice how he tenses up when you ask.

“Good…Her name was-” You don’t let him finish, you already know the answer to this next question and you don’t need her name in order to ask it, “Did you fuck her?”

He’s silent, green eyes staring straight at you. You meet his gaze, your eyes almost burning holes into him. His eyes are begging you to not make him answer the question, he doesn’t want this to end, even if he also didn’t want the commitment he had felt himself exhibiting the other night.

When he had come to your room the other night after Mitch had almost caught you, he knew he shouldn’t have stayed. He didn’t want you to feel bad so he had come to apologize, but when the pair of you didn’t have sex, he should have left. But he didn’t, he stayed and it wasn’t for you, it was for himself. It was for him to hold you in his arms because he liked to. But when he woke up the next morning he knew he needed to leave. Solely cuddling wasn’t part of your arrangement together. It’s probably on the list of don'ts that the pair of you had. So after he realized the line he had willingly crossed with you, he quickly sent a text to Jeff who had tried to set him up with a model they were acquaintances with the night before - the reason he had gotten held up. Harry had initially declined, not very interested in seeing anyone else but you. But looking back on that choice in the light of day seemed to solidify what this relationship was - a relationship - and Harry didn’t like that. The commitment wasn’t part of the plan, so he told Jeff to set that date up for after the second show at the Forum and give the woman a ticket. That’s why he was smiling at his phone the morning after only cuddling with you, that’s why he didn’t joke around with you during the show, and that’s why he wasn’t in your bed last night.

You watch him expectantly, silently waiting for his answer, your veins cold as ice. He finally starts his answer and he wants to make it clear that it wasn’t as good with the other woman, but he’s not sure how to work that part in. He’s not sure how to explain to you it meant nothing if your arrangement also apparently meant nothing. You barely even let him get in a sentence. “Yes, but it was just a one time-”

“Alright.”

“What?” He doesn’t understand what you mean when you nod your head and cut him off.

“I told you at the beginning, Harry. Tell me when you sleep with someone else because when you do this is over. It doesn’t matter if she’s the love of your life or a one night stand. I will not be a backup plan, so if you’re able to find other people to sleep with, you don’t need to be sleeping with me.”

He sits in silence for a moment, his jaw dropped open slightly. He’s unable to keep it shut as his mind races about what to say. “Are you mad with me?”

“No, I’m fine. This was just sex. Charlotte will be happy that I’ll be going out with her more.”

Harry’s brow furrows as you shift away from him on the bed, grabbing your phone and beginning to flick through it. You feel numb and you’d like to not think about why.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asks because he does care about you, worry is written all over his face. He just can’t commit, not now.

“What would I be mad about, Harry?” You look up and your eyes widen at him, silently asking him to truthfully say why you should be so upset about this revelation. You always knew it would eventually come to an end, you just hadn’t expected so soon. You hadn’t known the last time would be the last time and it broke your heart even if you knew it shouldn’t.

He shifts to reach his hand out to touch your exposed knee. You move away from him and he sighs, looking exasperated. “I- I don’t know. It just seems like we should talk about this.”

“You didn’t even think it was necessary to tell me you were going on a date last night, so I think it’s best if we just left it at ‘it’s fine, see you around’.”

He spreads his hands out across the sheets, examining his rings and painted nails thoroughly. You’re right, he doesn’t really want to talk about this. Well, more so, he’s conflicted. He would like to talk enough that you want to continue your arrangement but he doesn’t want to talk about feelings or emotions. Even if he has those feelings and emotions, they’re just not part of the things he’d like to talk about. “But-” You set your phone down at his first word, “Were you even going to tell me you fucked someone else today if Charlotte hadn’t asked you if it was a date last night? Would you just have come to my room tonight and acted like nothing had changed?”

“I would have told you.”

“Sure.”

“I swear I would’ve. I would never break a promise to you.”

“But you would make a decision that affects the both of us without telling me until afterwards?” Your voice breaks a little and you beg yourself not to cry right now.

“I thought you said this was just sex?”

You laugh humorlessly, in disbelief, “Of course it’s not, Harry! And it hasn’t been for a long time and that’s why you got scared and went and fucked someone else.” He looks at you blankly, unsure what to say, knowing you’re right. You continue, “But I also told you at the beginning of this, that I wasn’t going to try to change you. So this is me not trying to change you.” You sigh when he still says nothing, his expression completely unreadable, even to you. “Why couldn’t you have left it at ‘it’s fine’?” You say finally, barely above a whisper.

He blinks a few times after your final question. He flexes his hand one more time and then stands up from the bed. He adjusts his clothes and stares at you. You feel helpless, but you’re still trying to look pulled together, even after your outburst. You stare back. A thousand words floating through your heads, all the things you want to say and likely never will.

“I know, I’m…” he pauses, trying to get himself to say it, but he can’t. He can’t admit that he’s completely ruined whatever messed up paradise you had created together. “I’ll see you later.”

The apology or lack there of hangs in the air as he walks silently out your door. You don’t move, you barely even blink, still staring at the spot he had just occupied. Your breath finally escapes you, a large sigh. Then some nervous laughter. It was over...just like that. But things like this, left like this are never really over.

-

It’s awkward for a good amount of the rest of the tour. You hang out with your bandmates more and Harry rarely ever comes out with them after the shows. He either hangs out with Mitch on his own or is going out with random people he knows on the road. You and him speak, but it’s never a lot or about anything relatively meaningful. It’s not the fun back and forth of before or the fiery heat of sneaking around. You try to be normal with him, act like his casual friend and bandmate.

He does his best to do the same, but it’s difficult for him. He doesn’t know how to talk to you anymore. He misses being with you, but can’t bring himself to fix it. He doesn’t do much to right his wrongs with you. He also doesn’t even know what he would want if he did apologize. It scared him to think about the step that came after ‘sorry’ so he saved himself the trouble and never did that part either. One night he texts you: “I’m trying, it’s just hard.” and that’s it. You don’t give him a response, he doesn’t need one. You know he’s trying and he knows you know.

Near the end of the tour, he comes out with the rest of you for drinks one night. Only Mitch is between the two of you in the booth, so you feel closer to Harry than you’ve felt in a long time. The group of you are chatting and having a good time. You somehow get onto a story from when you were still in college. You explain how you had narrowly avoided getting Chlamydia right before your Christmas break junior year. You act out the conversations you imagined would have happened at all your Christmas events if you had indeed gotten it. Your impressions of your mother, father, and sister have everyone laughing the most. Harry is shaking with laughter from your story and you smile at him in appreciation when he says, “That is the funniest story I’ve heard in a long fucking time.”

The rest of the night goes really well, for the most part. No one bickers or is short with each other. Everyone is laughing and drinks are flowing. Eventually Mitch gets up to go to the bathroom and you feel Harry slide back into the booth closer to you after letting Mitch out. Your hand had taken up residence next to your thigh, resting on the vinyl of the booth. You sense something next to it now and notice Harry’s hand is resting close beside it. He shifts his hand closer when he sees that you’re looking down at it. He’s almost touching you and you look up to his eyes, wondering if he’ll close the distance. He makes an imperceptible shake of his head, but you know what he means. As you’re about to shift your hand so that your pinky connects with his, Mitch returns and your head shoots up to his figure. You instantly remove your hand from the vinyl and shift closer to Charlotte. Harry gets up, but doesn’t sit back down once Mitch is settled. He instead walks off to get another drink, risking one last look at the table where he makes eye contact with you, but he doesn’t come back. Mitch informs everyone that Harry went back to the hotel because “he was tired” after Harry doesn’t return and Mitch gets a text. You roll your eyes, sure that you saw him slip out of the side door with a woman he found at the bar after he had gotten his drink. If that’s what ‘tired’ looked like on Harry, it was fine.

You start to speak to Harry on a more regular basis after that night out. It’s not funny or lighthearted. It’s just ‘I saw this song the other day, thought you might like to listen’. It went back and forth, it wasn’t everyday but it was something. The last text between the two of you before you began sharing songs again was his ‘I’m trying it’s just hard’ text that he had sent randomly one night. Then after one of you would listen, you would see each other at sound check and mention the song and what you thought about it. It can be noted that it was Harry who sent the first song.

For Harryween, Adam couldn’t be there. He has some family emergency the day of and doesn’t come with the rest of you to Madison Square Garden or the hotel you were staying at. Thankfully, Charlotte also plays keys and you can play bass. The band had to shift around some things on stage and make minimal changes to the setlist since you weren’t rehearsed on the covers Harry was doing. You spent the whole day running through the chords of those songs with Mitch, trying to memorize them so you didn’t mess it up during the show.

It was weird because for Harryween the setlist was switched up a little from the regular set for Love On Tour. Harry was playing the entire new album as well as half of the first album, Medicine, some of his other unreleased stuff, and about six covers, including old One Direction songs. It was going to be a long show and a challenge for you.

Before the show, Harry pulls you aside, to a dark corner backstage, and your mind flits back to the last time you had been in this type of position. The last time he had called you ‘love’, the last time you bit his earlobe - which always drove him crazy, the last time he ground his hips against yours, those and more and you had no idea that it was the last. By then you had already had sex with Harry for the last time, kissed his lips for the last time. It made your heart race to be so close to him and so alone once again. But it’s nowhere near the same as it once was. You shake the memories from your mind and look up expectantly at him.

“Have you got this?” He asks seriously, tone concerned. Of course it’s a music question, nothing more. Like it always was now.

“Yeah, of course.” His stare is unwavering and you try not to falter from it.

“I can get someone else to cover tomorrow, it was just such a short notice today. You know bass really well too, it made sense.”

“I’ve got this. Seriously, don’t worry, Harold.” You pat his chest lightly and for once Harry smiles at the sound of your nickname for him. You had stopped using it after the end of your arrangement. It never felt right to use when you were talking about music, and that was about the only time you had been talking. In this moment though, it felt right. His warm, large hands held your upper arms as you stared up into his big eyes. You missed staring into them, the shimmering emerald of his irises were constantly intriguing. You instinctively reach up to move back a curl that has fallen onto his forehead. He doesn’t shy away from your touch and continues to smile down at you.

“Y’haven’t called me that in forever.” He grins, his lips a shiny pink from the lip balm he had on.

“No, I suppose I haven’t. But where was the groan? The whole point is to annoy you.” You smile coyly. He tips his head back and laughs, releasing your arms from his grasp as he laughs wholeheartedly.

Then he does a soft groan, a playful sound, “How was that?”

“Eh. I’ll give you a four out of ten. Not enough emotion behind it.” You slide from the area the two of you have been occupying and make your way onto the stage to start dealing with the bass you would be playing. You hear Harry call out to you, “I think I deserve at least a five, maybe even a six!” You turn back for a second to look at him with an unimpressed expression and shake your head no. He laughs again and you hear him even when you walk out onto the stage. You smile to yourself as you pick up the bass.

When he introduces the band, he waits to talk about you last. “And sadly this evening Mr. Adam Prentergest, our usual fabulous bassist, was unable to attend our fancy dress party! However! Our lovely Y/N L/N is also a superb bassist and was kind enough to step into his place. - Anything to add?” He saunters across the stage to you and you laugh kindly, feeling at ease in this part of the stage even though you were usually on the opposite side and further back from the crowd. You nod at Harry and he leans his portable mic towards your lips. You wet them quickly and eye Harry before turning out to the crowd. “Just please go easy on me if the bass sounds a bit wonky. It wasn’t on the job description that I’d be playing songs I didn’t know, with a few hours notice, on not my main instrument.” You say this in a kind of list format, holding up your fingers as you tick off all the ways that this was out of your comfort zone. You scratch your head dramatically after you’re finished and the whole crowd laughs and cheers. The rest of your bandmates chuckle along and Harry nods and smiles at you.

“You’ll do great, love.” He leans into your ear and says without the microphone. Then he winks and turns to go back to the center of the stage. You press your lips together to contain your smile, both happy and concerned about the flip your stomach just did.  

The show is going great. Harry is killing it with the crowd. Everything is electric. You’re entirely focussed on your bass playing, but Harry has been coming over every so often to do something fun or have you tell a joke.

“She’s truly the funniest person I know! And I know a fair amount of people I think.” Harry says as he walks over to you have you tell another joke. Mitch has been looking at you and Harry interacting all night and he’s sure that it isn’t your different position that has him coming over and talking to you so much tonight. Something has definitely changed once again. First the pair of you were always together and having fun, then it was silence and stolen glances that neither of you realized you were taking, now it was back to the beginning.

“That’s because you think puns are part of the top tier levels of comedy.” You say easily, “Here, I can guarantee Harry will love this and the rest of you will likely groan.” Then you stop and act as if you’re thinking for a little, everyone’s waiting expectantly. “Sorry, thinking...Well, I’ve got some skeleton puns I could do, they’re very humerus or y’know classic vampire ones..eh but those ones kind of suck. What do you think, Harry?” You look out at the crowd, face deadpan, as Harry laughs beside you. You roll your eyes playfully and push him back to the center of the stage. Leaning into your own mic now, you say, “I told you.” That’s when everyone laughs. Harry throws another look at you over his shoulder and laughs a little more, his smile wide and eyes bright.

A little over half way through the night, it’s time for ‘to be so lonely’. You already knew the bass chords for it before today and you were confident in yourself by now. It wasn’t as hard a song so you were happy for the little break. This song allowed you to not be looking down at the notes you had stuck to the floor in front of you. Harry’s voice comes in after Mitch’s intro and you watch the way his lips move against his mic. You laugh a little as you watch the crowd yell the first “arrogant son of a bitch” line. You used to not particularly like when people did that, but after it had ended with Harry you had started to enjoy it a bit more. Having those people yell the words you couldn’t, but truly felt about him sometimes, was cathartic. Tonight you weren’t angry with him, but you enjoyed the energy in the room when everyone said it. We’ve all got our own ‘arrogant son of a bitch’ that we want to scream at sometimes. Tonight yours wasn’t Harry for the first time in a long time. The song moves along and Harry takes the microphone off its stand, he walks towards your side of the stage. When the lyrics get to:

“I miss the shape of your lips, your wit, it’s just a trick, this is it so I’m sorry”

Harry isn’t looking at the crowd, he’s looking straight at you. You don’t understand the way he’s looking at you. Or maybe you don’t want to understand it. This song, its lyrics, explains Harry really well. You saw the relationship you had with him in the words. Maybe not precisely, but a part of it was in it. Harry had unknowingly foretold your lives with his words. You know he has trouble connecting and committing, you know his issues, and you accept them. But you knew what had happened between the two of you was far more serious than meaningless sex and you knew Harry couldn’t bring himself to be that serious. He ran off and that was fine, but the face that he couldn’t even apologize hurt you the most. But the song lays it all out for you, he’s not one to be able to apologize quickly. The fact that he looks at you and means the apology he sings in the song for you, it’s a big step, but it’s not enough. The banter, the technical apology, it was all a good start, but it’s just that - the beginning. If Harry wants to make things better with you, a lot more needs to be discussed. So when you sing backing vocals for the following chorus you mean the words for Harry completely.

“Don’t call me baby again, you got your reasons, I know that you’re trying to be friends. I know you mean it, but don’t call me baby again it’s hard for me to go home and be so lonely”

His eyes flick to you again and see your lips moving around the words as you play the bass. He sees the emotion in your face and understands what you’re saying. It’s hard for you to go to your room at night and be alone while he’s out with someone else. It’s hard for him to act like everything’s all fine and perfect, back to normal, because for you it isn’t really. He can’t call you ‘love’ and tell the world you’re funny and expect it to be enough. He can’t sing his sorry that was initially for someone else to you and expect you to accept it. And he knows it, too.

After the show everyone decides they’re exhausted and need to rest before tomorrow. You all planned to celebrate the whole day and you knew it was going to be a wicked Halloween. Knowing this, you’re surprised with the knock on your door after about an hour of being back at the hotel. You’ve given up the habit you had once hoped to cultivate and swing the door open haplessly. Truly having no idea who to expect, you are still surprised to find the man standing before you.

“Mitch.”

“We need to talk.” He stares down at you, his shoulders slumped from tiredness.

“Come in,” you usher him in when you hear the urgency of his voice. He saunters in before you and you close the door. You move to the small couch in the room and sit down. Your hands gesture for him to sit as well, but he shakes his head. He stays standing and brings a hand up to smooth his hair back on the right side. His eyes staying on the floor and flickering up to you every so often.

“What is going on with you and Harry?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh come on Y/N. You’re seemingly best friends with him for a good portion of tour, then you’re barely on speaking terms for the second half, now you’re joking around again. What is going on?”

You sit there in a stunned silence, “I don’t know what to say.” Your arms go to hug your body, feeling anxious about being confronted about this topic.

“Were you seeing each other?” His voice is soft, eyes taking in your body language and knowing it’s a difficult topic.

“I wouldn’t put it like that…”

He holds back the ‘I knew it’ statement because of  how sullen you look, b..ut in his mind all of the pieces he had watched unfold came to fit in a perfect puzzle. He decides to sit beside you when you don’t say anything else.

“We were having sex,” it felt weird to say it out loud, no one but you and Harry had actually known, “But it ended. I don’t know what today was...but it felt different than how it’s been.”

“Why are you so sad if it was just sex?” He places a hand on your shoulder and your tear-filled eyes meet his. “Oh…” He knows why.

“I’m sorry, Y/N.” You sob at his apology because he’s not the one who should be at your door apologizing. You sniffle and lean your head into his chest. He takes you into his arms and holds you as your cries become muffled sounds in his shirt.

You cry without words for a few minutes, Mitch coos some soothing words, his voice soft and kind. He was always a good shoulder to cry on for all of your bandmates, he was extremely strong and you made a mental note to thank him thoroughly when you actually were capable of forming coherent thoughts. “I’ve never told anyone before. It feels so weird even saying it out loud,” you say as you pull back from Mitch’s embrace. You're thankful his shirt is black, no tear stains can be made out.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks gently, gauging your reaction. You wipe at your eyes and nod.

Taking a deep breath, you decide to start from the beginning. “Do you remember the party Charlotte had a week before we left for tour?”

Mitch nods and his eyes widen at what you’re saying as he remembers the night. “It started back then?” He’s unable to contain his incredulous question. He had suspected something, but hadn’t thought it had been going on for that long. He was truly astounded. You nod, “Well sort of,” then you go on to recount the last couple of months. All the way up until the Forum shows. “That night, when I opened Harry’s door and it was you standing there...Harry and I didn’t have anything to discuss. It was just…” Mitch nods again. He hadn’t spoken much since you had gotten into the story, wanting to let you be in charge of what you were saying and believing he could probably ask questions at the end. “Then the next night he blew me off for his date with that model and I cried in the elevator because I knew what was going to happen next.”

“So that’s when it ended?” Mitch asks when you don’t speak for a rather extended period of time.

“Yeah, the next morning he came over and I asked if they had sex and he said yes so I told him it was over.”

“But I don’t get why he went out with that model. He had told me she wasn’t his type the night before…” Your eyes shot up and looked at Mitch. His eyes widened when he realized what he said.

“What?”

“When we were talking about Canyon Moon, he mentioned that Jeff had tried to set him up with some woman but he had declined. Said he wasn’t interested. I don’t get what changed between then and the next morning.” He figured it was best to put all the cards out on the table right now. You’d be going your separate ways for a while, now that the tour was over and he had seen how unhappy both you and Harry had been over the last part of the tour.

You shift your leg to have it folded beneath you as you continue to stare at Mitch. “He came over after you and him had your meeting,”  you say quietly. Mitch hums, waiting for you to continue this time.

“He apologized for choosing you over me to talk to. Then we slept together, but we didn’t have sex...I think that’s what wigged him. It had felt too real, sleeping in the same bed with me without having sex beforehand made it feel like something more than just two people fulfilling needs.” Mitch nods and sighs heavily. He looks around the room and then back to you, taking in your full appearance. Again he feels terrible for you, how he had felt the second night at the Forum even though he hadn’t known the full story yet. “Now we’re here.”

“Tonight, it felt like he was trying,” Mitch finally said and you smiled sweetly, thinking back to Harry’s behavior. No matter how far from him you were, all those good feelings you associated with him never went away.

“Yeah, it’s been getting better. He texted me once saying he was trying. Then he came out with us one night and it almost seemed like that would be the night he’d apologize, but then he didn’t. Then we started sharing music with each other again. Then tonight… was tonight. It’s just confusing. He’s confusing.”

Mitch smiles sadly and brings you in for another hug and you’re actually so thankful he

showed up at your door. It was your first time telling anyone all of this, because Harry didn’t even know how you felt about some of these things. It felt amazing to be heard and to be told it was okay to be feeling like this.

Pulling back, Mitch says, “He’s definitely different. But his differences are what make him special and that’s why I think he clings to them even if they sometimes can hurt other people. The fact that he’s trying is a good sign. I hope he can find it in himself to make it right between you two because I had never seen either of you happier than when you were apparently together. Especially those few weeks leading up to Los Angeles. Sarah had kept asking me why Harry was so smiley back then. When I had asked him, he had just said “have you ever found something and realized you wanted to keep it with you forever?” I had no idea what he had meant, but I feel like he meant you now.”

Your awestruck at what Mitch has just told you. He was right about the first part about Harry trying to change, but the last bit, that’s what had left you speechless. You turn your body to face the rest of the room and put your chin against your hand as you think.

“Mitch...I have to go.”

He understands what you mean and you walk out of the door with him. He walks down the hall to his room and you walk quickly past the elevator and opt for the stairs. Before you know it you’re running up the stairs, taking two at a time even though you’re not the most athletically inclined. You can’t stand to wait for the elevator and your mind is racing.

You knock on the door that is Harry’s after reaching his floor. It swings open and reveals a confused and sleepy Harry. Thankfully he’s still fully dressed because that would have been a whole other problem you would have if he hadn’t been. You push past him and walk straight into his room without any invitation. He follows behind you, still unsure of why you’ve come here.

“Have you ever found something and realized you want to keep it forever?” You ask him, repeating the words Mitch had just told you.

“Pardon?”

“You told Mitch that about me before we ended things. If that’s how you felt, why didn’t you do what you said?”

Harry sighs as the words register in his mind. The memory of when he had smiled at Mitch so giddily and asked the vague question, his thoughts only of you as he asked it. The shit-eating grin he had plastered on his face after Mitch had looked at him confusedly flitted across his mind. As well as the way he had gone to his dressing room and had a quickie with you after that conversation.

“It’s not that simple…”

“It is, Harry! Why can’t you just be honest with me for once?”

“Okay, fine. You want me to be honest?” you nod at his harsh tone. The two of you standing only a few feet apart. “You have no goddamn idea what you do to me, when I’m around you, I have no control of my emotions or of my thoughts. I pushed you away because I didn’t like feeling out of control. I got out because what had started as a fun time had turned into me longing to be with you every waking hour. I found myself not caring what we did as long as I got to hold you and be around you, but that wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Plans can change, Harry.”

You step closer to him and he meets your eyes. He had left his music playing softly on his phone before he had opened the door so now as the two of you stared at each other, he must have been playing his Etta James playlist because her voice faded out of the song “I’d Rather Go Blind” and straight into “A Sunday Kind of Love”. Harry had shared her At Last album with you over the Christmas holiday of last year and you had decided to listen to her entire discography afterwards, so you knew the songs. The transition was a little too on the nose and you wondered if Spotify ever listened to your conversations.

His emerald eyes examine your face and take inventory of your features, measuring whether anything had changed since he had looked at you this close up. Your hand goes up to cup his cheek and he nuzzles into it, dropping his head closer to you ever so slightly and closing his eyes at the feeling of you.

“I am sorry,” he whispers earnestly as he reopens his eyes.

You can’t take your eyes off of him even if you tried. He looks so soft in the moment, so vulnerable in this light as the music swells in the corner of the room. Etta sings about how she needs a love that is going to last as the pair of you inch yourselves closer together.

“I forgive you, Harry,” you whisper back.

He nudges his head further down and your lips finally press together, slotting back together after months apart. Your lips are eager to press back against their favorite companion. You oblige them, but pull back for a second, just far enough to say, “I will always forgive you, so long as you tell me when you’re scared so we can work through it together.”

He nods, “I promise to never let you go again.” Before taking you back against his lips and gathering your body up in his arms. His lips missing yours just as much.

-

[tpwkxxangel]

Is this the real life? pt.1

*not my photo*

my materpost; fic materlist

[warnings: mentions of dark thoughts, fatigue, heart disease, fainting, language]

"I think we should steal a car," Rachel huffs, pouting at the walk. We had been walking for approximately two minutes before the complaining started.

I roll your eyes while chuckling, "That would be illegal. And I’d really rather not have to tell my mother I flew out of the state without her permission." She thinks I’m at a friend’s house this weekend.

"Ugh," she whines some more, "but we would get to the stadium faster! I don't want my future husband to see me sweaty like this!"

This night has been a long time coming. Of course, being the person I am, me and my friends planned out everything to the last detail, including the hotel being a five-minute walk from the stadium. This was mainly for after the show. Everyone didn’t want to walk that far after the concert and simply ubering to a hotel father away would take more time in the long run.

"I promise we'll get there, and he will see you and it will be like love at first sight," I smile at her responding giggle. I was finally with some of my best friends about to see the guy I’ve loved for the past decade.

I met everyone over Twitter. Stan Twitter to be more specific. Since the One Direction days, I’ve been a fan of all the boys. The number of tears I shed when the band announced their hiatus was too much, but I wasn’t the only one. Everyone knew they were over worked and just wanted some peace. No one could blame them.

During the first two years of their break, I grew as an individual. I graduated high school and started college, I moved in with a few of some irl friends and was truly finding myself...until I wasn’t.

At first, I didn’t know how I got there but I sank to rock bottom. There was no real cause for it, at least to me, but one day my thoughts just became too much. Everything was too much.

On a particularly low day, my roommate at the time was playing the morning news when a familiar face popped up. That’s when Harry Styles smiled and played a song. It was simple. He was just doing his job, but somehow, he knew the words to sing that would pull me right out of the darkest part of my life.

That’s when I returned to the fandom full force. I joined a group on Twitter and made quick friends. The group chat grew, some came and went, but eventually when Harry released his next album, my friend group was solid. We all bought tickets to the shows we could so we could see each other face to face and watch the most amazing human prance around stage. We were lucky enough to buy five pit tickets each to his shows and we all get to fly around chasing him in each of our cities. I am so thankful to Harry for what he has done, and no one is going to keep me from this show.

“Do you think we are going into that holding room?” Dove asks trailing behind slightly. She’s the mom of the group. Always checking in on everyone and doing a head count before we leave places. Tonight, she decided to go simple and old school, dressed in black shorts, a white vintage band t-shirt and some Docs. Needless to say, she tends to have her life more together than anyone else in the group.

“The security guy said he was opening the doors at 6pm for GA to head to the holding room. It looks like it’s about 5:45pm right now, so probably,” Sofie said from my right. She also took it old school tonight. She’s sporting black jeans and a tour shirt from Harry’s last tour paired with some colorful vans.

“Thank God,” Rachel rolls her head back, “We’ve been here since 2am. I would like to get some air conditioning.”

We all laugh nodding in agreement. It has been one hell of a day. We all flew in yesterday so we could hang out and then head to venue. When we arrived, there were only four people in the GA fan line. We are technically supposed to line up until 8am, but it’s really their fault for thinking we were going to follow the rules. At 8am, a security guard walked the line of nearly 300 people to the designated line up spot. From then on, we waited...and waited until we could get into the event center.

“Here. Let me fix your boa,” I turn to Rachel as we step back in line. She chose a more one brand looks for tonight. A simple green patterned two piece with a big green boa to match.

Once the feathers are adjusted, I drop my hands and lean against the concrete wall and sigh. I am utterly exhausted. I can feel my body screaming to get some sleep, but I can’t for obvious reasons. I listen to my friends talk to everyone around us. The fans are so nice, and it truly feels like home here.

I shake myself out of it. I am not going to wallow away because I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. Sure, I’m beyond tired but I’m about to see the love of my life in concert! I get to see him with my two eyes!

“Y/N,” Dove calls over. I look up before she continues, “Doesn’t H have another cat? Like doesn’t he have his own cat?” I see her talking to the beautiful fans in front of us.

I nod my head. “Yeah. He has Evie who lives with his mom while he’s traveling. He even bought her a laptop to play, like, cat games,” I wave my hand and roll my eyes. He is so extra sometimes.

“The amount of money he probably has sitting around in his bank account is frightening,” Sofie chimes in, everyone agreeing. We all get lost in conversation about the rockstar and before we know it, we start to line up.

“Alright everyone, be sure not to run or we will not let you on the floor,” a security guard motions for us to move forward.

This is the moment. As the worker scans my ticket and hands me a wristband, I feel a buzzing in my veins. I can already tell this will be a night to remember.

Dove grabs my hand to stop me for a moment.

"Are you sure you’re, okay?" she asks quietly.

Technically I’m not supposed to be in pit. I have a weak heart and crowded, hot places are usually a no go, but this is Harry fucking Styles. Just because my doctor, mother, and irl friends all told me this cannot happen, I chose this. It's honestly for my mental health more than anything. I just want to see him once, as close as I can be. Then for the other shows, I could just hang in the back of the pit.

"Yes. I'll be okay. I have my inhaler and I took my meds this morning. Nothing should happen. If I start to feel poorly, I'll head to the back of the pit," my tone reassuring.

She stares at me for a moment before nodding and releasing my hand. We all file into a large waiting room. Some people order drinks and a snack at the bar area. After about twenty minutes we are all lined up once again in front of two black curtains.

“Remember not to run. Please hold up your wrist with the band as high as you can as you go through,” the security guard spoke loud.

They really did try, but I could help but laugh as we all ran to the stage. My friends and I all knew where we wanted to stand. Since it was a circle stage, we knew there was really no bad spot to stand. We just wanted to be right behind Sarah and Mitch.

“Holy shit,” Sofie breathes out. It was almost like we all blacked out.

When I look down at my hand, it’s gripping tightly to the black barricade. Holy shit is right. We all erupt in cheers and excitement.

“All we have now is to wait the three hours for my husband to make his appearance,” Rachel sighs sitting down with her back to the barricade.

I lay my head on Rachel’s lap. She softly strokes my hair before I fall into a light sleep.

~~~

With the little power nap, my energy picked up in full force. I was able to dance around during the opener and talk to more people. Maybe my body just need that little rest. This will totally be fine.

"...Sweet Thang..."

The entire stadium erupts in cheers of excitement. The energy was electric, pure anticipation seeping from every corner of the arena.

I start to dance with the others around me while shouting the lyrics as loud as I could. Tonight, is going to be the best night of my life.

When the first strum of Golden starts, I can't help but scream. I strain my neck to see the small head starting to pop up from the middle of the stage.

"Oh my God-" Rachel yells, "THE OUTFIT!" she slaps my arm.

It just so happens I seem to be matching Harry. He was wearing a shimmery white top with cream-colored pants. I just so happen to be wearing a similar top with it unbuttoned. I’ve had the Victoria’s Secret bralette since high school too. The only difference between out outfits is the fact that I’m wearing black slacks with black heels.

My smile couldn’t be bigger. This was the moment my entire being has been waiting for. The way he draws every eye in the room. I stop breathing when he makes his way over to your side of the stage.

His eyes look into the crowd waving to a few people while singing. He was always meant to be a rockstar. There is no other occupation that could hold the amount of charisma leaking from every pore in his body.

“How is everyone doin’ tonight?” his sweet slow words sound through the microphone. The responding cheer was deafening. He chuckles a little into the microphone. “Y’ sound so sweet,” he smiles.

“Oh my God!” Sofie screams and hits my arm repeatedly. “He’s real!”

“I don’t believe it. He could totally be a hologram,” I say in awe as he starts the next song.

I feel myself get lost in the music and his funny antidotes. I never thought I’d have an opportunity to see him this close after One Direction. He went into acting and the fandom really thought he was giving up on music, but little did we know...

He dances his way over to our stage during Carolina and he almost trips on his mic chord. I can’t help but bending over to laugh at his facial expression of pure relief. When I pull myself together Harry is standing right in front of me. My heart jumps up to my throat. He’s singing out to the crowd, but I could swear his eyes drift down to my group of friends a few times as his smile widens. If my frozen frame has anything to say about it, he totally just made eye contact with me.

When he starts to move again, I turn to my right shouting “Did you see that!” at the same time Dove yells “You’re kidding me!”

My throat was definitely going to be sore from how loud I’m screaming tonight. The next hour is filled with dancing and great interactions with his fans. It’s like a blink of an eye when he says, “Now, we aren’t done quite yet, but we are gonna act like we are. I’m gonna slip off stage and I want you to chant, scream, for me. I’ll be gone for about two minutes and then I’ll come back.”

“That’s the narcissism for you,” I chuckle. My breath catches in my throat when he throws his head back almost like a moan when the stadium starts chanting his name. He totally knows what he does to us.

During the two minutes he was under the stage, I start to feel the adrenaline drain from my body. My chest had already started to hurt during Fine Line, but I didn’t want to miss a moment, no matter what I promised my friends. I gently grab onto the barricade and close my eyes for a moment. Usually this helps. If I can center myself enough, maybe I can make it through the rest of the fifteen minutes of the show. I’ve gotten this far, what’s another three songs? It seems like just seconds before the lights are back down and the starting notes to Sign of the Time starts.

When I open my eyes, I see Harry standing just a bit in front and to the side of us. He has his eyes closed and when I look up at him with the biggest smile on my face. He looks so beautiful. His open slowly as if in response to my thoughts.

The moment our eyes meet, he starts singing in his deep voice. It’s so soothing. This song was one of the ones that helped me the most. He looks away blushing softly, but I chalk that up to the flush of performing. He did just run around the stage for an hour. he’s bound to be a little flushed.

It’s about halfway through the song that I start to feel the pain in my chest worsen. This was going to get bad fast. I needed to get out of this pit. I try to shove backwards, but everyone is too caught up in Harry’s singing to pay me any mind.

When I turn back around, I grasp the barricade tightly. If I could just make it to the end of the song--

That moment I feel my breath catch. In a last-ditch effort, I look up desperately only to meet the big round green eyes of the man who saved my life once before.

As I clutch my chest, struggling to breathe, I could only hope he can save my life one more time.

Before my knees finally give out, I hear a frantic voice sound, “Someone catch her!”

Funny thing is it sounded throughout the entire stadium.

[mythomagically-delicious]

Okay so in a better world au ford and fiddleford created the Institute and made up, right? What happened to stan?

The point of that first post about "the twist" was this: what if Stan and Ford switched bodies and stans was sent into the portal with ford inside, and Stan in Ford's body remained behind. Stan immediately tries everything to turn it back on, to no avail. He went thru hundreds of papers and notes trying to understand ANYTHING and he got some general idea that ford had had a research partner out here who knew things- knew ford, knew the portal, he could help!

Stan in Ford's body races to town instead of staying isolated in the cabin for four weeks, and finds fiddleford. Fiddleford looks confused and stranger than the notes suggested but it matches up. He begs fiddleford to help him, and despite the falling out fiddleford has enough fondness for his old friend remaining that he is swayed. He doesn't get his full mind erased by the society bc he isn't abandoned fully and left wandering the town to be targeted by blind Ivan in his power grab.

Fiddleford and Stan (in Ford's body) go back to the shack and stan starts to take him to the basement when fidds starts freaking out, yelling and crying about the world-shattering consequences. About the things he saw, rhe demon, and more. Stan calms him down, takes him back upstairs. He's frustrated to high heaven and back but he knows he could never do this alone.

(He hasn't told fiddleford who he really is. Yet. He will, he just needs some help first. Who would help a loser like stan? But ford has a friend, he can be ford for a little bit to work the angle and get his brother back.)

It takes time. Way too much time, for Stan, but fiddleford slowly recovers enough of his sanity and calms his nerves enough to go down to the basement and not freak out. Stan admits to anything fiddleford asks him about, anything he saw from Ford's notes and makes it convincing that he's asking for a second chance. Maybe they could rebuild it, better? Without demon assistance?

Fiddleford helps tear it to shreds. They mark every part as they dismantle it and fiddleford searches for the reasons it opened a portal to nightmares. He doesn't follow schematics blindly, any more, no more blind trust to his friend. But he does help. Stan is learning on the job. He isn't convincing in the slightest of being a genius but fiddleford is too frazzled to notice. He's got his own shit going on.

They tear it down. Stan is afraid and angry and desperate but he holds his shit together. Fiddleford regains more of himself as they go. Stan learns more about ford and fiddlefords time together as fiddleford recovers memories and tells them to Stan. Stan makes his own notes, of how to Be Stanford Pines.

In time, they get to a stable place of living in the shack together, Stan trying to learn as much as he can about this science shit, pretending he was hit by the memory gun into forgetting himself when fiddleford questions it. Fidds is afraid to go confront the society, and can't remember where they are anyway. Stan doesn't care about it as long as his cover isn't blown. He hasn't told fiddleford yet. He will! But not yet.

They begin to plan a new, stable trans-dimensional vortex. It takes a whole hell of a lot, but they slowly build it anew. Still in the cursed basement, not even a skeleton of the old machine left after they destroyed it the first time.

Stan is flying less by the seat of his pants. Taking a leaf from Ford's book and staying up to radically terrible hours of the night studying and trying to understand all the science and math shit to make this work, to keep stringing fiddleford into helping him. Fidds takes time for his own projects and Stan doesn't bug him about it, saying if it makes money to split it, and when fiddleford hits a big invention that also happens to patent well and spread? They use the money to help their new portal.

It takes ten years to do it, but they recreate the portal, this time to a place they can control thru careful calibration. Fiddleford writes a scientific paper about it, publishes it with ford as a co-author, and they get international renown. Stan knows how to work a crowd and he uses their leverage to get people invested in investing, so to speak. It's not cheap to fund the energy required to turn it on, so they expand the building and create the Institute of Oddology, given enough time and building and circumstances lining up just right.

Fiddleford runs the teams and the day to day stuff. Stan handles finances and resource allocation and scheduling tours, interested parties, rivals, anything business side. He and fiddleford go to the first stable dimension together , though, and Stan uses all of the science gizmos at their disposal to search for ford while they're there.

He doesn't find him. He still hasn't told fiddleford. Its been too long at this point, right? What if he takes the money and fame and everything and kicks Stan out for lying? He mostly rode fiddlefords genius to get here, there's no way he'd not be mad about this.

They go to many dimensions. Stan takes samples and learns scientific process thru osmosis over the years and contributes to publishibg written works to the greater scientific community.

He looks for Ford. He finds nothing. He tells no one his true purpose for everything he's achieved to that point. He lies and wears Ford's face and shakes hands and is a sham.

One day Fiddleford races to his office, frantic and eyes wide and hands shaking slightly like Stan hasnt seen in years. It's been 30 years since ford was lost to the portal. And fiddleford comes to him and says there's a parallel you, Stanford, in conference room B, we need to send him on his way immediately, you remember what happened to Ernie on that trip 8 years back?

And Stan ignores this, heart pounding, and knocks fiddleford out, locking him in the office, racing to conference room B.

He bursts in, and sees a version of his brother. One he doesnt see in the mirror. A real Stanford Pines, 30 years older than the kids they were when they fought beside the portal. Apparently no universe is fair, if ford ends up inside in multiple dimensions.

Stan is speechless. The portal!ford is on the defensive, but interest is clear in his face. He keeps his distance, cognizant of parallel!fiddlefords warning from before. Of counterparts meeting in a dimension of origin. Annihilation.

Stan cries. Ford looks shocked to see his own self in such a state. He doesn't know what to do. Stan surges forward for a hug and Ford tries to dodge, afraid of the consequences. Stan traps his hands to his sides and sobs on Ford's mysterious black coat, calling him brother. Ford's inner alarm bells go off even as he clenches his eyes shut against the incoming total destruction.

When nothing happens except for a wet patch to grow on Ford's clothes, he opens his eyes and studies himself. They look scarily similar, truth be told. His counterpart heartier than he, an interdimensional fugitive. That makes sense. Parallel ford is apologizing into his jacket and clutching him hard enough to leave bruises.

Ford dodges out of the grapple his counterpart has him in. He demands answers in a clipped tone. Stan does his best to reign it back in as he confesses what transpired in this dimension to this dimension traveling ford. How he hopes his own brother, trapped in stans body, is still out there, still surviving, still where Stan can find him.

Ford starts a fight. Stan defends himself but it gets physical and he doesn't have the same instincts to take down he did when he was younger. He remembers the last fight he had with his brother, and doesn't want that to happen again.

Fiddleford eventually gets free of the office and runs in to see parallel ford beating the shit out of his ford. He stuns ford with a device on his belt and brings things back to some semblance of order, getting a first aid kit out to tend to them both. P!Ford's knuckles, mainly, and stans face.

The truth comes out, ugly and stained and fiddleford forgives Stan immediately. He turns to parallel ford and helps him out of the room, promising help with his weapon and more, later.

Stan is left with the knowledge that all these years later, no matter what he does, his brother hates him.

Fiddleford helps ford with his weapon. If ford can destroy bill cipher, more dimensions will open up to be explored. If his and stans ford is still alive out there, they'll have a better shot if Bill is out of the picture. They send parallel!ford off a few days later. Fiddleford goes to Stan that night and calls him by a name that hasn't been spoken in 30 years. Stan can barely look at him. Fiddleford gives him time and space, but tells him he understands.

A month and a half later, a ripple is felt thru thousands of dimensions at once, the death of Bill cipher in every iteration is making its way thru the multiverse. Celebrations are happening as people cheer and laud thr name of the one who saved them, spread in a cosmic understanding by some greater power. Stanley Pines, shatterer of Bill Cipher.

4 years later, they find Ford. Ford in Stans body is old, ragged. He's missing an eye and an arm and so much more of who he used to be. But they bring him home. He doesn't want to switch bodies back.

Stan feels guilt eat at him, but ford is different than the other traveler they'd met. He's more settled. He thanks Stan for finding him. Doesn't blame him for how long it took. Didn't think he'd be come for anyway.

It's strange and rocky but slowly strides are made to bridge the gap of decades and become people they want to be, again. Brothers, friends, explorers. They never body swap again, but they settle into themselves and own who they are.

[ectonurites]

idk how to quote tags on mobile where is the conner kent essay i NEED it

ALRIGHT OKAY! here’s 5k+ words plus panels & screenshots of me comparing and contrasting the two drastically different versions of Superboy (comics vs young justice cartoon) and going over what makes them such distinctly separate characters. someday i’ll refine this a bit more its kinda just a word dump that’s been living in my brain that i wanted to actually articulate after i read through Reign of the Supermen but here we go:

--

Pretty frequently I see the question “Why is Superboy so different in the Young Justice cartoon?” float around in DC circles. I think there are two main approaches to answering this:

Why did the writers of the cartoon decide to create a very different version of Superboy?

What factors make this Superboy so different from the comic version?

For the first approach the answer is relatively straight-forward, from the start Young Justice as a cartoon was never meant to be a direct adaptation of the comics. They just used the title and a few elements so they could create their own approach to the DC universe with a focus on younger heroes. For example, Artemis Crock in their show is also COMPLETELY different from her comic counterpart, Zatanna is aged way down to be a member of the teen team, and Kaldur’ahm was created for this show (and integrated into the comics as Jackson Hyde). They were always trying to do different things than the main comics universe, so them making a different version of Conner also makes sense. Their approach to him is also very clearly influenced more by how he appeared in the Teen Titans comic run that was still coming out as Young Justice started airing (his design, and some other elements we’ll discuss along the way), as opposed to his original version from the 90′s/the Young Justice comic.

So the basic “why” is that from the start they wanted to create something unique to their universe, which they definitely did accomplish.

The much more interesting subject to dive into, though, is looking at the differences in Superboy’s story that contribute to him becoming such a different person. 

The drastic changes made to the following factors are what I view as the main source of his differences in personality/outlook/characterization:

The conditions and history of the world at the time he is introduced

The circumstances around him being introduced/leaving Cadmus

The reaction Clark has to him and how their relationship starts

The people he first interacted with & became close to, and how he interacts with the world

The timing of him finding out about his connection to Luthor

The State of the Worlds

In the comics, Superboy is first introduced in Adventures of Superman #500 by iconically saying “Don’t ever call me Superboy!” 

during a 1993 event called “Reign of the Supermen”, a follow up to the 1992 event “The Death of Superman”. Based on the title of the 1992 event, I think you can, uh, guess what one major difference in the setting here was vs. the state of the world at the time he was introduced in the cartoon. Obviously Clark didn’t stay dead forever, but Superboy first comes onto the scene as a young clone of Superman who insists he is the new Superman (one of the four characters trying to do so during the event). This is in the main DC universe in the early 90’s, which means that heroes in general, including teen heroes, aren’t a new thing! Not only has the Justice League been around for a while but so has the Teen Titans. Once Clark is alive again, Superboy goes off on his own to establish himself as an individual teen hero. 

So how is that different in the cartoon?

In the cartoon, Superboy is first introduced in the pilot episodes “Independence Day” and “Fireworks” 

on the 4th of July in (what most people consider to be) 2010. This was supposed to be the day that Robin (Dick Grayson), Speedy (Roy Harper), Kid Flash (Wally West), and Aqualad (Kaldur’ahm) would get to see the true Justice League HQ at the Hall of Justice, which... doesn’t go exactly as planned. 

In this world, superheroes are a newer thing, this is something that the creators have talked about before. At this point, while there is an established Justice League, there are no known teams of teen superheroes. Just the fact that as of season one Dick Grayson is still Robin is a pretty good indicator that this world is early in it’s time with a Batman. Now, the sidekicks aren’t a secret, as they appear very publicly in this first episode, but they are almost always seen acting with their mentors at this point. Again, there is no Teen Titans in this setting, and there never has been. 

So when they do form the first teen hero team? It is kept covert-ops. They do not publicize that they act as a superhero team, and the members who weren’t already publicly known heroes (mainly Miss Martian and Superboy) end up being pretty… unknown to a lot of the world outside the hero/villain community! Again their existence is not strictly kept a secret, but they keep the fact that there’s a team of minors who are heroes going on independent missions VERY under the radar on purpose. Thus, those who aren’t going around doing super public hero activities just don’t have nearly as much of a presence.

So to summarize:

In the comics, Superboy is immediately put in a spotlight (he befriends a reporter and is all over tv and literally trademarks the name Superman) becoming known to the world and establishes himself as a solo acting hero YEARS before joining any teams.

In the cartoon, Superboy is kept relatively out of the spotlight, immediately becomes part of a covert-ops team and doesn’t act solo very often. The well known teen heroes in this setting are sidekicks working under a mentor, and Superboy does not actually act as a sidekick.

What does this mean for Superboy?

Superboy in the comics gets to, right away, act on his own and get a taste of what being Superman is like. In the cartoon, he’s brought into the world at a time where there already is a Superman. I think back to this bit from the therapy episode, where he says:

“See, from the moment I first opened my eyes in that Cadmus pod, there’s been one thing I’ve wanted, and feared. To know what it is to be Superman.”

Comics Superboy started out getting to do that! He immediately got a shot at filling that role, and he then makes the choice to relinquish it back to the original once he’s alive again. He (begrudgingly at first) understood that it wasn’t yet his time to be Superman, and knows he’ll someday fill those shoes for real- but in the meantime being Superboy is gonna be his own thing and he’ll embrace it and make it work.

Cartoon Superboy is left in a shadow, not ever truly knowing what it’s like to fill those shoes (except in a doomsday scenario training exercise gone awry that he then just feels intense guilt over). This leaves him a lot more frustrated and lost, and I think is a major contributor to how angry this version of Superboy is compared to his much more ‘chill go with the flow’ attitude in the comics.

Cadmus

In the comics, in that same issue he’s introduced, we find out that Superboy broke out of his cloning tube prematurely and left Cadmus with the assistance of the second Newsboy Legion, who also gave him his first leather jacket, before the programming that would allow Cadmus to control him was implemented.

He quickly gets up to speed with the situation, that Clark is dead. So he comes on the scene starting to save people and saying he is Superman, or at least the clone of the original one. A major thing that does influence his character here is the fact that… this is the 90’s. He is designed around the idea of what is ‘cool’ back in 1993. (look, even his original character design sheets call him cool)

So right off the bat he’s got a stereotypical ‘cool teen guy in that era’ personality, which is often played for comedy to add a little lightness to some of the dark things happening during this event. 

Anyways, he has left Cadmus, he’s acting on his own, and he starts realizing that his powers aren’t exactly the same as Superman’s over the course of the Reign of the Supermen story.

After the main conflict is settled and Clark is fully alive and acting as Superman again, the two of them end up going back to Cadmus to find out what the exact deal is with him. I’ll go into this more in a later point, but they find out he’s not exactly a clone of Superman (or Lex- him being actually involved as a DNA donor is a retcon that happened a decade later). They agree to let someone from Cadmus (Dubbilex- the grey guy with the horns in this pic) leave Metropolis with him, as he sets out on a press tour to establish himself as Superboy now that he relinquished the trademark on the Superman name back to Clark. 

Let’s pause and look at how this is different in the cartoon.

In the cartoon, when the trio of Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad decide to prove themselves to their mentors they run off on their own to attend to a fire at Project Cadmus when the Justice League got called off to do something else. Upon arriving, they accidentally uncover some weird things about Cadmus, like the crazy amount of sublevels, the creatures roaming around, and the fact that it’s not on the main power grids. They eventually find Superboy, still in his cloning tube. They break him out, but then get captured themselves.

When they are then put into tubes by Cadmus personnel, they manage to convince Superboy to help free them by promising him things like getting to meet Superman, and see the moon. The group of four now working together manages to escape from the building and it topples down, where they are then greeted by the Justice League who are Not Happy.

Superman flies away shortly after, and the group of kids explain to their remaining mentors that sure, they disobeyed orders, but they accomplished something good here, and they are going to keep doing it, whether the League likes it or not. The compromise is the formation of The Team, to be covert-ops while the Justice League acts publicly, and the boys are joined by Miss Martian.

So to summarize:

In the comics, Superboy leaves Cadmus pretty independently (with some assistance) to go act on his own as a hero immediately. He returns to Cadmus later for more information, and they reveal truths to him about his existence. After he knows his truth, he goes off to continue establishing himself as a solo hero but lets Cadmus still supervise what he’s doing through Dubbilex.

In the cartoon, Superboy is rescued from Cadmus by Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad, without knowing pretty much anything about himself besides the fact that he is a clone of Superman, and is immediately put on the covert ops team. 

What it means for Superboy:

Comic Superboy goes to act on his own, even after he admits he’s not the real Superman anymore. Yes he’s not 100% alone in terms of ‘he’s got people (Rex, Roxy, Dubbilex, Tana) around him’, but as a hero he’s a solo act and ends up taking residence in Hawaii. In the cartoon, by joining a team right away, he’s taking on a very different style of being a hero, especially because the team itself is covert-ops. Rather than regularly saving the day all on his own much like Superman, which can help comic Superboy feel like he’s still living up to the name more, cartoon Superboy is working under the radar in a group setting, while still wanting to desperately fill those Superman shoes. 

He is overconfident in his abilities and wants to be the hero he was created to be, so him being put into this very different type of superhero situation is another major contributor to the frustration/anger. Even later on when comics Superboy is part of forming the Young Justice team, they were never a secret covert-ops team, they were always publicly known. (hell, a reporter is the one who gave them the team name Young Justice because he’d misheard Bart)

Superboy & Superman

In the comics, as we have established, Clark was dead at the time Superboy first came on the hero scene. Clark comes back to life, during a little bit of a lull in the middle of the huge conflict. He immediately accepts that Superboy is one of four who came forward to try to replace him, and one of the only two (Superboy & Steel) who genuinely only had good intentions in doing so. Clark, Steel, Supergirl, Hal Jordan, and Superboy then all work together in the big battle against the Cyborg Superman.

Once things are settled, Clark is curious about him, and where he came from and his origin, so they end up going to Cadmus together with Guardian and learning more about him, as I previously mentioned. Once it is established that Superboy is in fact a metahuman clone who was created to mimic Superman, but is not actually a clone of him, Superman still accepts him and thinks he’s earned his right to continue using the ’S’ shield and have the name of Superboy. 

They part ways so Superboy can go on his press tour, but in general they have pretty positive interactions where they mutually respect each other! Not too much later in the comics even (I forget exaaactly when this happens but it’s definitely before the 1998 Young justice comic), Superman is the first one to give Superboy a real name, “Kon-El”, something he is so happy about he literally cries.

How is this different in the cartoon? 

When the boys first escaped, and Superboy first meets the Justice League, Clark is standoffish. Other members of the league need to nudge him over to go actually talk to Superboy, and it’s not much of a conversation before he flies off and away, leaving Superboy frustrated and alone.

This… turns into the standard for almost the entire first season. Other characters constantly telling Clark that he needs to reach out and be support for the boy (like in this iconic diner scene with Bruce and Clark), but Clark consistently being too freaked out by the fact that someone made a clone of him without his knowledge to properly accept Conner. While this does over time get better, this being the immediate reaction when Superboy is brand new in the world definitely… has an impact! 

He is rejected by the person he idolizes, and feels neglected and abandoned, and definitely kinda overcompensates with ego to try to make up for it. 

So:

In the comics, Superman and Superboy work together from the start, not falling into a hero/sidekick situation but rather acknowledging each other as individual heroes with respect for one another. They grow to see each other as family much faster, and little tension between them. A crucial difference in situations, though, is that at the time these versions first meet Superboy is not actually a clone of Superman.

In the cartoon, Superman at first avoids Superboy, and does not offer guidance or mentorship or anything the boy needs. It is clear that he wants to work with Superman and be like him, since it was what he was created to do. It takes a lot of time for Clark to accept Conner in this setting, and there is a lot of tension for the first several months Conner exists. (they seem to settle this towards the end of season 1/during the gap between season 2, but it still has it’s impact on who Conner is early in his life)

What does this mean?

I feel like this is another major factor that contributes to Conner being so angry all the time in the cartoon, he feels immediately rejected by the person he’s supposed to be someday, rather than accepted by him. Again, very different from how comics Superboy got a chance to be Superman, and a chance to then work with the real deal as equals. 

Friendships, Relationships and Identity

When Superboy is freed by the second Newsboy Legion, it’s primarily out of a ‘we’re clones who are stuck here, but you need to be out there, you’re what Metropolis needs right now!’ kind of idea. The first person he actually becomes close to is a reporter named Tana Moon.

Tana and Superboy’s relationship is… bad once it actually becomes romantic due to their huge age difference (she’s around 23, he is for all intents and purposes 16), but during the Reign of the Supermen where they’re still just friends for the most part, it’s not as bad. Tana becomes the GBS correspondent who focuses on everything Superboy (at this time still insisting he is the new Superman) is doing as a hero, and they become close friends.

GBS then also brings in Rex Leech (and his daughter Roxy) to be his agent, to promote Superboy and manage things for him. Rex is exploitative as hell, but Roxy does become another really important person to Superboy. These characters along with Dubbilex are his main supporting cast at the start of his solo comic when he’s in Hawaii.

In this whole era, Superboy is pretty much a celebrity. He’s cool, he’s a superhero, and I think it’s very notable he does not have a secret Identity. For a decent chunk of time, he is always just ‘Superboy’ (until, as I mentioned earlier, Clark gives him the name Kon-El. Even so, he doesn’t adopt a regular secret identity [Conner Kent, although he actually used a different one, Carl Grummett, before that!] until he begins living with the Kents in the early 2000s). By the time he joins any teams, Kon is pretty damn confident in who he is as a hero and has a relatively good grasp on who he is in general, if anything he’s a little too confident.

Young Justice was created in the aftermath of World Without Grown Ups when the trio of Superboy, Robin (Tim Drake) and Impulse (Bart Allen) had teamed up. After they saved the day they realized they worked well together and formed their team, utilizing the old Justice League base in Mount Justice. They were eventually joined by more members, especially relevant here is Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) who Kon later dates for a portion of the Teen Titans run that these four are in after Young Justice ends. 

The four of them become close, and when Kon dies during Infinite Crisis it rips a hole in everything they had established growing up together over the past several years (Cassie joins a cult dedicated to bringing him back, Tim tries to clone a new Kon, Bart got aged up and took on the mantle of the Flash, etc) and Bart’s death that followed similarly shook the remaining Cassie and Tim. This group eventually does get to reunite, with Kon and Bart coming back during Final Crisis, solidifying how even things like death don’t keep them apart for long. It’s hard to look at the comic book versions of these four characters and imagine how they would be without their connections to each other... until you look at the YJ cartoon and see a world where they’re not even all part of the same generation, let alone a friend group.

Now in the cartoon…

The first people Conner primarily interacts with are Dick, Wally, Kaldur, and M’gann, along with the League members who interact with The Team pretty regularly, Red Tornado, Batman, and Black Canary. He’s shown to be friends with the other memebers of the team and get along with them relatively well, but in general he’s not much of a social person. 

Much like in the comics, Superboy is considered very attractive, and immediately upon their meeting, M’gann is interested in him. Very, very interested in him.

At first it definitely does seem more just like an innocent crush, but it’s later revealed to be a little more… concerning than that. As in ‘Megan subtlety influencing Superboy to become her dream boyfriend based on a TV show she likes’ concerning. Like… she literally gives him the name ‘Conner’ after the TV show character that was the boyfriend of the character she bases her human self and entire identity on. The two date and once that becomes a thing, a lot of their plot lines in the following seasons revolve around the ups and downs of their relationship.

In general in this show, Superboy doesn’t really get much of a chance to establish himself on his own terms. Within months of him leaving his cloning pod, he and M’gann start going to high school with secret identities, so he’s already having to hide who he truly is to blend in with other people, before he even knows who he truly is. 

So to compare:

In the comics, Superboy gets to figure out who he is as Superman’s Clone/Superboy very publicly, has multiple love interests and a celebrity status, and over time becomes part of a tight-knit group of friends. He doesn’t use a regular secret identity for the first several years he’s active.

In the cartoon, Superboy has one love interest with a very large impact on him, not nearly as much focus is given to his other friendships, and he immediately adopts a secret identity meaning he needs to hide who he is from the start. 

What it means:

These factors play a big difference in his attitude, particularly highlighting how extroverted his comic version is and how introverted his cartoon version is. Comic Superboy never really needed to hide who he was until years into his career, vs being told to do so early on in his life. When you get used to needing to hide things so early, that can definitely lead to being more private/disconnected from others. Also somewhat related- in the comics, when Kon is given knowledge in his cloning tube, more pop culture got included. He mentions knowing Star Wars without having seen it, and references a ton of TV and Movies, vs the cartoon version of him that seems to have been given a lot of history of the world but not the current fun stuff. It’s the difference between knowing what’s going on in the world and what’s popular, vs only knowing the past and what’s fundamental. Not knowing pop culture like this can also really contribute to feeling alienated and lead to introversion. (I just... I think about how in the comics Kon’s favorite TV show is Wendy The Werewolf Stalker, in the cartoon Conner just... watches white noise static)

Also, having a completely different set of friends with different personalities has a big effect, people are always gonna be influenced by the people they’re close to to some extent. Bumping Conner up to Dick’s generation of heroes instead of Tim’s not only gives him completely different friends, but it also puts him in this position of being one of the ‘Original Team Members’. By this I mean, a member of the first iteration of the only teen team, one of the people that younger heroes coming onto the scene and joining the team in later seasons see as an experienced and older team member to look up to (despite the fact that cartoon Conner is permanently 16- they never fixed that for him like in the comics). That just creates a different dynamic entirely, because in the comics even when the Tim/Kon/Cassie/Bart group are more experienced on their team late in the Teen Titans run, they are still always going to have heroes like Dick Grayson, Donna Troy, Wally West etc as the older generation of ‘original teen heroes’ who came before them.

Also, while I am talking mostly about in-universe reasoning here, I do wanna bring up one slightly more meta reason that might also have contributed to them choosing to go for a more ‘introverted brooding hero’ characterization with him: the fact that their version of Wally already filled the ‘flirty jokey’ archetype original Comics Kon fits into. Having two characters like that in the show from the start would definitely get... overwhelming. And at the time this show was first airing, in the comics, he was relatively devoted to Cassie and not nearly as flirty anymore anyways.

Lex Luthor / Details of Cloning

In the comics, as I have already mentioned and will now actually explain, when Superboy was first introduced he was not the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor as we know him to be today. Kon was a metahuman clone, made with the DNA of Paul Westfield who worked at Cadmus, that they genetically altered to look like Superman, and gave powers based on the energy aura they discovered to exist around Clark’s dead body. This telekinetic field gave Kon the distinct powers he had for his first decade of existence: His Tactile Telekinesis (often referred to by him as TTK)

Lex Luthor was originally not directly involved in his creation, but he was aware that it was going on as is revealed during the Reign of the Supermen arc. Kon’s TTK allowed him to mimic Superman’s flight and strength, but not all of his powers. TTK also gave him powers Superman DOESN’T have, such as his ability to dismantle machinery or mold materials he is touching into different shapes. (The reason this is called Tactile Telekinesis is because there needs to be a tactile element, he needs to be touching the things) 

It is not until 2003, a decade after Superboy was created, that writer Geoff Johns in his Teen Titans run decided to alter Superboy’s origin. He established that Lex Luthor had been the real human DNA donor and that Superman’s Kryptonian DNA was actually used in the cloning process. Around this time, Conner also begins to exhibit more of the typical Kryptonian powers, like Clark did around this age. 

This information is at first only known by Conner and Tim, because the email had actually been sent to Tim directly. The two keep it a secret as Conner was not ready to tell the rest of the team, because he fears the implications it has, and is afraid of becoming evil or being rejected. This revelation about Lex being one of his ‘parents’ DNA-wise coming years into his hero career changes a lot of things for Conner, and makes him begin to question who he is. Unfortunately, Lex does at one point take control of Conner and force him to break Tim’s arm and attack Cassie directly (as well as the rest of the team, but these two specifically are what Conner expresses the most guilt over after the fact). This era of Conner in the comics is where he’s definitely closest to his cartoon counterpart, because he’s very troubled and dealing with a lot of heavy stuff regarding himself as a person. Yet there’s still traces of who he has always been in there. I mean, if you’re only familiar with cartoon Conner, can you really imagine his final words as he’s dying after saving the world being “Isn’t it cool?”

Now, looking at the cartoon…

Conner finds out about his connection to Lex in November, only a few months after having existed outside of a cloning tube. He finds it out on his own, from Lex speaking to him directly, after Conner went back to investigate the remains of Cadmus and ended up having a fight with Match (another clone who is able to pass for Conner’s duplicate who they… their version of Match is another thing they drastically changed from the comic version but as we’ve established that’s something they like to do so I’m not gonna dwell on it).

In the cartoon, Conner’s powerset is, from the start, different from both Superman and comic Superboy. Here he has heightened senses and strength and the ability to leap really far, but he lacks actual flight and some of the other standard Kryptonian powers, and has no TTK. The cartoon explains these gaps in his powers as being due to his half human DNA, and they introduce these patches that are able to suppress his human DNA and give him temporary access to full powers. Lex uses these patches as a way to manipulate him. Much like in the comics, Lex has a code word programmed into Conner that effects him, although it isn’t quite used for the same amount of ‘total mind control’, and he doesn’t get fully brainwashed and turn against the team or anything. Instead, the code word (here “Red Sun” rather than “Aut vincere, aut mori” [Translated as “to conquer or die" / "victory or death”]) just leaves him stuck in a hypnotic trance.

So:

In the comics, Kon finds out after years of believing he was a metahuman clone who was given powers to mimic Superman, that he is actually a clone of Lex Luthor and Superman, which alters his entire perspective on himself! This causes him to become a lot more unsure and anxious about who he is, in stark contrast with how confident he was before. There are still traces of his old self within him, but this is a development in his character that influences him moving forward, making him a bit more serious but still at his core the same person he used to be.

In the cartoon, Conner finds out after months of thinking he was a clone of just Superman, that he has half human DNA and the donor was Lex Luthor. While he always had confidence in his abilities, he was still somewhat lost as a person in knowing who he really was outside of things other people have assigned to him (teammate, boyfriend, superhero, etc), and finding out this information about himself just adds to the uncertainty and frustration.

What it means:

Having this struggle be something Conner has to deal with so early in his existence is one of the most fundamental changes in my opinion. Finding out that Lex Luthor is one of your clone parents is something that will alter your entire perception of yourself and who you are! In the comics, Conner had already been confident in who he was so it shakes his world in a really big way, but in the cartoon he still didn’t know who he really was so it just adds to further confusion. 

I think that even with the more serious characterization Kon starts getting in the 2003 Teen TItans run, his history and past as the fun cool 90′s Metropolis Kid isn’t entirely forgotten, it’s still a part of who he is/was. Sure, maybe he’s sometimes even embarrassed by how he used to be, but it’s not treated as though it didn’t happen. All of his history comes together to create the character and who he is by the time he wears just a T shirt as a costume.

By skipping over the fun era of his life and jumping right into who he was when he started facing these huge changes, it creates such a completely different set of challenges for him and that contributes directly to how he’s characterized. 

Putting it all together

The ultimate point I am trying to reach in all of this is that, beyond just ‘they made a writing choice to make him different’ the environment that Superboy was brought into and the events that took place right when he came into the world greatly influenced the type of character he would become. Every time an adaptation is made of something like comics, there are going to be changes and alterations to fit the world the creators want to make. Sometimes these changes are minor and don’t actually change who a character is (an example for the YJ cartoon’s universe itself: In the tie-in comics [issue 6] it’s established in this universe that the Flying Graysons weren’t just Dick and his parents, but other family members were active parts of it too. One was an uncle also named Richard, who actually survived the fall that killed the rest of his family but was left paralyzed and thus unable to care for him. This uncle already used the nickname ‘Rick’ which is likely why Dick ended up using ‘Dick’ as a name in a modern setting even though it has fallen out of popularity as a nickname because uh, connotations. This is something that is mostly unique to their world and helps to explain some things, but it’s not like tragically losing a few more family members changed their version of Dick and his backstory that drastically. At his core, he still has many similarities to his comic self) but they’re still changes, and that’s okay. Superboy, though, is such an extreme case where they made so many changes that at his core he really does become a completely separate character. Sure he has the name and design, but I was able to write five thousand words about differences here and am struggling to come up with more similarities beyond that.

I think there still could be specks of the original Superboy buried inside cartoon Conner, and that maybe he could have been more like his original version under other circumstances. Looking at these differences and where they come from is, I think, a cool way to begin to understand what elements contribute to who each version of Conner Kent really is. I think it’s clear from how I wrote this that I prefer the comic version, but there are definitely things that are fun to look at and think about with both.

--

if u read all of this UH thanks for listenin to me ramble! sorry if this is incomprehensibe!

[maximumjinx]

Steven Universe Gravity Falls AU

~Yknow what they say, if you run out of content, ya gotta make it yourself. This is a ? shot (I might continue or not who knows not me) please don’t ask for more I have 18 unfinished fanfics on this site.~

California was nice, Steven had to admit. The people were nice, the food was fantastic, and the weather was splendid. It reminded him a lot of Beach City. Though there were just so many people, and traveling north, Steven was beginning to long for something small and simple again.

Oregon was the perfect place for that, right?

“Ronaldo wants pictures of Bigfoot, and if anyone can find him, its you Steven.” Petey’s voice was faint on Steven’s phone speaker, tossed into the passenger seat as Steven blindly picked a highway exit.

“Sure Petey, but couldn’t Ronaldo just go to a circus?”

“Not big feet Steven,” Petey emphasized, “Bigfoot.”

“Saying it twice isn’t helping buddy.” Steven was half paying attention. He was focusing on the winding roads and the looming trees surrounding him. Deep, in the pit of Steven’s stomach, he felt something start to tug him toward one direction farther away from the highway. He wasn’t quite sure if it was a good or bad feeling yet.

“Forget it, I’m going to take a blurry photo of that mean Gem in the woods and say its Bigfoot.”

“Just don’t let Jasper catch you, she’s no joke when she’s angry.”

“I saw her ripping grass out of the ground I think I’ll be fine. Later dude.”

Steven heard a small click and smiled to himself. He’s happy to see how far the people of Beach City have come and how they’ve taken to the gems. He remembers when the Crystal Gems were once the outcasts of town that locals warned you to stay away from.

He looked up to see a welcome sign.

“Gravity falls. Well, that’s a funny name.”

—

Steven wanted small and simple but he feels he may have overshot it.

This small town had exactly three attractions. A town museum that mentioned marrying woodpeckers (Steven couldn’t figure out if that was a normal human thing, like taxes and velcro), a small diner, and as one local described it ‘some tourist trap’ deep in the woods. It was a sticky summer day and the former two attractions didn’t have airconditioning. Steven gambled on the last stop in hopes of stretching his legs and maybe finding a source to the strange feeling in his gut. It had become much stronger since he entered this small town. Alluring, but nothing related to Gems as far as Steven could tell.

He parked in the nearly empty lot and stepped out. Jacket wrapped loosely around his hips, Steven made his way inside.

A girl that looked about 13 was petting a pig on the front porch. She was incredibly reflective, and depsite the heat wore a knitted bedazzled sweater that made her glow like a disco ball in the sun.

She looked Steven up and down as he approached, a wide smile taking up her face and Steven saw bright braces with colored bands.

“Hi!” She launched upwards, startling the pig away, “I’m Mabel, but you can call me anytime.” The girl winked and stuck out her hand, palm facing the floor.

Steven blinked.

“Mabel, stop scaring away the customers!” A gruff voice yelled through the screen door, and soon an older man stepped out in a suit, wearing a fez and eyepatch.

Immediately the old man squinted at Steven, sizing him up.

Stanley Pines knew this teen wasn’t local, but he wasn’t sure if he had any money. For all he knew he was another boy trying to hit on his giftshop cashier, Wendy.

Oh well, a customer is a customer.

“Come in, come in, and see our mystical and magical wonders!”

“Magical?” This could be it, Steven could figure out why this town has felt off. Maybe it was gem related after all.

Quickly this older man who had introduced himself as Mr. Mystery gave Steven a tour of what looked like failed taxidermy projects. Now Steven may have a lived a sheltered childhood, but he felt pretty confident there was no such thing as a Sashcrotch. And so far, nothing had felt magical or mysterious.

“That concludes our tour! Here is our mistifying giftshop and it’s purchasable wonders!”

“Right...” Well, at the very least he was able to spend some time in airconditioning.

There was a girl behind the desk in plaid that looked about Steven’s age, and just a half inch shorter than him. She looked bored, flipping through a magazine as a young boy that looked a lot like Mabel made googly eyes as he swept by the door.

Steven guessed there was no harm in asking around.

“Hi, I’m Steven.” He smiled easily, walking up to the register.

“No refunds, even if an exhibit bit you.” She sighed, peeking up before turning back to her magazine.

“Oh no, nothing bit me, I just wanted to know something.”

She looked up to get a better look at Steven and gave a small smirk.

“Sure, but only because I like your shirt. Mr. Universe merch, now that’s a deep cut.”

Unbeknownst to Steven, Dipper Pines would had been watching the exchange felt a twinge of uneasiness as this out of towner talked with Wendy.

“Have you ever seen anything strange or weird actually happen in this town?”

Wendy’s smile dropped.

“Why do you ask?” Her eyes flickered to Dipper, just for a moment, and that was all he needed to rush over.

“Excuse me sir, please buy something or exit the store.” Dipper spoke in the deepest voice he could muster.

Steven looked over with a questioning expression.

“Oh sure uh-“ He blindly reached for the wad of bills that his dad had given to him before he left. Steven pulled out a hundred dollar bill and put it on the counter. Wendy looked up baffled as Steven stuffed the other cash back in his wallet.

“Boy was I wrong about you kid!” Mr. Mystery, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, now bounded over. He had loosened his tie and lost the eyepatch which turned out he never needed.

“Whaddya wanna know? I’ll tell you everything. There’s gnomes in the woods you know-“

“Grunkle Stan!” Dipper protested loudly, dragging his Stan away and harshly whispering at him.

“Did you steal that money?” Wendy asked as Steven watched the pair whisper fight in the corner. He turned back to the girl and gave a sheepish smile.

“Uh no, my dad gave it to me before this roadtrip. He’s actually Mr. Universe.”

Wendy lit up.

“No freaking way! Your dad is Mr. Universe? I only got into him since he managed Sadie Killer and the Suspects and they always perform covers of his songs on tour, I can’t believe he’s your dad!” She rambled, stars in her eyes. Steven beamed, he loved when people praised his dad’s music. Greg really deserved it.

Steven learned Wendy’s name and they swapped stories back and forth, only interrupted as the girl from outside slowly rose from the behind the counter beaming.

“A cute musician that loves weird stuff, take me now.” She swooned. Steven blushed profusely, not used to the attention.

“Sorry, my girlfriend Connie probably wouldn’t like that very much.” He said gently. Mabel looked him up and down and pouted.

“I can wait, but not forever.” She warned, and winked, bounding to break apart her grunkle and Dipper, who are now whisper screaming with arms flailing.

“I wasn’t going to mention that Dorito shaped jerk! Just the normal stuff!”

“It’s dangerous! He could be a spy, or government, or another stack of gnomes!”

Steven raised an eyebrow and looked at Wendy. She chuckled and shrugged. Steven carefully approached them.

“He can hear everything you’re saying anyways so might as well tell him!” Mabel interrupted, nodding towards Steven as he came up.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m definitely not government.” Steven technically didn’t exist at all. He never had a social security card and didn’t have a birth certificate.

Dipper only glared. Rich strangers with an interest in the paranormal didn’t come through gravity falls without some kind of agenda.

Steven hated the conflict he was starting. No information was worth this family fighting.

“Okay,” he surrendered, hands up, “I’ll just go. I’ll stick around town until tomorrow if you change your minds”

“Wait Steven-”

“Let him go Wendy,” Dipper glared as the boy in pink walked out, “We can’t trust him.”

“But I was going to ask for Sadie tickets...” Wendy groaned, defeated.

“There’s something weird about him.”

“Great!” Mabel beamed, “He’ll fit right in.”

~.~

Steven wasn’t crazy about sleeping in his car, but was seriously considering it after seeing the state of his motel room. It looked like it hadn’t been used in decades, a thin line of dust covering every surface. He was also pretty sure they didn’t even have free ice. 

“Wish Pearl were here..” He mumbled, exhausted. He curled up on top of the covers, fully clothed, and let sleep take him.

Being Steven Universe however, meant rest was sure to allude the half alien. 

Steven found himself in a dark space, fog all around him. Before a word could come out of his mouth he heard a fast, repetitive muttering. 

“Stranger...Wendy looked pretty today..Can’t trust...Tell no one...Ford isn’t here..”

“What, the-” Steven quietly walked toward the source of dialogue, and saw the faded silhouette of the boy from the Mystery Shack. His back was turned to him, but Steven recognized the blue vest and mosquito bitten legs. 

“I thought I was over the dream hopping.” Steven spoke a tad too loudly, starting the young boy - Dipper.

“What-” Dipper’s eyes grew wide in panic, and the boy fell back harshly.

“No, no, you can’t be in my head!” 

“Wait, I’m not-” Steven tried to reassure him, stepping carefully towards the boy but Dipper let out a screech of terror, sweat gathering around his temples.

“Bill sent you didn’t he?! He’s not really gone- he’s going to hurt Mable again-” Dipper began to hyperventilate. 

“Dipper please,” Steven took a step back, arms in the air in surrender. 

“I-”

“I’m not going to hurt you I swear on the gems.” He placed a hand over his heart. “This is a total invasion of privacy but it’s something that happens when someone’s emotions are out of control-”

“How are you here?” Dipper demanded, scrambling to his feet. “Tell me what you are and what you want.”

“I’m just passing through!” Steven insisted, then lowered his tone to calm the younger boy. “I’m kinda of magnet for weird stuff. I just wanted to help in case anything was going on.”

“We deal with things just fine around here.” Dipper spat, then watched as Steven deflated. He seemed tired, like he hasn't slept well in a while. 

“So what are you anyways? How can you be here?”

Steven winced, and laughed nervously. “It’s kind of a long story..”

Dipper raised and eyebrow and swept his arm around the void dramatically. 

“You have until dawn.”

~

“I thought that was a conspiracy theory, it wasn’t even covered by major news outlets.” Dipper look exhausted, cross legged on the unseen floor as he ran his hands through his hair. 

“I think Garnet is pretty persuasive when it comes to government and reporters. They all kinda fall in love with her.”

“She’s the one that’s really two aliens?” 

Steven shook his head with a small smile. “It’s hard to explain but yes, I guess that comes close.”

“That’s actually insane. I’m insane, aren’t I?” Dipper stood up, leaving Steven on sitting next to an empty space. “It’s been too quiet around here and now I’m so desperate for weird, that I’m making it all up in my head.”

“I get that feeling.” Steven smiled without humor, “but no, this is real. I’ll prove it when you wake up.” Steven felt a shift, the fog in the void getting denser. 

“Sooner than I thought, you’re an early riser huh?”

Dipper looked back at Steven, panicked. “You’ll come to the Shack again right? In just a bit?”

Steven smiled. “Promise.”

~

Dipper woke up to his sister braiding his hair. Mabel still had her pjs on, and a make up kit next to the bed. Dipper frowned, tasting strawberry shortcake. 

“Stop testing party looks on me, Mabel.”

“Stop having my face structure and maybe I will.” She grinned, covered in blue glitter. 

Dipper quickly washed up and got dressed for the day, feeling like he was anxiously waiting for something but not quite remembering what. 

He felt like he had a strange dream last night...

He quickly remembered, choking on cereal as Steven walked into the shack right as it opened. Hair slightly frizzy from the heat and eyes strangely tired. Maybe dream hopping took energy that he anticipated. 

“Steven!”

“Meal ticket!” 

“Grunkle Stan.” Mabel chastised as Dipper rushed over to the older boy. 

“Good morning everyone.” 

Dipper stopped short, slightly hoping that everything he experienced wasn’t just his imagination. That everything exciting and weird and interesting wasn’t always trying to kill him, ruin his life, or steal his candy. 

Steven looked tired, like he had been doing this much longer than Dipper, but he had still come out with enough energy to smile. 

“Not insane?” Dipper asked hopefully, quietly. Steven snapped his attention from his Grunkle and Mable bickering down to the Dipper. He gave a reassuring smile, eyes quite serious. 

“Not insane.”

[sykhan048]

Your Beloved...(Chapter 11)

Mini and Cutler walking together. After some time they both stop as cutler is tired now. His leg is weak now. They were sat on the sea shore.

Mini: Is your leg hurting?

Cutler: Yes, (sigh) A little.

Mini: The infection is recover but your leg is became little weak now.

Cutler: But it's better than lost of leg. If the infection won't recover maybe you would have been cut my leg.

Mini: yes. but Thank god.

Cutler: By the way we are staying together almost 1 month. But We don't know anything other than each other's names.  And as friends, we have the right to know about each other. Is not it?

Mini: Yes, you're right. let's start.

Cutler: So, I am Lord Cutler Becket. The...

Mini: The Chairman of East India Trading Company. You joined East India Trading Company as a governor. For many years you faithfully served the Company, eventually becoming the Director of West African Imports and Exports for the Company. From your post in calabar , you organized a search for the mythical  island of karma, hoping to find its legendary trajor. But something happened there and you mission became unsuccessful. You nonetheless continued to work for the Company. More than a decade after the incompleat mission, You were granted the title of , eventually becoming the Company's governor. As a duly appointed representative of king george II, he led the Company's expansion in the Caribbean, taking control over Port royal with the blessing of the Crown, turning it into his base of operations. With the huge EITC fleet and army of mercenaries an under your command, Lord Beckett made it his goal to forever annihilate piracy  from the world. And then.....

Cutler: How do you know that?

Mini: amm....actually...(nervous)

Cutler: who are you? How do you know about this? (suspicious)

Mini: (in mind) If I tell him that I am from future then he will take this in wrong way. I won't be able to know him properly.

Cutler: Mini...

Mini: oh..come on Cutler... You only said this to me.

Cutler: Did I? When?

Mini: When you was at unconscious state.

Cutler: Really?

Mini: yes.. and you were also muttering some like sparrow, pirates many things. What was that mean?

Cutler: AAhan...long story. I will tell you later. Now will you tell me about yourself?

Mini: Ok...(bright smile) As you know my name. Soudamini Sen. You can understand by my name that I am from India, West Bengal. I am a doctor. Actually I'm studying in medical science. My vacation is started so I decided to do a tour of Caribbean.

Cutler: Strange.

Mini: why?

Cutler: Because I didn't hear about any Indian is studying and they are involved at this noble work.

Mini is about to argue but the she remember that She is in past.

Mini: Yes, now it's looking rare but in future this will be an ultimate truth.

Mini said with a sparkling eyes.

Cutler: (in mind) Will it really happen? Don't know. But there was a determination in her voice. It makes me forcefully believe that it will surely happen. She is so young. But sometimes talk like a matured person.

Mini: Hey, where have you lost? (waving her hand)

Cutler: Oh...nowhere.

Mini: Breakfast in ready. I think we should go.

Cutler: Hmm...let's go.

She help him to stand and they headed to their hut.

Black pearl,

Barbosa: (tensed) hey Captain Turner. you should stay careful.

Will: What happen?

Barbosa: Devy jone is get his life back.

Elizabeth: WHAT?????

Elizabeth: Barbosa, how can be Devy Jones is alive? Will was stabbed on his heart and killed him.

Barbosa: You forgot one thing your highness. Calypso is alive. Maybe she did something.

Will: But Barbosa, It was a rule that The Dutchman must have a Captain. And The Captain should be immoral.

Elizabeth: Devy jones, stated this ritual. He cut his heart and close it in a chest. So that's why will cut his heart and dedicate himself to the sea and take this responsibility. The Captain of Dutchman has a responsibility to the souls of people who died in the sea. He take them to the after life.

Bill turner: But Calypso is an unpredicted goddess. We can't guess her intention your highness.

Bill Turner came there.

Barbosa: your highness, I need sometime to find more detail regarding this.

Elizabeth: ok...Mr. Gibs you will bring jack.

Mr. gibs: aye...

Elizabeth: dismiss.

Everyone is gone. Elizabeth is looking worried.

Elizabeth: Will...

She went to him.

Will: don't worry Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is about to hug him.

CAP'N TURNER. WE SHOULD SET SAIL.

Will: aye...(to Elizabeth) I have to go. take care.

Will went to his ship. Elizabeth is looking at him with teary eyes.

Bill came and held her shoulder.

Elizabeth: Father...(teary eye)

Bill: Dear, My son is alive with the power of you love. Don't worry. He'll back.

Elizabeth wipes her tears and nods.

Bill: So, your highness. May I take my leave ?

Elizabeth: (smile) Sure Mr. Turner.

Will: Mr. turner

Bill look at Will.

Will: if you say you can stay with your beloved daughter-in-law. 

Elizabeth: Well he has more experience than you Captain Turner and you really need him my dear husband.

She look at Bill.

Bill: Yes, your highness....Aye Aye Cap'n.

The Dutchman set the sail and Barbosa keep researching for the reason of the mess is going.