#and now 50 years later its literally the same but even worse because louis is speaking about the love along with the hatred so ?????? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

in-madhouses · 6 years

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drink up your movements (still i can’t get enough)

Niall Horan to Aahna Deakins: just a heads up

Aahna Deakins: ??

Niall Horan: i think caroline wants to have sex with you

Aahna Deakins: i mean i already knew that

Niall Horan: …

Niall Horan: what?

Aahna Deakins: seen

Niall Horan: ‘m gonna kill harry

Aahna Deakins walks onto the set that first day of filming and Niall just knows he’s fucked. Like, proper, up the arse, without lube, fucked.

And he doesn’t think that very often. Not since he was twenty and earning minimum wage as an english lit teaching assistant who auditioned for a small role in a tv show but ends up being cast as Remus Lupin.

Three and a half critically acclaimed seasons later, he’s one of the more successful actors in the British young adult genre, earns more than the average person’s annual income in a month, and oh, right, is on first name basis with JK Rowling. A feat he’s sure he’ll never top considering that he was an avid Potterhead growing up. (He still has his first copies of the books, creased, weathered, and now, signed by the author herself, sitting on his shelf along with every script that he’s ever received.)

Life is, more or less, good. But after weeks of whispers proclaiming everything from new characters being added to the cast to the producers planning a genderswap episode, things take a sudden nosedive.

Their red stamped ‘Confidential’ scripts made clear that some of the rumours were true; they were adding a character to the show but said character is only there for a backdoor pilot that spills over multiple crossover episodes within the latter season of Marauders: Mischief & Mayhem. If it were any other show, it would be easy to assume that the writers were getting lazy; a whole six episode arc to introduce characters and a plot that will depart for its own show? Seems ridiculous, but the idea is solid and the script is tight, so tight, that apparently Rowling herself greenlit the crossover slash spin off.

Now, by all intents and purposes, Niall and Aahna should have gotten along fine. She’s a model turned actress with a strong work ethic while he’s a seasoned veteran by now, having worked with a lot of people in his time being on Marauders. Being one of the four titular characters kind of guarantees that he’s a given amidst the revolving faces of extras and guest stars. But for some reason unknown to man, Aahna Deakins completely just… gets the better of him.

He recognises her from pictures and billboards when they have their first table read, tall and tan, all lean muscle and sharp edges, her face as mysterious as it is expressive.

When he looks her up, he finds her tweets sharp and witty, her instagram lined with humour, and her presence in the tabloids a staple. And for that alone, he realises that they would mix about as well as oil and water. The fact that they share about 50% of their screen time together doesn’t help. Every scene, every table read, every small discussion turns, at some point or another, into a ridiculous debate and often time (more than a little) raised voices.

He’s not sure how, or who, starts it, but they have full on shouting matches about inflection and intention and everything in between. And it’s not like he’s the oddity who doesn’t play well with his cast members, he gets along with the cast members like a house on fire. She gets along great with everyone too, moving into Harry’s guest room because they go way back and she’s not about to make any property commitments in London until she knows for sure that her show is getting a full season order.

And that’s where things go from bad to worse for him because it means that they live in the same apartment complex and he’s practically a permanent fixture over at Harry’s.

Harry Styles to marauders doing marauder-y things (plus liam): nialler why’d u call 12 times

Niall Horan: slight emergency, am out of beer

Harry Styles: just come over u never had a problem with that b4

Niall Horan: deakins there?

Harry Styles: look do u have any idea how big a deal this is for her

Harry Styles: she did two pilots that got axed before they aired in the states

Harry Styles: and that one movie that basically made a loss in the box office

Liam Payne: didn’t she win a bafta for that?

Louis Tomlinson: nah

Louis Tomlinson: she won the baftas by going on the red carpet with her girlfriend

Harry Styles: *ex gf

Harry Styles: they broke up at the after party

Harry Styles: it was a mess™

Zayn Malik: i still got pictures from that night… that i don’t… understnd what’s going on

Harry Styles: lol yeah u were pretty fucked mate

Louis Tomlinson: i maintain i had nothing to do with that

Liam Payne: wow that girl’s not having a good year is she?

Harry Styles: yeah so maybe u guys should like go easy on her

Zayn Malik: i’m out with her and caroline rn wot u talking about

Louis Tomlinson: i don’t have a prob with her

Liam Payne: i literally have like two scenes with her

Niall Horan: seen

Harry Styles: did you just type ‘seen’

Harry Styles: that’s not how you seen someone, u just seen them

Harry Styles: !!!

Louis Tomlinson renamed the group niall old man horan™ cant work tech

Niall tries to be nicer to her, he really does, but Aahna Deakins doesn’t quite make it easy for him.

She’s… a bit of an enigma.

On one hand, she’s just the type of person he wouldn’t mind as a friend; a sense of humour, the ability to draw the line between on and off screen relations, and an oddly in depth knowledge on history and mythology. (They had a twenty minute row on set about lycanthrophy which had to be escalated to some staff writers before they reached a resolution that she was indeed correct, despite the fact that he’d been the one playing a werewolf for most of his on-screen career. Where is the justice?)

But on the other hand, their similar interests; a passion for food, books, and golf doesn’t stop them from arguing all the time. And it doesn’t quite matter where they are either; on scene, in the studio, at the apartment, even while grabbing lunch with the cast. There’s apparently always something to disagree over.

Suffice to say, it drives everyone a little bit crazy. Especially Harry, who is caught in between more often than not.

“Oi, five-year-olds! We were trying to get some work done here?” Harry hollers, rolling his eyes.

Aahna’s in midst of running lines with some of the boys at Harry’s when Niall decides to pop by for a beer and they (naturally) find something or another to bicker about.

“Oh, I’m a five-year-old?” Aahna asks, incredulous, “I’m not the one who needed seven takes to get one line right,” she shoots a glare at him as he plops down on the couch, a beer in hand, intentionally close to her despite the copious amounts of space available literally anywhere in the living room.

It’s evident at that point, that no work is going to commence in the space anytime soon.

“I wouldn’t have needed seven takes if you didn’t keep breathing down my neck about my bleedin’ accent,” Niall jabs her in the ribs with his free elbow, “Christ, you give a model one acting gig and she thinks she’s Helen fucking Mirren.”

Niall’s not quite sure why, but the need to rile her up as much as she does him is overwhelming. It isn’t even hypothetical, when it comes to Aahna, he’s condescending and he’s obstinate to a point of being obnoxious, and he can’t seem to help himself. He’s tried to isolate where the antagonism is coming from, because it really is out of the ordinary; her presence, on set and in recent times, in his life, somehow nettles him more than it should.

But he isn’t sure what it is about her. Isn’t sure why he’s reacting the way he is.

Aahna just… gets under his skin.

“Don’t you have your own apartment to muck around and drink and do nothing in?” Aahna huffs at him, voice condescending as he plucks the script out of her hands.

“Well if I did that, who would you have to distract from learning your lines?” Niall shoots back, voice dripping with something not quite pure annoyance.

“Alright you two need to cut it out!” Harry is pretty much frantic at this point. “And Lou, stop taking shots. It’s barely sundown! What is wrong with you?”

Louis simply shrugs and tilts his head back, tequila shot glass in hand and refusing to look even a little bit guilty for not helping the situation even at all.

“Many things, primarily his overwhelming desire avoid responsibility,” Zayn shrugs.

“Oh, blow me Malik,” Louis snaps.

“Not for free.”

Life falls into a bit of a schedule like that. They work, they bicker, their friends slash cast mates break up the tension of their bickering, and they all end up getting drinks together or watching some kind of documentary at Harry’s whilst playing a drinking game at his expense (they take a shot everytime he points out an inaccuracy).

And it works, until they’re about halfway into filming the third episode when something just snaps in him.

“Can you stop it with these accusations?”

“It wasn’t an accusation,” she hisses back, the line of her jaw going taut as she walks off set, heading, he’s guessing, away from him. Which of course, only leads to him trailing behind, matching her large strides.

It’s the same old song and dance.

“Really?” Niall taunts, unable to help himself, “Sure as hell sounded like one.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“Alright, then.”

“Just shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just shut up!” She snaps, taking a step forward at him as if to issue a challenge. And suddenly they’re all too close. The inches separating them feel like a ravine. An abyss from which he’s not sure he’ll recover from.

“It wasn’t an accusation, it was a observation,” she says finally after the silence lingers one second too long between them, “You come in and you do the scenes without a thought; you know your character, you know Remus by heart, and that’s great for you, but some of us don’t have a five season contract to tide us over.”

Niall grits his teeth at that.

Her lips purse at the silence and when she finally speaks, he’s sure it’s just to provoke him some more.

“You’re maddening,” she says, sounding equal parts exasperated and defeated.

“What, so I can’t argue with you but I can’t be agreeable either?”

“Well, maybe it’s too late to be agreeable.”

“Well, maybe it shouldn’t be.”

The glare that she throws him is heated and harsh, “Why do you care so much?”

She’s got him there, he has to admit.

And so they stare at one another like that, breaths uneven and face tinged pink from anger.

Before he knows it though, he’s crashing into her like a tidal wave; mouth on mouth, skin on skin, and searing heat all over.

It’s not just a kiss, it’s a head rush. It’s a fight. It’s… akin to a flood, and it’s as though he’s waited his whole life to feel it. Part of him knows that they were just seconds ago shouting themselves hoarse at one another, but she’s pulling him in closer and all Niall can hear his blood rushing in his ears, blocking out everything but the smell of her, the taste of her, the feel of her.

Her lips are pressing up against his, ravenous, matching his intensity.

He’s glad that they’ve actually gone into overtime for the scene and the studio is mostly empty at this time of night because when they finally stumble into his dressing room, the door slams behind them with all the subtlety of police sirens in the dead of night.

“Fuck,” she gasps, pulling back as though reality hit her like a tonne of bricks. Her eyes wide and frenzied, lips red, hair wild around her head. Niall is certain that if they were to be walked in on, they would look to an outsider, guilty as sin.

Her blouse is halfway buttoned and barely hanging off her shoulders while his belt buckle is undone and fly already down.

“Fuck?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, “Fuck!” She reiterates herself slightly louder, running her hands through her already wild hair.

Niall breathes out a shaky laugh, “Someone’s eloquent tonight.”

“Oh like you think of a better word to describe,” she motioned the space between them a little too frantically with her hand, “… whatever this is?”

“I’ve got a couple off the top of my head, yeah.” He shrugs, looking her straight in the eye.

There’s a silence. And then…

“Oh shut up,” she instructs, taking a step closer before tugging on his jumper and pulling his lips back down onto hers.

Niall Horan to niallofficial is a shitty twitter handle: seriously

Niall Horan: which one of you bellends got Sierra involved

Harry Styles: ???

Niall Horan: someone told my agent

Niall Horan: who apparently is also deakins’ agent (thanks btw harry)

Niall Horan: that i’m being difficult on set

Niall Horan: now she wants to ‘talk to me’ tomorrow at her office

Louis Tomlinson: … have u evn checked twitter since u created your acc?

Louis Tomlinson: mirror.co.uk/things-getting-fired-up-between-niall-horan-and-model-actress-aahna-deakins-on-marauder-set

Niall Horan: oh

Liam Payne: don’t think ‘oh’ is gonna fix this one mate

Niall Horan: this explains that email from the execs

Louis Tomlinson: i can’t believe u read those studio memos

Harry Styles: not to abruptly change the subject but i need 2 talk about this thing with me n ains

Niall Horan: my agent is about to rip me a new one for on set behaviour

Niall Horan: which by the looks of the mirror article, the whole world knows about by now despite it being a closed set and everything

Niall Horan: but by all means commandeer the chat to talk about your love life

Louis Tomlinson: either get together or dont

Zayn Malik: ur not exaclty an authority on the subjct tommo

Harry Styles: i have booze

Louis Tomlinson: in the car now

Liam Payne: swing by to pick me up

Zayn Malik: me too

Niall Horan: getting in the elevator now

Ainsley Williams to Niall Horan: You should look at Twitter right now

Ainsley Williams: Everyone is so frenzied

Ainsley Williams: By the way, what were you boys up to last night?

Ainsley Williams: Apart from your drunk tweets

Ainsley Williams: Harry called twice to tell me he really enjoys scones

Ainsley Williams: Hello?

Niall is a little nervous as he makes his way to Sierra’s office at five past noon. The woman is a hardass agent who’s great at sniffing out opportunity (not that he’s needed for much from her in the past four years). She books his appearances, endorsements, and despite him never being interested, never fails to send over scripts for killer movie roles.

By proxy, she also works as his publicist, although they have more of a you stay out of trouble and I don’t have to put out any fires type of relationship.

And now he’s five minutes late to see her.

Sierra I didn’t get to where I am today by sleeping in Jones, is going to rip him a new one. He knows it. He can feel it in his bones. Niall can just imagine, and he groans at the thought of it, her utter annoyance at him. First he makes headlines for being a diva on set and not playing nice with the newcomer and then shows up to a meeting late? She’ll have his left nut and then some.

He reaches her office door a good three minutes later despite the near jogging pace he’s been walking at and silently curses Harry’s complicated love life. He’d told Aahna to stay at Ainsley’s so that he could have a lad’s night but ended up mostly just whining about how he doesn’t quite know where he stands with Ainsley.

Sierra’s assistant waves him in and he takes a deep breath before pushing the door open, surprised himself to find Aahna already in the room and apparently trying to reason with the older woman.

“Mr. Horan, how nice of you to join us,” Sierra greets his entrance sweetly, sarcasm simmering just beneath the surface of her voice.

Niall shuts the door behind him, rolling his eyes ever so slightly. The woman is a great agent, he can’t argue with that, and an expert negotiator too, but she’s definitely got a short temper and a flair for dramatics.

“Do sit down.”

Niall slides into the chair next to Aahna, intentionally avoiding her gaze considering that they hadn’t discussed their rather… explosive row few days prior. Not that they had much to discuss; they yelled, they had a bout of angry shagging, and kind of just left things at that.

It helps that they hadn’t needed to be in the same room together since. Up until this point that is.

“You wanted to talk to me?” He almost chokes out the words, voice a little worse for wear after the night of heavy drinking.

Sierra raises her eyebrow before letting her stare flit between her two clients, as if gauging something.

“Well, it has come to my attention that there’s been some… trouble on set,” the older woman starts saying, “Now, I don’t normally interfere in these matters but neither of you have publicists or managers, and no one is pointing fingers, but filming might need to go into overtime for two weeks.”

Sierra takes a long breath and exhales rather theatrically before continuing, “Would I be wrong to assume that this is because you two can’t seem to get your scenes wrapped satisfactorily?”

Niall sighs, “Is that what she told you?”

The woman frowned, “Is that incorrect?”

“That’s hardly—”

“Aahna, you’ve had your say, now I’d rather hear his,” Sierra says curtly before diverting her attention back to him.

Niall takes a deep breath before non committally saying, “Well, there was never a problem like this until she came around.”

“Oh, piss off!”

“Language, Aahna!” Sierra snaps, glaring at her sharply for a moment before resettling her gaze on Niall, exhaling crossly, “You were saying?”

He pauses for a moment, feeling his co-star’s rage boring holes into the side of his head. The co-star he does not at all like but shagged in his dressing room. (But there’s no way he’s discussing that with Sierra. Or anyone really.)

“We just… rub each other the wrong way,” he settled on saying, “And maybe that’s stalled production a little but—”

“Oh, so this is my fault now?” Aahna interjects.

“You can’t just conveniently skip over the part where you constantly insult how I play my character and think that that’s not going to have an effect on production!”

“Forgive me for trying to have a civil discourse—”

“And here we go again with the accusations—”

“For the last time, it’s not—”

“All you need to do is show up and read your lines—”

“We’re on the same team here, you wank—”

“If you two could restrain yourselves!” Sierra interjects, her voice the loudest Niall has ever heard. She pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales, taking her time to (he’s guessing) let all three of them calm down.

She declares crisply, voice slightly acidic, “Do you think we can find it within ourselves to act our age?”

“I wasn’t the one tweeting obscenities at midnight,” Aahna rolls her eyes, crossing her arms like a petulant teenager.

Technically, she’s right. (He’d seen some of her meme retweets of their video that’s making its way around the internet and things got… a little more heated online. The boys and the booze didn’t help, obviously.) But he’s not about to let her know that.

“Are you fucking kidding me?! I wasn’t the one retweeting vines—”

“Obviously, you didn’t even know what a vine was before—”

“WOULD YOU BOTH. JUST. SHUT IT?!” Sierra explodes, her voice cracking with shrill exasperation, her eyes blazing at the indignant lack of respect in her two clients.

They’re both immediately silenced, words dissolving off of their tongues at the volatile frustration of one Sierra Jones. Niall suspects that their agent is way past pinching the bridge of her nose in dramatic silence. So they sit there under her steely gaze.

After a moment or two, she states as a matter of factly, “I’ve come to a conclusion that you two idiots need to sort this out yourselves.”

He hears Aahna scoff derisively.

Niall blinks at that, slowly and deliberately, contemplating his agent’s words and willing her to continue that sentence because honestly, he imagines that paying her 20 per cent of his income would warrant a better solution.

“You two clearly have personal issues that you need to resolve outside of the set,” Sierra says, eerily calm as she flips through some files, some scripts, and stacking them all together, “If these little outbursts are of any indication, your antagonism towards one another clearly goes beyond work.”

Niall reluctantly turns to meet Aahna’s confused gaze as they both pull into the same trail of thought, all of five minutes with them and they’ve somehow driven their agent completely mental.

“The only way I see fit to remedy this situation is to forcibly give the two of you time together to straighten things out.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, his head fills with apprehensive dread. More time together did not sound like a solution. If anything, it spells disaster, and clearly, Aahna thought so too.

They both speak out at the same time;

“The more time we spend together is just more time spent fighting.”

“Wouldn’t throwing us into The Hunger Games be faster?”

“Is that even necessary when we’re already halfway through the season?”

“If we’re already behind schedule that hardly sounds like a good idea.”

Ignoring them both, Sierra rearranges the stack of her files patiently and stands up, tucking them into her oversized purse before pushing a button on the phone on her desk, “You can leave for the rest of the day, Andrea, I’ll be working remotely.”

“Hang on,” Niall asks as Sierra walks around the table toward the door, “Did you just say ‘forcibly’?”

She swivels around to face them as she reaches the door.

“I don’t know about you kids, but my Twitter feed today is 80% people asking if the two of you are having hate sex,” Sierra’s no nonsense eyes snaps over to his mirthlessly, as though issuing a challenge, “And I’m not saying that hate fucking is going to fix this… whatever it is that’s going on between you two, but it might be something to think about in the next few hours.”

They’re both out of their seats at this point.

They have definitely, definitely, driven their agent to the brink of insanity.

“You’re kidding.”

Sierra tight lips lifted slightly into a satisfied smirk, “I don’t ‘kid’.”

“You can’t just lock us into a room together and force us to get along.”

“Watch me.”

And with that, she is out the door with a rather decisive click echoing behind her slamming the door shut.

Aahna turns to look at him, “Did she just—”

“Lock us in her office together? Yeah, I think so.”

Niall’s eyes fly shut in disbelief, head lolling back and frustrated groan leaving his lips as she lunges forward toward the door to rattle the knob inconsequentially.

She turns around, a slip of paper that Sierra somehow slid through under the door in her hands.

“This is a nightmare,” she declares, passing him the piece of paper.

Office is soundproof so yell away.

Snacks and water in my left drawer.

Cleaners have the keys. They come at four.

DO NOT BREAK ANYTHING.

A rather tense, momentary silence fills the room. While Niall resigns himself to their fate, it seems that Aahna has other thoughts, fidgeting with the doorknob some more and getting really up close and personal with the door in general.

When he doesn’t seem at all bothered to help, she snaps at his direction, “What are you even doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Vegetating, or something equally productive.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Niall kicks his legs up onto Sierra’s desk and places his hands behind his head.

“So you’re just going to not look for a way out of this?”

“She said that the cleaners are coming in a few hours,” he shrugs, enjoying the fact that the whole situation seems to have her more on edge than him.

And on edge she proves to be, making a ruckus and a whole production out of trying to unscrew the hinges and then moving onto attempts to break the doorknob. After about twenty minutes of her basically exhausting herself and him making mindlessly unhelpful comments, Aahna slumps onto the sofa.

It’s uncomfortable to say the least, but only because they’ve never really spent any time alone together. There are always other cast members around, or crew members, or… other people in general. And the last time they were left alone, well, that didn’t really fix anything.

Niall never would have thought in a million years this is what his career would result in after taking on Remus Lupin.

He had prepared himself for pulling all-nighters to get scenes just right for rather difficult directors or falling in love with guest stars on the show over table reads on otherwise unremarkable Wednesday nights or piling laughingly into taxis with the cast and crew after a night out and having good-naturedly bemused drivers who’d chuckle and ask to take selfies with him. But he hasn’t quite done any of those things.

He’s never been one for rash, near-reckless errors in judgment so he doesn’t quite know why he expected life to change.

But it didn’t, for so long, that he got comfortable and now he doesn’t know what the protocol is when you don’t get along with a co-worker, get into their pants that one time, be involved in a bit of bad press, and then get locked in a room with said co-worker.

So they just sit in silence for a few minutes, the tension palpable, and it’s turning him into a bit of a mess honestly, sitting there with his phone dead and nothing to do to distract from the fact that the last time they were alone together, things got a little… out of hand.

He tries not to think about it, he really does, but the way she drapes herself onto the sofa and a lack of things to occupy his mind with makes it a pervading thought; the way she had kissed him back, hard and rough and unexpected. The way his hands moved from her waist, lower and lower, like they’d been there before.

Niall starts shuffling through some of the scripts on Sierra’s desk to have something to do, but none of them hold his attention for long. His thoughts revolve mostly around how the last time they were alone together, his heart raced and his head swam and his blood seared.

The slow-going and low-simmering… something that he feels for her has inexplicably expanded. Exploded. Gone from an itch he couldn’t quite scratch to a blistering burn he couldn’t ignore. He thinks that liking someone isn’t a prerequisite for wanting them. Which is why he finds himself blurting out, “So the boys may or may not have also suggested that we should fuck.”

Aahna raises her eyebrow at his direction from the couch slash casual sitting area in Sierra’s office where she’s taken up permanent residence in the past ten minutes, casually swiping on her phone.

Her expression ripples with surprise and then disdain.

“Why exactly do the boys think we should fuck?”

“I didn’t tell them that we technically already did if that’s what you’re worried about, they just think that some platonic fucking might actually help us be in the same room as each other without wanting to kill each other.”

And also they thought it might be good for me to stop being a soppy romantic and just get laid, he thinks. But he doesn’t say it.

“Right,” she says, but there’s something a bit off about her voice, “The platonic fucking in your dressing room didn’t exactly help us with Sierra today now did it?”

“It’s just a thought.”

“Uh huh.”

The pause that follows is heavy and full of all kinds of something he can’t name.

“This was a mistake,” he groans.

“What’s that mean?”

“What?”

“You said ‘this’ was a mistake,” she replies casually.

His heartbeat is beating fast, faster than it should be, and his palms are damp.

“What’s ‘this’?” She stands up, “Suggesting that we fuck? Or…did you mean something else?”

A muscle in his neck ticks, lurches, jumps.

“You started this,” he snaps.

“Look, I’m not a phase, okay, I’m not your crisis or your fucking spiral because your life is so God damn—”

He can tell that it’s about to turn into one of their angry yelling matches that got them into this predicament to begin with so he just nips it in the bud because he’s still slightly hungover and really isn’t in the mood, “Look, just forget I mentioned it!”

“It’s just a thought,” he’s also on his feet by now.

“Okay,” she nods in a tone that suggests she may not be okay with it.

Her gaze softens and looks genuinely alight with some kind of curiousity. But he catches the tail end of some unknown emotion flitting across her face as she takes another step forward.

“So let’s dissect it. You think we should, as Sierra so eloquently put it, have angry hate sex to solve our problems?”

He hesitates and clenches his jaw, unsure how she can be so blasé about the whole thing.

Tension hangs in the air between them like thick velvet curtains, heavy and all-consuming. The intensity of her gaze far too intoxicating to be uncomfortable.

“No, I’m—what do you think is happening here?” he hedges, his frustration mounting.

“I think you’re propositioning me for mindless totally non-timing consuming sex.”

Another step.

“Non time consuming?” Niall sputters, taking a step forward, a choked-off huff of frustration building at the base of his throat.

“Someone was pretty eager the last time,” she shrugs.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he huffs, completely lying.

They’re so close to one another now that he’s almost afraid a flicker of eyelashes would betray him. But she’s standing her ground, so he just waits for her to argue with him instead.

She doesn’t.

Instead she tugs on his shirt collar and fully closes the gap between them.

Their lips, as if entirely of their own accord, start to move furiously against each other and sort of just… work, in an unexpected and unexplained harmony.

Like a melody and a lyric that shouldn’t fit but flowed beautifully together.

Her throat hums in agreement beneath his lips.

Taking that as a go ahead, he moves his hands from beneath her shirt to lift her onto the solid surface they hit, Sierra’s desk. In turn, she wraps her legs around his waist, pulling him closer and smirking as he groans into her mouth, his growing arousal rubbing against her.

Aahna all but swallows her exhale as he slides his fingers into her, the sound that rips from her throat mid way between a grunt and a groan.

“You sure you want to talk about eager?” He all but challenges, a streak of confidence bordering the line of arrogance rearing its head as his fingers move against her obvious enthusiasm.

“Well, I haven’t had dick in a while, what’s your excuse?”

Her fingers are digging into his shoulders the way they are and her voice all raspy and out of breath shooting electricity into every corner of his body.

Niall can’t seem to think or breathe at their proximity. Nevermind that he’s being stupider than he’s ever been in his life, she whimpers as he groans, and his mind is blissfully blank, so he continues the teasing, rubbing and stroking and flicking.

“Okay, you have about five seconds—” she starts to say before he hastily covers his mouth with hers.

He lets his tongue push past her lips at the same time he pushes into her and the sound that comes from her throat is so fucking intoxicating that he‘s not sure of anything anymore.

Niall grips both sides of her hips tight, moving slowly inside of her, giving her the only thing he’s got that she wants and it pisses him off to be honest, how well they fit together. And by the way she’s leaving fingernail crescent marks down his back, he’d say she feels it too. They are scorching and sweaty and utterly out of breath, lips lazily locked. He’s stretching and drawing out the whole ordeal further than he thought himself capable of, eliciting sounds from her that play a soft symphony around the still room.

She pulls her head back to let obscenities freely tumble out, her breath hitting his skin in ragged huffs.

Aahna practically keens for more, her cheeks impossibly flushing and her muscles tight beneath him. It’s all heady and sensual and way more than he can take so in one smooth motion, he slides out and flips her over to bend her over the desk.

He thrusts into her, deliberately frantic, each pump leaving her more of a quivering mess than before, her knees shaking and barely holding her body upright.

As her body begins to spasm, his thrusts grow more desperate, barrelling her towards the release they both crave.

A dozen or so strokes later, he’s there too.

It takes them both by surprise, the sheer intensity of it. They pant together, recovering slowly, still tangled and reeling, neither moving more than what it takes to claim the next gulping breath.

Caroline Davies to Niall Horan: u fucking deakins yet?

Niall Horan: WHAT

Niall Horan: NO

Caroline Davies: care to explain y not?

Niall Horan: care to explain where this is coming from?

Caroline Davies: cos

Caroline Davies: u should get on that

Caroline Davies: or under that

Caroline Davies: or behind that

Niall Horan: i WILL block you

Caroline Davies: lol like you know how

Caroline Davies: also, i mean, if u wont i will

Niall Horan to Aahna Deakins: just a heads up

Aahna Deakins: ??

Niall Horan: i think caroline wants to have sex with you

Aahna Deakins: i mean i already knew that

Niall Horan: …

Niall Horan: what?

Aahna Deakins: seen

Niall Horan: ‘m gonna kill harry

The first time they consciously agree to have angry hate sex, in Sierra’s office no less, Niall thought it’d be a one-time thing, an interesting experiment culminated from a hangover and not having had sex in… a while.

But then the second and third time go by, and it occurs to Niall that there might be some real science behind the whole hate sex theory.

Things actually begin to drastically improve after they start shagging out their frustrations on the regular. When they agreed on something without yelling a good few minutes about it first, Louis chokes on his tequila shot. (It’s at the pub at the corner of the studio and the boys decided that everyone needs to take a shot whenever he and Aahna ‘go at it again’ and it spectacularly backfires when they take a preemptive shot just as she says, “No, I think you’re right.”)

A few more weeks and a few more tucked away in a dusty corridor rendezvous later and they’re all at the production wrap party, hosted by the studio after the final scene of the season has been shot.

It’s a Tuesday and they’re out with some of the crew at a little bar smack down in the middle of London. Aahna’s been ordering round after round of brightly coloured cocktails, all of which named after incredibly explicit sex acts, and between the outrageously short dress she has on and the sound of her saying things like, “hit me with a screaming orgasm” and “get me a couple of leg spreaders”, Niall thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’s been thrust into a very special kind of hell.

And he can’t stop fucking staring.

It’s so easy to see now that she’s more than just a persona. Not just an empty, shallow, airbrushed mask. Not just a famous for being famous type influencer slash model slash actress.

She’s blatantly jagged and simpering and unapologetic about how she is.

And she’s smart too, not a lot of people have the nerve to move their entire life across oceans to fight her way into Hollywood (albeit it didn’t pan out as well as it could have). And he doesn’t doubt for a second that she’d had to fight tooth and nail for her Marauders audition as well. That she probably had to call in favours, made some unpaid appearances, turn down “comeback” runway opportunities. Basically, really really want it.

As Aahna throws her head back, laughing from across the room at some joke the ridiculously tight v neck t’ shirt by the bar just made, Niall thinks that they need to talk about their whole provoke each other and then press each other up against walls situation. His mind is slightly befuddled by the fact that they’ve been low-key shagging for the past month or two yet she’s flirted quite openly with the bartender for the past hour and the half.

(He’s also a bit confused about the fact that he can’t find any internet searches that addresses her sexuality head on. There’s little to no indication that she’s even ‘into the d’ as the kids say.)

Her laughter carries itself across the room and Niall fights the urge to go over and drag her away from the dark-skinned, broad-shouldered bartender.

Said bartender has high cheekbones and eyes half-lidded to go along with his lazy trying hard to play it cool demeanor. His posture is perfect, a little too perfect for a man standing by the bar at some shi shi up and coming hotspot in London. If it weren’t for the pub full of who’s who at the studio, Niall might think that he’s one of those tries too hard to be dangerous prep school boys peddling designer drugs with a carefully crafted layer of apathy.

Distracting himself from the scene, he busies himself with the tedious task of talking to some studio executives. Someone has to, considering that Harry and Ainsley have disappeared god knows where together, Zayn and Louis are going round with a bottle of tequila making cast members take shots and Liam is deep in conversation with one of the directors.

He’s mid polite laugh when out of the corner of his eye, Niall sees her meander out the backdoor all hips swaying and dress swirling and alone.

A few seconds go by and he excuses himself to follow, but something, or rather someone, stops him before he even makes it to the door.

“So how long have you two been fucking?” Caroline asks bluntly.

He’s not sure how Caroline of all people would know, but in hindsight, Aahna did leave his place the other night to meet her for a drink in one of his t’ shirts.

He raises his brow and feigns nonchalance, “Me and Mark from finance?”

“You and Aahna, bellend.”

He laughs, “What makes you say that?”

“Because you have that look in your eye.”

“What look?”

“That ‘I want to fuck the shit out of you’ look.”

He looks Caroline straight in the eye and is incredibly proud of himself for not cracking, not even a little, “I do not have an ‘I want to fuck the shit out of you’ look.”

“You do and you so want to hit that,” the blonde says, all smug.

I’m already hitting that, he almost says, the words on the tip of his tongue just balancing perfectly before it swan dives him into trouble.

“No, you want to hit that,” Niall chuckles out instead.

“We get along too well for there to be any sexual chemistry,” Caroline shrugs, “The two of you on the other hand…”

“There’s nothing but animosity between us, Care.”

“Can I point out that hate sex is a known cure for situations like this?”

“Yeah. No,” he says before sidestepping her and pushing the door open.

He’s pretty sure she’s grinning like the cat that caught the canary and Niall isn’t sure if he’s the canary in the situation. The London air hits him like something out of a literary scene, a little nippy but a much appreciated break from the suffocating interrogation by the hands of one Caroline Davies inside.

Just as he recalls why he headed out there into the back alley to begin with, a line of cigarette smoke wafts into his view.

“Don’t you have better things to do than play babysitter and watch me smoke a cigarette whilst sipping on your tonic water?” Aahna remarks, a cigarette between her fingers and a layer of indifference around her.

“Excuse me?”

Niall may be twenty-five and enjoys the occasional beer or two (that often don’t end at two) but he’s also old fashioned and refuses to crack one open until the sun goes down to the very least.

“At least I’m not drunk at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday, at a company party.”

“I like to chase my cocaine high with gin, it goes down real smooth,” she hums, mocking the judgement in his voice with a line of smoke to his face.

“You realise that this isn’t Models R’Us anymore, right?”

She flashes him a smile that a journalist once called ‘equal parts make your slacks tighter and stop a baby elephant in its tracks terrifying’ in the Daily Mail and informs him in a sickeningly sweet voice, “First of all, it was a joke. And second of all, it’s a party, old man Horan. Loosen up.”

“I’m not—” He cuts himself off, expression visibly hardening as she effortlessly pushes his buttons.

There’s a pause as he collects his comeback and she leans in, as if to whisper a secret.

“Careful,” she simpers, narrowing her eyes, “Might give yourself an aneurysm there.”

“I don’t think you’re in a place to give off health advice, Deakins.”

She almost chokes on the smoke as she cackles at his statement, “Oh, like you are? Mr. three knee surgeries and clearly needs glasses but doesn’t wear them?”

“Just…” he says tiredly, “Shut up.”

“You shut up,” she snaps back, but without any real bite in her voice.

“I’m not the one trying to peddle an STD to poor unsuspecting bartenders.”

“Oh come on,” she drawls, “Getting chlamydia from me has been the highlight of your year.”

“I was wondering what that rash was,” Niall plays along as they grin at each other, sharp and feral, as though not realising who it is exactly they’re bantering with.

She drops the cigarette to the ground and their lips lock.

She tastes of cigarettes and sin. And her mouth is just the way he remembered, hard and warm, tongue flickering against his as he pulls her body close. It’s wet and messy and a little bit desperate the way their teeth clack together and their tongues urgently wanting more, but they stumble blindly into a storage room of some sort.

She arches up into him with a whimper when he moves his way down her neck.

He sinks blunt teeth into her sternum right where the fabric of the top crosses over on her chest and she whines at the contact. Her body already erupting in goosebumps.

“What are we doing?” He asks as he slides ad hand up her skirt between her thighs.

“I don’t know; what do you think we’re doing?” She gasps between breaths as she grinds against his fingers.

He’s not even touching her in earnest yet, just teasing, keeping her on the edge, ghosting over her skin.

“I thought you weren’t into this?”

“What, this being dick?” Aahna asks, contempt in her voice.

The disdain, obvious and unforgivingly sharp, would have bothered him if he didn’t quite enjoy feeling her body react to his touch so much.

He uses that as opportunity to slip his fingers into the thin fabric that is her underwear, using the pad of his thumb to rub gentle circles into her just the way he knows drives her crazy.

“Well, there’s this concept called bisexuality. I’m sure you’ve— fuck,” she moans throwing her head back as his fingers slide into her.

Her cheeks are flushed and bright while her eyes keep on fluttering, struggling to stay open.

The sounds escaping her throat as he continues to finger fuck her makes things so much better and so much worse at the same time. When he feels her insides clench at him and her breath shudder into his shoulder, reaching her release, he’s ready to burst.

For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of their harsh breathing, and she sighs into his neck. And then, she lifts her head and leans back against the wall, sly smirk dancing on her lips, “You know, they say once is a mistake and twice is a pattern.”

“Yeah, and what’s seven and a half?” Niall jokes weakly, his pants so tight he’s surprised there’s any blood going to his brain at all.

“Good practice,” she says as her hands slide from their spot on his back and down to the front, undoing his belt and unzipping his trousers with a certain finesse that’s getting him impossibly harder, “I mean, giving a blowjob isn’t exactly like riding a bike.”

He forgets what they’re even talking about when she gets down on her knees in the dingy little storage room.

Niall Horan to CALL TIME IS 12PM DONT FORGET: did empire just reschedule the shoot?

Niall Horan: i swear tommo, if you’re hungover and lied about the baby being sick again…

Niall Horan: guys

Harry Styles: why do u even have a twitter acct if ur never gonna use it

Niall Horan: what?

Louis Tomlinson: for once it is not my fault thank you very much

Zayn Malik: a and h are stuck with the bobbies

Niall Horan: what?!

Liam Payne: aahna saw a cyclist get hit and run-ed, she called harry after she called the ambulance, he goes over because he’s an idiot, they get recognised, twitter blows up because the interwebs think aahna and harry hit the cyclist, and now they’re giving a statement at scotyard

Louis Tomlinson: and that’s what you missed on glee

Niall Horan: the cyclist ok?

Aahna Deakins: thanks for the concern, horan

Niall Horan: and why would you stop if you weren’t the one to hit him

Aahna Deakins: it was a corner

Aahna Deakins: he could have gotten run over by other cars!

Harry Styles: didn’t you stop for a guy who got hit by a car once?

Louis Tomlinson: because he was chasing his dog?

Zayn Malik: at like 2am at night or some shit?

Niall Horan: i’m not a lone female driver nor a celebrity yet at that point

Niall Horan: and he got hit because his dog jumped out of his car and he ran after it

Aahna Deakins: wow was the dog okay?

Niall Horan: that’s beside the point

Louis Tomlinson: the owner still sends him pics every christmas

Niall Horan: THE POINT IS

Niall Horan: it could’ve been one of those staged scams where you get robbed blind

Niall Horan: or you could’ve gotten caught in a fan mob

Niall Horan: have you no sense of self preservation, deakins?

Louis Tomlinson: aww look at nialler all concerned for aahna

Harry Styles: i call that growth

Zayn Malik: look how far they’ve come

Liam Payne: 😍😍😍

Niall Horan has left the chat

Aahna Deakins to Niall Horan: we’re secretly fucking on the regular

Aahna Deakins: does that answer your self-preservation question

Niall Horan: THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING

Zayn Malik to this is your reminder to stop getting tattoos before they replace the whole cast: we’re heading over to pick ‘em up

Zayn Malik: make sure they dont get mobbed cause of harry’s fans

Liam Payne: so we can all get mobbed together apparently

Niall Horan: no

Louis Tomlinson:

As much as he loves his job, Niall is glad when things wind down. It’s mostly post-production work once all the scenes are shot and the cast get to take a little break. Not like anybody actually takes breaks; Harry and Zayn usually have promotional commitments or other projects that they jet off to, as does Ainsley, Liam almost exclusively has some West End or Broadway gig, Louis disappears into his role of on duty father and occasional boyfriend depending on the state of his on again off again relationship, and Caroline does quite a fair bit of radio.

For Niall though, it spells out a chance to settle in and recharge. Maybe get some golfing in. Playing someone on screen is like having someone in your head, and it’s exhausting. So he fulfills contractual appearances, does an interview or two, and reads scripts for movie roles he knows he won’t take because trying to purge one character out of his head is hard enough.

If he’s feeling particularly restless, he dives into a bit of writing.

He’d hit a wall with one particular piece he’s been working on a while ago and wasn’t sure where he’s going with it. But between shelving it and the hectic filming season, he thinks he might just be able to get back into the groove of it.

He’s reading through the pages when his phone buzzes violently by his side. Niall wedges the mobile between his ear and shoulder, answering on autopilot more than anything.

“Hello?” It’s Aahna’s voice, sounding like she’s calling from the middle of Glastonbury or some rave or whatever the young’uns are into nowadays.

Except her voice sounds terrible, gasping and raspy and all wrong.

He shoots upright from his former position on the couch.

“Deakins?”

“Yeah— I’m just— Hang on— I can’t deal with that right now, can you please get her from the loo so we can get out of here?”

There’s a shuffling and some shoving sounds coming from the other end, but then she’s back before he can question it or voice his worry.

“Sorry— We’re kind of next to bar fight. Anyway—”

“Did you just say bar fight?”

“Yeah, Harry’s been away for a week now and he hasn’t called to check in with Ains so we went out for some drinks where she basically whined about how she doesn’t know what they are and then Caroline thought it’d be fun to instigate a fight between these two guys who kept buying us drinks,” she rushes through the whole thing like it isn’t a big deal, “It’s a whole ordeal.”

“Yeah?” Niall says, having no idea where she’s going with the call.

The background noise seem to be getting louder and he eyes his car keys from his living room couch, wondering if he should go pick them all up before it morphs into a social media frenzy and another one of those things that the studio execs send them all emails about with exclamation marks in the headline.

“Yeah,” Aahna shouts back over the phone, “You remember that time when I told you that Harry’s new coffee maker was voice activated?”

He smiles at the memory of it, dropping the papers in his hands to his side, “Yeah, that was a fun morning. Spent fifteen minutes yelling at the damn thing before Harry asked me the hell I was doing.”

She laughs at that, “I swear you’re like a seventy year old in a twenty five year old’s body.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Niall’s finding it hard not to raise his voice to match hers at this point.

“Nothing, I was just calling to let you know that watching Caroline manipulate guys into a fisticuffs was really fun,” she shouts back, louder this time, “Almost as fun as watching technology stump you.”

Niall goes warm all over at that. He blames the chilli he wolfed down earlier that she left for him last night.

She’s stayed over at his almost every night since Harry’s been away, doing away with the cloak and dagger of sneaking in and out to avoid questions or suspicions.

It’s been surprisingly domesticated. She brings over takeout, they watch something or another on the telly, they fuck, they bicker all over his apartment that he feels her breath lingering in corners when she leaves for whatever responsibilities she has for the day, and it’s been sort of just… nice.

The intimacy of it all should feel like too much; the cuddling after sex, the falling asleep wrapped up in one another. But he can’t find it in him to to care. Not when his blood is still getting back to their path not south of his body and his sheets have yet to cool from their exertions. Besides, they’d agreed that they weren’t hurting anyone with their arrangement so there’s no point trying to fix something that isn’t broken and that’s just been that.

When he opens his door about an hour later, it’s Aahna. Leather jacket over a thin romper (ridiculous for London weather, in his humble opinion) hair all blowsy and too much leg showing.

No wonder some pricks was buying her drinks all night. But he doesn’t tell her that, obviously.

“You need to tell Harry you’re not dead,” she pushes past him into the apartment, kicking off her shoes and hanging her jacket at the hook next to the door habitually, without him prompting her to do so she goes.

“What?”

“He’s been texting me to check up on you this whole week because none of your socials show signs of life and it’s driving me insane.”

He stares after her as she makes her way to his living room, confused. He does a few InstaStories on set here and there but those are more contractual obligations for promo than anything.

“And it’s not like I can tell him you’re fine because I’ve seen you practically everyday,” Aahna continues, “When I tried to flip the subject on him for leaving Ainsley hanging yet clearly not being dead because he’s texting me like clockwork every day, he accused me of not looking out for you, because apparently it’s a neighborly obligation to ensure that you haven’t accidentally bored yourself to death or something.”

“I don’t need looking out for,” Niall frowns.

“Good, ‘cause I’m apparently doing a shit job,” she jumps on the couch, lying flat with her feet propped on the armrest. She cocks her head looking over at him, “Although in his defence, your socials have been particularly dead and that’s not— Wait, what is this?”

She yanks out the scripted version of his story from beneath her.

“It’s nothing,” he says, as he goes to snatch it out of her hands.

“Niall James Horan, are you actually looking to expand your curriculum vitae?” Aahna cocks her eyebrow up as she leafs through the first few pages.

“Give me that.”

“Are you auditioning for a film?” She asks again, eyes skipping across the words on the pages, and ignoring his previous statement.

“No. It’s nothing,” he repeats defensively, tugging at the script, feeling nervous and oddly self-conscious about it. But Aahna has got an inexplicably strong grip and she weasels out of his grasp, script still in hand, jumping off the couch to read more of it without his limbs getting in the way.

“Where’d you get this from?”

“It’s not—”

“Niall, this is good,” she looks up at him, eyes alight, “This is really good. You should do it.”

He starts trying to explain that it isn’t a movie, just a silly thing he’s been working on and off over the years but he trails off before he can let the words out.

He can’t believe it, but the sleek, sour, and at times, inexplicably charming co-star, Aahna Deakins has, over the weeks, gradually gone from a veritable thorn by his side to somewhat of a begrudging friend. (Well, a friend who ruthlessly mocks him every available opportunity and then jump into his bed when no one is looking. That sort of friend.)

She’s just staring at him and they’re just silent, which neither of them are used to.

“It’s just a thing I’ve been fiddling with,” he finally admits, “I’ve been writing it for a couple of years, it’s not… It’s not anything.”

“I’m five pages in and I’m hooked, why aren’t you pitching this to the studio?” Aahna asks, confused.

“It’s barely a done script.”

“Then finish it,” she says, as a matter of factly.

“Sure,” he says with a shrug.

She looks at him pointedly, “I mean it. You need to show this to Sierra or something.”

“Alright.”

“You better,” she says, pushing the thick wad of paper flimsily stapled together into his chest as she turns to head to his kitchen as though it was hers. Although at this point, with all the take out and beer she’s bought over, it might as well be.

“If anything, you should do it for me,” she grabs a beer out of the fridge.

“For you, huh?” Niall sets the script down, trailing behind her into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” she knocks the beer cap off the corner of the bar counter with ease, “To impress me.”

“Trust me, I’m trying,” he says under his breath.

She cocks her head at that, and he takes the opportunity to snatch the beer from her, “Forget I said that.”

“Alright,” she says, mirroring his tone from earlier, smirk on her lips, smug and proud.

He’s moved closer to her without realising.

“You do, by the way,” she plucks the beer bottle back from his hands effortlessly.

“What?”

“Impress me.”

He says nothing for a minute, just looking at her. And she’s just looking back at him. Too much space between them. His heart, still thudding from the panic of her finding the script to begin with, slowing finally.

“Now,” she says, breaking their prolonged eye contact, “Let’s talk about getting Harry off my back about you; how do you feel about fashion shows?”

Niall Horan renamed the group can we pls stop renaming the group chat

Louis Tomlinson renamed the group horan and deakins sitting on a tree

Niall Horan: what

Louis Tomlinson: oh im sorry

Louis Tomlinson renamed the group #teamdrowningindeniall

Louis Tomlinson: better?

Niall Horan: first of all, you’re not using the hashtag right

Niall Horan: second of all, pretty sure this is cyberbullying

Louis Tomlinson: first of all what do u know about hashtags

Louis Tomlinson: second of all no is not

Louis Tomlinson: everyone saw the fashion show photos

Niall Horan renamed the group stop it or i’m calling old bill on you tommo

Louis Tomlinson renamed the group lmao old bill cant help that ur in love with aahna

Liam Payne: hahahahahahhahahahah

Harry Styles: could’ve been worse

Harry Styles: he could have started a fb couple page for u

Niall Horan: …

Louis Tomlinson: if i weren’t so happy ‘d be upset i didn’t think of that first

Zayn Malik: link us as soon as it’s up

Niall Horan: thanks, harru

Niall spends a good five minutes under the stream of the too hot shower water just staring at the tube of face wash. The body wash, her brand that leaves him smelling a little too coconut-y and a little more moisturised than he likes, swirls down the drain as he contemplates the face wash so innocently staring back at him.

It’s the exact brand he uses, one that you can’t just get out of any Boots or Tesco. No, his face wash is one that you could only get at its boutique brand outlets.

And he knows he’s overthinking it. Knows that it’s stupid to get all worked up over a simple face wash. He can’t help it though, a few weeks of under the radar shagging has left him even more unnerved than before they were working out their onset aggression.

He makes a gargantuan effort to push the thought away; the thought that Aahna went out of her way to get him his face wash to keep at her bathroom. The thought that even though filming for the season has wrapped and for all intents and reasons they wouldn’t be seeing much of each other anymore, she still got his face wash to keep at her place.

The thought that their level of intimacy now is almost on the edge of being caught. (She insisted that she needs to make Harry’s place look lived in by the time he gets back and Niall goes over to help her out with that except they just ended up fucking on the couch with some mindless cop drama playing in the background.)

He’s cleaning up in her bathroom and there it it, his face wash just sitting there in the shower. Like it’s been there waiting for him all this time.

Niall shuts off the water and steps out of the shower, face wash be damned. But when he walks out to the living room, she’s just lounging on the couch, scrolling through the Netflix queue in the ratty t’ shirt he was wearing earlier and his heart swells with some kind of feeling he hates to admit.

She settles on some documentary on greek mythology and he wonders for a moment if she is Persephone; an abstract idea he dreamed up and kidnapped, now kept captive in his mind.

(And he knows right then, that he is completely and utterly fucked.)

#wow this one got away from me #niall fic #fic: and they'll hang us in the louvre #fic: louvre #niall smut #niall horan fanfiction #keep reading

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businessweekme · 6 years

Text

Can America Build a Luxury Powerhouse to Rival Europe’s LVMH?

The new 700,000-square-foot headquarters of Coach is a state-of-the-art campus in one of New York’s newest skyscrapers. Showrooms along a 15-story atrium look out over tourists walking the High Line, the elevated railroad track-turned-park, and terraces on the 23rd floor poke out from a dine-in cafe that offers sushi and sandwiches. There’s even a special chicken wing bar for staffers who don’t want the usual lunch fare.

A lot of work remains to be done, though. The building occupies the southeast corner of the city’s new $20 billion Hudson Yards complex, and cranes have loomed around the 52-story glass tower since the brand moved in two years ago. Even now, the buzz of jackhammers and welding machines greet Coach’s 1,200 or so employees each morning as they enter their pristine new office.

Inside, a similarly radical restructuring is underway. Sales at Coach are just starting to recover after a disastrous three-year stretch from 2012 to 2015, when the label shed $928 million, or more than 18 percent, of its annual revenue. During that time, shares plummeted more than 62 percent, from an all-time high of $77.28 to $28.93.

To restore the fading fashion house, the plan is to turn it into America’s answer to European luxury conglomerates such as Kering and LVMH, which run wide-ranging portfolios of brands. LVMH, the world’s largest luxury company at nearly $50 billion in annual revenue, owns everything from Louis Vuitton clothing and Veuve Cliquot Champagne to Guerlain perfumes, TAG Heuer watches, and Sephora cosmetics.

The man steering this strategy, perched in a corner office high above the Hudson River, is taking a page out of his former boss’s playbook. Victor Luis, a 52-year-old executive, ran two divisions at LVMH before joining Coach: fashion label Givenchy in Japan and Baccarat crystal glassware in the U.S. An immigrant from São Miguel, a little Portuguese island in the Atlantic, he has a master’s degree in international economics and, from the looks of it, a Ph.D. in swagger.

Since his promotion to the top job in January 2014, Luis has announced two acquisitions: a $574 million deal for women’s shoemaker Stuart Weitzman and, last July, $2.4 billion for Kate Spade, one of the brand’s nemeses. He announced layoffs, culled about a third of his domestic store fleet, and hired replacements for several high-level executives, including former brand chiefs Craig Leavitt and Wendy Kahn. He eliminated the Jack Spade menswear business. He has also severely cut down on promotional activity, such as flash sales and discounted merchandise, purposely hurting sales in the hope that it would wean customers off lower-priced fare.

Perhaps the most controversial announcement, at least for the millions of shoppers who buy Coach’s bags and wallets, occurred last fall, when Luis gave the 77-year-old fashion house a new corporate name: Tapestry Inc. The move signals that Luis is looking to reposition the company as an American LVMH, one that has evolved beyond “core fashion.”

This year’s performance has been much better, with the stock up about 18 percent this year to $52.03 through Tuesday’s close. Coach, Tapestry’s biggest business at more than $4 billion, is coming off a strong 12-month run, with same-store sales, a key metric for the retail industry, turning positive over the holiday season last year. “The biggest question mark for us—and for me—was how much time do these things take?” Luis says. “Anxiousness? Short-term concern? Absolutely.”

A Brief History of American Luxury

It wasn’t always like this. Coach was known as an originator of what’s called “affordable luxury.” The company began in 1941 as a leather goods workshop in New York that sold only men’s goods: bags, wallets, flask-holders. It didn’t sell women’s handbags until Lillian and Miles Cahn bought the factory 20 years later. Some of the label’s oldest pieces are still stored in its archive, deep in the labyrinth of its headquarters. They’re relics that designers now use to jog their creativity.

Many of those bags were designed by Bonnie Cashin, who was hired in 1962 and is considered a pioneer of women’s sportswear. In her 12 years there, she transformed Coach from leather shop to fashion house. Her shoulder bags with interchangeable straps, bucket bags and clutches became mainstays, and her signature brass turn lock, which was inspired by the toggles on the roof of her convertible, is still used on many of the brand’s styles today.

In 1985, the Cahns sold the company to the Sara Lee Corp., a now-defunct consumer goods conglomerate, and Coach expanded quickly. It hit $100 million in sales by 1989 and made longtime executive Lew Frankfort its president. Appointed CEO in 1995, he spent the next 19 years turning Coach into a multibillion-dollar global luxury powerhouse. Head designer Reed Krakoff became a fashion superstar, thanks to runway-worthy leather goods that could also be sold to the masses—at much lower prices than European peers could offer. When Sara Lee spun off its leather goods business in 2000, Coach had just surpassed the half-billion mark in annual revenue.

Krakoff’s most lasting contribution came in 2001, when the label released a line of bags covered in interlocking Cs, a design that coincided with the very beginning of fashion’s logo craze: Abercrombie & Fitch had its logo tees, Gap had its logo sweatshirts, and Coach had its logo bags. The print was applied to premium leather satchels, as well as to its cheap nylon tote bags. In a little over a decade, Coach would grow into one of the world’s largest handbag labels, peaking at nearly $5.1 billion.

Frankfort and Krakoff left Coach in 2014. The company said that the CEO’s departure was part of a long-term succession plan and that it didn’t require an interim chief for the transition. Frankfort took a role as an executive-in-residence at private-equity firm Sycamore Partners. Krakoff, too, left before Coach had found a replacement. (He is now the creative head of U.S. jeweler Tiffany & Co.)

Luis spent eight years under their leadership and watched the empire they built come crashing, in a very literal sense. Coach’s old industrial building, at 516 West 34th St, has since been taken down. One executive kept a brick as a souvenir.

Six months after Luis became CEO, executives held an investor day to reveal their turnaround plans. It would get worse before it gets better, they said. A 2014 company-wide memo asked not to panic, even though sales would be down more than 20 percent for the quarter. “That’s not a pretty number,” says Luis. “Even if you know it’s coming, it never feels good.”

In Search of “Elevation”

On the bottom floor of Tapestry’s new headquarters, seamstresses and leatherworkers sit at sewing machines, churning out sample clutches and hobo bags among spools of bonded leather and rubber fleece. Upstairs, a squad of designers sketch at high desks, surrounded by sheets of fabric. Pin-up boards line the merchandising floor, a vast menu of styles for a brand that sells thousands of different products.

On the 19th floor is the glossy C-suite. Senior management has experienced near-total turnover under Luis, and new faces now run the company’s global supply chain, finance, international business development, and technology. All three of Tapestry’s labels have new top executives, each recruited from outside the company. Kate Spade is run by fashion veteran Anna Bakst, who came over from Michael Kors in late March. In April, Stuart Weitzman announced that its new boss was Eraldo Poletto, the former head of Italian fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo.

Coach CEO Joshua Schulman, who joined from Neiman Marcus Group last June, is the company’s longest-tenured brand chief. The former president of posh department store Bergdorf Goodman speaks conceptually about Coach’s “brand DNA” (a label’s most distinctive attributes), the impact of “omnichannel commerce” (selling seamlessly both online and in stores), and where each new handbag line fits into his theoretical product “pyramid” (higher margin items with a smaller market at the top; lower ones with a bigger market at the bottom).

Coach has begun to diversify its offerings beyond handbags. It started selling ready-to-wear apparel, and it plans to expand into new product categories and grow its menswear selection, which accounts for about 20 percent of the business. Its merchandise now includes outerwear, jewelry, watches, scarves, and fragrances. Schulman is open to expanding into home décor and other segments, when the time comes.

“Elevate” is a word that Coach executives use on a near-constant basis, whether it’s elevated product, elevated price points, or an elevated brand. The average price of a Coach handbag was once under $300. Now, according to Schulman, the sweet spot for price is from $300 to $500. The Rogue, at $795, is Coach’s most expensive line of handbags. Made from glove-tanned pebble leather, it has detachable straps and suede lining and can also come in bold patterns and embellishments. It was designed with die-cut snakeskin tea roses and priced at an elevated $1,500 in the recent season.

In February, the brand welcomed celebrities and influencers to a runway show for Coach 1941, an upscale offshoot of its main brand, designed by creative head Stuart Vevers. “He’s taken the brand in directions that it had never been,” says Schulman. The catwalk itself was more abstract art than clothing showcase, presented as an eerie forest full of video monitors gone haywire. As the show closed, lights dimmed and strobes pulsed as the models hurried through the set. You couldn’t see the clothes at all—not that it mattered. This was about artistic credibility.

“Maybe a shopper who buys a Fendi or a Dior might come in and buy Coach apparel or Coach footwear, because it does now have a luxury point of view,” says Erinn Murphy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “That customer would have never bought a logo-oriented Coach tote from seven or eight years ago.”

More Brands, More Problems?

Tapestry’s other brands remain in recovery from a variety of ailments. Stuart Weitzman’s business largely relies on two styles: an over-the-knee, super-tall boot called the “5050” and a line of minimalist “Nudist” sandals with a delicate ankle strap. But if consumers aren’t wooed with compelling versions of those franchises for one season, it can mean disaster. Earlier this year, the shoemaker ran into production delays with new styles, forcing the company to admit that the issue will persist through next winter. On top of that, Tapestry ousted Stuart Weitzman’s creative director, Giovanni Morelli, in May, citing issues with his “behavior.”

With $1.4 billion in annual revenue when it was acquired, Kate Spade had different problems, primarily that it had torpedoed its own brand with constant online flash sales. As a more youthful, less serious brand, it sells sneakers covered in rose gold glitter, jacquard dresses in multi-color daisies, and giant, heart-shaped hoop earrings. But the label’s whimsical items were often too strange for luxury shoppers unwilling to shell out $300 on bags that looked, for example, like a giant cat’s head. Weak traffic at its outlet stores forced the brand to offer deeper discounts. Even worse, several seasons of inventory missteps hindered stores that failed to stock enough of the merchandise that people actually wanted.

Sales at Kate Spade fell 3 percent in the last period—its sixth-straight negative quarter—but that qualified as good news since it still beat analysts’ estimates, sending the stock up as much as 11 percent. In June, fashion designer Kate Valentine, better known as Kate Spade and co-founder of the label, died in an apparent suicide at her Manhattan apartment. Grieving fans had an “immediate heartfelt response” to the news, executives said, and shoppers bought up products bearing her name.

At first, Tapestry estimated it would see from $30 to $35 million in savings from the Kate Spade integration. Next year, it expects to hit from $100 to $115 million. Analysts see Kate Spade’s growth potential as an attractive opportunity, if its new owner is willing to shrink first and keep enduring months of bad results as it reduces flash sales. “If they have the discipline to see this through, then the reality is they’ll emerge better off at the end of the tunnel,” says Simeon Siegel, an analyst at Nomura’s Instinet. “It’s important to understand what was the healthy sales versus what was the extra dollar that management wanted to grab.”

But if the company is to fulfill the promise of becoming an American luxury conglomerate, Tapestry will eventually have to spend billions more to acquire additional brands. Luis insists that the company must first fix Kate Spade before resuming the hunt. When it’s time, though, the company will be looking for labels in accessories, footwear, apparel, and outerwear to add to its offerings.

And he has no plans to stop at things you wear. “We’re very focused on our planning horizon, which tends to be three to five years, but that doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity for Tapestry, as a house of brands, to evolve well beyond the core fashion categories,” he says. “The opportunities are endless.”

In analysts’ and media reports during the past year, numerous brand names have been mentioned as potential acquisition targets: Burberry, Britain’s largest luxury label, as well as Barbour, Mulberry, and Longchamp, the French accessories brand. Italy has its share of attractive targets, too, such as Furla handbags and Canali tailoring. PVH Corp., owner of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, is the closest thing to an existing American fashion multi-brand house, and it could potentially be in the mix as a buyer. But PVH is considered more a mid-range apparel seller than a glitzy luxury group.

Tapestry’s American competition won’t be so easily left behind. Last November, Michael Kors bought shoe label Jimmy Choo for $1.2 billion, its first foray outside its legacy brand. Famous for its Sex and the City stilettos that Sarah Jessica Parker loved so much, the pumps can cost $600 to $1,200 or more, making Choo higher-end than its new owner is. The addition gives Kors a strong foothold in footwear as the handbag war spills into shoes and clothing. At the time, Michael Kors CEO John Idol said the acquisition signaled the start of new strategy: to build an international group of luxury brands.

The post Can America Build a Luxury Powerhouse to Rival Europe’s LVMH? appeared first on Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East.

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