#got the bandanas from a local artist

[stepbyvampirevveekend]

cowboy dumpppp he got a new handmade bandana from a local artist

[ironwoman18]

From competitors to lovers - Part 4

Chapter 4: Live Performances

Giyuu and his band decided to not have rehearsals on Saturday and Sunday morning.

On Saturday they went to a shopping mall and bought clothes for their concert and for tonight's concert. They were invited to watch the other bands so after lunch they changed and went to watch it.

On Sunday they decided to have a hair cut. Giyuu, Eddie and Veronica just cut a little but Sam and Matt had a proper hair cut.

Then they had lunch and went to take a shower. Veronica dyed the tips of her hair pink like she usually does when a  big performance is coming.

They put on their band shirt, their logo was on their chest, and blue jeans. The only things different from each other were their accessories. Giyuu put on a leather jacket, Eddie had a sleeveless jean jacket, Sam had a baseball cap, Matt was wearing a blue bandana and Veronica had a jean jacket and her dyed hair.

They left after getting ready and headed to the arena.

On their way there, they were informed about the amount of people and the place was at full capacity. The local band was playing tonight and the Japanese were going to support them.

“Great... Tonight we will have a sold out show” said Sam with a small drop of sweat on his forehead but the others noticed also the excitement in his voice.

“We will do our best tonight. Thankfully I planned that Japanese song as the opening song” said Eddie winking at Giyuu. He just rolled his eyes but smirked slightly.

“What a visionary,” Giyuu said, in a teasing tone, still smirking.

When they arrived they noticed the amount of people and they suddenly got nervous. The arena was at max capacity and they will be the last band to perform.

They walked in their green room, inside there was a table with food on it, bottles of water, juice, hot tea and coffee.

The Hashira were on stage testing their sound and the Ubuyashiki staff was testing the cameras, the lights and the screens on stage.

Their instruments were transported by the staff so they just needed to plug them on and test them before their turn to play.

Giyuu's eyes were on the screen, watching his friends doing their sound test before the show while the audience were looking for their seats.

An hour later everyone was on their seats ready and the band was on the stage behind the curtain.

The final countdown began and the band started to play. Giyuu and his friends looked at the screens in their room as the concert began.

They sang a song he composed back when they began to perform to present them. He felt a punch in the stomach when he heard the arrangement they made to include Kyojuro. Eddie noticed that but didn't say anything. 

Then they sang Teenage Dreams, of course they would, Kanae loved Katy Perry and would suggest it, but what shocked him was looking at Sanemi looking at her and he could tell he was mumbling the lyrics. 

He knew that his friend had a crush on her but watching the tough Sanemi singing that song made him laugh out loud. The others looked at the screen and noticed that and also laughed.

“He's down for her, isn't he?” Said Eddie.

“Most definitely... He is so down for her” Giyuu smirked.

Then they performed an original song but he didn't know it. It was new, but by its lyrics he knew it was Shinobu's song. The feelings in that song didn't sound like Sabito or Kanae and he wouldn't have thought of Sanemi writing something this deep.

They switched to one of his original songs, he remembered when he showed it to them, back then he wasn't good enough with the piano but he managed to play it and sing it. It was about his time with them, as a band. 

He could see the audience moved by it and his friends, even when they didn't understand Japanese, were crying like babies. Mission accomplished, moving someone even without understanding the lyrics was one of his goals as an artist.

The next song was a cover but this time Kanae moved to the keyboard and Shinobu sang it. Bring me back was their second cover song with Rengoku as the male voice. Her voice wasn't as deep as the original but she mashed it with her powerful high notes and her pitch perfect.

After that song, Shinobu stayed in the front and sang another one. This time one of his songs. It sounded like a cover since her voice was different from her sister's but he liked how it sounded. This was one of the few original songs they have in English, he forced himself to write in Japanese to be more natural in that language.

He smirked at it because he liked this change. His reactions were watched closely by his friends, they just looked away when he noticed him turning his head.

They knew he would be proud of his former band and they were sure he would never do anything to damage their chances of winning. He could look quiet and like he doesn't care but he liked to win and would work for that at any cost.

At the last original song the crew called him to go up to the stage for the last song, which will be their duet. Giyuu stood up and walked there. 

They got him ready and after their last song they made the announcement for the last song and that it will be a duet. He walked it holding a second microphone and introduced himself in perfect Japanese making both his friends on stage and in the greenroom smirked. 

He could be shy but he was also aware of the country he was in and knew he needed to show off to win.

The music started after he finished to present himself and the song they will be singing.

The guitar, piano and drums entered at the right time as well as the bass. Then it was Giyuu's turn to sing

Giyuu

Here we stand

Worlds apart, hearts broken in two, two, two

Sabito somehow sounded more amazing than ever since they began to learn how to play. He sounded like he was sending a message to Giyuu and his new friends, something like “I do my best for my best friend”

Sleepless nights

Losing ground, I'm reaching for you, you, you

Feeling that it's gone

Can't change your mind

If we can't go on

To survive the tide, love divides

Sanemi also was a beast playing the drums.

Both

Someday love will find you

Break those chains that bind you

One night will remind you

How we touched and went our separate ways

Giyuu

If he ever hurts you

True love won't desert you

You know I still love you

Though we touched and went our separate ways

Shinobu

Troubled times

Caught between confusion and pain, pain, pain

Distant eyes

Promises we made were in vain, in vain, in vain

Shinobu’s high notes were knocked out of the park as she had eyes on him. Giyuu never stopped to be amazed by her voice.

If you must go, I wish you love

You'll never walk alone

Take care, my love

Miss you, love

Both

Someday love will find you

Break those chains that bind you

One night will remind you

How we touched and went our separate ways

When they sang together they looked at each other and electricity filled the air. They noticed and the audience did too. Everytime they looked into each other's eyes, nothing else mattered to them.

Shinobu

If she ever hurts you

True love won't desert you

You know I still love you

Though we touched and went our separate ways

Sabito had an amazing guitar solo while Sanemi was playing the drums amazingly. They weren't this intense when they were practicing. Giyuu thought that this was definitely a message for his new band.

While this solo happened the couple of singers approached the audience and led them to clap then Giyuu, intoxicated in the mood of the crowd played with Sabito a little and the peach haired boy smirked at his best friend as he played.

Both

Oh

Someday love will find you

Break those chains that bind you

One night will remind you

How we touched and went our separate ways

If he/she ever hurts you

True love won't desert you

You know I still love you

Though we touched and went our separate ways

Giyuu somehow felt like the “You know I still love you” was a message to them. Even when he had a new band they were the original one and he still loved them and would love to return to play with them.

Suddenly the audience asked for another song, they looked at the people behind the stage. They haven't seen this in the other concerts but after a few seconds one of the guys dressed in black, Ubuyashiki men, raised a thumb up telling them that they were allowed to play another song.

“Giyuu... Can you play with us?” Asked Kanae. Giyuu thought about it and after a few seconds he nodded.

Rengoku handed him his bass and after he went backstage they talked for a few seconds and started to play. They decided to do their favorite medley, they arranged some of Queen's most iconic songs into one medley.

Giyuu took the lead as they played it and for the other members of the band felt like getting back to the good old days when they were a band.

Rengoku noted how well they worked together. He could never be that kind of leader, he only could lead the harmony when Shinobu was the singer but it didn't happen as often as he wished so he had to follow her instructions. He never really care about it because he was happy to play with a band, but now he realized that he wasn't as good as Giyuu.

They seemed more intense with him, he didn't feel it at practice, but on the stage. Maybe they released that intensity as part of the adrenaline to perform in front of this big crowd.

They finished the song and told the people to wait until the next band jumped on the stage. The Hashiras left the stage chatting as the concert crew made sure to get everything done for the next band.

It normally takes twenty minutes, enough time to let the people go to get food and drinks. 

When they arrived at the green room there was Giyuu's band looking at him, they started to tease him. They would never get upset about him playing with his friends, after all, they introduced him to the music. However, they realized that Giyuu looked so happy with them and might get back with them after they finished high school.

So they will do their best to continue in competition to keep playing by his side. It was a non verbal agreement between Sam, Veronica, Matt and Eddie.

Twenty minutes later the next band was ready. 

They followed the plan. Giyuu walked in first and sang in Japanese, only him playing the piano. Then the rest of the instruments joined. He finished the song and while he was wrapping the bass around himself the band continued to play the next song. 

It was a cover, they sang Believer by Imagine Dragons. Then they played two more original songs. The Hashiras were watching the show as they drank water and had some snacks.

They had to admit that this band was great and Giyuu's songs were better known. Their songs were amazing but years of experience made him better. Now they were dying to sing a new song written by their best friend.

The next song was Numb by Linkin Park which was sung by Giyuu. He was playing the bass and singing at the same time. Their next song was another original which connected with Dream On. A song about dreams.

Then they presented Kanae back on stage. Veronica left the stage while Eddie got a hands-free microphone to sing and play.

We started to play, first the guitar, then Giyuu joined, he knew the song by heart so he didn't need to practice with them, with Sam on the piano. Kanae started to sing.

Kanae

Every time that I look in the mirror

All these lines on my face getting clearer

The past is gone

It went by like dusk to dawn

Isn't that the way?

Everybody's got the dues in life to pay.

Then it was Eddie's turn. Giyuu looked at her, she was amazing when they were twelve and she is amazing now at seventeen.

Eddie

Yeah

I know nobody knows

Where it comes and where it goes

I know it's everybody's sin

You've got to lose to know 

Both

How to win

Kanae

Half my life's in 

Both

Books’ written pages

Kanae

Live and learn

Both 

From fools and from sages

Eddie

You know it's true, oh

Both

All the things come back to you

Kanae

Sing with me, sing for the year

Sing for the laughter and sing for the tear

Eddie

Sing with me, if it's just for today

Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away

Their voices complemented very well and their harmony was flawless. It was Giyuu's first time hearing them as well as the Hashiras. He could be sure, Sanemi wouldn't be happy to see his crush having so much chemistry with another guy.

Kanae

Yeah, sing with me, sing for the year

Sing for the laughter and sing for the tear

Both

Sing with me, if it's just for today

Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away

The hardest part of the song started and Kanae continued to nail it.

Kanae

Dream on,

Eddie 

Dream on,

Kanae 

Dream on

Dream until the dream come true

Eddie

Dream on, 

Kanae

Dream on, 

Eddie

Dream on

Dream until your dream come true

From here on, the notes started to get higher and higher by the singers and the instruments with them.

Kanae

Dream on, 

Eddie

Dream on, 

Kanae

Dream on

Eddie

Dream on, 

Then Kanae did a perfect falsetto and Eddie followed her. Just as high as hers which was amazing considering she was a woman, with a higher range.

Kanea

Dream on,

Eddie

Dream on

Kanae

Dream on, 

Both

ooooooooh

The crowd got crazy at that and clapped and screamed at the amazing performance.

Eddie

Sing with me, 

Both

Sing for the year

Eddie

Sing for the laughter

Both

And sing for the tear

Eddie

Sing with me,

Both

 if it's just for today

Eddie

Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away

Kanae

Sing with me, 

Both 

Sing for the year

Sing for the laughter and sing for the tear

Kanae

Sing with me, if it's just for today

Both

Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away

After that amazing performance the crowd erupted and screamed full of excitement. The song sounded amazing and the band performance matched the vocals. Some of the other bands present in the arena knew they would never outmatch those two.

Tomorrow they will know their score but they already knew these guys beat them. The real competition will be between the Hashiras and California Roll.

OOooOOooOO

I hope you like this chapter. Next on will be some more interaction between Shinobu and Giyuu and we will meet Obanai and Mitsuri and a special someone.

[s0ym1lk]

And here's part 2! Wanted Poster / Neon Moon

One year before

“Are you firing me, Sheriff?”

Sheriff Williams, who was a long, lean man with a somber face, just shrugged. He had a way of shrugging that made you think there was nothing in the world to be done about whatever problem it was he was being confronted with. Walcott Thorpe had spent every day of the last year getting increasingly frustrated with that shrug.

“It’s just business, Wit. You rub people in Flatwood the wrong way. I think it’s time you found a town more suited to your personality.”

Wit stood abruptly and shoved the chair back he’d been sitting in. The Sheriff’s office was so small that when he stood, his holster nearly swept a cup full of half-drank coffee onto the floor.

“Here I thought our job was to keep the law, not to make people feel good about themselves.” Don’t you have a drop of decency? Wit wanted to add, but even in the middle of being fired, he wasn’t a man to say something like that to his boss.

Williams gave him that somber look again. “You got a lot to learn about this business, son. Bud will show you out.”

Wit didn’t wait for Bud to show him out. He grabbed his hat, swept right past the deputy’s desk in the front room, and strode out into the afternoon sun.

It was a scorcher of a day, making even Wit with his tan complexion sweat inside his linen shirt. At this hour of the afternoon, most everybody was inside hiding from the sun; the only people to see his walk of shame down the town’s main street was a gaggle of women from the local bar, out hanging laundry, and one of the town mutts lying in the meager shade of the town restaurant. Raising its head as Wit walked by, it heaved itself out of the dirt, circled around the front of Wit’s horse, and feel into step beside him with a tongue-lolling grin.

“Sorry pal, the well done dried up. Nothing here for you.” he told the dog. The dog simply wagged its tail and kept trotting at Wit’s side.

It might have been smart to stay a night and get his thoughts and his things together. But Wit was tired of Drawlens. He was tired of the humidity and the stink. He was tired of the corruption that ran through the town’s underbelly like a cancer. And he was tired of the small, stifling room he’d taken at Mrs. Georgeson’s, where he knocked his knees against the bedpost every night and tripped over his boots by the door. So instead, he stopped by the room, dumped everything in a jumble in his saddle bags, and slapped the rest of his payment for the week on the counter as he left without ceremony.

As he always did, he stopped by the town board outside Mulligan’s to see what had been posted that morning. There were a few jobs, but nothing that he was suited for. Henry Higgins’ prized lighter had gone missing, and he was promising a reward for anyone that found it. Of more interest were the wanted posters on the right side. Two had been there for weeks – the Bedram brothers, who’d robbed a bank a few towns down and were holed up somewhere in the area, and Fats McClane, who’d shot another man dead over a poker game and then fled.

Two new posters had been tacked up next to them. One was of a man wearing a cowboy hat and a bandana pulled up over his face, so that only the narrow strip of his face where his eyes were could be seen. The artist had drawn him with dark eyes and thick, heavy brows. The other was just the silhouette of a face with a question mark inside it.

“The Masked Bandit and the Bridgetown Ghost. Highway robbery and robbing a casino.”

The rewards were promising, but the leads were thin. You couldn’t pick a man out of a crowd based on his eye color. And the other poster was no lead at all – without any facial features or even a name, there was nothing to go on. A bust. He’d keep his eye out for the Bedram brothers and McClane though.

Wit thought he might had felt a sense of sadness riding out of town, the stray dog still tagging along at a trot beside his horse, but all he felt was relief. The next town would be better.

It would.

--

The desert at night was a different world. Free of the deadly sun, it pulsed with life and movement. Jackrabbits, cottontails, and ground squirrels scurried anxiously about, trying to scratch out their meals without becoming one themselves. Road runners flashed by. Lizards dozed under bushes. The smell of sage brush and the occasional cactus blossom swept past Wit as he rode, the earthy scents draining away a tension he hadn’t been aware he’d been carrying.

He was a Missouri boy, born and raised, but he rarely missed the swampy lowlands of the Bootheel. His home town, barely a town at all, had felt as stagnant and repulsive as mold on a loaf of bread. Despite the sun’s oppressive heat sucking the moisture from everything it touched, the West had an energy and life to it that resonated with Wit in a way no other place ever had. The people here were not always good and rarely kind, but they were brave and ambitious. And when Wit needed a break from them, or when things went south as they often did for him, he could do just what he was doing now: saddle his horse and ride off, to the next town and the next adventure.

When it got too dark to ride anymore, he found a good patch of flat, empty ground and set about to building a camp fire with the dry scrub brush that lay around in ample supply. He, his horse, and the dog shared the remains of his canteen of water, after which he hobbled the horse in full range of a spread of tough grass and chopped a hunk of sausage in half to split with the dog. Then, all that was left was to lay back and watch the light slowly drain from the sky.

The moon was a shy friend that night, just a sliver peeking out occasionally from behind a slow drift of clouds. His mind meandered alongside the clouds for a while, then wandered back to Flatwood. He’d worked there for a year – not the longest he’d spent in a town, but the first he’d really tried to make it work. After Anna -

Well, never mind what Anna had done. Best not to dwell on that. The point was, he’d decided after what happened to try to make an honest effort of it in Flatwood. He was reminded now why he’d never bothered to get his hopes up in the first place. It had never bothered him before to pick up and go, whether it was a lost job or a town drying up or just an itch under his collar. There was something different about it now, but he didn’t know what it was. The desert still called to him, and the stars above were still as mesmerizing, but -

He brought his hand, which was stretched out palm-up on his bedroll as if to grasp something that wasn’t there, under his head. He didn’t know what was different. But he didn’t care for it.

The dog had wandered off, poking his nose here and there in the bushes, occasionally chasing after some small creature he unearthed in the night. When he let out a sharp yip, Wit turned his head and tried to catch sight of him.

“Get over here.” he called. “If you get snakebit, there ain’t nothing I can do out here.”

The only reply was the sound of digging.

Wit considered leaving him to it, but snakes weren’t the only thing here in the desert that could kill a dog, and he didn’t want to tangle with any of them after they’d already done damage. With a sigh, he pushed to his feet and trudged out towards the sound of the digging.

The dog was scratching furiously at a mound of dirt half-under a creosote bush. The dog stopped for a moment and glanced at Wit, let out another sharp yip, and went back to digging.

“Now what have you – what in the hell -”

Wit pushed the dog away and sank to his knees. Dirt mounds didn’t have arms.

“You find us a body, boy?” he asked. The dog let out a low whine and wagged his tail lowly, ears pricked in concern. Wit reached out carefully for the arm and pushed up the dirty shirtsleeve covering it to find skin.

The skin was cool, but not cold, and it still had the softness of life to it. If there was a pulse, it was so faint at the wrist Wit couldn’t feel it. Carefully, he begin scooping sand away from the body. He went slowly, so that he didn’t aggravate a wound or hurt the person further, but there was no response from the figure no matter what he did, even when he attempted to push the creosote bush out of the way and stepped on the figure’s still-buried leg by accident.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch.” Wit murmured, when the figure was finally unearthed. It was too dark to see anything but the outline of them laying motionless on the ground, though the ground under them was stained black. “How long you been lying out here?”

Carefully, unable to see what we was doing, Wit ran his hands up down the figure’s body. Their clothes were stiff and dirty. None of the limbs were bent at awkward angles, or had the swollen heat of a snakebite. Their skull was intact and their face lax with unconsciousness. At their throat, the carotid artery had the barest flicker of a pulse.

It was going over the torso that Wit finally felt something. Something deep in the chest grated at his fingertips like nails on a chalkboard. When he shoved his hands under the figure’s shirt, the skin there was smooth and unruptured, but that grating sense of wrongness still pulled at him.

“On the backside, then. Well, good thing you’re unconscious, because this is going to hurt.” he told the figure. At least flipping them would get them out of the creosote bush and Wit would stop getting smacked in the face by rogue branches.

When he had them on the side, the injury rapidly became apparent. Their entire back was stained with blood. Wit cut the shirt away carefully with his knife and ran his hands again over the figure’s back, ignoring the slick-sticky feel of the blood. The bullet hole was on the left side, just near the shoulder blade. Wit was good enough at the magicking to get it out just by focusing, but he could feel the site of the injury several inches in, the way the tissue around had been torn apart, the fracture in the scapula where the bullet had lodged. It was a nasty wound, but maybe not a fatal one, if he was lucky.

It took dragging the figure – a man, he found out by the light of the fire – to his camp, and an hour of careful digging with his field knife, before he was able to get the bullet out. All his witchery could do for him was let him choose the least deadly parts to tear up in his quest, but Wit was used to be a sledgehammer where a toothpick was needed.

When he was done, the wound had been washed out with a slug of gin, packed with one of Wit’s spare shirts, and the man had been propped up against a saddlebag with his arm bound to his chest to keep it still. Wit took a handkerchief from his pocket and wet it with water to hold to the man’s lips. There was no movement for a moment. Then, a faint parting of lips.

“You and I are about to get pretty well acquainted, it seems.” Wit told the man as he dribbled a stream of water into the man’s mouth. The dog, who’d been hovering anxiously since Wit found the body, finally slunk in and pressed himself along the man’s side.

Overhead, the moon peeked out from behind its curtain of clouds, brightening for just a moment before it slipped away again.

Yeehawgust 2023 - Chapter 1: Gather the Posse / We Ride at Dawn

I thought it would be fun to write for Yeehawgust this year! I'm going for a short story/novella based on the daily prompts. Hoping to have each section out every day or every other day, but we'll see how it goes. And I may possible move some of the prompts around, depending on how they fit into the story. I am writing this by the seat of my pants; nobody knows what's going to happen in it, least of all me. Let's get riding!

There was milk on the floor of the bar. That was the only thing occupying Buck Grady’s mind during the fight. The air conditioning in the bar had stopped working two weeks ago, and in the span of thirty minutes, that milk would stink to high heaven; there’d probably be some blood on top of it within the next few minutes, though Buck didn’t know if that would make the situation better or worse.

Someone slammed into the front of the bar. Buck could feel the reverberations in his spine where he was tucked up next to the hooch. It was where he always hid when a fight broke out, which was roughly once a week. Gave him plenty of practice in the art of duck and cover, as well as ensuring he had the number for the police station memorized. The sound of something shattering came from behind, and he reached for the bottle of whiskey next to him with a sighed and swallowed a slug.

“Quit dancing away like some little fairy, short man! Get over here and take a punch!” a deep voice roared. There was more crashing and the meaty sound of flesh thudding into flesh.

The piano up to that point had still been playing, adding to the cacophony assaulting Buck’s ears. It got worse when it stopped. Buck hunkered in even further, clutching the whiskey to his chest. For a long, terrible moment, there was dead silence.

“You think you’re faster than me, you little shitheel?” came the deep voice again. “Well then, let’s find out!”

The gunshot came so fast after his words they were almost simultaneous. Buck waited for another shot, but nothing came. There was only a rustle and then a soft thud as something large collapsed to the floor.

He waited to hear voices before he uncurled from his hiding place and cautiously poked his head over the bartop. A body lay on the floor in the puddle of milk. Another figure stood in front of it, gun still drawn. Behind the body, three men were locked in a staring contest with the man holding the gun. Buck could practically see the twitch in their hands, wanting to draw from their holsters, but it would have been suicide; with a gun already pointed at them, at least one of them would get shot before they could so much as touch the pistol grip.

“Your friend made a miscalculation. I suggest you do your math a little more carefully.” the man with the gun said. He didn’t sound particularly concerned, but perhaps it was the drawl that covered up the tone.

The men’s eyes darted to the body on the floor. Then, almost as one, they backed up, cursing, and stumbled out of the bar.

Only when the door was swung completely shut did the man holster his gun. The moment he did, figures emerged from behind upturned tables and out of the far rooms of the bar to gawk at the scene. People in Digger’s End didn’t have much of a sense of self-preservation; shootouts happened too often for them to. From the far end, the pianist re-appeared at the keys and began playing again. Like the customers, it took a lot to lever him from his seat. When he stopped playing, it was only because guns had appeared, and when he started again Buck always knew it was safe to come back out.

Buck was already on the phone to the station when the man with the gun appeared in his vision and slid onto one of the barstools just in front of him. Behind him, the bar’s patrons were acting like the body on the floor didn’t exist. One woman, in blue skirts with ribbons the color of ivory in her dark hair, stepped over the body as if it were merely a pile of horse dung in the road.

Buck eyed him warily, but the man didn’t make any threatening gestures. In fact, he looked away politely while Buck spoke, as people did when they were attempting to give you the illusion of privacy in a public place.

“Yeah, just the one dead. Can you come pick him up? No, sorry, I don’t know what happened to the man who shot him. He took off just as soon as he could.”

At this, the man’s eyes slid over, one brow raised. Whatever he saw in Buck’s face didn’t reflect. He looked away again.

“I apologize for the disturbance.” he said when Buck hung up the phone. Surprisingly, he did actually sound remorseful. Remorseful and tired; when Buck glanced at his face, the circles under his eyes seemed somehow bigger, his color more pallid, than before the fight had started. “I can pay for the damages.”

“Oh, it’s going on your bill.” Buck said drily. “But it weren’t your fault, so I can’t be too upset. The Bingley boys are a piece of work. When word gets around, you’ll be fighting off free drinks with a stick.” He poured them both a shot of whiskey and pushed one over to the man, who took it with a quick smile. He threw it back with the ease of the practiced. Buck didn’t watch the line of his neck as it happened.

“You know, the sad thing is, I do actually like milk.” the man continued once he’d set the shot glass down. “I drank gallons of it as a kid. If it made you taller, I’d be the tallest man in the world.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” Buck said ruefully. The bar had been shorter once. Then he’d almost lost his head to a stray bullet, and Buck had replaced it with something that could adequately shield his gangly frame. “Those short arms seem to make you quicker on the draw, anyway. Old boy over there didn’t even clear leather.”

The man gave him a crooked smile. “That’s Mr. Short Arms to you, my friend. Now, can I trouble you to help me rack up my tab before the boys in blue show up?”

--

Buck woke coughing, the taste of smoke thick and suffocating on his tongue. When he tried to open his eye, a searing burst of pain made them water immediately. Cursing, he tried to kick the sheet over his hips off and fell to the floor in a heap.

Being low to the ground helped moderately with the smoke, but Buck knew it wouldn’t last long. As quickly as he could, he dragged himself to the door of his room and felt it with the back of his palm. It was warm, but not hot. He reached up blindly for the lock, flipped it open, and crawled out into the hallway.

The smoke was thick as mud along the hall of rooms, so much that Buck could barely see a foot ahead of him. Crackling and the sound of wood collapsing echoed down. Then, a different sounding thud and a string of curses.

“To your right!” Buck choked out. “Get to the staircase to your right!”

He couldn’t be sure that whoever was there had heard him, but he heard the low drag of someone crawling and figured he’d done as much as he could. He needed to get out himself before he passed out.

It was a terrifying minute as he crawled as quickly as he could towards the staircase. Years of experience led him there where his eyes couldn’t; the hallway had become a completely different place, a hellscape of black and grey. Buck put his hand out and caught a bare patch of skin rather than the floor. The person he’d grabbed jolted and kicked his hand away.

Buck was too scared to even feel the pain. The floor was starting to get warm under his hands and knees. “Staircase is just to your left! Quick!”

The figure in front of him continued down the hallway, Buck right on his tail, close enough to almost get clocked in the jaw by his foot. When he reached the stairway, the figure flipped around to go down feet first, but before he could so much as put a toe on the first stair, there was a roar, and a tongue of flame came thundering up the stairwell. The figure lurched back and into Buck.

“First floor’s already on fire.” the figure said. This close, Buck recognized him – it was the man who’d shot the Bingley boy. He’d paid for a night in one of the bar’s rooms after a few hefty glasses of whiskey. He hadn’t offered his name, and per the house rules, Buck hadn’t asked for it. “We can’t get out that way.”

Shit. There was no other staircase down. The only option was -

“Back the way we came! There’s a window at the end of the hall!” Buck coughed out. He spun around and took off back down the hall as fast as he could go.

The air was no longer clear down by the floor, and the roar of fire was deafening in his ears. The floor had gotten as hot as a boulder at high noon and stung his hands and bare knees as he crawled. He was so focused on reaching the end of the hall he slammed headfirst into the wall and nearly knocked himself out. Clutching his head, he fumbled over the window, caught the latch, and threw the window open.

Mr. Short Arms jumped to his feet and leaned out the window, wheezing. Buck did the same. The fresh air seared his smokey lungs. Below, a crowd had started to form and Buck could hear the staccato melody of a rattle watchman, but there was no sign yet of the water wagon, and none of the bystanders were coming anywhere near the bar. Instead, they had made a line at the rattle watch’s direction and were passing buckets of water to the barber shop and the mercantile on either side, trying to wet them enough that they wouldn’t catch fire too.

“We can’t jump this.” Mr. Short Arms said grimly, looking down at the ground below. He was right; the bar on the ground floor had a high ceiling, so even though the rooms were on the second floor, they were three stories up. They would probably survive if they jumped, but not with intact bodies.

“Shit. I don’t have a ladder or anything. There’s another window on the other end, but it’s the same as this one.”

“I can solve this problem.” said a voice from behind them. Buck and Mr. Short Arms turned. A woman stood behind them, handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Either she had taken the time to dress or she’d already been dressed when the fire started; unlike Buck, who was in boxers only, and Mr. Short Arms, who had on shirtsleeves and a pair of longjohns, she looked as if she was out for a stroll on the town.

“Move.” she said to the two of them, pushing through to the window. Without ceremony, she turned and sat on the windowsill, tucked the handkerchief neatly into her decolletage, and then grabbed the two men. Mr. Short Arms got a small hand twisted into the collar of his undershirt; for Buck she buried a hand in his hair and gripped, so tight Buck thought his scalp was going to rip off.

“I’m going to get out of the way and you two are going to sit on the windowsill. On the count of three, you’re going to throw yourselves out the window. No questions.” As she was talking, the woman had been wriggling backwards until she fell out of the window. Mr. Short Arms snatched a hand out and caught her elbow, but she didn’t seem concerned about falling. Strangely, she wasn’t that heavy either, despite her tenuous grip on the two of them.

“Stop wasting time.” she snapped. “Legs out the window or you’re going to die.”

Too dumbfounded to question, Buck slung one long leg out the window and then carefully swung the other over. Mr. Short Arms tried to copy him, but the window was too small; he could only get one leg out and sit astride the windowsill, hips tucked flush against Buck’s thigh. He tried shift and nearly knocked Buck off the sill.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” the woman snarled. With no warning whatsoever, she planted one heeled foot into the wall of the bar and yanked the two of them out of the window. Buck screamed as he fell forward – and then blinked in confusion.

They weren’t falling. Instead, a warm swirl of breeze pressed against them, and the three of them floated gently down to the ground. It was the strangest feeling; the air didn’t feel supportive at all, but still they didn’t fall. Their feet landed as soft as moth’s wings in the dirt.

Then the woman let go of Buck’s hair, and he collapsed in a heap, wheezing.

It was a long moment before he clamored to his feet, and it took the arrival of the water wagon to prompt it. The wagon ignored the bar completely and set up to the left to hose down the barber shop; the line of bucket passers shifted to the other side to keep wetting the mercantile. One fireman in heavy

wool raced over to where Buck was struggling to stand. Buck recognized him – George Wiggins, the hostler down the road.

“Anyone left in the bar, Buck?” he asked urgently. Buck shook his head, trying to think how many rooms he’d rented out. There was Mr. Short Arms, the woman, and – had there been two more?

Buck glanced around and caught sight of a woman in a sleeping bonnet buried in the arms of a thickly mustached man. His heart jumped with relief.

“They’re all out. Those two were the only other guests.” he told Wiggins, pointing at the couple. Wiggins gave him a short salute and jogged back to the water wagon.

It took nearly an hour for the fire to die down enough that the crowd had mostly dispersed and the water wagon began rolling up its hoses. It was so late into the night that the first rays of dawn had appeared on the horizon, replacing the flames of the bar fire with its bloody red streaks. That was enough time for Buck, who had long since given up on standing, to come to terms with what had happened.

His bar was gone. His bar was burned down to the ground, with everything he owned inside it. The only thing he had left was a pair of boxer shorts.

“Shit.” he said to no one in particular. “Shit. What am I – what do I -”

Mr. Short Arms had disappeared at some point. Buck hadn’t been coherent enough to notice, but when he reappeared, his face was creased and serious. He crouched down in front of Buck, still in his long johns with his bare feet streaked with grime, and held something out to him.

“We’ve got a real problem.” he said solemnly.

Buck took the item automatically before his brain had caught up with what it was. The waxed canvas bundle was tied shut with a leather thong that had been scorched enough to snap in two. Buck already knew what he would find, but he untied it anyway. The red clay, snake blood, and yucca flowers had dried up into a smear of dark, gritty paste on the inside of the canvas.

“Someone set this fire. Someone – who would -” he looked up into Mr. Short Arm’s eyes and understood.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, but it’s all I’ve got.” the man said softly. “I didn’t meant to bring any trouble down on you.”

Gingerly, Buck set the bundle aside. His head felt stuffed with cotton. Everything felt strangely distant; he noticed with bland attention that his body was covered with goosebumps, but no part of him registered the cold that produced it.

“I -” he tried, and got nowhere. Mr. Short Arms, still crouched in front of him, turned his hand to the side, then quick as a snake grabbed Buck’s arm and hauled him to his feet.

“I don’t think the trouble’s over, either. Come on.”

Buck glanced over to the side and saw a trio of men standing in the remains of the crowd, looking to the left and the right. Bingley boys. Two of them had been in the bar last night. The third was new. None looked friendly.

“I think the two of you were supposed to die in that fire.” came a voice from Buck’s right side. The woman in ribbons who had floated them down to the ground reappeared. She looked as equally unfussed by the idea that they were being hunted by a trio of murderers as she had standing in a burning building. “Do you have a plan?”

“My horse is at the hostler down the way. I think getting out of town for a few days is the best bet.” Mr. Short Arms replied. The woman nodded.

“As is mine. If you don’t mind company, I’d like to ride along.” she shot a glance at Mr. Short Arms. “As it was, I’d hoped to engage your services, Mr. Robbins, and I’m willing to wait until you’ve tied up this loose end.”

Someone shouted behind them. The three of them turned their heads as a unit. Someone was pointing in their direction.

“We’ll figure all this out later.” Mr. Shorty concluded. “For now, let’s get a move on before we all get shot.”

[helixandchicken]

The weather doesn’t know it yet, but it’s officially fall 🎉

[bunnys-beetlejuice-blog]

been a while since i posted a fic update! anyone wanna read some cowboy au nonsense? sure you do! well here it is

The blinding, unforgiving midday heat is enough to raise blisters on the skin. Looking out over a crowd of folks booing him, calling for his demise, probably should have had some kind of emotional impact. On the occasion of one’s death, after all, one does expect tears. Flowers, laid out in lace, dark veils and coal black clothes, a few muffled sobs from those further back in the funerary procession, unable to contain themselves. Instead he’s met with the dusty faces of former neighbors and strangers alike, all eagerly waiting to hear the exact tone and pitch that his neck will make when it snaps.

Bored, he turns his attention from the crowd, and watches a lizard scurry across the wooden planks of the gallows, as a man to his right fits a rough bit of rope around his neck. It scratches, but he doesn’t react, not feeling frightened or even especially interested. A similar rough twine is binding his hands together behind his back, keeping him from having any viable way to save himself. The crowd is calling for blood now. Hangings generally are not gorey affairs, but he did once see a drop too sudden and a rope so long that the fella wasn’t just hung, he was decapitated. Beetlejuice glances back down at the crowd, tries to imagine what direction his head would roll if that happened here, and smirks, because it seems to him the last thing he’d see would be the view from inside the skirts of some of the women standing front and center. Not the worst last sight a man could have. “You think you could hurry this along?” he asks the man fitting the noose around his neck. “Sun’s beatin’ down somethin’ fierce an’ I ain’t got my hat.” His personal possessions are back at the sheriff’s office- hat, bandana, silver plated, pearl handled pistol, and his custom belt buckle, just about the nicest, and maybe only, thing he ever paid for. God damn corrupt lawman’s probably gonna pawn his stuff as soon as he’s swinging. Maybe before. Maybe his last worldly possessions are already gone. S’not like he’ll need them, where he’s goin.

A face he recognizes is led up from the crowd, an ancient wizened body tanned for years by the all too eager sunlight and scorching sands. It’s the local preacher, who he remembers from his formative years. The old man used to give him bread and plain, unseasoned chicken in return for listening to him talk about god, and if he hadn’t been nearly starved to death half the time, he might have spat in the old man’s face. Shouldn't charity be done for the sake of charity, not proselytizing? He’d said so once, and that was the last meal the old miser had given him. Jackass.

“Beetlejuice,” the preacher begins. His name is said with disdain and a curled upper lip. It’s one of the reasons he chose it, honestly. “You still have time to repent, young man. I remember you, as a child, bright eyed, curious about the kingdom of heaven.” Well now, that’s the very definition of taking artist liberty. “Now, here, you have one more chance to repent, to accept god’s mercy, and avoid the lake of fire.” The crowd is watching, waiting to see if he will confess his remorse. Beetlejuice hums, rocks on the balls of his feet, and then sighs. “.. C’mere,” He mumbles, jerking his head to indicate the old man should step closer. The holy man does. “I got a lot to confess to, preacher man, an’ not much time.” His voice is soft. The ailing man can’t hear him, steps closer, if only a little. “So much to confess to, in fact, I oughta just… Skip th’ whole thing an’ go straight to hell!” And Beetlejuice reels back, and then slams his forehead into the old man’s face. The sickeningly satisfying crunch of cartilage tells him he’s broken the preacher’s nose, as the elderly man falls back, crying out in pain, blood gushing from his new wound. The crowd roars, furious, and he grins, and laughs. “Ain’t no good extendin’ your pious pity to me!” he calls, gleeful, as he’s pelted with whatever the people watching can get their hands on, and the old man is helped, taken away, led off of the platform. “Enough, enough, we will have order!” a lawman cries, coming up the gallow steps, to stand in front of the outlaw. It’s enough to get the crowd to settle, or at least stop throwing things. There’s still a bad energy in the air, which Beetlejuice can taste on the tip of his tongue. His smile is rictus, he’s delighted to be the cause of it all.

“This man has been tried and found guilty,” the lawman continues. The trial had been very short, and his incarceration shorter. He understands he’s being made an example of to other outlaws, bandits, and trouble makers. They intentionally didn’t give him any time to plan anything, or for any coconspirators to come and assist him. Joke’s on them. They could have taken all the time in the world. Ain’t nobody alive who cares for this outlaw. Not a soul who would dare to come and stage a rescue. He’s utterly alone. “He’s allowed his last words. Clearly,” the lawman turns, eyes Beetlejuice, who smiles flirtatiously. The other man’s expression shifts from annoyance to disgust. “He’s disavowed the advice of Pastor Neighbors.” “M’not so sure you’re usin’ that word right, friend,” Beetlejuice snorts, but he’s ignored. “Any last words?” the hangman to his right asks, his hand itching to grip the lever that will drop the floor and finally, finally, release the outlaw from the confines of mortal life.

Beetlejuice grins.

“If any of you have a message for th’ devil, give it to me!” he shouts, with a cackle, and he watches in rapt and morbid delight at the way the faces in the crowd twist. “I’ll carry it down to hell for you!” The crowd is furious enough it almost seems to him they’re going to storm the platform, and maybe beat him to death. The wave of gasps from the women folk is particularly amusing.

“Enough of this!” He hears the voice of the lawman, disgusted, and the hangman must agree, because the last thing he hears is the lever being thrown, and the floor gives out under him, and he’s falling, falling, falling.

His ass hits a chair.

There’s a moment of blinded confusion, because he's gone from the unbearable dusty sun of midday California, to a cool, dark, musty smelling interior. His eyes need a moment to adjust to the change. He’s sitting in a room he doesn’t recognize. The chair under him is plush, but just thin seated enough to be a tad uncomfortable. He squirms in it, confused, and finds his hands are still tied behind his back. He turns his head. Seated across from him is a young woman.. Well, little girl might be more accurate, she’s maybe fourteen. There’s a wicked looking hoofprint emblazoned on her right temple. The blood that’s leaking from the wound has gone a sickly old color. They stare at each other. “Did that hurt?” she asks, first, and he squints, because he’d been about to ask the same question. Her hand has gone to her throat, as she looks at him, and he looks down, pressing his fat face into his fat neck to create an unflattering double chin as he does so. He can feel the rope around his neck. He follows the line of it with his eyes, and turns to look up. The rope travels up from him, into the ceiling. It’s still taught, like he’s suspended by it, but his ass is touching chair, his boots are on the ground, and he doesn’t feel choked by it’s presence. He tuts. “Didn’t feel a thing. That hurt?” he tries to gesture to her wound, but again, he’s reminded his hands are bound behind him. She stands. “Hurt a bit, but then I got so dizzy I didn’t hardly feel it, after,” she tells him, and then, like the good little frontierswoman she is, she produces a knife from inside some pocket in the volume of her skirts, and gratefully, he leans forward. She rests a knee on one of the chairs, to get a better angle, as she uses her bowie to cut through the rope at his wrists. “Awful kind of you, half pint,” he tells her, and she smiles. “Ain’t nothin.” She settles into the chair next to him, which is a little surprising, but he doesn’t mind, over all. “You’re an outlaw, then?” she asks. He grunts, and then turns to face her, with a grin. “You probably heard of me. They called me Th’ Ghost, on occasion, cause I could slip away without bein’ caught-” he watches her eyes travel up the line of his noose, and then settle back on his face, a little less impressed than she ought to be. He responds by pinching her nose, and she swats at his hand, and laughs. “I do think I heard of you,” she concedes. “I’m Presley.” “Presley, alright. You got a clue where we are, kiddo?” “I just was told to wait.” “Told by who?”

Across the room, a window he hadn’t registered as being there slides open. This place vaguely resembles a bank, he realizes, and so that means that’s the teller’s window. A woman with a tired expression on a pretty face peers out at him. “Hey, dead beat,” she calls, her accent thick around the words. “Juno wants to see you.” He motions to himself, questioningly. She raises an eyebrow in silent confirmation. “Should I care?” he asks, and her upper lip curls in the most beautiful version of a sneer he’s ever seen. “You’re real funny. Get in there before she loses her temper.” And she reaches up, and slams the window shut.

He looks to Presley, and they both share a little shrug, before he stands, and takes a step. The rope going through the ceiling moves with him, not along any visible track, that he can see, but seeming rather more like a toy balloon on a string, bobbing along as though after a child winding their way through the crowd of a state fair. There’s a door by the teller’s window, and he makes for it, only for the window to slide open again, and that beautiful face to reappear. She looks him over, not seeming particularly impressed, but also not outright cruel. “Where’s your handbook?” she asks. Beetlejuice tilts his head. It lolls a little comically to one side, presumably because his neck is broken. She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. “You can’t be serious. You didn’t bring your handbook?” “Listen, lady, even if I had whatever book you’re talkin about, I couldn’t read it,” he counters, and she pauses, at that. “Illiterate. Of course. What’s even the point of the handbook when so many folks can’t read it?” she mutters to herself, and then she waives him at the door, the conversation apparently over. Alright.

The door, predictably, leads to a hallway, a bit unlike anything he’s ever seen before, in terms of sheer length of the thing. It twists around like a snake, and the number of doors along the hall leads him to believe wherever he is, it’s massive. The hallway is empty, save for a man at the far end, mopping, and there doesn’t seem to be anything around for him to tuck into his pockets. Too bad, he mopes, as he carries himself down the hall, boots clacking in a way he finds tactile and pleasant. He passes the custodian, who stares at the floor behind him and sighs, and Beetlejuice looks back to see a mess of dusty footprints he’s left on a previously slightly damp but otherwise pristine floor. With a snort, he spits into the bucket of mop water, and the other man jumps back, disgusted, as Beetlejuice cackles, and continues his leisurely walk down the hall.

At a certain point he realizes he’s got no idea where he’s going, but it doesn’t especially matter. Wherever he is now, whatever version of the afterlife this is, because clearly, that’s what this is, it doesn’t seem to be fire and brimstone and all that bullshit, so he takes it easy, opening doors at random and peeking through. The things he sees don’t always make sense to him, feel like they’re out of place from the world as he knows it. He opens one door, and suddenly he’s staring at what must be a city, but the buildings are so tall they’re touching the sky, going up past the clouds, up into the heaven he doesn’t believe can really be up there. The people are dressed strangely, men and women wandering around in little more than underclothes, which he likes, instantly, and the streets are black with painted yellow lines, instead of dust and earth. Some kind of metal.. Something, a trolley without a track, moves on it’s own down the street, and he catches a glimpse of faces inside. He gets lost in the contents of this door, staring for a long time, entranced, and then it’s slammed suddenly. He turns, catches sight of the custodian with his hand on the door, and growls, an animalistic sound he didn’t know he could do. And then he stops, and turns to look, because the custodian is still a ways behind him, mopping with spit water. It’s the same man. “You don’t need to go poking your snout into places it doesn’t belong,” the man says, simply, and then in a blink, both versions of him are gone from the hallway. Maybe that’s just an… afterlife thing.

He reaches, after what feels like a boring and dragging eternity of twenty whole minutes, a set of saloon doors, the swinging kind. There’s a void of blackness behind them, but the draw he feels is unmistakable, and he pushes them open, and walks through. Instead of a room black as ink, he finds himself… standing on the wooden porch of a bar he remembers frequenting fairly often, in his younger days. At least, he has clear memories of walking into the bar. How and when and why he ended up outside of it, well… whiskey has a hell of an effect on a man’s memory. It’s a fairly chilly desert night. The chirping of crickets and the long ways away lonely baying of a dog is a sort of familiar comfort, but god damn it, he’s just left this world. He wasn’t intending on coming back to it, ever. The dusty streets are dim, illuminated only by the moon, the stars, and the few lamps still burning in windows. The town is quiet.

On the dirt road in front of him is a woman, staring at him. She’s small, older, nicely dressed, with hair shorter than he’s ever seen on a lady, and a mouth sort of like a toad, long and downturned. There’s an unlit cigarette between her fingers. She’s watching him, curious and apathetic all at once. He returns the look. “Juno, then?” he grunts, stepping off the porch. No dust lifts when his boots hit the unpaved road, which he notes. Maybe he’s not really here. Maybe he’s a ghost. Fitting.

“Lawrence “Beetlejuice” Shoggoth,” she says, as he comes to stand in front of her. “Took you long enough. You realize I’ve been waiting here for days. You get lost, or something?” Her tone is sharp, like a schoolmarm with too much on her hands and not enough energy for it all. He feels a little sheepish, if only because no, he hadn’t realized that. “Gimme a break,” he says, instead of an apology. “I just died.” “Like that makes you special,” she huffs, and then, waving her unlit cigarette in his face, machine rolled, not hand, he notes, she asks, “Have you got a match?” He produces one from one of the many pockets of his moss green duster, strikes it on his thumb, and holds it up for her. She has the decency to look grateful, as she leans in, cigarette to her lips, and lights it from that little flame. “So,” she exhales smoke, and it curls from the corner of her lips, and out a previously unspotted slash to her throat. No wondering how she died, then. Speaking of, he glances up, to see that his noose is no longer floating above his head, and turning, he catches sight of it dragging on the ground behind him, long and snake-like in the way it’s twisted and coiled. Juno snaps her long red nails in his face, brings his attention back to her. “You weren’t supposed to die, you know. You’ve mucked things up for me.” “Whut?” he grunts, a bit thrown. She rubs her temples. “You were supposed to go in your seventies. Catch tuberculosis and wither away in obscurity. How old are you?” “Thirty four, or abouts,” he croaks, and she takes another drag. “You let yourself be caught,” she accuses. Well.. yeah. But how the hell does she know that? “I got pinned down in a shootout. Lucky they didn’t blow my head off, right then.” “You’ve gotten out of worse.” She looks almost.. Disappointed. “And then you put down your weapons, instead of fighting it out.” “I was surrounded.” “You were sloppy.” “What’s it to you, anyway?” he growls, again low and animalistic, which Juno ignores, as she walks circles around him, studying him. “You let yourself be caught, and you let yourself be hung. You didn’t even try to get away. You might not have killed yourself, but you let them kill you, for you,” she says. “And it’s giving me a hell of a time, both because it’s changed you, and because I have to put you somewhere, Beetlejuice, and now no one knows where you should go.” “So what does that mean?” “It means, my little statistical outlier, that you’re going to be staying up here, probably a lot broader a time than it would have taken you to just live your life and die at seventy,” she sighs, rubbing at her forehead. “Which is a shame. Because.. I was looking forward to.. To you. And now we both have to wait longer,” and here, she finishes her circle of him, to stand face to face with him again, and she flicks his ear, the way he always imagined an frustrated mother might. “Because you gave up. You weren’t supposed to give up.” “Wasn't much worth livin’ for,” he says, and it’s got more emotion behind it than he meant to give it. Juno’s hand goes to her throat, and she looks pained. “I guess that’s an inherited trait,” her voice is soft, and he squints at her, confused. Instead of giving him any context for that, she points down the dusty main road. Shining under the moonlight, he can see, vaguely, a dark shape suspended in air, near the gallows. “Go put your suit back on,” she says dryly. “And try not to cause enough trouble that I have to come up here and get after you, understood?” “What part of outlaw ain’t you gettin?” he snorts, and she responds by giving him an affectionate pat to his scruffy cheek, before she takes another drag, and vanishes inside the swirling smoke. He’s left standing on his own.

His “suit” is still hanging, he notes, looking up at himself. He’s strung up on a tall pole by the platform, leaving it free for more use, if need be, with his body on display as a gruesome reminder for potential criminals that this is a hanging town, and they’ve even hung their most despised son. His neck is bent at an ugly angle, a little bulge at the side betraying how exactly his bones had shattered, and his skin has gone a bad color, gray and foul looking. But aside from that, he’s not rotted the way he would think he ought to be. Juno’d said she’d been waiting for days, presumably meaning it has been days since his death, but his body is looking remarkably unbuzzard pecked and unrotted. He shimmies up the pole he’s hung from, his ghostly noose trailing behind him, and the moment he touches his own boot, the world spins, going upside down and inside out in a way that’s too painful to try and perceive.

“Gahh-” says Beetlejuice, because he’s back in his body, which is still being hung by that god damn noose, and he realizes, annoyed, that he has no way of cutting himself down. He kicks, pointlessly, one hand going to the rope at his neck, to clutch it and try to keep it from choking himself again, and the other grabbing at the rope further up, gripping it to pull himself up, give himself some slack, instead of hanging taught. It’s not the most coordinated he’s ever been. At least there’s no one around to watch him struggle.

“Holy shit, the body’s movin!” he hears someone holler. Oh, come on.

Read the rest, right over HERE

[conradscrime]

The Keddie Cabin Murders

April 30, 2021

In July 1979 a woman named Glenna Susan Sharp (known to everyone as “Sue”) left her Connecticut home with her 5 children after separating from her abusive husband, James Sharp. Sue and her children decided to move to California, where Sue’s brother Don was living. 

Sue first began renting a small trailer but then moved to house #28 in the community of Keddie. The previous occupant was a Plumas County sheriff, Sylvester Douglas Thomas, but when he moved out Sue and her 5 children, John age 15, Sheila age 14, Tina age 12, Rick age 10 and Greg age 5, moved in. 

Sue was a single mother of 5, struggling to make ends meet. She got $250 from her abusive ex, was on welfare and used food stamps. She also enrolled in a federal education program that allowed her to take business classes. Her classmates said she was a good student who got excellent grades, however they described her as a loner. 

A lot of people in the community didn’t like Sue. They gossiped about her being on welfare and they claimed she dated a lot of men. There was rumours that she slept with men for money or was dealing drugs. Most of the gossip about Sue was the fact that she kept to herself and didn’t have many friends, though Sue didn’t mind this. She didn’t care what people thought of her and she was only looking to improve her life, with dreams of opening her own business to be able to provide for her children. 

On April 11, 1981 at 11:30 am Sue and her children Sheila and Greg drove from their friends’ house to pick up her other son Rick who was at baseball tryouts at Gansner Field. On their drive Sue came across her eldest son John and his friend, Dana Wingate, who were hitchhiking from Quincy, California to Keddie. Sue picked the boys up and around 3:30 pm John and Dana hitchhiked back to Quincy where some believe that had plans to visit some of their friends. 

The evening of April 11, 1981 Sheila, Sue’s eldest daughter had plans to spend the night at her friends house, at the Seabolt family home, who happened to live adjacent to the Sharp’s home. Sheila left the home after 8pm and Sue was left with Rick, Greg and their friend Justin Eason (some sources call him Smartt) who was staying the night. Tina, Sue’s other daughter, was already at the Seabolt’s watching tv, but she returned home around 9:30 pm. 

Greg went to bed around 8:30 pm that night, and Tina at 9:30. Rick and Justin joined Sue to watch tv before they also went to bed around 10 pm. Sue stayed on the couch and was dozing off, but it was believed she didn’t want to fully go to bed until John and Dana returned. Allegedly people noticed some “odd” things that night. People heard a dog barking by Cabin #28 as well as noticing the back porch light was on at 4 am. 

At 7 or 8 am on the morning of April 12, 1981 Sheila arrived home from her sleepover at the Seabolt’s to change her clothes as she was planning to go to church with them, when she discovered the dead bodies of her mother Sue, her brother John, and John’s friend, Dana Wingate in the living room. All three had been bound with tape and wire. Tina was not found to be anywhere in the house, and the three younger children, Rick, Greg and their friend Justin were still alive, unharmed in a bedroom. Numerous sources say that the three boys must of slept through the murders though this claim has been contradicted. 

When Sheila discovered what had happened she ran back to the Seabolt’s home where Jamie Seabolt got Rick, Greg and Justin out of the house through the window. Jamie admitted he did enter the house through the backdoor at one point, to see if he could find anyone else alive, thus possibly contaminating the crime scene.

Two bloodied knives and one hammer were found at the scene, and one of the knives which was a steak knife had been bent at 30 degrees, clearly showing the brutality of the attack. The blood spatter evidence indicated that Sue, John and Dana had all been murdered in the living room where they were found.

Sue was found laying on her side near the sofa and nude from the waist down. She had been gagged with a blue bandana and her own panties which had been secured with tape. She had been stabbed in the chest and her throat was stabbed horizontally, the wound went through her larynx and nicking her spine. On the side of her head was an imprint matching the butt of a Daisy 880 Powerline BB/pellet rifle. Sheila claimed that the Sharp’s did not have any medical tape in the house so it was believed one of the killers brought it with them.

John’s throat had also been slashed and Dana had multiple head injuries and had been strangled to death. Both John and Dana had suffered blunt-force trauma to their heads caused by a hammer. The autopsies determined that Sue and John both died from knife wounds and blunt-force trauma but Dana had died from asphyxiation. 

Sheila and the Seabolt family both claimed they had not heard any commotion during the night however, a couple who lived nearby in house #16 were awakened at 1:15 am by what sounded like muffled screaming. Keddie cabin #28 showed no signs of forced entry but the telephone had been taken off the hook with the cord cut from the outlet and all the drapes were closed.

Tina, her shoes, jacket and a tool box were missing from the house. A man named Martin Smartt, who was a neighbour to the Sharp family and the step-father of Justin Eason, one of the boys found alive from the attack claimed that a claw hammer had gone missing from his home. The police interviewed Martin Smartt and determined that he gave “endless clues” in the case and seemed to want to throw suspicion away from himself. 

The police interviewed the Smartt family along with other locals and neighbours, including the Seabolt family who recalled seeing a green van parked at the Sharp’s house around 9pm.

A composite sketch of two suspects was drawn up based off testimony from Justin, who claims he witnessed the crimes. Justin gave lots of conflicting stories though, saying he had dreamt details of the murders but later claiming that he actually did witness them. Under hypnosis, Justin stated that he woke up to sounds coming from the living room while he was asleep in the bedroom with Rick and Greg. He went to see what the sounds were and saw Sue with two men, one with a moustache and short hair and the other was clean shaven with long hair. Both men were wearing gold framed glasses. 

Justin said John and Dana then entered the house and began to argue with the men. A fight broke out and Tina then entered the room and was taken out the cabin’s back door by one of the men. Because Justin’s story changed numerous times and his stepfather, Martin, was one of the main suspects, many believe Justin was threatened somehow, and that’s why his story changed a few times, to cover up for his stepfather. It also explains why Justin and the two younger boys were unharmed during the attack -- if Martin was involved why would he kill his stepson? Martin would of had to leave the two younger Sharp boys, Greg and Rick alone because they were sleeping in the same room as Justin. 

These composite sketches were drawn by a man named Harlan Embry who had no artistic abilities and was not trained in forensic sketching. There has never been an explanation as to why the police did not hire an actual forensic sketcher. The suspects were described as being in their late 20′s or early 30′s, one was between 5′11 to 6′2 tall with dark blonde hair and the other was between 5′6 to 5′10 with black greased hair.

Rumours began to start and some believed the murders had been ritualistic or had a drug trafficking motive. The Plumas County Sheriff, Doug Thomas, dismissed all of these stating that there was no drug paraphernalia or illegal drugs found in the home. A family acquaintance claimed that Dana Wingate had recently stolen LSD from local drug dealers but there was no proof of this. 

The police spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened at Keddie Cabin #28 that night and the case was described as “frustrating.” In December 1983 detectives ruled out serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole has suspects. 

The FBI thought Tina’s disappearance was a possible abduction. A grid pattern search of the area was done around the house with police canines but they found nothing.

On April 22, 1984, 3 years after the murders, a bottle collector found a portion of a human skull at Camp Eighteen near Feather Falls in Butte County, around 100 miles from Keddie. Shortly after the discovery, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office received an anonymous phone call with the person on the other end claiming those remains were Tina Sharp’s. This call was not documented in the case and a recording of it wasn’t found until 2013, at the bottom of an evidence box. The remains were positively identified as that of Tina Sharp in June 1984. Near Tina’s remains they found a blue nylon jacket, a blanket, a pair of Levi Strauss jeans with a missing back pocket and an empty surgical tape dispenser.

Keddie Cabin #28 was demolished in 2004 and in 2008 a documentary on the murders came out, with Marilyn Smartt, mother of Justin and wife of Martin Smartt, claiming that her husband and his friend John “Bo” Boubede who was living with the Smartt’s at the time, were responsible for the murders of the Sharp’s and Dana. Martin Smartt allegedly met John “Bo” a few weeks earlier in a Veteran’s hospital where he was being treated for PTSD after serving in the Vietnam war. Supposedly Martin was angry at Sue Sharp, claiming that she was interfering with his marriage as she allegedly would give Marilyn advice on how to leave his abuse. Martin was known to cheat on his wife, have violent outbursts and was even accused of selling drugs. Martin was working as a cook but had been fired a few weeks before the murders.

Marilyn Smartt claimed that on the night of the murders she left Martin and John “Bo” at a local bar around 11 pm and went home to go to sleep herself. Other sources say Marilyn went to the bar with the men herself and invited Sue to join them, but she declined. Supposedly all three came back home and when Marilyn went to bed at 11 the two men went back out to the bar. Around 2am she woke up to find the two men burning an unknown item in the wood stove. Marilyn also claimed that her husband Martin hated John Sharp with a passion. Other sources claim it was actually John “Bo” that didn’t like John Sharp and referred to him as a “punk.” 

However in the documentary, Sheriff Doug Thomas said he had interviewed Martin Smartt himself and that he had passed a polygraph test. Martin Smartt died of cancer in June 2000 (other sources say 2006). John “Bo” Boubede died in 1988 and apparently had ties to organized crime in Chicago. 

On March 24, 2016, almost 35 years after the murders, a hammer that was matching the description of the hammer Martin Smartt claimed had gone missing was found in a local pond and taken into evidence. Sheriff Hagwood who knew the Sharp family personally believes that this hammer was intentionally placed there. 

In a 2016 article published in the Sacramento Bee, it was stated that Martin Smartt left Keddie and drove to Reno, Nevada and while there sent Marilyn a letter that said, “I’ve paid the price of your love and now I’ve bought it with four people’s lives.” Marilyn, who has since been remarried, says she doesn’t recall ever receiving that letter but she did recognize the writing as being Martin’s. 

Plumas County Special Investigator Mike Gamberg stated that this letter was never taken into evidence and that the initial investigation of the murder’s in the 1980′s was done poorly. 

Martin Smartt’s counsellor also admitted that Martin told him about the murders of Sue and Tina, but claimed he didn’t have anything to do with the murders of John and Dana. He told the counsellor that Tina had to die because she had witnessed the whole thing and would be able to identify him. 

In April 2018, 37 years after the murders Mike Gamberg stated that there was DNA evidence found from a piece of tape at the crime scene and it was a match to a known living suspect. The investigation is still opened, with a $5000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest and prosecution in the case. 

The police say they know some of the living suspects who were involved in this case and are convinced that they are closer than ever to solving the Keddie Cabin murders. 

[straight-to-the-pain]

You wanna know something infuriating haha? So I ordered this new custom mask that's hand-stitched (support local artists) but the order got backlogged and the person said they'd need a bit of time because the mask I ordered was very heavily requested. I was like cool I don't mind waiting a little longer^^ It's been three months. I got the first shot. Second one is next week. Guess when my cool new mask arrives?

Next week.

At least I'll be able to not seem like a Republican in style.

Oh that’s frustrating! I remember way back when I was thinking this would all be over soon and wondering if I needed a mask or if I could just keep tying my bandana around my face...

Admittedly, a face covering is a face covering so I don’t judge people for how they choose to cover their face, but my uni provided some pretty decent masks that I’ve been wearing ever since.

I need to buy another one with a metal strip because that gives me the chance of wearing glasses without having them steam up the whole time. I had a nice lemon one from my friend but I lost it at work like a dummy :’(

[tomtenadia]

Island Dreams - Chapter 19

Good evening, afternoon, morning to everyone and welcome to chapter 19.

I have a few notes before letting you to the chapter. Rowan and Aelin finally attend Heb Celt. Heb Celt is this wonderful festival held in Stornoway each year (non covid years) and it's all about Scottish and Celtic music. It's big and it's amazing. That's where they are. I mentioned some groups. Peat and Diesel have been mentioned before in the fic. The new ones are Skerryvore and Skipinnish. they do some amazing music and I highly recommend it if you want to try some Scottish bands. They also sing in Gaelic. The song from Skerryvore that Aelin sing is called You and I. Awesome stuff.

Half way through you will notice Elide and Lorcan appearing in the fic. I tried to keep Lorcan IC as much as i could. not an easy task. I had to give them modern world jobs so Lorcan in my head is perfect for a rugby player. He is the Captain of the Glasgow warriors. They are a real team in Glasgow. The boys also mention the Six Nations. This is a wonderful competition that if you are in Europe you might have heard of. It happens every year and it has 6 teams competing: Scotland (YAY), Italy (YAY - I am Italian... imagine my pain on a Sco vs Ita game), Wales, Ireland and France. I love this competition and it's going to start this weekend. Rowan and Lorcan joke about England and Scotland. Although England wins most of the times (grrrrr) a few years back Scotland actually won and it almost became a new national day after St Andrews. I am not joking. Rugby is a big thing in Scotland.

Two Gaelic phrases: -Tha Gàidhlig agam cuideachd: I speak Gaelic too -Tha beagan Gàidhlig agam. I speak little Gaelic.

Quick update as well about the fic. Most of the chapters have some big chunks written. But there are two important chapters: 22 - something big happens. I wrote the main important part 5 times already and probably re write another five before i publish it. It involves something I don't usually write and I am really nervous. So finger crossed.

26: this will be the last chapter (there's an epilogue as well) and again I have written the main event. There is so much fluff that it's probably not healthy :)

So, after this massive introduction I can let you go and enjoy (hopefully) the chapter.

---------------

Aelin had woken up before Rowan that morning. It was finally mid July and it was Heb Celt day and she was super excited. The festival would run for three days but they had chosen the one with the most of their favourite artists. Plus Rowan had tickets for Peat and Diesel and they could not miss them. She rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen. That morning it was her turn for once to prepare breakfast. Rowan had taught her enough for her to make breakfast safely without burning the house down. It was a special day and she was going to make eggs and bacon, the only concession Rowan would make in his perfect diet. Once a week they could treat themselves to a non healthy breakfast. She prepared the coffee, sliced some bread for the toaster and started frying the bacon in one pan and getting the eggs ready as well. She felt good, she could make breakfast for Rowan for once. She was almost done when she felt his arms around her waist and a soft kiss behind her ear. “It smells lovely.”

“It’s a special day today so we are having our special breakfast.” She told him while finishing ti prepare the eggs. She was very proud of her job. “I’ll set the table.” He added and moved away and she missed his arms. “So, the main event is tonight at seven.” She said passing him the plates with food “I had a look at some events and it seems there is enough for us to fill up the entire day.” “You have done a good job,” he commented taking a bite of the food she had prepared for him. She tasted it as well and found it edible. Well, at least she was not going to poison them and he seemed satisfied. “Look at you.” He pulled her to him, and Aelin sat on his lap. She grabbed her plate and finished her breakfast with one of his arms around her. She was really loving it living with him. It had taken her a little while to adjust to his way of life but she had realised that living with him was quite easy. They had their little fights but he seemed to hate to hold grudges for too long so every time they had fixed their issues quite quickly. The two of them ate in silence for a moment “This is good, Fireheart.” And he polished off his plate. “I had a good teacher.” She stood and Rowan noticed that she was only wearing a large t-shirt, his t-shirt, and under it he could very barely notice her underwear. He grabbed her and pulled her back on his lap and she straddled him. His hands landed on her butt and she kissed him. “You really love teasing me, don’t you?” “It’s fun.” He looked at her in a weird way “Sure, torturing a poor man like that.” She got up again and took all the plates to the sink and she walked swaying her hips on purpose. Rowan almost howled at the sight. She started washing the dishes and at the same time she began dancing and singing and that’s the way we do it, the way we do it in the Western Isles. Rowan laughed and helped her. She washed and he dried them. She kept singing and bumped her hips into his and the two started dancing together. Once they were done Aelin went to her old room to get changed. She wore a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Then she braided her hair and tied a colourful bandana to her head. She prepared her backpack and she was ready to go. Once out, Rowan was waiting for her. He had blue shorts a grey t-shirt and on top of it a blue shirt with short sleeves and his sunglasses on top of his head. Aelin took a photo of him “so sexy.” He raised an eyebrow at her comment “I am not—“ “Shh…” she said placing a finger on his lips “I am your girlfriend and I am the one to judge.” He bit her finger in reply. “Fine, fine.” He grabbed her hand “Come on, I have a surprise for you.” Her face lit up and he could spend an entire day staring at her smiling at him. It was such a beautiful sight. They left the house and began their walk all the way to the harbour and Aelin was getting curious about their destination. They reached a small house down at the pier and Rowan pulled her toward the small group of people gathered. Aelin noticed another couple and a woman on her own. She was quite intent in studying the couple. The woman was quite petite with black hair and black eyes as well and she had a very bright smile. The man was almost the opposite. He was tall, Aelin suspected even taller than Rowan, something she could not believe it was possible. He had a thick muscular build with long dark hair and same for his eyes. But where she exuded a friendly attitude, he seemed to scowl even at the stones. “Is this part of the festival?” Wondering about his plan. “In a manner.” He explained quite vaguely “It’s just a pre festival fun.” Sure, now it was clear, thought Aelin, none the wiser. Rowan left her side for a moment and she noticed him talking with a man who, from the way he was dressed seemed to be a crew member on a boat. Rowan looked relaxed and Aelin suspected the two were friends. And with sadness she realised she had never met any of Rowan’s friend and he did not seem to mention any of them. “Ready for an adventure?” He told her once he came back, carrying two lifejackets. Aelin stared at him and then he pointed at the small rib boat and he gave her a huge grin. “I know one of crew members, Callum,” and he pointed at the man he was talking to. We used to dive together. I asked him if he could save us two seats for this morning. It’s a gorgeous day and a boat trip seems like the best way to spend the morning.” “You are a very resourceful man, Rowan Whitethorn.” She tiptoed on her feet and kissed his nose. One of the crew member walked around distributing lifejackets and explained the basic health and safety measures. Aelin wore her vest and Rowan double checked it was up to his standards. Once he was happy that the jacket was safely on he helped her to get on the rib. The brunette girl who was part of the couple sat beside her giving her a wide smile full of excitement that probably mirrored Aelin’s. “I am Elide.” The woman introduced herself and Aelin took her hand. “I am Aelin.” She smiled back “Are you here for the festival too?” She had a feeling they were tourists. “Yes,” she replied excited “Lorcan and I come every year. We love it.” Then she turned to the man at her side “This is Lorcan by the way. Don’t worry he does not bite. That is just his regular face” and the man grunted in reply. Aelin laughed. The man seemed to be mad at the world. She turned to introduce Rowan to the couple, but she noticed he was still on the pier chatting away with one of the crew members. “The tall guy on the pier with the blue shirt? My boyfriend, Rowan.” Elide’s gaze took in Rowan and Aelin smiled wickedly at the woman’s stare of understanding. “Did you come here for the festival too?” “Oh, Rowan and I live here. He is the local, I moved her a few months ago.” “Nice,” said the woman. Aelin liked her already, she had a very bubbly personality. “Lorcan and I live in Glasgow.” “I never been there but Rowan did uni there..” “You should come and visit. It’s quite a fantastic city. So alive.” Rowan finally returned and sat down beside Aelin “nice chat?” “Yeah, I haven’t seen him in ages. I knew he had opened a boat tours business but I never had the chance to come and say hi. We were just discussing some ideas for possible diving adventures.” She caressed his head and realised that there was still so much she did not know about him. Some days he still felt like a huge mystery, but still, she was madly in love with him and she was looking to find out more about him day by day. “I made a friend by the way,” and she pointed at the woman at her side “This is Elide. She and her boyfriend Lorcan are here for the festival too.” Rowan extended his hand and then he and Lorcan exchanged a manly nod and both women rolled their eyes. Rowan fussed over her again and double checked one more time that her lifejacket was fitted and tied properly, when the rib boat started to move. His hand reached behind her back and he leaned comfortably against the side of the boat and closed his eyes, letting the sun kiss his face. Aelin and Elide on the other hand, were taking photos and chatting away happily pointing at all the points of interest. The boat glided on the water and Aelin leaned back against Rowan, taking in the scenery in front of her. She had explored all of that during her adventures, but seeing it from the water was a completely different experience. “Thank you for this.” She said to him. “Hopefully we will see some wildlife.” He added “Callum said that yesterday they spotted Orcas.” Aelin’s eyes went wide in surprise “I saw whales at the Butt of Lewis, or what I think it was whales.” “Highly likely.” Then she turned to Elide “So, you guys are staying here for the whole festival?” The woman nodded “Yes, Lorcan and I always rent a cottage for a week and spend the whole weekend at the festival. I am looking forward the main event tonight: Peat and Diesel.” Aelin almost squealed “us too. Rowan introduced me to them very recently and I am dying to see them live.” “We have been to one of their concerts in Glasgow at the Barrowlands.” Said Lorcan almost grumbling. “Oh, he speaks,” joked Elide, patting his leg and giving him a smile. He did not reply and just placed a hand on her back. “What about we spend the day together?” Aelin turned all excited to Rowan who gave her a nod “Yes,” she shouted looking at Elide again. They sailed for a bit longer and reached Tiumpan Head and Rowan told her to keep and eye on the sea. Not a moment later she spotted a couple of fins and she and Elide almost jumped. “Dolphins,” Rowan said in her ear. She made a 360 and sat on her knees facing now the water. She felt Rowan’s arm tight around her waist. “Please, don’t fall in the water.” Her hand was in the water and a dolphin passed very close to her and she almost touched it. Rowan used his free hand to take pictures of her. His phone gallery had nothing but pictures of Aelin. Elide turned as well and Rowan noticed the panic in the other man’s eyes and they exchanged a glance of understanding. Aelin leaned a bit further but Rowan’s arm pulled her back “Please don’t. Lifeguard service is not in my plans for today.” “There’s dolphins around the boat.” Aelin squealed. “I know, Fireheart,” he pulled her back “but you need to calm down.” She sat back down to a safer position and Rowan felt like he could breath again. “Is that Tolsta?” She then asked when they continued north and she recognised the place in front of her. The closer they got to the beach the clearer the water got and Aelin was in awe “This reminds me of when Lys and I swam at Luskentyre.” Oh yeah, Rowan remembered the day and very quickly chased the memories away. They were in public. The boat made a turn and they began to make their way back to the town. Aelin snuggled to Rowan’s chest, with her arms around his waist. “Are you cold?” He demanded “I have your favourite hoodie with me.” “I am fine.” An hour later they were back at the harbour and Aelin was high on excitement. The trip had been amazing. Once off the boat she flung her arms around Rowan’s neck and kissed him “Thank you. I loved my surprise.” “You are most welcome.” He pulled back from her “Let me say bye to Callum.” And she was left alone with Elide and Lorcan. “That was a nice trip.” Said the woman, grabbing her boyfriend’s hand. “Totally. I had never seen dolphins before. It was so awesome.” “Really?” Elide was curious. Aelin nodded “Until a few months ago I lived in London. Born and bred there. Not much chance to see dolphins in the water. I doubt they would enjoy the Thames.” Elide gazed at Lorcan “We were planning a quick weekend in the capital next month.” “Ask me anything. I can tell you the best places to go and how to survive London without breaking the bank.” “That would be lovely,” was Lorcan’s reply “I feel like I need a mortgage for this trip.” He kissed the woman’s head and she noticed the first sign of affection “But it’s a belated birthday present, so…” he shrugged. “Ach, I can help you with that. I survived London on a budget when I was student.” Rowan finally came back and embraced her from behind “Sorry, Callum and I were just planning an excursion for next Sunday.” He kissed her ear. “Can I come too?” “Of course.” Then he lifted his head and looked at their two companions for the day “Aelin and I are going to grab lunch, fancy joining us?” Lorcan almost protested but Elide poked his shoulder “Stop being grumpy.” Then she turned to Aelin and Rowan “Of course we are coming.” Rowan smiled and took Aelin’s hand and started walking to Maeve’s. He laughed when he noticed that Aelin was almost skipping. Gods, the woman had never ending energy. While walking to Maeve’s Rowan and Lorcan ended up side by side and Aelin just noticed that her assumption was right and Lorcan really was taller that Rowan. The man must have been closer to two metres. She felt tiny all of a sudden and Elide seemed even more petite beside the huge man. She could put Aedion with them as well and they could form a sexy, tall wall of muscles. She grinned and was glad that Rowan was busy talk to Elide so he did not notice her savage blush. They reached the cafe and noticed that it was packed and Rowan sighed. He loved the festival but it also meant a savage invasion disrupting his day to day life. He entered first and went to his aunt and Aelin smiled when she noticed that Maeve had managed to find some space for them. “Privileges of being related to the owner,” he smiled, going back to them. “This is a lovely place,” commented Elide “why we never stopped here?” “So, will you be enjoying the entire festival as well?” Asked Elide, passing a menu to Lorcan. “No, Rowan and I will be doing today only. Tomorrow we have to reopen the bookshop.” The woman’s eyes lit up in surprise “do you run the bookshop down the road?” Rowan nodded “It’s my shop.” He took Aelin’s hand in his “she helps.” “Yeah, I fix his displays and I charm customer. Rowan scares them away by being a grump” She grinned back at him and he, in exchange, flicked her nose. “I am a primary school teacher,” continued Elide who was definitely the chattier of the pair “And Lorcan is the coach of the Glasgow Warriors. They are a rugby team.” And Aelin was grateful to the woman for the clarification. “No way.” Said Rowan amazed “That’s why you looked familiar. You were their captain until a few years back. Lorcan Salvaterre.” Lorcan nodded. “I studied at Glasgow university and the Warriors were, and still are, my favourite team. I went to see plenty of their games. You guys are awesome.” “You like rugby?” “Aye,” added Rowan and Aelin studied him for a moment. He was alive all of a sudden, his usual calm disappeared and he was one beautiful sight “Stornoway has a small club and I go and watch some of the games. But I miss the big league guys. I usually get tickets for the Six Nations as well.” Lorcan smiled “I can get you some tickets for one of Scotland’s home games. Perhaps for the one against England. Wonder if it will be finally the year we trash them as they deserve.” “Hey,” Aelin exclaimed almost hurt “English woman here.” And as a joke she pushed her London accent. “No one is perfect, Fireheart.” Rowan kissed her temple. She pinched his side and he barely reacted “Fine, I will support England this year, just to annoy you” She threatened and the two guys glared at her. “Fine.” She raised her hands “but you need to teach me Flower of Scotland.” “It would be my pleasure.” And he pulled her to him and in that instant Maeve came with their order “Sorry for the wait guys, we are quite busy today.” Rowan said something in Gaelic to his aunt and she walked away with a smile. Elide turned to him “Tha Gàidhlig agam cuideachd.” Rowan’s face lit up. “I teach at the Glasgow Gaelic School. I am not a native. I picked it up at uni and I fell in love with it. I spent some time on the islands to learn it and then I got a job as a teacher.” “Yeah if she starts to shout at me in Gaelic I know she is really mad at me.” The man joked taking her hand. “I only know a few sentences. Tha beagan Gàidhlig agam.” Aelin said proudly “Rowan has been teaching me.” They finished their lunch chatting away nicely and getting to know each other. Lorcan did manage to utter a few more sentences but he became quite talkative once he and Rowan started talking about rugby. Aelin ordered a trip to the ice cream parlour. And the boys followed. Aelin took Elide’s arm and let Rowan and Lorcan follow. They were super immersed in their conversation. Aelin wished Lysandra was there too. She had a feeling the three of them would get along greatly. Aelin and Elide got a triple cone and the two men just went for something more sober with just one flavour. “Look at them all perfect and healthy.” Aelin mocked them and Elide giggled at her side. Rowan, in front of her just met her gaze and then licked his ice cream in a very taunting way and took great pleasure in noticing her reaction. Aelin almost chocked and his eyes flashed in amusement. A wall, she just wanted a wall and twenty minutes alone with him to remove that smirk form his face. He knew he had rattled her and hated the way he casually went back talking to Lorcan. She would have her revenge. Eventually her mind started functioning again and went back talking to Elide, hoping the woman had not noticed their exchange. That would have been embarrassing. Slowly they reached the festival grounds. They made it till four and they still had three hours to fill in before the main event. They all collected their tickets and ventured inside the main arena. Aelin squeezed Rowan’s hand and once she turned to him she noticed he had the most amazing smile. “We got a concert coming up.” Said Elide, then grabbed a notebook and scribbled something down “this is my number. Text me later. We can meet again for the main event.” Aelin took the piece of paper and then the notebook and wrote her number for the woman “Looking forward to.” The two said their goodbyes and Rowan finally pulled Aelin to him and kissed her deeply “I had to restrain myself all afternoon.” “You are a wicked man,” a whisper against his lips “You will pay for the ice cream trick.” But in response his kiss deepened and his tongue repeated some of the motions he did early. “Unless you want me to drag you in a hidden corner and have sex at a festival, you’d better stop it.” He laughed “Yes, Fireheart.” And mirth flashed in his pine green eyes. “Come on, let’s go and have a look at the merchandise. See if we can get you a P&D hoodie.” And he dragged her to the area with all the stalls. “Uh, food stalls.” She pulled on one side. “Later. We just had a massive lunch and ice cream.” “You are no fun.” She complained while following him. He walked with her in tow for a little longer and they finally found all the stall with the merchandise for the bands and the festival in general. “Look,” he said to her pointing at the big stall of the band “Good thing we are here early, we can do all these things now. Later on it will be mobbed.” Aelin got closer to the stall and started having a look at the hoodies. She noticed a green one and gave it a try. She had decided that for some reason green reminded her of Rowan, perhaps for his eyes, but the colour now was a reminder of him. She tried on the hoodie and Rowan turned and stared at her in appreciation. “You look lovely.” “I’ll take it.” As Rowan turned again, apparently interested by what was going on on the big screen and she used the moment to buy a t-shirt for him. His birthday was coming up and this was the second part of her present. She paid for her stuff and quickly placed the t-shirt in her backpack before he would turn again. She embraced him from behind and leaned her head against his back, he turned, “I really, really like it.” And kissed her forehead. They wandered a bit longer until they finally reached one of the smaller stages where the first band they were waiting for was going to play soon. They did manage to squeeze to the front and Aelin felt bad for whoever ended up behind Rowan. He pulled her in front of him and his arms went around her neck “Are you ready to sing?” She nodded. The band was called Skipinnish and one was one of Rowan’s favourite and she agreed that they did some wonderful music. The group started with a slow song and Aelin danced on the spot in Rowan’s arms and she felt like the happiest woman alive. In his arms she was finally happy. As if the last year ceased to exist all of a sudden. That had been his magic. He had slowly taken away all the grief she had felt until only a few months ago. He had given her again the desire to dream. She squeezed his hand and tried to convey somehow all those feeling in that simple gesture. The music suddenly picked up in pace and Rowan turned her to him, one of her hand landed on his chest and the other one in his hand that he held high. He started dancing and she swayed with him, then he lifted her and turned on the spot and put her back. A quick kiss and they kept dancing. His eyes alive with happiness. She giggled and he smiled at that sound. All through their dance, Aelin sang, impressing him by her knowledge. She only refrained from singing the songs in Gaelic, that was still too much of a challenge. They danced for another few hours then they moved to the next stage where Skerryvore, the next band they wanted to see was going to play. This time they ended up at the back, but Rowan had Aelin climb on his back, piggyback style, and that allowed her to see the stage a little better. She could not dance but loved her position. Her chin leaned on his head and her arms went around his neck. She took a sniff of his wonderful scent of pine and snow and kissed the back of his head. One of Aelin’s favourite songs began playing and she sang out loud you and I, we held each other tight. Time will take its toll, but I will never let you go. Your love is like a high, you and I. Our love can never die, together as we grow. I’ll always let you know, you’re my reason why Rowan joined in and she hugged him tighter and her head leaned against his head. “I love you,” she whispered while he was busy singing the chorus. It was past six when the concert finished. Aelin looked at her phone and noticed a text from Elide telling her that she and Lorcan were already at the main stage and they had a spot at the very front. “Let’s go.” Aelin grabbed Rowan’s hand “Elide and Lorcan have spot fro us as well at the front of the stage.” Luckily the main stage area was not busy yet, and they found the couple quite quickly. Rowan had a look and noticed they had found a good spot. “This is perfect.” Rowan commented. “Not our first festival.” Lorcan grinned back. Aelin and Elide were huddled together talking and being all excited for the grand event. Aelin paraded her hoodie and Elide showed her the t-shirt and the hoodie she had bought as well. Rowan really thought he had created a monster. With the passing of time the area started to fill and Aelin could feel the excitement around them. Half an hour later the show started with a roar. Aelin climbed on Rowan’s shoulders again and she noticed that Lorcan offered the same to Elide. Aelin roared as well and shouted as soon as she recognised the notes of the first song Stornoway of course. She sang with all of her voice and waved her hands in the air. She and Elide grabbed their hands and sang and waved together. Then they moved to Western Isles and the crowd went wild. Rowan laughed at Aelin’s wild excitement and was impressed by the fact that Aelin really had learned all the lyrics. “And that’s the way we do it, the way we do it in the Western Isles” she was singing with a passion and his mind went to that morning when she was cooking breakfast in nothing but a baggy t-shirt while singing and dancing to that song. Rowan moved a bit dancing as much as possible with Aelin on his shoulder but he sang as well and with his hand he beat the rhythm on Aelin’s legs. The band was playing some of their hits and he was having the time of his life. He had never been able to convince Lyria to go to Heb Celt with him. Her music taste was different and she was never interested in that type of music so he had gone alone for a very long time. But now he had Aelin and she was basically perfect. The guys started playing My islands and Aelin let out a savage cheer and then started to sing. She slowly slid off his back and started dancing and jumping in front of him shaking her head at the rhythm of the music Elide at her side being just as wild. She took his hands and danced on the spot as much as the crowd allowed it. Aelin took some photos of her and Rowan and went back dancing. It was quite late when the concert finished. Aelin and Elide were now walking silently hand in hand with their respective men. “I think they finally ran out of fuel.” Joked Rowan, seeing the two women quiet. “It took them a while, but eventually it happened.” Joked Lorcan who had slowly opened up a bit more. “You are both so mean.” Said Elide leaning against Lorcan. “Yes, and you are going to fall asleep soon.” Lorcan crouched down and offered to carry Elide piggyback “Come on, time to get you to bed.” “Are you coming to the ceilidh at An Lanntair tomorrow?” Aelin and Rowan looked at each other “we might,” she said. “Let us know.” Said Lorcan settling Elide properly on his back “Thanks for the day and evening.” And the two slowly walked away. Rowan turned to Aelin and noticed she had a massive grin on her face. Alas, she seemed to have some energy left. “That was awesome.” She took both of his hands “And we need to go to the ceilidh tomorrow. It’s your birthday. We need to celebrate.” “Fine. We can go. But now we are going home. You have to rest and recharge the batteries for the ceilidh.” She leaned forward and kissed him “Thank you so much for this. It was unbelievable.” He pulled her to him and lifted her and pirouetted while kissing her. Finally they started making their way home and when Rowan noticed that Aelin was on the verge of falling asleep on her feet he offered a piggyback ride and she accepted. By the time they got back home she was fully asleep. At home he deposited her on the bed and he started to ponder how to get her out of her current clothes and into a pyjama. He went to get her Cookie Monster pyjama, removed her hoodie and placed it on the chair at the bottom of the room. Next it was the t-shirt and her shorts and he tried to look away. He was about to put the new clothes away when she groaned and woke up briefly. “I am just changing you into your pj.” He told her gently. Still half asleep she let him guide her body into her night clothes. Then he realised she liked to sleep without a bra and he had no idea how to solve that one. “Bra…” she muttered. “I am… you…” he tried to hide his embarrassment “you do that.” She muttered something unintelligible and removed her bra and threw it in his face. Then collapsed on the bed and went back to sleep. Rowan slowly tucked her in then changed in own night clothes and joined her. His arms went around her waist tucked her head in the crook of his neck. Not longer after he was asleep as well.

[hldailyupdate]

Playtime With Harry Styles

THE MEN’S BATHING POND in London’s Hampstead Heath at daybreak on a gloomy September morning seemed such an unlikely locale for my first meeting with Harry Styles, music’s legendarily charm-heavy style czar, that I wondered perhaps if something had been lost in translation.

But then there is Styles, cheerily gung ho, hidden behind a festive yellow bandana mask and a sweatshirt of his own design, surprisingly printed with three portraits of his intellectual pinup, the author Alain de Botton. “I love his writing,” says Styles. “I just think he’s brilliant. I saw him give a talk about the keys to happiness, and how one of the keys is living among friends, and how real friendship stems from being vulnerable with someone.”

In turn, de Botton’s 2016 novel The Course of Love taught Styles that “when it comes to relationships, you just expect yourself to be good at it…[but] being in a real relationship with someone is a skill,” one that Styles himself has often had to hone in the unforgiving klieg light of public attention, and in the company of such high-profile paramours as Taylor Swift and—well, Styles is too much of a gentleman to name names.

That sweatshirt and the Columbia Records tracksuit bottoms are removed in the quaint wooden open-air changing room, with its Swallows and Amazons vibe. A handful of intrepid fellow patrons in various states of undress are blissfully unaware of the 26-year-old supernova in their midst, although I must admit I’m finding it rather difficult to take my eyes off him, try as I might. Styles has been on a six-day juice cleanse in readiness for Vogue’s photographer Tyler Mitchell. He practices Pilates (“I’ve got very tight hamstrings—trying to get those open”) and meditates twice a day. “It has changed my life,” he avers, “but it’s so subtle. It’s helped me just be more present. I feel like I’m able to enjoy the things that are happening right in front of me, even if it’s food or it’s coffee or it’s being with a friend—or a swim in a really cold pond!” Styles also feels that his meditation practices have helped him through the tumult of 2020: “Meditation just brings a stillness that has been really beneficial, I think, for my mental health.”

Styles has been a pescatarian for three years, inspired by the vegan food that several members of his current band prepared on tour. “My body definitely feels better for it,” he says. His shapely torso is prettily inscribed with the tattoos of a Victorian sailor—a rose, a galleon, a mermaid, an anchor, and a palm tree among them, and, straddling his clavicle, the dates 1967 and 1957 (the respective birth years of his mother and father). Frankly, I rather wish I’d packed a beach muumuu.

We take the piratical gangplank that juts into the water and dive in. Let me tell you, this is not the Aegean. The glacial water is a cloudy phlegm green beneath the surface, and clammy reeds slap one’s ankles. Styles, who admits he will try any fad, has recently had a couple of cryotherapy sessions and is evidently less susceptible to the cold. By the time we have swum a full circuit, however, body temperatures have adjusted, and the ice, you might say, has been broken. Duly invigorated, we are ready to face the day. Styles has thoughtfully brought a canister of coffee and some bottles of water in his backpack, and we sit at either end of a park bench for a socially distanced chat.

It seems that he has had a productive year. At the onset of lockdown, Styles found himself in his second home, in the canyons of Los Angeles. After a few days on his own, however, he moved in with a pod of three friends (and subsequently with two band members, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones). They “would put names in a hat and plan the week out,” Styles explains. “If you were Monday, you would choose the movie, dinner, and the activity for that day. I like to make soups, and there was a big array of movies; we went all over the board,” from Goodfellas to Clueless. The experience, says Styles, “has been a really good lesson in what makes me happy now. It’s such a good example of living in the moment. I honestly just like being around my friends,” he adds. “That’s been my biggest takeaway. Just being on my own the whole time, I would have been miserable.”

Styles is big on friendship groups and considers his former and legendarily hysteria-inducing boy band, One Direction, to have been one of them. “I think the typical thing is to come out of a band like that and almost feel like you have to apologize for being in it,” says Styles. “But I loved my time in it. It was all new to me, and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I wanted to soak it in…. I think that’s probably why I like traveling now—soaking stuff up.” In a post-COVID future, he is contemplating a temporary move to Tokyo, explaining that “there’s a respect and a stillness, a quietness that I really loved every time I’ve been there.”

In 1D, Styles was making music whenever he could. “After a show you’d go in a hotel room and put down some vocals,” he recalls. As a result, his first solo album, 2017’s Harry Styles, “was when I really fell in love with being in the studio,” he says. “I loved it as much as touring.” Today he favors isolating with his core group of collaborators, “our little bubble”—Rowland, Kid Harpoon (né Tom Hull), and Tyler Johnson. “A safe space,” as he describes it.

In the music he has been working on in 2020, Styles wants to capture the experimental spirit that informed his second album, last year’s Fine Line. With his debut album, “I was very much finding out what my sound was as a solo artist,” he says. “I can see all the places where it almost felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. I think with the second album I let go of the fear of getting it wrong and…it was really joyous and really free. I think with music it’s so important to evolve—and that extends to clothes and videos and all that stuff. That’s why you look back at David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust or the Beatles and their different eras—that fearlessness is super inspiring.”

The seismic changes of 2020—including the Black Lives Matter uprising around racial justice—has also provided Styles with an opportunity for personal growth. “I think it’s a time for opening up and learning and listening,” he says. “I’ve been trying to read and educate myself so that in 20 years I’m still doing the right things and taking the right steps. I believe in karma, and I think it’s just a time right now where we could use a little more kindness and empathy and patience with people, be a little more prepared to listen and grow.”

Meanwhile, Styles’s euphoric single “Watermelon Sugar” became something of an escapist anthem for this dystopian summer of 2020. The video, featuring Styles (dressed in ’70s-­flavored Gucci and Bode) cavorting with a pack of beach-babe girls and boys, was shot in January, before lockdown rules came into play. By the time it was ready to be released in May, a poignant epigraph had been added: “This video is dedicated to touching.”

Styles is looking forward to touring again, when “it’s safe for everyone,” because, as he notes, “being up against people is part of the whole thing. You can’t really re-create it in any way.” But it hasn’t always been so. Early in his career, Styles was so stricken with stage fright that he regularly threw up preperformance. “I just always thought I was going to mess up or something,” he remembers. “But I’ve felt really lucky to have a group of incredibly generous fans. They’re generous emotionally—and when they come to the show, they give so much that it creates this atmosphere that I’ve always found so loving and accepting.”

THIS SUMMER, when it was safe enough to travel, Styles returned to his London home, which is where he suggests we head now, setting off in his modish Primrose Yellow ’73 Jaguar that smells of gasoline and leatherette. “Me and my dad have always bonded over cars,” Styles explains. “I never thought I’d be someone who just went out for a leisurely drive, purely for enjoyment.” On sleepless jet-lagged nights he’ll drive through London’s quiet streets, seeing neighborhoods in a new way. “I find it quite relaxing,” he says.

Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy, setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard charts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

When Styles’s London renovation was finally done, “I went in for the first time and I cried,” he recalls. “Because I just felt like I had somewhere. L.A. feels like holiday, but this feels like home.”

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicks album cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles makes us some tea in the light-filled kitchen and then wanders into the convivial living room, where he strikes an insouciant pose on the chesterfield sofa, upholstered in a turquoise velvet that perhaps not entirely coincidentally sets off his eyes. Styles admits that his lockdown lewk was “sweatpants, constantly,” and he is relishing the opportunity to dress up again. He doesn’t have to wait long: The following day, under the eaves of a Victorian mansion in Notting Hill, I arrive in the middle of fittings for Vogue’s shoot and discover Styles in his Y-fronts, patiently waiting to try on looks for fashion editor Camilla Nickerson and photographer Tyler Mitchell. Styles’s personal stylist, Harry Lambert, wearing a pearl necklace and his nails colored in various shades of green varnish, à la Sally Bowles, is providing helpful backup (Britain’s Rule of Six hasn’t yet been imposed).

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness, is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

MITCHELL has Lionel Wendt’s languorously homoerotic 1930s portraits of young Sri Lankan men on his mood board. Nickerson is thinking of Irving Penn’s legendary fall 1950 Paris haute couture collections sitting, where he photographed midcentury supermodels, including his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, in high-style Dior and Balenciaga creations. Styles is up for all of it, and so, it would seem, is the menswear landscape of 2020: Jonathan Anderson has produced a trapeze coat anchored with a chunky gold martingale; John Galliano at Maison Margiela has fashioned a khaki trench with a portrait neckline in layers of colored tulle; and Harris Reed—a Saint Martins fashion student sleuthed by Lambert who ended up making some looks for Styles’s last tour—has spent a week making a broad-shouldered Smoking jacket with high-waisted, wide-leg pants that have become a Styles signature since he posed for Tim Walker for the cover of Fine Line wearing a Gucci pair—a silhouette that was repeated in the tour wardrobe. (“I liked the idea of having that uniform,” says Styles.) Reed’s version is worn with a hoopskirt draped in festoons of hot-pink satin that somehow suggests Deborah Kerr asking Yul Brynner’s King of Siam, “Shall we dance?”

Styles introduces me to the writer and eyewear designer Gemma Styles, “my sister from the same womb,” he says. She is also here for the fitting: The siblings plan to surprise their mother with the double portrait on these pages.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“My mum loved to dress us up,” she remembers. “I always hated it, and Harry was always quite into it. She did some really elaborate papier-mâché outfits: She made a giant mug and then painted an atlas on it, and that was Harry being ‘The World Cup.’ Harry also had a little dalmatian-dog outfit,” she adds, “a hand-me-down from our closest family friends. He would just spend an inordinate amount of time wearing that outfit. But then Mum dressed me up as Cruella de Vil. She was always looking for any opportunity!”

“As a kid I definitely liked fancy dress,” Styles says. There were school plays, the first of which cast him as Barney, a church mouse. “I was really young, and I wore tights for that,” he recalls. “I remember it was crazy to me that I was wearing a pair of tights. And that was maybe where it all kicked off!”

Acting has also remained a fundamental form of expression for Styles. His sister recalls that even on the eve of his life-changing X Factor audition, Styles could sing in public only in an assumed voice. “He used to do quite a good sort of Elvis warble,” she remembers. During the rehearsals in the family home, “he would sing in the bathroom because if it was him singing as himself, he just couldn’t have anyone looking at him! I love his voice now,” she adds. “I’m so glad that he makes music that I actually enjoy listening to.”

Styles cuts a cool figure in this black-white-and-red-all-over checked coat by JW Anderson.

Styles’s role-playing continued soon after 1D went on permanent hiatus in 2016, and he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, beating out dozens of professional actors for the role. “The good part was my character was a young soldier who didn’t really know what he was doing,” says Styles modestly. “The scale of the movie was so big that I was a tiny piece of the puzzle. It was definitely humbling. I just loved being outside of my comfort zone.”

His performance caught the eye of Olivia Wilde, who remembers that it “blew me away—the openness and commitment.” In turn, Styles loved Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, and is “very honored” that she cast him in a leading role for her second feature, a thriller titled Don’t Worry Darling, which went into production this fall. Styles will play the husband to Florence Pugh in what Styles describes as “a 1950s utopia in the California desert.”

Wilde’s movie is costumed by Academy Award nominee Arianne Phillips. “She and I did a little victory dance when we heard that we officially had Harry in the film,” notes Wilde, “because we knew that he has a real appreciation for fashion and style. And this movie is incredibly stylistic. It’s very heightened and opulent, and I’m really grateful that he is so enthusiastic about that element of the process—some actors just don’t care.”

“I like playing dress-up in general,” Styles concurs, in a masterpiece of understatement: This is the man, after all, who cohosted the Met’s 2019 “Notes on Camp” gala attired in a nipple-freeing black organza blouse with a lace jabot, and pants so high-waisted that they cupped his pectorals. The ensemble, accessorized with the pearl-drop earring of a dandified Elizabethan courtier, was created for Styles by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, whom he befriended in 2014. Styles, who has subsequently personified the brand as the face of the Gucci fragrance, finds Michele “fearless with his work and his imagination. It’s really inspiring to be around someone who works like that.”

The two first met in London over a cappuccino. “It was just a kind of PR appointment,” says Michele, “but something magical happened, and Harry is now a friend. He has the aura of an English rock-and-roll star—like a young Greek god with the attitude of James Dean and a little bit of Mick Jagger—but no one is sweeter. He is the image of a new era, of the way that a man can look.”

Styles credits his style trans­formation—from Jack Wills tracksuit-clad boy-band heartthrob to nonpareil fashionisto—to his meeting the droll young stylist Harry Lambert seven years ago. They hit it off at once and have conspired ever since, enjoying a playfully campy rapport and calling each other Sue and Susan as they parse the niceties of the scarlet lace Gucci man-bra that Michele has made for Vogue’s shoot, for instance, or a pair of Bode pants hand-painted with biographical images (Styles sent Emily Adams Bode images of his family, and a photograph he had found of David Hockney and Joni Mitchell. “The idea of those two being friends, to me, was really beautiful,” Styles explains).

“He just has fun with clothing, and that’s kind of where I’ve got it from,” says Styles of Lambert. “He doesn’t take it too seriously, which means I don’t take it too seriously.” The process has been evolutionary. At his first meeting with Lambert, the stylist proposed “a pair of flares, and I was like, ‘Flares? That’s fucking crazy,’  ” Styles remembers. Now he declares that “you can never be overdressed. There’s no such thing. The people that I looked up to in music—Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John—they’re such showmen. As a kid it was completely mind-blowing. Now I’ll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don’t feel crazy wearing it. I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it’s like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything—anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matches.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

“To me, he’s very modern,” says Wilde of Styles, “and I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has—truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity—is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world. I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”

“He’s really in touch with his feminine side because it’s something natural,” notes Michele. “And he’s a big inspiration to a younger generation—about how you can be in a totally free playground when you feel comfortable. I think that he’s a revolutionary.”

There are references aplenty in this look by Harris Reed, which features a Victoriana crinoline, 1980s shoulders, and pants of zoot-suit proportions.

STYLES’S confidence is on full display the day after the fitting, which finds us all on the beautiful Sussex dales. Over the summit of the hill, with its trees blown horizontal by the fierce winds, lies the English Channel. Even though it’s a two-hour drive from London, the fresh-faced Styles, who went to bed at 9 p.m., has arrived on set early: He is famously early for everything. The team is installed in a traditional flint-stone barn. The giant doors have been replaced by glass and frame a bucolic view of distant grazing sheep. “Look at that field!” says Styles. “How lucky are we? This is our office! Smell the roses!” Lambert starts to sing “Kumbaya, my Lord.”

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Diana bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

As the wide sky is washed in pink, orange, and gray, like a Turner sunset, and Mitchell calls it a successful day, Styles is playing “Cherry” from Fine Line on his Fender acoustic on the hilltop. “He does his own stunts,” says his sister, laughing. The impromptu set is greeted with applause. “Thank you, Antwerp!” says Styles playfully, bowing to the crowd. “Thank you, fashion!”

[theo-sev]

Musing on the future of the Leverage OT3 (663 words)

They’ve been in Portland for close to three years when Hardison realises that they can’t take any more local jobs. Things have been going reasonably well for them, they’re all a bit older and more battle worn than when they first moved there, but as a team of three they function better than even Nate could ever have predicted. They’re all comfortable with the current set up in Portland, with the Brewpub and their living spaces in the building above, but Hardison and Parker could burn it all at a moment's notice if it really came down to it.

Sure Hardison knows he’d bitch and whine about losing his tech, and Parker would pout over the loss of her accumulated climbing equipment, but at the end of the day it’s all just stuff. Stuff that they have the money to replace, should they ever need to.

But Eliot, well it’s different for him - even if he’d never ever admit to it, Hardison can see it. The man is putting down roots. Intentional or not, and Hardison assumes the latter, Eliot likes it here.

The thing that cinches it is the day when Hardison comes down into the bar area after spending the best part of the day holed up on his computers, compiling information for their next job. Eliot is in the kitchen just beyond the bar, far enough away that he’s not seen Hardison seat himself on a stool and reach around to grab a bottle of their latest brew creation. He’s got a dish towel slung over one shoulder and his hair is pulled back into a half ponytail, pushed off his face with a blue patterned bandana Parker had bought him the previous Christmas. Something Country-esque is playing from the small set of speakers his phone is docked into (also a gift, this one from Hardison), and Hardison doesn’t recognise the tune but he recognises the twang of the acoustic guitar and the strong Southern drawl of the artist, and even though he’s too far away to see or hear it properly, he knows the exact soft look that’s on Eliot’s face as he hums to himself while he cooks. What he is not expecting, however, is the gentle shimmy of Eliot’s hips in time to the music, or the way his elbows knock against his sides after they swing out a little. It takes a long moment for Hardison’s brain to catch up with that. Eliot - tough, punchy Eliot Spencer - is dancing. Only a little, and only where he thinks no one can see. But it’s enough for Hardison to finally realise something he probably should have spotted much sooner. Eliot is happy here. Probably more than he ever has been in his life, or ever expected to be. Here, in this place, and with Hardison and Parker, Eliot is finally beginning to let himself emotionally invest in a life outside of work.

It hits Hardison harder than he’d care to admit because he’d never really considered the permanency of their residency in Portland when Nate had told him to move here. Sure he expected they’d stay for a long while, that’s why he bought Eliot the Brewpub to begin with. But in the back of his mind he’s always figured that eventually they’ll get into hot water and end up needing to move on to somewhere new, as they’ve done twice before. As long as they are all together, the three of them, then he’s always thought that would be okay.

He sees his error now, though. Pulling Eliot out of this place that he’s worked so hard to build and that is obviously so important to him would be… the opposite of okay.

So it’s clear to him now. No more local jobs. No risk of them getting traced back here and having to leave everything behind without so much as a goodbye. Because Eliot needs this. And Hardison sure as hell isn’t gonna deny him that.

[hlupdate]

THE MEN’S BATHING POND in London’s Hampstead Heath at daybreak on a gloomy September morning seemed such an unlikely locale for my first meeting with Harry Styles, music’s legendarily charm-heavy style czar, that I wondered perhaps if something had been lost in translation.

But then there is Styles, cheerily gung ho, hidden behind a festive yellow bandana mask and a sweatshirt of his own design, surprisingly printed with three portraits of his intellectual pinup, the author Alain de Botton. “I love his writing,” says Styles. “I just think he’s brilliant. I saw him give a talk about the keys to happiness, and how one of the keys is living among friends, and how real friendship stems from being vulnerable with someone.”

In turn, de Botton’s 2016 novel The Course of Love taught Styles that “when it comes to relationships, you just expect yourself to be good at it…[but] being in a real relationship with someone is a skill,” one that Styles himself has often had to hone in the unforgiving klieg light of public attention, and in the company of such high-profile paramours as Taylor Swift and—well, Styles is too much of a gentleman to name names.

That sweatshirt and the Columbia Records tracksuit bottoms are removed in the quaint wooden open-air changing room, with its Swallows and Amazons vibe. A handful of intrepid fellow patrons in various states of undress are blissfully unaware of the 26-year-old supernova in their midst, although I must admit I’m finding it rather difficult to take my eyes off him, try as I might. Styles has been on a six-day juice cleanse in readiness for Vogue’s photographer Tyler Mitchell. He practices Pilates (“I’ve got very tight hamstrings—trying to get those open”) and meditates twice a day. “It has changed my life,” he avers, “but it’s so subtle. It’s helped me just be more present. I feel like I’m able to enjoy the things that are happening right in front of me, even if it’s food or it’s coffee or it’s being with a friend—or a swim in a really cold pond!” Styles also feels that his meditation practices have helped him through the tumult of 2020: “Meditation just brings a stillness that has been really beneficial, I think, for my mental health.”

Styles has been a pescatarian for three years, inspired by the vegan food that several members of his current band prepared on tour. “My body definitely feels better for it,” he says. His shapely torso is prettily inscribed with the tattoos of a Victorian sailor—a rose, a galleon, a mermaid, an anchor, and a palm tree among them, and, straddling his clavicle, the dates 1967 and 1957 (the respective birth years of his mother and father). Frankly, I rather wish I’d packed a beach muumuu.

We take the piratical gangplank that juts into the water and dive in. Let me tell you, this is not the Aegean. The glacial water is a cloudy phlegm green beneath the surface, and clammy reeds slap one’s ankles. Styles, who admits he will try any fad, has recently had a couple of cryotherapy sessions and is evidently less susceptible to the cold. By the time we have swum a full circuit, however, body temperatures have adjusted, and the ice, you might say, has been broken. Duly invigorated, we are ready to face the day. Styles has thoughtfully brought a canister of coffee and some bottles of water in his backpack, and we sit at either end of a park bench for a socially distanced chat.

It seems that he has had a productive year. At the onset of lockdown, Styles found himself in his second home, in the canyons of Los Angeles. After a few days on his own, however, he moved in with a pod of three friends (and subsequently with two band members, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones). They “would put names in a hat and plan the week out,” Styles explains. “If you were Monday, you would choose the movie, dinner, and the activity for that day. I like to make soups, and there was a big array of movies; we went all over the board,” from Goodfellas to Clueless. The experience, says Styles, “has been a really good lesson in what makes me happy now. It’s such a good example of living in the moment. I honestly just like being around my friends,” he adds. “That’s been my biggest takeaway. Just being on my own the whole time, I would have been miserable.”

Styles is big on friendship groups and considers his former and legendarily hysteria-inducing boy band, One Direction, to have been one of them. “I think the typical thing is to come out of a band like that and almost feel like you have to apologize for being in it,” says Styles. “But I loved my time in it. It was all new to me, and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I wanted to soak it in…. I think that’s probably why I like traveling now—soaking stuff up.” In a post-COVID future, he is contemplating a temporary move to Tokyo, explaining that “there’s a respect and a stillness, a quietness that I really loved every time I’ve been there.”

In 1D, Styles was making music whenever he could. “After a show you’d go in a hotel room and put down some vocals,” he recalls. As a result, his first solo album, 2017’s Harry Styles, “was when I really fell in love with being in the studio,” he says. “I loved it as much as touring.” Today he favors isolating with his core group of collaborators, “our little bubble”—Rowland, Kid Harpoon (né Tom Hull), and Tyler Johnson. “A safe space,” as he describes it.

In the music he has been working on in 2020, Styles wants to capture the experimental spirit that informed his second album, last year’s Fine Line. With his debut album, “I was very much finding out what my sound was as a solo artist,” he says. “I can see all the places where it almost felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. I think with the second album I let go of the fear of getting it wrong and…it was really joyous and really free. I think with music it’s so important to evolve—and that extends to clothes and videos and all that stuff. That’s why you look back at David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust or the Beatles and their different eras—that fearlessness is super inspiring.”

The seismic changes of 2020—including the Black Lives Matter uprising around racial justice—has also provided Styles with an opportunity for personal growth. “I think it’s a time for opening up and learning and listening,” he says. “I’ve been trying to read and educate myself so that in 20 years I’m still doing the right things and taking the right steps. I believe in karma, and I think it’s just a time right now where we could use a little more kindness and empathy and patience with people, be a little more prepared to listen and grow.”

Meanwhile, Styles’s euphoric single “Watermelon Sugar” became something of an escapist anthem for this dystopian summer of 2020. The video, featuring Styles (dressed in ’70s-­flavored Gucci and Bode) cavorting with a pack of beach-babe girls and boys, was shot in January, before lockdown rules came into play. By the time it was ready to be released in May, a poignant epigraph had been added: “This video is dedicated to touching.”

Styles is looking forward to touring again, when “it’s safe for everyone,” because, as he notes, “being up against people is part of the whole thing. You can’t really re-create it in any way.” But it hasn’t always been so. Early in his career, Styles was so stricken with stage fright that he regularly threw up preperformance. “I just always thought I was going to mess up or something,” he remembers. “But I’ve felt really lucky to have a group of incredibly generous fans. They’re generous emotionally—and when they come to the show, they give so much that it creates this atmosphere that I’ve always found so loving and accepting.”

THIS SUMMER, when it was safe enough to travel, Styles returned to his London home, which is where he suggests we head now, setting off in his modish Primrose Yellow ’73 Jaguar that smells of gasoline and leatherette. “Me and my dad have always bonded over cars,” Styles explains. “I never thought I’d be someone who just went out for a leisurely drive, purely for enjoyment.” On sleepless jet-lagged nights he’ll drive through London’s quiet streets, seeing neighborhoods in a new way. “I find it quite relaxing,” he says.

Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy,setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboardcharts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

When Styles’s London renovation was finally done, “I went in for the first time and I cried,” he recalls. “Because I just felt like I had somewhere. L.A. feels like holiday, but this feels like home.”

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicksalbum cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles makes us some tea in the light-filled kitchen and then wanders into the convivial living room, where he strikes an insouciant pose on the chesterfield sofa, upholstered in a turquoise velvet that perhaps not entirely coincidentally sets off his eyes. Styles admits that his lockdown lewk was “sweatpants, constantly,” and he is relishing the opportunity to dress up again. He doesn’t have to wait long: The following day, under the eaves of a Victorian mansion in Notting Hill, I arrive in the middle of fittings for Vogue’s shoot and discover Styles in his Y-fronts, patiently waiting to try on looks for fashion editor Camilla Nickerson and photographer Tyler Mitchell. Styles’s personal stylist, Harry Lambert, wearing a pearl necklace and his nails colored in various shades of green varnish, à la Sally Bowles, is providing helpful backup (Britain’s Rule of Six hasn’t yet been imposed).

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness,is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

MITCHELL has Lionel Wendt’s languorously homoerotic 1930s portraits of young Sri Lankan men on his mood board. Nickerson is thinking of Irving Penn’s legendary fall 1950 Paris haute couture collections sitting, where he photographed midcentury supermodels, including his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, in high-style Dior and Balenciaga creations. Styles is up for all of it, and so, it would seem, is the menswear landscape of 2020: Jonathan Anderson has produced a trapeze coat anchored with a chunky gold martingale; John Galliano at Maison Margiela has fashioned a khaki trench with a portrait neckline in layers of colored tulle; and Harris Reed—a Saint Martins fashion student sleuthed by Lambert who ended up making some looks for Styles’s last tour—has spent a week making a broad-shouldered Smoking jacket with high-waisted, wide-leg pants that have become a Styles signature since he posed for Tim Walker for the cover of Fine Line wearing a Gucci pair—a silhouette that was repeated in the tour wardrobe. (“I liked the idea of having that uniform,” says Styles.) Reed’s version is worn with a hoopskirt draped in festoons of hot-pink satin that somehow suggests Deborah Kerr asking Yul Brynner’s King of Siam, “Shall we dance?”

Styles introduces me to the writer and eyewear designer Gemma Styles, “my sister from the same womb,” he says. She is also here for the fitting: The siblings plan to surprise their mother with the double portrait on these pages.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“My mum loved to dress us up,” she remembers. “I always hated it, and Harry was always quite into it. She did some really elaborate papier-mâché outfits: She made a giant mug and then painted an atlas on it, and that was Harry being ‘The World Cup.’ Harry also had a little dalmatian-dog outfit,” she adds, “a hand-me-down from our closest family friends. He would just spend an inordinate amount of time wearing that outfit. But then Mum dressed me up as Cruella de Vil. She was always looking for any opportunity!”

“As a kid I definitely liked fancy dress,” Styles says. There were school plays, the first of which cast him as Barney, a church mouse. “I was really young, and I wore tights for that,” he recalls. “I remember it was crazy to me that I was wearing a pair of tights. And that was maybe where it all kicked off!”

Acting has also remained a fundamental form of expression for Styles. His sister recalls that even on the eve of his life-changing X Factor audition, Styles could sing in public only in an assumed voice. “He used to do quite a good sort of Elvis warble,” she remembers. During the rehearsals in the family home, “he would sing in the bathroom because if it was him singing as himself, he just couldn’t have anyone looking at him! I love his voice now,” she adds. “I’m so glad that he makes music that I actually enjoy listening to.”

Styles’s role-playing continued soon after 1D went on permanent hiatus in 2016, and he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, beating out dozens of professional actors for the role. “The good part was my character was a young soldier who didn’t really know what he was doing,” says Styles modestly. “The scale of the movie was so big that I was a tiny piece of the puzzle. It was definitely humbling. I just loved being outside of my comfort zone.”

His performance caught the eye of Olivia Wilde, who remembers that it “blew me away—the openness and commitment.” In turn, Styles loved Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, and is “very honored” that she cast him in a leading role for her second feature, a thriller titled Don’t Worry Darling, which went into production this fall. Styles will play the husband to Florence Pugh in what Styles describes as “a 1950s utopia in the California desert.”

Wilde’s movie is costumed by Academy Award nominee Arianne Phillips. “She and I did a little victory dance when we heard that we officially had Harry in the film,” notes Wilde, “because we knew that he has a real appreciation for fashion and style. And this movie is incredibly stylistic. It’s very heightened and opulent, and I’m really grateful that he is so enthusiastic about that element of the process—some actors just don’t care.”

“I like playing dress-up in general,” Styles concurs, in a masterpiece of understatement: This is the man, after all, who cohosted the Met’s 2019 “Notes on Camp” gala attired in a nipple-freeing black organza blouse with a lace jabot, and pants so high-waisted that they cupped his pectorals. The ensemble, accessorized with the pearl-drop earring of a dandified Elizabethan courtier, was created for Styles by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, whom he befriended in 2014. Styles, who has subsequently personified the brand as the face of the Gucci fragrance, finds Michele “fearless with his work and his imagination. It’s really inspiring to be around someone who works like that.”

The two first met in London over a cappuccino. “It was just a kind of PR appointment,” says Michele, “but something magical happened, and Harry is now a friend. He has the aura of an English rock-and-roll star—like a young Greek god with the attitude of James Dean and a little bit of Mick Jagger—but no one is sweeter. He is the image of a new era, of the way that a man can look.”

Styles credits his style trans­formation—from Jack Wills tracksuit-clad boy-band heartthrob to nonpareil fashionisto—to his meeting the droll young stylist Harry Lambert seven years ago. They hit it off at once and have conspired ever since, enjoying a playfully campy rapport and calling each other Sue and Susan as they parse the niceties of the scarlet lace Gucci man-bra that Michele has made for Vogue’s shoot, for instance, or a pair of Bode pants hand-painted with biographical images (Styles sent Emily Adams Bode images of his family, and a photograph he had found of David Hockney and Joni Mitchell. “The idea of those two being friends, to me, was really beautiful,” Styles explains).

“He just has fun with clothing, and that’s kind of where I’ve got it from,” says Styles of Lambert. “He doesn’t take it too seriously, which means I don’t take it too seriously.” The process has been evolutionary. At his first meeting with Lambert, the stylist proposed “a pair of flares, and I was like, ‘Flares? That’s fucking crazy,’  ” Styles remembers. Now he declares that “you can never be overdressed. There’s no such thing. The people that I looked up to in music—Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John—they’re such showmen. As a kid it was completely mind-blowing. Now I’ll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don’t feel crazy wearing it. I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it’s like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything—anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matches.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

“To me, he’s very modern,” says Wilde of Styles, “and I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has—truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity—is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world. I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”

“He’s really in touch with his feminine side because it’s something natural,” notes Michele. “And he’s a big inspiration to a younger generation—about how you can be in a totally free playground when you feel comfortable. I think that he’s a revolutionary.”

STYLES’S confidence is on full display the day after the fitting, which finds us all on the beautiful Sussex dales. Over the summit of the hill, with its trees blown horizontal by the fierce winds, lies the English Channel. Even though it’s a two-hour drive from London, the fresh-faced Styles, who went to bed at 9 p.m., has arrived on set early: He is famously early for everything. The team is installed in a traditional flint-stone barn. The giant doors have been replaced by glass and frame a bucolic view of distant grazing sheep. “Look at that field!” says Styles. “How lucky are we? This is our office! Smell the roses!” Lambert starts to sing “Kumbaya, my Lord.”

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Diana bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

As the wide sky is washed in pink, orange, and gray, like a Turner sunset, and Mitchell calls it a successful day, Styles is playing “Cherry” from Fine Line on his Fender acoustic on the hilltop. “He does his own stunts,” says his sister, laughing. The impromptu set is greeted with applause. “Thank you, Antwerp!” says Styles playfully, bowing to the crowd. “Thank you, fashion!”

[albarivas]

ana de armas, cis female, she/her    —    whenever i see alba rivas meandering down agnes street la escalera by pablo alborán starts to play inside my head. maybe it is the vibe they give off. bullet journals, colorful dresses, hairstyles with bandanas ;   you know ? artistic impressions is what keeps them interested in agnes. i heard they are a thirty-three year old teacher at bright future. they look like the kind of person who would make you do a vision board. 

hi again, it’s ella again. okay so i had cameron (the lily james) but tbh she’s a new muse and right now i don’t have the brain to develop a muse from scratch but i still want to write and that’s why i decided to bring alba, one of my oldest muses. i’m so happy to give her a new home and i can’t wait for her to meet all of your characters.

basics

NAME: alba carolina rivas borges

NICKNAME: al, albie

GENDER: cis female

PLACE OF BIRTH: boca raton, florida

DATE OF BIRTH: april 19, 1988

AGE: thirty-thirty

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual

OCCUPATION: teacher at bright future

background

tw: illness, cheating

CHILDHOOD

her story starts between cuba and spain. her mother, carolina, fled from cuba and her father immigrated from spain with no friends or family and only with a few dollars. the two newcomers were matched by fate and just a year later they welcomed their daughter, alba.

two years later, a son completed the rivas family. they didn’t have much and often had to deal with homesickness and many times they considered moving to spain, but eventually they decided to stay.

it was a big change for both julián and carolina. he used to work as a lawyer back in spain and carolina had almost graduated from med school. now in the united states they both had to start from zero.

her mother traveled an hour from boca raton to palm spring every day where she worked cleaning those luxurious houses.  her father got his credentials to become a spanish teacher and taught in the local high school.

alba always knew she didn’t have much. she grew up going with her mom to those huge houses and from a young age she understood what wealth could buy. however, alba never envied those who had a lot more than her. in fact, her childhood best friend was the girl that lived in the house her mother cleaned. the two were inseparable.

ADOLESCENCE AND COLLEGE YEARS

alba excelled as a student. education was something her parents always deemed as important and so she made it her goal to make them proud. 

she earned a spot in a prestigious public high school. as a teenager, she was the model child. always listening to her parents, rarely giving them problems. she had an active social life, she went on a couple of dates and she was part of several groups.

these qualities eventually earned her a place at nyu. moving to new york was something she’d never considered. she liked florida, and her family were there but her parents convinced her that this would be a great opportunity and that she could comeback.

becoming a teacher was her ambition. she admired her father for doing it and she knew from a young age that she wanted to teach children. 

to make ends meet, she got a job as a waitress and she really didn’t have a social life as she worked and studied full time. there was no time for friendship and even less time for dating.

it was during one day at work that she met someone that changed her life. she met another student while she was working who asked her out but she refused, however, he came back and did the same thing every night until one day she finally accepted.

one date turned into two and then three until soon people couldn’t see one without the other. most people thought they wouldn’t last, their personalities and values were too different. he came from a wealthy family, the typical spoiled kid that was set to inherit his parents’ fortune someday, the one that always featured on page six with a different woman every night. meanwhile, alba came from a working-class family, daughter of immigrants who always had to work to get what she had in life. despite the skepticism, they proved everyone wrong.

at twenty-two, alba graduated with a degree in early childhood education and began working as a teacher.

ADULTHOOD

her relationship with this guy (i dont have a name for him lmao) was better than ever and after dating for three years, he proposed and alba said yes as she was convinced she’d found her other half.

however, not everything was perfect. his family didn’t like her and things only got worse after they got engaged. the couple married only a year later. they left new york and moved to florida where they bought one of those houses alba always had dreamed to have and the best part is that they were neighbors with her childhood best friend.

but all good things must come to an end, and soon her fairytale turned into a nightmare. the relationship with her in-laws was awful which eventually caused tension in their marriage. they began to fight more often and he started to spend more time at his office than at home. however, she was determined to make their marriage work, a love like theirs couldn’t end like this, she wouldn’t allow it.

tw cheating: one day, alba returned to their home early and what she saw was heartbreaking. there he was, in bed with none other but her childhood best friend. heartbroken, alba refused to accept any of his excuses and immediately filed for divorce, to the joy of her in-laws. end of tw.

after her divorce, alba moved to california where she started a year course at stanford. she planned to stay there but that when she received news from home.

tw illness: her father was very sick, and her parents had decided to move to islebury, rhode island. without anything holding her back, she packed up her stuff and moved here as well so she could help her mother with her dad. end of tw.

she’s been living here for three years now and works as a teacher at bright future.

personality

She has the ability to see the good in almost anyone or anything and tends to sympathize with even the most unfriendly person. She often hides the extreme depth of feelings from her, even from herself, until circumstances elicit a passionate response. 

She has a deep sense of idealism that comes from a strong personal sense of right and wrong. She sees the world as a place full of possibilities and potentials and is governed by her intuition. She is quite reserved and is not easily manipulated.

She is a good listener and considerate, they try to care for and understand others in a deep way. She can be very calm and intuitive with the people around her, being able to search for hidden meanings in the actions and words of others.

Of course, all of life is not rosy and Alba is not exempt from suffering the same disappointments and frustrations that are common to others. She tends to be a perfectionist and often strives for personal ideals that can be exhausting or very difficult to obtain.

headcanons

she’s a bookworm. her favorite book is the persuasion by jane austen

she speaks fluent spanish

alba has a beautiful white persian cat named nube

she loves wearing bandanas in her hair

claims she’s allergic to strawberries, she’s not. she just hates them and that’s easier than explaining why

connections

Younger brother: I’m gonna make a wanted connection because I love this dynamic. He is two years younger than her and she adores him. She tries to stay in touch with him and in general, they are close.

Ex-best friend: they met as children and grew up together, they knew everything about the other. alba’s mother worked as a housekeeper and she used to go with her sometimes, that’s how they met. this person came from a different background, she lived in one of those expensive houses alba could only dream to own. their friendship was so strong that they even applied to the same university (although her friend was not accepted). alba considered this person as the sister she never had, but then she did the worst thing in the world, she slept with alba’s husband. they haven’t spoken since she found out.

Ex-husband: They divorced two years ago, after alba found out he had been cheating on her with her best friend. they met while she was a student at NYU and were together for three years before getting engaged and married. he comes from a wealthy family, the typical perfect american family. their relationship was never approved by his parents. she hasn’t spoken to him since the divorce.

Best Friendish: Okay, so this is a tricky one because her actual best friend turned into Judas and slept with her husband, but maybe this person is the closest she has to a best friend. she trusts this person and since her divorce, this is the only person that she has been able to speak without limitations.

Bad influence: Alba has never been one to go to many parties or even to drink, but this person is the only one that can convince her to have a good time.

Co-workers/Parents: She works as a teacher at bright future, maybe your character works there or their kids go/went there.

Neighbor: self-explanatory

Unlikely friendship: The two have different personalities, but somehow, both have managed to get along and form a weird friendship.

Hook ups: She’s not really the relationship kind bc she’s always busy but once in a while she hooks up with people ghdghdhgd (open to everyone)

Flirtationship: they act like friends, but cannot help to throw flirty looks or comments at each other.

Unrequited: It could go either way, I’m fine to plot it out. I’m an angst hoe sooo

Bad tinder date: after her divorce, her friends tried to set her up with someone but it didn’t go well. There was nothing wrong about her date, but she wasn’t ready and in the end it was a very uncomfortable situation for them.

One night stand: she was drunk, he/she was drunk too. They didn’t plan it but happened and now whenever they see each other in town it’s a bit awkward.

[transparenttriumphzombie]

Harry Styles On Vogue

Source:

 https://www.vogue.com/article/harry-styles-cover-december-2020/amp?__twitter_impression=true

From Vogue MAGAZINE

Playtime With Harry Styles

THE MEN’S BATHING POND in London’s Hampstead Heath at daybreak on a gloomy September morning seemed such an unlikely locale for my first meeting with Harry Styles, music’s legendarily charm-heavy style czar, that I wondered perhaps if something had been lost in translation.

But then there is Styles, cheerily gung ho, hidden behind a festive yellow bandana mask and a sweatshirt of his own design, surprisingly printed with three portraits of his intellectual pinup, the author Alain de Botton. “I love his writing,” says Styles. “I just think he’s brilliant. I saw him give a talk about the keys to happiness, and how one of the keys is living among friends, and how real friendship stems from being vulnerable with someone.”

In turn, de Botton’s 2016 novel The Course of Love taught Styles that “when it comes to relationships, you just expect yourself to be good at it…[but] being in a real relationship with someone is a skill,” one that Styles himself has often had to hone in the unforgiving klieg light of public attention, and in the company of such high-profile paramours as Taylor Swift and—well, Styles is too much of a gentleman to name names.

That sweatshirt and the Columbia Records tracksuit bottoms are removed in the quaint wooden open-air changing room, with its Swallows and Amazons vibe. A handful of intrepid fellow patrons in various states of undress are blissfully unaware of the 26-year-old supernova in their midst, although I must admit I’m finding it rather difficult to take my eyes off him, try as I might. Styles has been on a six-day juice cleanse in readiness for Vogue’s photographer Tyler Mitchell. He practices Pilates (“I’ve got very tight hamstrings—trying to get those open”) and meditates twice a day. “It has changed my life,” he avers, “but it’s so subtle. It’s helped me just be more present. I feel like I’m able to enjoy the things that are happening right in front of me, even if it’s food or it’s coffee or it’s being with a friend—or a swim in a really cold pond!” Styles also feels that his meditation practices have helped him through the tumult of 2020: “Meditation just brings a stillness that has been really beneficial, I think, for my mental health.”

Styles has been a pescatarian for three years, inspired by the vegan food that several members of his current band prepared on tour. “My body definitely feels better for it,” he says. His shapely torso is prettily inscribed with the tattoos of a Victorian sailor—a rose, a galleon, a mermaid, an anchor, and a palm tree among them, and, straddling his clavicle, the dates 1967 and 1957 (the respective birth years of his mother and father). Frankly, I rather wish I’d packed a beach muumuu.

We take the piratical gangplank that juts into the water and dive in. Let me tell you, this is not the Aegean. The glacial water is a cloudy phlegm green beneath the surface, and clammy reeds slap one’s ankles. Styles, who admits he will try any fad, has recently had a couple of cryotherapy sessions and is evidently less susceptible to the cold. By the time we have swum a full circuit, however, body temperatures have adjusted, and the ice, you might say, has been broken. Duly invigorated, we are ready to face the day. Styles has thoughtfully brought a canister of coffee and some bottles of water in his backpack, and we sit at either end of a park bench for a socially distanced chat.

It seems that he has had a productive year. At the onset of lockdown, Styles found himself in his second home, in the canyons of Los Angeles. After a few days on his own, however, he moved in with a pod of three friends (and subsequently with two band members, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones). They “would put names in a hat and plan the week out,” Styles explains. “If you were Monday, you would choose the movie, dinner, and the activity for that day. I like to make soups, and there was a big array of movies; we went all over the board,” from Goodfellas to Clueless. The experience, says Styles, “has been a really good lesson in what makes me happy now. It’s such a good example of living in the moment. I honestly just like being around my friends,” he adds. “That’s been my biggest takeaway. Just being on my own the whole time, I would have been miserable.”

Styles is big on friendship groups and considers his former and legendarily hysteria-inducing boy band, One Direction, to have been one of them. “I think the typical thing is to come out of a band like that and almost feel like you have to apologize for being in it,” says Styles. “But I loved my time in it. It was all new to me, and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I wanted to soak it in…. I think that’s probably why I like traveling now—soaking stuff up.” In a post-COVID future, he is contemplating a temporary move to Tokyo, explaining that “there’s a respect and a stillness, a quietness that I really loved every time I’ve been there.”

In the music he has been working on in 2020, Styles wants to capture the experimental spirit that informed his second album, last year’s Fine Line. With his debut album, “I was very much finding out what my sound was as a solo artist,” he says. “I can see all the places where it almost felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. I think with the second album I let go of the fear of getting it wrong and…it was really joyous and really free. I think with music it’s so important to evolve—and that extends to clothes and videos and all that stuff. That’s why you look back at David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust or the Beatles and their different eras—that fearlessness is super inspiring.”

The seismic changes of 2020—including the Black Lives Matter uprising around racial justice—has also provided Styles with an opportunity for personal growth. “I think it’s a time for opening up and learning and listening,” he says. “I’ve been trying to read and educate myself so that in 20 years I’m still doing the right things and taking the right steps. I believe in karma, and I think it’s just a time right now where we could use a little more kindness and empathy and patience with people, be a little more prepared to listen and grow.”

Meanwhile, Styles’s euphoric single “Watermelon Sugar” became something of an escapist anthem for this dystopian summer of 2020. The video, featuring Styles (dressed in ’70s-­flavored Gucci and Bode) cavorting with a pack of beach-babe girls and boys, was shot in January, before lockdown rules came into play. By the time it was ready to be released in May, a poignant epigraph had been added: “This video is dedicated to touching.”

Styles is looking forward to touring again, when “it’s safe for everyone,” because, as he notes, “being up against people is part of the whole thing. You can’t really re-create it in any way.” But it hasn’t always been so. Early in his career, Styles was so stricken with stage fright that he regularly threw up preperformance. “I just always thought I was going to mess up or something,” he remembers. “But I’ve felt really lucky to have a group of incredibly generous fans. They’re generous emotionally—and when they come to the show, they give so much that it creates this atmosphere that I’ve always found so loving and accepting.”

THIS SUMMER, when it was safe enough to travel, Styles returned to his London home, which is where he suggests we head now, setting off in his modish Primrose Yellow ’73 Jaguar that smells of gasoline and leatherette. “Me and my dad have always bonded over cars,” Styles explains. “I never thought I’d be someone who just went out for a leisurely drive, purely for enjoyment.” On sleepless jet-lagged nights he’ll drive through London’s quiet streets, seeing neighborhoods in a new way. “I find it quite relaxing,” he says.

Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy, setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard charts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

When Styles’s London renovation was finally done, “I went in for the first time and I cried,” he recalls. “Because I just felt like I had somewhere. L.A. feels like holiday, but this feels like home.”

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicks album cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles makes us some tea in the light-filled kitchen and then wanders into the convivial living room, where he strikes an insouciant pose on the chesterfield sofa, upholstered in a turquoise velvet that perhaps not entirely coincidentally sets off his eyes. Styles admits that his lockdown lewk was “sweatpants, constantly,” and he is relishing the opportunity to dress up again. He doesn’t have to wait long: The following day, under the eaves of a Victorian mansion in Notting Hill, I arrive in the middle of fittings for Vogue’s shoot and discover Styles in his Y-fronts, patiently waiting to try on looks for fashion editor Camilla Nickerson and photographer Tyler Mitchell. Styles’s personal stylist, Harry Lambert, wearing a pearl necklace and his nails colored in various shades of green varnish, à la Sally Bowles, is providing helpful backup (Britain’s Rule of Six hasn’t yet been imposed).

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness, is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

MITCHELL has Lionel Wendt’s languorously homoerotic 1930s portraits of young Sri Lankan men on his mood board. Nickerson is thinking of Irving Penn’s legendary fall 1950 Paris haute couture collections sitting, where he photographed midcentury supermodels, including his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, in high-style Dior and Balenciaga creations. Styles is up for all of it, and so, it would seem, is the menswear landscape of 2020: Jonathan Anderson has produced a trapeze coat anchored with a chunky gold martingale; John Galliano at Maison Margiela has fashioned a khaki trench with a portrait neckline in layers of colored tulle; and Harris Reed—a Saint Martins fashion student sleuthed by Lambert who ended up making some looks for Styles’s last tour—has spent a week making a broad-shouldered Smoking jacket with high-waisted, wide-leg pants that have become a Styles signature since he posed for Tim Walker for the cover of Fine Line wearing a Gucci pair—a silhouette that was repeated in the tour wardrobe. (“I liked the idea of having that uniform,” says Styles.) Reed’s version is worn with a hoopskirt draped in festoons of hot-pink satin that somehow suggests Deborah Kerr asking Yul Brynner’s King of Siam, “Shall we dance?”

Styles introduces me to the writer and eyewear designer Gemma Styles, “my sister from the same womb,” he says. She is also here for the fitting: The siblings plan to surprise their mother with the double portrait on these pages.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“My mum loved to dress us up,” she remembers. “I always hated it, and Harry was always quite into it. She did some really elaborate papier-mâché outfits: She made a giant mug and then painted an atlas on it, and that was Harry being ‘The World Cup.’ Harry also had a little dalmatian-dog outfit,” she adds, “a hand-me-down from our closest family friends. He would just spend an inordinate amount of time wearing that outfit. But then Mum dressed me up as Cruella de Vil. She was always looking for any opportunity!”

“As a kid I definitely liked fancy dress,” Styles says. There were school plays, the first of which cast him as Barney, a church mouse. “I was really young, and I wore tights for that,” he recalls. “I remember it was crazy to me that I was wearing a pair of tights. And that was maybe where it all kicked off!”

Acting has also remained a fundamental form of expression for Styles. His sister recalls that even on the eve of his life-changing X Factor audition, Styles could sing in public only in an assumed voice. “He used to do quite a good sort of Elvis warble,” she remembers. During the rehearsals in the family home, “he would sing in the bathroom because if it was him singing as himself, he just couldn’t have anyone looking at him! I love his voice now,” she adds. “I’m so glad that he makes music that I actually enjoy listening to.”

Styles’s role-playing continued soon after 1D went on permanent hiatus in 2016, and he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, beating out dozens of professional actors for the role. “The good part was my character was a young soldier who didn’t really know what he was doing,” says Styles modestly. “The scale of the movie was so big that I was a tiny piece of the puzzle. It was definitely humbling. I just loved being outside of my comfort zone.”

His performance caught the eye of Olivia Wilde, who remembers that it “blew me away—the openness and commitment.” In turn, Styles loved Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, and is “very honored” that she cast him in a leading role for her second feature, a thriller titled Don’t Worry Darling, which went into production this fall. Styles will play the husband to Florence Pugh in what Styles describes as “a 1950s utopia in the California desert.”

Wilde’s movie is costumed by Academy Award nominee Arianne Phillips. “She and I did a little victory dance when we heard that we officially had Harry in the film,” notes Wilde, “because we knew that he has a real appreciation for fashion and style. And this movie is incredibly stylistic. It’s very heightened and opulent, and I’m really grateful that he is so enthusiastic about that element of the process—some actors just don’t care.”

“I like playing dress-up in general,” Styles concurs, in a masterpiece of understatement: This is the man, after all, who cohosted the Met’s 2019 “Notes on Camp” gala attired in a nipple-freeing black organza blouse with a lace jabot, and pants so high-waisted that they cupped his pectorals. The ensemble, accessorized with the pearl-drop earring of a dandified Elizabethan courtier, was created for Styles by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, whom he befriended in 2014. Styles, who has subsequently personified the brand as the face of the Gucci fragrance, finds Michele “fearless with his work and his imagination. It’s really inspiring to be around someone who works like that.”

The two first met in London over a cappuccino. “It was just a kind of PR appointment,” says Michele, “but something magical happened, and Harry is now a friend. He has the aura of an English rock-and-roll star—like a young Greek god with the attitude of James Dean and a little bit of Mick Jagger—but no one is sweeter. He is the image of a new era, of the way that a man can look.”

Styles credits his style trans­formation—from Jack Wills tracksuit-clad boy-band heartthrob to nonpareil fashionisto—to his meeting the droll young stylist Harry Lambert seven years ago. They hit it off at once and have conspired ever since, enjoying a playfully campy rapport and calling each other Sue and Susan as they parse the niceties of the scarlet lace Gucci man-bra that Michele has made for Vogue’s shoot, for instance, or a pair of Bode pants hand-painted with biographical images (Styles sent Emily Adams Bode images of his family, and a photograph he had found of David Hockney and Joni Mitchell. “The idea of those two being friends, to me, was really beautiful,” Styles explains).

“He just has fun with clothing, and that’s kind of where I’ve got it from,” says Styles of Lambert. “He doesn’t take it too seriously, which means I don’t take it too seriously.” The process has been evolutionary. At his first meeting with Lambert, the stylist proposed “a pair of flares, and I was like, ‘Flares? That’s fucking crazy,’  ” Styles remembers. Now he declares that “you can never be overdressed. There’s no such thing. The people that I looked up to in music—Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John—they’re such showmen. As a kid it was completely mind-blowing. Now I’ll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don’t feel crazy wearing it. I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it’s like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything—anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matchesfashion.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

“To me, he’s very modern,” says Wilde of Styles, “and I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has—truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity—is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world. I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”

“He’s really in touch with his feminine side because it’s something natural,” notes Michele. “And he’s a big inspiration to a younger generation—about how you can be in a totally free playground when you feel comfortable. I think that he’s a revolutionary.”

STYLES’S confidence is on full display the day after the fitting, which finds us all on the beautiful Sussex dales. Over the summit of the hill, with its trees blown horizontal by the fierce winds, lies the English Channel. Even though it’s a two-hour drive from London, the fresh-faced Styles, who went to bed at 9 p.m., has arrived on set early: He is famously early for everything. The team is installed in a traditional flint-stone barn. The giant doors have been replaced by glass and frame a bucolic view of distant grazing sheep. “Look at that field!” says Styles. “How lucky are we? This is our office! Smell the roses!” Lambert starts to sing “Kumbaya, my Lord.”

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Jackie bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

As the wide sky is washed in pink, orange, and gray, like a Turner sunset, and Mitchell calls it a successful day, Styles is playing “Cherry” from Fine Line on his Fender acoustic on the hilltop. “He does his own stunts,” says his sister, laughing. The impromptu set is greeted with applause. “Thank you, Antwerp!” says Styles playfully, bowing to the crowd. “Thank you, fashion!”

[lorei-writes]

21 questions tag

I was tagged by @nad-zeta ! :D Thanks, love, I had a bit of a rough day and it really made it all better! :) 

1. Name: Karolina 

2. Nickname: Huh, I don’t think I have one? Sometimes my friends call me Karolcia, but it isn’t really a nickname. 

3.Gender: Female

4. Star Sign: Pisces

5. Current time: 22:55 (and I still want to do some more stuff - why am I only productive at night, aaaargh)

6. Favorite song Artist(s): I really like Halestorm and Hozier! Although Alter Bridge is a close call as well.

7. Favorite Song: By far, Heart of Novocaine by Halestorm. Wait. Calm The Fire by Alter Bridge... And I really like the first opening of My Hero Academia and Flyers (the opening song of Death Parade).

8. Song stuck in your head: Dance Monkey - Tones and I is currently on loop with Angel of Small Death :)

9. Last Move you saw? Hmm... Tales From Earthsea. Haven’t watched any movie since that one ^^”

10. Last thing I googled: “boustrophedon” 

11. Other Blogs? Yep. This one is actually a side blog (gash, I wish I could switch that around :C), my main is @mllorei (it’s mostly screaming into the abyss and funny stuff).

13. Do you get asks? Sometimes and they make me so happy! :D 

14. Reason for your URL: I’m bad at names + this place is literally my nest for all the shiny stuff and some of my garbage. 

15. Average amount of sleep: I used to sleep for 6 hours per day and be well-rested - and ever since then it’s been a disaster. I need to feel some sort of external pressure to function somewhat well whenever I sleep 8 hours, but I usually wake up by myself after 10 >.< And now my hormones decided to make my 

16. Lucky Number: 13, 4

17. Currently wearing: ... A rainbow llama bathrobe, leggins and a bandana with a daisy print on it.

18. Dream Job: Huh, something fulfilling and meaningful to local community - I’d like to be a high school math teacher, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. Other than that... Dunno, I like writing? But I don’t like how the writers are oftentimes isolated from the people that read their stuff. It would be hard to stay motivated.

19. Dream Trips:  Japan, Finland and Sweden. As for one that may actually turn into reality, Czech Republic - Prague. :D

20. Favorite Food(s): Okay. It’s a bit silly. Pea soup, but not like. I don’t know how to describe it. My mum makes this soup. Most people don’t like it or are like meh, whatever. I? I shit you not, when I was 8, I would eat 4 bowls of that thing and still want more. And that haven’t changed. 

21. Play any instruments? Nu-uh. 

Okay, I know the original rules were tag 21 people, buuuut... I don’t think I can do that? ^^””””””” I think some of you guys had already done this tag, so, if it wouldn’t be a problem, could you tag me in the replies to the post or send a link my way? ^^” I’m really curious of you. (Even more so since I haven’t got a chance to hear from some of you ever before). @ikesensrandomninjagirl24 @datenoriko @fairstival @metroidgirl0234 @ikemencrossedmyth @ieyasuwu @shingekinoali @cailannuesugi @-kissthebabysky @paopufruittt @nxh-special-here-just-lia @zazax42

[isa-ah]

what are 4 of your oc isaiah's favorite things? :0

the obvious answer is billie, hunter, riker and bette... but thats the gay answer.

his bike! he built her in his teens, saving up money from shitty local jobs to buy parts. shes kind of a frankenstein project so she needs constant maintenance but hes so fuckin proud of his bike its absurd. 

spud too, his emotional support dog! ive never done a full pic w spud cos i cant draw dogs for shit but hes a big ol golden retriever with a bandana and vest on account of being a service dog. he helps with isaiahs ptsd and anxiety, keeps him company bc he does poorly when hes alone, and helps support him when hes getting used to his prosthetic leg. isaiah got him from a breeder as a lil puppy (he looked like a potato when he was born! hence spud) and raised him well trained and well loved! theyre v good partners.

tattoos are another huge thing for him. isaiahs career path tends to lean pretty heavily on becoming a tattoo artist in his twenties! he started commuting two hours to the nearest city from his hometown to do an apprenticeship and once he was ready to start doing it for real the dude let him stick around in his shop and he found a tiny lil place to start renting so he could get out of his shithole little tiny town and start his life for real. hes not necessarily an artist type but he starts to really begin self expressing through it! and ofc hes got plenty of his own tattoos! 

okay look i made the obligatory joke about his husbands but like really. everything they do is amazing to him. hunter was in ballet when they were younger, before he ended up in movies, and isaiah has always been his biggest fan. bette goes off to college to become an animator and isaiahs so fucking impressed by everything he makes. riker never ends up doing anything big or wild but you know who looks up to him every day? just adores everything he does do? thats right, its isaiah. hes so impressed by them, and he loves them so much.

[cuppalevi]

Blue Guitar | Chapter 2: Dinner’s On You

Series Summary: Leone Abbacchio's trying his best to get his shit together for Narancia. But when Narancia ends up inviting him to a concert he's playing for, Leone ends up under the sheets of the popstar, Bruno Buccellati. It turns out dating a popstar has complications. Especially when a certain someone named Diavolo has tricks up his sleeves.

Chapter 2 Summary: Leone Abbacchio arrives at Bruno’s concert, only to be completed fascinated by the singer. He promptly meets the band, and gets flirted by Bruno. 

Fandom: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

Pairing: Leone Abbacchio x Bruno Buccellati

AO3 Link | Previously | Masterlist

“How are we doing so far tonight? Are we good?” Bruno took the microphone off from the stand it was placed and grasped it within his hand. He walks around the stage, waving a hand towards the crowd before him, a bright smile on his lips. The singer was clad in glittered, iridescent, light blue pants. A sheer white suit with ruffles upfront adorned his torso, showing off the black lace of his undergarment. All the while a shiny, heeled, black Christian Louboutin completed the outfit he wore.

Bruno’s under the spotlights, illuminating his whole figure and showcasing the singer to the audience in front of him. He’s charismatic, in words and in movement. When his band had started playing the first tunes to his opening song had started playing and he was waiting for his moment to come out to the stage, he clutched the handle of his microphone- a sleek white with black teardrops design which he had custom made- soft breaths leaving his lips as the rush of adrenaline had slowly come over him. And when it was his cue, all anxiety just drifted away and sheer euphoria flooded his veins as he started singing in sync with the tune.

The crowd before him cheers, waving their hands wildly. Bruno’s chest feels warm at the overwhelming attention he’s getting. Life on stage was the best part of being a musician. The adrenaline he gets from being upstage, hearing the screams of people, singing his songs as he moved to the beat. It was exhilarating.

Although, the handsome man upfront surely caught his attention.

Narancia seemed more anxious about the concert than Leone had expected. A few hours ago, Narancia was frantic. Running from the kitchen, his bedroom, the living room- pretty much the whole apartment basically- to make sure he did not forget anything. Moody Blues grumpily hissed at Narancia when the cat awoke from her nap due to the teenager’s feet shaking the floors of their apartment as if an earthquake was happening. Leone had to reassure Narancia a thousand times, all the while Moody Blues tried to resume her nap.

Leone did not have high expectations for the concert. He just wanted to watch Narancia rock his guitar. Before Buccellati climbed up the stage, the band first settled in. When Narancia had entered the stage with two other guys, his eyes immediately started to scan the crowd- eagerly wanting to see Leone. The teenager had frantically waved with a massive grin on his face when he had spotted Leone’s silver hair among the crowd.

The adult chuckled at Narancia and waved back at him, a warm feeling filling his chest.

But what he didn’t expect was to see the charming man, Bruno- whom he had met in the grocery shop after his squabble with Giorno, upstage singing in front of him. From the moment Bruno had revealed himself onstage with dancing lights above him, least to say he was stunned to see the view before him. Who knew that Bruno from the grocery store was the Buccellati Narancia was working for? Certainly not Leone.

Leone hadn’t been to many concerts. He’d rather put up his headphones and get lost in the music of Monteverdi. But today, this- wholly, beautiful man that’s got Leone into some sort of trance that’s gotten him lost in nothing but Bruno’s voice- it’s exhilarating. He’s irrevocably captivated. The tone of the singer’s voice sends deep chills down his spine and he’s pulled in to listen for more.

“Before we near the end of today’s show, I wanna give a massive thank you to my incredible, incredible band!” Bruno splayed out a hand and presented the band behind him, multiple spotlights falling on the boys who were bringing life to the instruments they were playing.

A grin is plastered on Bruno’s face as he presented Narancia to the crowd first, “A recent recruit of mine and my wonderful guitarist, Narancia Ghirga!”

The spotlights fell onto Narancia. The teenager waved to the crowd, full of enthusiasm. In return, the audience before him cheered. Leone’s lips twitched into a smile as he looked at Narancia fondly, warmth seeping through his chest. Damn, he’d never felt any prouder than he was before.

Narancia is wearing a black t-shirt which was tucked in grey wide-legged pants and black loafers that had a big, gold ring in front as design. But what really was eye-catching was the glittered light blue bandana he wore on his head. The bandana matched Bruno’s trendy trousers.

Leone looked over to the drummer as Bruno introduced him, “My great and amazing drummer, Guido Mista!”

Guido Mista was sitting behind the array of drums but he stood to his feet and stepped out from his set of drums and bowed with his hand outstretched when Bruno called his name. Mista is dressed in a solid black, cropped turtleneck sweater. A beanie of the same color sat on his head, an arrow pointed downwards on his forehead. However, the turtle-necked collar, the hem of the sleeves, and the color of the arrow of his beanie also happened to be glittered and light blue that also twinned Bruno’s trousers.

“Of course, last but not least. My skilled and marvelous keyboardist, Pannacotta Fugo!”

Pannacotta Fugo had dirty blonde hair that fell behind his back ever so gracefully. His face only showed a twitch of a smile and a gentle wave to the crowd. Leone had to keep a snicker when he saw that Fugo’s black suit was riddled with holes and strawberry earrings dangle freely. He thought that the boy looked ridiculous. And surprisingly, the necktie he adorned matched Bruno’s pants as well.

“Wow, fashionably coordinated, huh.” Leone murmured under his breath.

Bruno walked back in front of the microphone stand and attached the microphone back to its stand before speaking once more. “This is: Adore You.”

The lights dim a little bit, Mista starts thrumming his drums at a pace. Fugo’s fingers start pressing down on the keys and Narancia’s strumming his guitar with the chords of the song. Bruno’s foot starts tapping to the beat, bobbing his head to the sound, eyes shut as he starts singing, “Walk in your rainbow paradise,”

Narancia, Fugo, and Mista sing a back-up of, “Paradise,” and it amazes Leone how their voices mesh together in a perfect melody that accompanied Bruno’s voice so well.

“Blueberry lipstick state of mind,” Bruno’s eyebrows furrow as he sings into the mic.

Then the lyric is followed by the trio harmonizing, “State of mind.”

“I get so lost inside your eyes,” Bruno’s eyes subtly scan the array of people in the area in front of him. It wasn’t that hard to spot the pair of eyes he wanted to see as the owner of those eyes belonged to a man with hair white as snow. “Would you believe it?”

Bruno Buccellati, a kind, and compassionate soul. He was adored by many due to his songs. His overall aura just draws you to him. Bruno lived in the coastal suburbs of Naples with his mother and father. His father worked as a humble fisherman. When his mother had sung him a lullaby instead of the usual bedtime stories, he was instantly enthralled by the way his mother sang. It was then he developed an interest in singing.

“You don’t have to say you love me. You don’t have to say nothing, you don’t have to say you’re mine.”  

Even when his parents divorced, his passion for singing never wavered. His father was determined to give Bruno a good education so he started taking tourists on his boats to earn more. Bruno would entertain the tourists by giving them a song number he practiced the day before. Consequently, it earned him a good amount of lire which he put into his savings.

“ Honey, ” Bruno sang, taking the mic off its stand and walking around the stage.

Collectively, the three band members sang, “ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ”

“ I’d walk through fire for you, just let me adore you, ”

Leone used to think that nobody could match the likes of Monteverdi. Just like how no movie could surpass Sling Blade, in his opinion. But watching Bruno sing his heart out in front of him. And the charming smile the singer puts on his face while he gazes to the crowd. Leone thought, maybe Monteverdi won’t be the only artist he’ll be listening to after this.

“ Like it’s the only thing I’ll ever do, ” Bruno finishes the first chorus. He proceeds to walk around the stage, waving to people.

Bruno was found by Polpo who worked for the management, Passione. After being able to save up for his education, Bruno started working a part-time job in a local pub where he would stand in front of tipsy people and sing songs. Coincidentally, Polpo had been looking for a client. He offered Bruno a chance at becoming an artist. It took Bruno a couple of days to consider the man’s offer. He didn’t want to leave his father all alone when he was off chasing his dreams. But his father encouraged him to take it.

“You’d make a proud man,” His father had told him.

So here he was now. Pouring his heart out with every ounce of his being to the songs he had written.

Bruno stops in a particular spot at the stage, which just happened to be right in front of Leone. “ Your wonder under summer skies, ”

“ Summer skies, ” The three band members sing.

“ Fair skin and lemon over ice, ” A twitch overcomes Leone’s lips as he meets Bruno’s eyes.

He feels entranced when Bruno shoots him a subtle wink. Like he can’t seem to take his eyes off of him.

“ Would you believe it? ” Bruno tilts his head in question as if he was asking Leone.

Leone bites back a chuckle, pressing his lips together. He looks around him to see if anyone saw their interaction, but everyone else was lost in Bruno’s singing. Bruno starts his pre-chorus again, but he stays in that particular area of the stage. His body moves to the rhythm of the song, his head is swaying with the melody. The ends of his hair are dancing along with him, whipping against his head back and forth. And his right foot, simultaneously in sync.

“ It’s the only thing I’ll ever do,” Narancia, Fugo, and Mista sing the lyric repeatedly as the song’s bridge. They sing it a number of times as they play their instruments. Bruno’s feet bring him to different parts of the stage as he awaits the finishing lines. But before the bridge finishes, he quickly pulls the microphone stand and drags it toward that spot.

Just as the last chorus began, he swiftly places his microphone back on the stand and opens his mouth. “I'd walk through fire for you, just let me adore you.”

He knows Leone’s eyes are on him, but he doesn’t return the gaze this time. Instead, he shuts his eyes, grasping the thin body of the microphone stand. His other hand stays on the mic. “Oh, honey. I’d walk through fire for you. Just let me adore you.” He continues singing the chorus until it eventually comes to the finishing lyrics.

But for the last lyric of the song, he opens his eyes and it makes contact with Leone’s, “Just let me adore you.” Bruno places a hand on his heart as he sings, then he points. The crowd goes wild at the action- thinking it was meant for them and their proceeding screams are deafening. But Leone knows it was meant for him.

--

Leone’s pulled by Narancia’s hand through the hallway that led to the lounge where the rest of the band and Bruno retired too when the concert was finished. He was nervous to see Bruno again, especially after the striking stares a pair of blue eyes had given him when the singer was pouring his heart out on the song. Leone felt as though Bruno was indirectly talking to him through the song. Even with a crowd full of people that came to watch and adore Bruno Buccellati, it was like Bruno was playing the song for him.

When Narancia opened the door, Leone first laid eyes on a certain blonde that brought irritation to his veins. He immediately rolled his eyes when the familiarity struck him and the events at the grocery shop came flashing back in his mind.  

Giorno snickered when he saw Leone come through the door being pulled by Narancia while he leaned against Mista who was munching on a slice of strawberry cake.

“Guys! Guys! Meet Leone Abbacchio!” Narancia announced, two of his hands splayed to present the tall goth, “My foster dad!”

The tall goth received a wave from Mista and a nod of acknowledgment from Fugo. Giorno greeted Leone with a small smile, “ Buona serata. ”

“Buona serata my ass,” Leone murmured, but he slowly realized what Narancia had called him earlier on. His eyebrows raised in surprise as he turned to look at Narancia, “Foster dad? What have you been telling these people Narancia-” But he wasn’t able to finish what he was saying because before he could process what Narancia called him, his arm was tugged once more.

But this time, it was pulled in the direction of none other than Bruno Buccellati himself.

Oh shit, Leone thought, stammering in unsensible words as he tried to stop Narancia but alas, it was already too late since they neared Bruno who was stood by the food table.

“Buccellati! Buccellati!” Enthusiastically, Narancia beamed at the adult in front of him.

Bruno turned his head when he heard Narancia’s voice, first glancing at the teenager himself before settling to the tall male next to him. Gently, he smirked at Leone. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of meeting, Narancia?”

Narancia giggled with a cute grin, pulling Leone close to him like glue. “Buccellati, meet Leone Abbacchio! He’s the one who’s been taking care of me. Abba, meet Buccellati!”

Leone inhaled sharply, swimming in the pools of blue he’s staring at. Without the sunglasses (And standing directly in front of him), Bruno looked so handsome at this proximity. Leone’s able to see his pretty face and the full of his sweetly curved lips. He feels his cheeks flush red when he sees Bruno’s eyes check over his body almost sensually. Fuck, Leone feels weak at the knees under his intense stare.

“Is that so? It’s a pleasure to meet you, Leone, ” Bruno smiles endearingly, eyes looking back at Leone’s while he holds out his hand. The way his name falls out of Bruno’s lips is smooth. The tone of his voice is soft yet it’s deep and penetrating.

“Pleasure to meet you too, Buccellati,” Leone replied, taking Bruno’s hand in his for a shake.

Bruno’s hand feels soft against his compared to his calloused ones. The warmth of Bruno’s hand engulfs his own, and he is almost reluctant to let go. “Bruno’s just fine, bello,” Bruno’s thumb softly rubs at Leone’s knuckles- Leone’s hand still grasped in his- as he gave another one of his award-winning smiles. Narancia’s oblivious to the overwhelming tension between the two adults.

“Oi Narancia! If you don’t hurry I’ll finish the cake myself!” Mista’s exclaim echoes in the room.

Gasping offendedly, Narancia shrills, “You wouldn’t dare!” He turned his head to look at the cake which earlier was whole but was now reduced to two slices.

“Oh, I would!” Mista threateningly taunts Narancia.

“You guys get acquainted! I’m gonna get the cake before Mista eats all of it,” The teen says to the two adults who finally let go of each other’s hands when they heard Mista shout. Before the two could say another word, Narancia is shuffling over the food table to grab a plate and a fork before quickly heading to grab a slice of the cake.

“Did you enjoy the show?” Bruno asks Leone, turning to face the food table. He resumes filling up his plate with a slice of prosciutto.

Leone nods his head, picking at his lacquered nails. “It was good, yeah. You were uh- great up there.”

For a moment, Bruno’s head spins to look at Leone and gives him a smirk, “I’m glad you liked it, bello. You should take a seat.” He nudges the legs of the stool beside him with the toe of his foot.

Politely, Leone takes a seat at the stool. He brushes back a strand of hair behind his ear when it falls to the front of his face as he sits down.

"So you’re Narancia’s guardian?”

Leone hums, “Not legally. The kid ran away from home and all. I just gave him a place to stay.”

“Not foster dad then?” An amused smile overcomes Bruno’s lips.

Chuckling Leone answered, “Nope. Not foster dad.”

Bruno leans against the food table with his back away from the array of food and moves beside Leone. He holds a plate of prosciutto in front of him. “Tell me about yourself, Leone.” Bruno takes a forkful of the food in his mouth as he awaits Leone’s reply.

Leone scratches the back of his neck, “There’s not much to tell and besides, I just met you.” He raised a brow pointedly to which Bruno replies with a chuckle.

“Buon punto, Leone. Surely you remember our encounter in the grocery store? You know, orange thief?”

Leone inwardly groans, rolling his eyes as he remembers an annoying blonde brat. “Hardly makes me a thief. You gave them to me at the end, though. Remember?”

When he came home from the grocery shop, he refused to tell Narancia what had gone down to save himself from the teen’s endless bickering. Ugh, the things I do for you, Leone thought as he handed Narancia the pack of oranges hours before. He was rewarded by repetitious thank yous from the teenager.

Bruno nodded, “Sì, you were quite adamant about getting them for your kid and all.” He flicks his eyes to Narancia.

“Okay, okay. Let’s just- forget about the oranges.” The long-haired man sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

Another hearty chuckle escapes through Bruno’s mouth. “Don’t fret, Leone. I was only teasing. Anyway, have you formally met the others?”

“Not really. All I know is the brat who claimed that I stole the oranges.” Leone huffs, crossing his arms stubbornly.

“That brat is my publicist,” Bruno answers, finishing his plate of prosciutto. “Giorno’s pretty strict and he can be dogmatic at times. But it’s what makes him a good publicist. I apologize on his behalf.”

Leone shakes his head, “It’s fine. It’s over now anyway.”

Humming, Bruno asked, “Say, Leone, are you busy tonight?”

Shaking his head, Leone answered, “Have lots of free time, why do you ask?”

“Hmm… I have a reservation for Ristorante Don Alfonso 1890 to try out their food. Giorno insists I go and have dinner with a friend for the experience because apparently he and Mista had a date there. He said the food was great.” Bruno poured two glasses with iced tea, offering one to Leone.

Graciously, Leone accepts the glass. “You’re… you want me to go with you?”

“I was going to bring mio padre but he told me he was exhausted from working and he rather I’d bring a friend instead,” Bruno explained.

Leone purses his lips in thought. Staring at the iced tea before him. Bruno Buccellati was inviting him to dinner. “Are- are you asking me out?”

Bruno looks at Leone and hums. He shrugs his shoulders, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

It baffles him that someone like Bruno Buccellati would want to invite him to dinner. Bruno could have anyone he wants but instead, he’s asking Leone out for dinner. Leone wasn’t really a romantic person. He’s reserved and closed off, built up walls. Unlike Bruno’s charming and outgoing personality- which people admire- He’s the complete opposite of Bruno.

Bruno’s had his fair share of lovers. Ranging from men and women. But they were all flings. The only long-term relationship he had didn’t last because the press was being invasive with their relationship. Consequently, that led to a break-up. He coped with the aftermath through songwriting and thus, his new album was born.

“As long as there’s good wine, I’m in.” Said Leone. He agrees because he does want to go. He wants to get to know Bruno. Not Bruno Buccellati the pop star, but just simply Bruno. Even without admitting it to himself, he already likes where this is going.

Bruno smiles, “Di molto bene! Wear something nice, bello. I’d very much like to adore you.”

Leone blushes, he opens his mouth to reply however a sudden thud, crack of an object and a shout interrupts them.

“You shit for brains!”

A distorted, out of tune note erupts from the keyboard due to the clenched fist that belonged to Fugo pounded on the instrument. Bruno and Leone’s eyes widen and survey the scene.

Narancia and Mista lay on the floor groaning, the coffee table that used to be in front of the couch was now in broken pieces scattered around and under the two bodies. Giorno’s face is full of shock as he tries to process what the fuck just happened.

Bruno’s sudden snap makes the room go silent, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS DOING?!”

< To Be Continued I \ I |