#read a clockwork orange a few weeks ago

[justagaycryptid]

Watched American Psycho and this man wants to be Alex DeLarge sooo fucking bad its unreal

[king-spite]

thanks for the tag Aleksander! :] 🫶🫶

• Reblog with your current/next reads!

Current reads:

(have been my crs for over a month bc college has been kicking my ass and i haven't had the time to read :| but i'm liking both a lot so far!)

Next reads:

( i read the 1st poppy war book last year and it became my absolute fav series, so i plan to finish reading the whole series after my crs. wish me good luck🧍)

tags (trying to include everyone who hasn't been tagged already + anyone else who wants to join<3): @princenightingale @thatpeculiargremlin @planetmaven @mavenne @infinitely-caffeinated @sappholovell @shakingcryingwriting @bunnybearsworld @ravioliwings

Reblog with your current/next reads :p

Current:

Next:

Anyone can, but tagging: @barnbridges @one-hell-of-otaku-is-here @tmin-n @infactilovetea @poeticabomination @memory-the-unconscious

[creepling]

✒️ - “making fun of them for their favourite (movie/book/etc) then (watching/reading/etc) it because of them and ending up loving it” + johnny <3

(congratulations on 1k you’re writing is so immersive and the characterisation is always SO on point you deserve every note and follower <33)

omg anon thank you sm, that is so sweet. i love this prompt so much because i have been wondering what type of movies and books johnny would be into. hope you like the result<33

tags: ment of a clockwork orange. canon-set in 1974. johnny is smoking and gets a lil pissy at reader

"Surely you go to the cinema now and then," You scoff after Johnny admits he wasn't one to watch many movies.

"Nah, don't like 'em," He shrugged, resting his feet on the porch fence, and he swung on his chair. You watch as he draws his cigarette, shaking your head in amazement.

"Have you ever seen a movie in your life?" You tease, shading your eyes from the blazing sun.

Johnny frowned and exhaled the smoke from his mouth, "Of course, I have, dumbass. I'm not that stupid."

"Well, what's the best movie you've seen so far?" You ask, leaning back on the fence, your blinded eyes adjusting to Johnny's face.

He thought for a good while, sucking his cheeks and staring into space. "A Clockwork Orange," He blankly answered, returning to smoking his cigarette.

Your eyebrows knit in inquisitiveness. You have heard of it; it came out a few years ago. But everyone you know who saw it said it was disturbing, so you did not go and see it. "Isn't that the British one with a lot of violence in it?"

Johnny shrugged, "It wasn't that bad,"

You scoff out a laugh. "Trust the bad boy to like a movie with a lot of violence in it," You tease, earning a glare from him.

"You asked me my favourite movie, and I told you. Now you wanna get at me for it?" Johnny's defensiveness took you aback, causing you to laugh nervously.

"I'm only joking, Johnny. Damn, calm down." You say, but Johnny was already storming back inside the house. You took that as your message to leave and sulk back to your car.

In the week you were away from the Slaughter yard, you took the time to go to a midnight screening of A Clockwork Orange, thinking you owed Johnny some gratitude for teasing him. Once you left the cinema, you were amazed. Sure, it was violent, very violent. At times, you shielded your eyes from the screen. But for Johnny to like it, it was surprisingly visualistic. It was grotesquely beautiful.

The next day, you visited Johnny, approaching the porch like a dog with its tail between its legs. You were curious to know if Johnny was mad at you as he gave you a blank stare like he always does. In the same position, smoking a cigarette, you walk up to him and stand by his side.

"I saw that movie you like the other day," You begin, looking for his reaction.

He glances at you, keeping to himself. You lean down and wrap your arms around his shoulders, resting your head.

"It was terrific," You confess. Johnny's shoulders shifted as he chuckled. "What?"

"Trust you to tease me for liking a movie and end up likin' it yerself," He said amusingly, leaving a peck on your arm. At his return to affection, you smiled and hugged him tighter.

"I kinda wanna see it again. Maybe we should go together?" You suggest.

Johnny smirks as he rubs your arm and pulls you closer, "Sounds like a date."

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

my year in review (data/stats/numbers)

this year, mental illness kicked my ass until it didn't (when fabba came back), and then about a week ago, it started kicking my ass again. i wish i had spent more of the year escaping into art. 2023 was the first year in a while, i feel, that has had this low numbers.

part of that is because my special interest in the 2000s emo scene was reawakened by fob's return, so much of my year was spent re-obsessing over them. rediscovering a bunch of music that made me happy ages 12-15, a time period full of suicidal ideation. my suicidal thoughts and impulses were slain, once again, by the fabbaboos like champions in an arena. 'are you not entertained?' and all that.

(the only 're-'s i am counting are film re-watches, so no album re-listens are counted in that. so a bunch of the stuff i did this year is not being counted! i actually listened to a lot more music than i have catalogued here, i just don't personally log re-listens in my physical media log, so they aren't counted here.)

another part of this is that i spent so much of the year working on my own projects, working on myself, and trying to manage my mental illnesses. i quit drugs and wanting to kill myself! i'm learning spanish! i'm graduating in a few months! this is not an apology; i just prefer to do a lot more stuff to distract me from all the horribleness in my life </3.

this is a (hopefully) complete-ish log of stuff i did this year bc i like number and data and keeping logs because i have an intense, immense fear of lack of permanence/forgetting/losing things because i have lost and forgotten so much stuff in my life 😁😁😁

this is going to get long, so i'm putting it under a cut.

movies watched: 54

top 10 best movies, loosely ranked best to worst:

the revenge of frankenstein (1958) (re-watch) (5 stars)

moustachette (2009) (re-watch) (5 stars)

a field in england (2013) (5 stars)

barbie (2023) (5 stars)

the curse of frankenstein (1957) (re-watch) (5 stars)

spider-man: across the spider-verse (2023) (5 stars)

how to get ahead in advertising (1989) (5 stars)

field of dreams (1989) (5 stars)

the boy and the heron (2023) (4.5 stars)

withnail & i (1987) (4.5 stars)

die hard (1988) (4.5 stars)

honorable mentions: akira (1988), his girl friday (1940), juno (2007), guardians of the galaxy vol. 3 (2023), a clockwork orange (1971)

top 5 worst films, loosely ranked worst to best:

black jack (1981) (2 stars)

lust for a vampire (1971) (2 stars)

some may live (1967) (3 stars)

renfield (2023) (3 stars)

men at work (1990) (3 stars)

*

i don't really watch that much television, so i'm not logging it here. i did watch a bunch of tv, but not enough to really warrant a wrapped.

*

books read: 7 (+3 issues of do a powerbomb) (+ part of great expectations by charles dickens, but i haven't finished it yet 🥰)

ranked, best to worst:

gray by pete wentz, james montgomery (4.5 stars)

landline by rainbow rowell (4.5 stars)

the last command by timothy zahn (4.5 stars)

the secret diary of laura palmer by jennifer lynch (4 stars)

attachments by rainbow rowell (4 stars)

specter of the past by timothy zahn (3.5 stars)

do a powerbomb by daniel warren johnson (first three issues, 3.5 average stars)

death star by steve perry, michael reaves (2 stars)

*

i still haven't received my spotify wrapped in full because it won't load all the way through, so that is going to have to wait. but i am an album listener through and through, so here are some album stats!

i'm only counting albums that are new to me/i previously hadn't listened to all the way through, so this doesn't count re-listens :/

this also IS counting eps.

albums listened to: 29

top 10 albums, best to worst:

soul punk (2011) by patrick stump (5 stars)

so much (for) stardust (2023) by fall out boy (5 stars)

purple rain (1984) by prince (5 stars)

hot mess (2009) by cobra starship (5 stars)

transgender dysphoria blues (2014) by against me! (5 stars)

can't buy a thrill (1972) by steely dan (5 stars)

like vines (2006) by the hush sound (5 stars)

bleed american (2001) by jimmy eat world (5 stars)

this is why (2023) by paramore (4.5)

flamboyant (2019) by dorian electra (4.5 stars)

honorable mentions: where sleeplessness is rest from nightmares (2001) by arma angelus; the land is inhospitable and so are we (2023) by mitski; old world underground, where are you now? (2003) by metric; phantomime (ep) (2023) by ghost; sempiternal (2013) by bring me the horizon

loosely ordered, non-exhaustive 10 of my favorite new-to-me songs:

fake out by fall out boy

run dry (x heart x fingers) / cryptozoology by patrick stump

love from the other side by fall out boy

thick skull by paramore

so much (for) stardust by fall out boy

allie by patrick stump

bleed american by jimmy eat world

i would die 4 u by prince (there would be more prince on this list, but i had listened to much of purple rain already, so!)

you're not in on the joke by cobra starship

to feel no more bitterness forever by arma angelus

*

personal project wrapped!

poems: 37

the bc wip: 6146 words (daily writing streak not broken since i started it 😁)

the mi wip: 836 words

the epdb wip: 1697 words

other stuff: ???

i've written too many songs/scraps of songs to count those.

*

10 favorite real world things + stuff i'm grateful/proud that happened:

got hardcore back into fall out boy !

saw fall out boy live !

saw ghost live !

sobered up and became straight edge !

overcame suicidal urges (kinda) !

have been learning how to read music and play piano better !

went to the pmu !

read 'gray' by pete wentz !

curbed my righteous anger / learned to cope with anger better !

have been learning spanish !

honorable mentions: learning to be a better friend, have been keeping up a writing streak with the bc wip + haven't missed a single day since i started, started the mi wip, have been putting myself out there more, doing things scared, writing a shit ton of poetry + sharing it, got clandestine merch, keeping to my dietary restrictions, recovering from onychotillomania!

[survey--s]

662.

What colour is the photo frame closest to you? Pale wood.

Are your pets asleep right now, if you have any? The cats are all asleep but the dog is awake and waiting for Mike to get home - I think the clock change has confused him as it's dark and Mike is normally home before dark lol.

Would you have any idea what your parents are doing right now? I assume they're at home - probably watching TV?

How many windows (roughly) does your house have? Eight.

Do you have a good relationship with your cousins? No. They all live overseas so we barely speak to each other.

What was the last kids movie you saw? Alice in Wonderland.

Do you know anyone who was born in Africa? My mum was born in East Africa. Well, on an island there.

Have you ever been to an internet cafe? Ha yes. I remember when finding an internet cafe was like, the highlight of my holidays LOL.

Are there any upcoming events for you to look forward to? Yeah, the weekend, my birthday and Christmas break.

Has the year gone quickly for you so far? This year has FLOWN by. I can't believe it's Halloween already.

How many siblings does your significant other have? Four. Three sisters and a brother.

Are you one of those people who can drink vodka straight? I can but it's not pleasant.

Have you ever done three or more shots in a row? Yes.

Do you share a middle name with any of your friends? I'm sure I do as it's a pretty common one.

What was the last movie you saw in theatres? Cats ha. I haven't been to the movies since before COVID.

Are you interested in international politics? I wouldn't say I was interested but I do keep up to date on it.

How many pairs of jeans do you own? About ten or so.

When was the last time you showered? About three and a half hours ago when I got in from work.

Do you know the name of the pharmacist at your local drug store? No.

What was the first cellphone you had and how old were you when you got it? It was a Sagem something or other and I was about thirteen. According to Google it was a my X-6.

Do you use public transport in your town or city? No. It's unreliable and generally doesn't go where you need to get to.

Have your parents ever worked in a factory? I think my dad did when he was a student.

Do you have several best friends? No.

How many lights are in the room you’re in? Three sets of fairy lights and two overhead lights.

Is there a Hard Rock Cafe in your town or city? No. I haven't been to one of those in about a decade lol.

Do you eat fast food more than once a week? No.

What flavour is your toothpaste? Mint.

Have you ever shared a shower or bath with someone as an adult? Yeah, with my husband.

When was the last time you had a bubble bath? About a month ago.

Are you sleepy right now? A little bit. Not enough to actually sleep though.

How big is your backyard? Big enough for a small terraced house.

Do you know anyone with Tourette’s Syndrome? No.

What time does your alarm wake you up in the morning? On work days, 7.30am.

What was the last zoo you visited? Our local one, which is pretty shit really.

Do you like crime films and tv shows? I have to be in the right mood for them, but yeah.

When you shop, do you take a basket or a cart (trolley)? Depends on how much I plan on buying.

Have you ever tasted milk straight from the cow? Yeah, a few times. It's GOOD.

What’s your favourite sleeping position? On my right side, curled up.

What colour is the bra you’re wearing? Black.

Have you ever seen A Clockwork Orange? No. I've read the book though.

Are you bitter about anything? Nah.

Do you like to make games out of chores to make them more enjoyable? No, it just takes even longer lol.

How many letters are in your best friend’s surname? Six, the same as mine.

Is there anything in your possession that probably shouldn’t be? Nope.

What is your favourite flavour of yoghurt? Raspberry or blackcurrant.

What was the first online account you remember having? Probably a Hotmail account or something.

Do you listen to music to fall asleep? No, I like silence to sleep.

Where did you go last time you left your town or city? Uh, the vets I think.

Do you use emojis? Sometimes.

Have you ever wanted to be a lawyer? Yeah, when I was younger.

What percentage of battery does your phone currently have? 25%.

What was the last type of soda you drank? Pepsi Max.

How far away from your house is your favourite place to shop for clothes? About an hours' drive.

Do you have supplies handy right now to draw something if I told you to? Yes.

Have you ever been married? I've been married for just over five years.

What does your deodorant smell like? Berries.

Is your bedroom more messy or clean at the moment? My side is clean, Mike's is messy.

Do you use Twitter? No.

Are you any good at baking cakes and cookies from scratch? I'm not bad at it, I just don't enjoy it.

Is there a floor lamp in your bedroom? No.

What does most of your weekly or fortnightly income go towards? Savings/long-term investments.

Have you ever been to another continent? Yeah, Asia, Australasia and North America. I live in Europe.

Do you have any hidden piercings? (this includes bellybuttons) Yeah, but I don't wear any jewellery in it.

What month is your birthday? December.

What can you hear right now? The Simpsons. I'm watching all the Treehouse of Horror episodes.

[mrschwartz]

this semester i'm taking a class about cinema where every week we watch a different film. this week (oct 15 to oct 21) we had to watch a clockwork orange. hold that thought

alex has been saying how sculptures of anything goes came about because jamie wired a drum machine to a moog synthesizer, right? i had never heard of a moog synthesizer until a couple weeks ago when he started talking about it but now i know what it is. great!

so back to clockwork. i watched the film and then i went to watch a bunch of videos about it on youtube, and when of them was talking about the film's score they said "there's a lot of classical music in a clockwork orange but lots of it are modified with a moog synthesizer" and i was like what. what a coincidence, this information would've flown right over my head like last week. called it a crazy coincidence and moved on

and so, in addition to watching a bunch of videos in preparation for my class, i also read a few texts that my professor recommended, and one of them said something like "after 2001: a space odyssey kubrick was set on making a film about napoleon's biography, but received minimum encouragement and that's when working on a clockwork orange as his next project came into the picture"

but then. like on the next day radiox's track by track interview came out and the interviewer asked alex what "lego napoleon movie" meant and he answered that he liked the idea of the possibility of the people that make the lego movies taking kubrick's unused script and ideas for his napoleon film and turning it a lego movie. so again. fucking WHAT. what are the chances. this comment would've meant nothing to me like the day before. but having read a text for college gave me context for it

listening to arctic monkeys and watching their interviews enhanced my experience of watching a clockwork orange by giving me a better understanding of it, and watching a clockwork orange and looking for analytical material of it enhanced my experience of listening to arctic monkeys by giving me a better understanding of them. just because i did both on the same span of two weeks

[whisperlullaby]

Concentrated Sunlight

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Warnings: Fluff, some angst (?) maybe a curse or two

Word Count:  1362

Summary: Steve Rogers owns a flower shop and is smitten with a regular customer. What happens when he finds out she has a boyfriend?

A/N:  This was done for @syntheticavenger​‘s challenge! It was a lyric prompt  “ If I told you that I loved you, tell me what would you say?” (The Neighbourhood ‘The Beach’) And I made up a little flower shop AU to go along with it! I want to thank @syntheticavenger​ for reading my story and @river-soul​ for hyping me up to post this! This is my first EVER fanfic for any fandom and the first time I am publishing my work anywhere. If I forgot any warnings let me know!

Friday, 4:00,  like clockwork you walked into Steve Rogers flower shop. The sunflowers always seemed to lean into you when you passed their cooler. You had been coming every Friday to pick up what you called “weekend flowers” for 6 months now and simply knowing you were coming seemed to make the weeks go by a lot faster. 

“Hey Steve! Got anything fresh this week?” you teased. You knew he went to the wholesale market daily to make sure each arrangement held the freshest flowers. You had asked about it the third time you came into the shop and he made it a point to tell you about his daily trips to the wholesale market. What he didn’t tell you was that he made a point of going 6 months ago when you started coming in, just in case you needed flowers any other day of the week.

“Hey doll, got some orange dahlia’s that look pretty good. Wanna take a look?” He moved towards the cooler that held the special find. Orange was your favorite. He noticed how you always seemed to pick out orange day lilies, poppy’s, marigolds, and orange Gerber daisies. There weren’t many impressive orange flowers so when Steve found eye catching ones at the market he would always buy them out of stock.

“No, actually, I’m not picking up flowers for me today.” You paused and looked at Steve who seemed to stiffen. “I’m meeting my boyfriend's family for the first time tonight and I think they prefer white flowers with lots of green filler, maybe roses? I don’t know though, do you have anything a bit more traditional?” You shifted around to where Steve stood at the cooler a bit nervously. You loved his flower shop and didn’t want to go anywhere else, but admitting to needing something to bring to another man's family seemed unsettling. 

Steve’s face visibly dropped and his hand white knuckled on the cooler door. You had a boyfriend. Of course you did. You were concentrated sunlight, even the flowers noticed. Each bloom always opened up a bit more when you were around. He knows he sure as hell did. “You have a boyfriend? How long have you guys been together?” His voice threatened to break, and his grip on the coolers handle somehow tightened. 

“Not long really, about a month? My co-worker kind of set it up, thought we would be a good fit. I’m not sure though it seems to be going a bit fast. Isn’t it a bit soon to meet the family? We’ve only been on a handful of dates. I'm not even sure why I agreed to it.” You mumbled while chewing your lip raw. Your eyes were looking all around the shop until they finally landed on Steve. “Are you okay Steve? You seem a bit flushed. Maybe you should sit down.” You moved to grab Steve's hand off the handle. He immediately relaxed at your gentle touch. You led him to the back office where he could sit while the color came back to his face. “Can I get you some water? Or do you have anything to snack on back here?”

“Don’t go. Tonight. To meet his family.” Steve spat out breathlessly. He couldn’t let you go. You said so yourself that it was only a handful of dates and you thought it was moving too fast. Surely there was a reason you hesitated, right? He had to say something, anything to get you to get your orange dahlia’s and stay for a few hours. He loved your Friday afternoon conversations and the thought of those coming to an end made him nauseous. He didn’t enjoy anyone’s company more than yours, you had to know that by now.

“Steve what are you talking about? I already agreed to go, what will they think of me if I cancel at the last minute without a reason?” You were fidgeting with your hands unsure why you cared what they thought of you. You knew very little about the guy as it was, he wasn’t much of a talker. He wasn’t much of anything really, but he was polite and punctual. When he asked you to go to dinner with him at his parents house you felt your brain start to cloud over. You had just taken a sip of the bitter coffee he had ordered for you when he dropped that bomb. What were you going to do, say no? You were caught off guard! He was a perfectly lovely person. Just not the one you had your eye on.  

Steve could see your hesitation, he knew you were uncomfortable. He saw the way your eyebrows knit together and how you were fidgeting with your fingers. You only did that when you were unsure about something. You did the same thing when you were trying to decide between the peonies and the anemone’s after you had a hell of a week at work. He knew that you thought buying flowers for the weekend gave you more time to enjoy the colors. He knew that you moved here after cutting off ties with your family, looking for a fresh start you said. He knew you preferred tea to coffee but he knew you wouldn’t pass up a peppermint latte during the holiday season. He had to tell you how he felt, he couldn’t let you start this relationship with this guy without having you know how he felt about you. 

“If I told you that I loved you, tell me what would you say?”

You stared at Steve in shock. Your mouth hung open with a gasp. You had a huge crush on the town's florist but thought he was way out of your league. After that revelation you finally caved and said yes to your coworker’s attempt to set you up. You always did have a problem saying no to people and now it was biting you in the ass. Steve made your Friday flower shop visits the highlight of your week. He taught you so much about each flower and the day he told you that you reminded him of a peony in bloom you could have kissed him right there. You knew he preferred coffee to tea after the hour long debate one afternoon ending in you storming out only to bring back a chai tea for him. He said it smelled like bells of Ireland and you had to agree. You knew he was taking care of his mom after her stroke and he had a best friend named Bucky who used to get him both in and out of trouble. You stared into his crystal blue eyes full of hope and adoration. You brought your hand to his face and he sighed leaning into your warm touch.

“I would ask you what took so long.” You teased as he smiled. He grabbed the hand that was resting on his cheek and pulled you into him. You felt his soft lips kiss the top of your head and you let out a breath you didn’t realize you had been holding. 

“So, how about I wrap up some orange dahlias and bring them by your place tonight.” You looked at Steve confused. “What? I don’t think you’re still planning on going to meet that guys family tonight and I want to take you to dinner. Call it a date”

You laughed incredulously shaking your head, “Ha I guess you’re right. Should have known it wouldn’t work out when he got picky with the flowers.” You spot a pen and paper on the desk and scribbled your address on the page. “Pick me up at 7:30 and don’t forget my weekend flowers.” You pulled away from Steve and headed towards the door.

Steve stared as you left his office with a cheshire cat grin. He walked back into the main store and grabbed every  available orange dahlia he had and closed up shop. He had a date to get ready for. 

[luminescencefics]

fade in, fade out - part six

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A/N: Since this chapter is quite long, mobile viewing is probably not the best option because Tumblr can sometimes be finicky! I would recommend viewing in a browser. Happy reading, loves! x

***

The Climax

January 2013 

Marcus and Nora break up during the spring of her second year.

He wanted things to move much faster than they were, and Nora was far too comfortable with their normal—the normal in which Marcus lived a floor above her and they could wrap around each other in his tiny twin bed without worrying about things outside of their protective bubble. Because this normal was easy, it was simple, it was safe—and doing anything different, switching up their normal, would make it the complete opposite.

So when he tells her that he found a small studio apartment in the West Village one April afternoon underneath a budding black tupelo tree in Central Park, and he would love more than anything for Nora to move in, she immediately declines. She wasn’t ready for that step—wasn’t ready to not live with Ebony and switch up her normal and pop their bubble.

Breaking up wasn’t in Nora’s plan, but she knew that it was bound to happen. It was an amicable split, something that didn’t shake her world or leave her feeling lost at sea without an anchor in the unforgiving rough waters. And two months later, when she’s spending her final summer at home with her mother, Nora wonders if there’s something wrong with her heart when it still feels intact and the still-beating flesh isn’t ripping apart at the seams.

But life moves on, and so does Nora.

When she arrives back on campus at the start of her third year, Nora finds that she has room in her schedule for extracurriculars due to her influx of AP credits from Townbridge. On a whim, she decides to fill in the gaps with Film Study classes, and Nora finds that her heart is thumping in a way that it never has before—in a way that makes her feel that she’s finally found purpose, finally found her passion, finally found something close to unadulterated happiness.

Her favorite film professor is an older woman named Suzanne Davies who insists she be called Sue, or more radically, Suzy. She’s built of thin bones and worn skin, mahogany eyes that have seen almost everything that Nora wishes she could, with grey curly hair that twists at the nape of her neck and covers a brain that Nora wishes she could pry apart and indulge in every memory like a film projector reel on a thin hanging sheet.

She teaches Film Theory & Criticism, and when Nora listens to her thick British accent work through Apparatus theory and Structuralist theory, she can’t help but think of London—a city that feels an entire world away, and how badly she wishes she could visit, if only for a short amount of time.

One dreary November afternoon when Nora is the last one to leave the lecture hall, Suzy stops her and asks her what she wants to do with her life. Nora is instantly brought back to a time in December three years ago, in a different state with a boy she thinks about every now and then, who asked her this very same question as the snow was falling outside and they were laying down on concrete steps, eyes facing the cracked ceiling above. She was honest then, not even hesitating when spilling the words freely from her lips, because for some odd reason, she trusted him entirely in that small moment in time.

She feels the same now, and suddenly, she’s telling her professor about the pressure she feels of choosing a stable career, of how she needs her mother to be proud of her, of how she studies Communications but craves Film, of how she’s never been happier than when she’s watching old movies and dreaming up plots of her own. She tells Suzy how she’s never left the country, of how she wishes to see places that aren’t coastal Newport or rural Connecticut or bustling New York City.

When Nora sits in her usual seat in the middle row for her next class a week later, she finds an application for Columbia’s exchange program with University College London on her desk. She skims through the pages, finding that Suzy has filled in most of the basic information, leaving the personal questions for Nora to finish. And when she looks up at her professor just as she’s beginning the lecture, Suzy feels her gaze warm her wrinkled cheek and shoots her wink, going right back to discussing human nature as a fundamental theme in A Clockwork Orange.

Nora sends in her application right after class, and receives her acceptance letter the week before Christmas break. She feels as if she’s floating through thin air, and the only thing keeping her from floating into the stratosphere is the glossy folder from UCL with the words Congratulations! and welcome and 4 January 2013 printed on thick paper. Her mother might possibly be more thrilled than Nora, and when she’s back in Newport folding thick sweaters and knitted scarves and thrifted trench coats into her suitcases on New Year’s Eve, Nora can’t help but think that if moments could be bottled, she would pick this one to cherish forever.

Time seems to pass much faster for Harry. His first year meshes into his second year without hesitation, his afternoon’s at his internship with his father fall into nights spent with his mates almost thoughtlessly—and it’s only once he’s been doing the same thing for almost an entire year when he feels himself growing tired of it all. He’s sick of this routine. Sick of drinking himself into a place where he doesn’t have any feelings, doesn’t think of all of his past mistakes, doesn’t do anything else except simply exist for a few hours. And when he falls into his bed the next morning feeling his brain throb against his skill in agony, he comes to the conclusion that he’s completely and utterly exhausted from this meaningless lifestyle.

When his third and final year comes along, he decides to stop answering his mates when they call. He doesn’t show up to their penthouse parties anymore, he doesn’t frequent the same claustrophobic clubs he knows they’ll be at. Harry keeps to himself, and when he sees a flyer after his Business Ethics lecture about intramural football tryouts, he brings his old kit to the pitch the next afternoon. He’s a bit rusty, but Harry finds that most of the lads are, and that thought alone makes him start to feel something other than emptiness.

He makes the team and meets a boy named Niall. He’s from Ireland and drinks like a fish, but he’s kind and easygoing and doesn’t care that Harry’s surname is Styles—and it’s a refreshing change from the incessant partying and shallow people he wasted away with his first two years. Niall is warm and comfortable, and reminds Harry of slipping on that warm jumper he’s had for years in the back of his closet whenever the weather gets cold, and it’s nice having a real friend for once in his life.

As October changes into November, Harry feels a change within himself, too. It’s subtle, the smallest of shifts that allows his icy heart to thaw ever so slowly, and he finds that he welcomes it with open arms.

He meets Niall’s girlfriend just as the long stretch of autumn begins. Her name is Piper and she’s practically made for Niall, in the way that the top of her head reaches just under Niall’s chin so that he can rest it there whenever they’re talking to other people, in the way that his hand practically swallows her much smaller one whenever they’re walking from pub to pub, in the way that she instinctively makes him a cup of tea whenever she brews her own, knowing exactly how he takes it. It makes Harry a little bit jealous, because for the first time in years, he finds that he yearns to wrap a body part around another warm person just to inform them that he hasn’t forgotten their presence, yearns to swallow palms with his own, yearns to have another person think of him while doing the most mundane of tasks.

Yearns to have somebody want him in a way he hasn’t ever been wanted before.

Piper is in her third year at UCL, and she met Niall at a house party during their first year hosted by a mutual friend. They fell in love quickly and seamlessly, and after three weeks Niall told her that she was the one for him, and it all sort of made sense.

She welcomes Harry into their eclectic group, filled with a few lads from footie and a few girls from Piper’s dorm, and they’re the fastest friends Harry’s ever made. They spend their fall semester at a small pub in Camden on Wednesdays that plays live music and is filled with seemingly normal people like Harry’s new mates, and busy house parties hosted by UCL students on the weekends, with the occasional club sprinkled in between.

As autumn trickles into winter, Harry finds that he’s quite sad to watch Niall leave for Ireland for the holiday break. He’s not sure how time passed so quickly, and as December fades into January, Harry’s counting down the days until his loud brown-haired mate is back in London, showing up on his doorstep to drag him to the pub around the corner for a pint.

When Nora exits Heathrow during one of the coldest days of the year, she finds that not even the weather can dull her perpetual shine. She barely slept the entire flight, her excitement of being on a plane for the first time and receiving her first official passport stamp keeping her wide awake throughout the entire seven hour journey.

During the car ride from Heathrow to her residence hall in Central London, Nora’s face is glued to the window pane, her eyes taking in every sight that flashes by. Her mouth is close enough to the glass that her humid breaths are causing the window to fog over, but she can’t even think about how rude that probably is. All she can think about is the fact that she’s in another country, in a brand new city, experiencing all of this for the very first time.

When the black car finally pulls up to a brick building, Nora clutches her two suitcases in each hand, her leather backpack strapped tightly against the wool material of her trench coat, and makes her way to the sixth floor.

Nora’s room is small but homely, a single twin bed against one wall with a wooden wardrobe on the other. A white desk sits underneath the decently-sized window straight against the back wall, and when she looks around and takes everything in, she feels herself breathe properly for the first time since stepping on English soil.

Her floor is quiet, but before Nora can begin to explore, she decides to be smart and starts unpacking, knowing that the longer she puts it off, the less inclined she’ll be to put her clothes away properly. 

After about an hour, she decides to venture down the hallway into the common room where a small kitchen and lounge area reside. Nora notices a few coats thrown over the back of the couch haphazardly, and before she can build up the courage to turn down the other adjacent hallway and meet her new floormates, she decides to brew a cup of coffee to push past the jet lag attempting to invade her insides.

When she turns the kettle on and rummages through the cupboards to try and find some instant coffee, Nora discovers nothing but various tea flavors. Disgruntled, Nora plucks a package of Earl Grey and places it inside a mug she grabbed from the shelf, moving the plaid tea towel a little bit further down the countertop as she waits for the hot water to boil.

Nora leans her right hip on the counter while she waits, drumming her fingertips against the laminate material as she tries to remember if she even likes the taste of tea to begin with. She drank chamomile tea once after studying for finals so that she could sleep, and whenever she was sick with a cold, her mother would make her a cup with a dollop of honey to soothe her scratchy throat. She wonders if she’s allowed to put milk inside so the color isn’t a deep murky brown, or if sugar would help with the bitter taste.

Suddenly, Nora detects something that smells distinctly of burning. She springs upright, wondering what on earth she could have possibly done. Water can’t burn, right?

But before her fuzzy brain can start functioning properly, she looks down to her right and notices that the edges of the plaid tea towel have charred, and when she blinks, Nora realizes that the red light on the hot plate has been turned on.

“Shit!” Nora squeals, flicking the switch off that she must have accidentally turned on when she lazily rested her hip against the edge of the counter moments ago.

Just as she makes a reach for the burning tea towel, she hears a high-pitched accented voice behind her shriek, and suddenly, freckled arms are appearing in her periphery, snatching up the ruined tea towel as she yells, “Oi! No tea towels on the hot plate!”

With a flick of her wrist, the girl throws the tea towel into the sink, turning the cold water on while Nora’s cheeks burn bright. “I’m sorry! I didn’t even realize—Christ,” she splutters, tearing her eyes away from the wet fabric inside the steel basin and focusing them on the smaller girl in front of her.

“Ah, you’re the new American exchange student.” The girl says it in a way that makes Nora wonder if it’s a good or bad thing, as if her identifier explains why she nearly burned their residence hall down a mere three hours after being allowed in the country.

Before Nora can apologize or worse, make an even bigger fool of herself, the pretty girl in front of her chuckles in a way that makes Nora breathe in a deep sigh of relief. And before she can even realize what she’s doing, Nora starts to laugh along with her—loud enough until her cheeks feel bruised from smiling so brightly and her ribs hurt from the lack of air pumping through her lungs. The kettle starts to whistle, forcing them to break their eye contact.

Just as Nora reaches over to turn it off, the girl’s freckled arm beats her to the punch, knocking her hip against Nora’s with a bright smile, “Let’s keep you away from any more potential fire hazards, yeah?”

The lightness in her tone makes Nora believe that she’s being genuine, and when the girl begins to pour the hot water into the mug and shoots a kind smile over her shoulder, Nora takes a step back and feels a bit more at ease.

“I’m Nora, by the way,” Nora announces, watching the pretty girl with auburn hair dunk the tea bag exactly seven times into the water.

“I’m Piper. How do you take your tea?” she asks, looking over her shoulder again. Nora gets a bit distracted by the smattering of freckles covering the bridge of her nose and falling onto the apples of her cheeks. Her eyes are the brightest shade of green Nora’s ever seen, and when the girl tilts her head to the side in question, Nora shakes her head, realizing that she has no idea how to properly drink tea.

“Uh, I’m not sure,” she admits sheepishly. Piper gives her a soft smile, before reaching into the refrigerator and grabbing a small carton of milk.

“You’ll take it like me, then. Reckon I’ll convert you into a proper tea drinker by the time your exchange is over, Rah,” Piper calls out, pouring a dash of milk and plopping one sugar cube inside the cup, stirring it another seven times. Nora wonders if that changes the taste or if it’s just a little quirk her new floormate does.

Nora’s eyebrows furrow at the unfamiliar name that falls from Piper’s pink lips. “Rah?”

Piper hands over the mug with twinkling eyes. “Gotta give you a nickname if we’re meant to be proper mates, right?”

It’s a question that seems to not need an answer, because Piper is the type of girl that says things with an air of unbridled assurance. Piper could tell you that the glowing star in the sky wasn’t the sun, instead, it was a dripping egg yolk that warmed everything underneath, and you would believe it. So when she calls Nora by her nickname, she doesn’t even bat an eye, because if being called Rah means she has a new friend in this unfamiliar place, then Nora will accept it without hesitation.

“Let’s get you all settled in then, yeah? I’ll have my boyfriend bring us some dinner. I think you’ll like him,” Piper says, grabbing Nora’s hand and dragging her into her bedroom at the other end of the hall.

A few hours later, when a brown-haired boy with matching blue eyes and a thick Irish accent shows up with two bags of Thai takeaway in one hand and a twelve-pack of Fosters beer in the other, Nora finds that Piper was right—she likes him quite a bit. They seem to get on like a house on fire, and when he cracks open a beer for her and tells her that he thinks she has a funny accent, Nora laughs and throws his comment right back in his face. The three of them end up eating too much food and drinking too much beer, but Nora doesn’t mind the bellyache when she falls into bed later that night, thinking all of it was worth it, because she made two new friends on her first night.

The next evening, Piper swings open Nora’s door without knocking, and begins rummaging through her wardrobe and pulling out her nicest pair of blue jeans, a cute sweater she got on the clearance rack at some New York City boutique, and one of her thrifted trench coats. She tells Nora to get ready because they’re going out tonight, and before she can decline, she hears Niall yell over from the common room, “Get yer arse dressed, Rah! It’s pub night!”

Barely thirty minutes later, Nora finds herself sandwiched between Niall and Piper in the cold January air, heels stomping against the pavement as they zigzag their way through the crowded streets of Camden Town.

Niall’s phone begins to ring, and before Nora’s head can snap in his direction, the sleek black device is already pressed against his ear as he begins speaking loudly into the night air. “Curly! How’re ya, mate? What? Yes, of course we’re goin’ to the pub. It’s Wednesday! Late? What d’ya mean, late? Oh. Yeah, sure, take yer time, Pipes and I have our hands full breakin’ in Rah over here. What’s that? Rah? Pipes and I adopted her. Yer gonna love her. Right, see ya later!”

He looks over at Nora as he slides his phone into his back pocket. The question is at the tip of her tongue, but when she takes in the mischievous twinkle in his eyes and finds that Piper’s are matching, she just shakes her head softly before muttering, “Do I even want to know?”

Niall flings his arm around her shoulder and Piper’s much smaller one wraps around Nora’s waist. “Best not to know anything,” Piper whispers into her ear, giggling as they make their way around the corner to the brick-faced pub at the end of the street.

When they finally pull Nora inside, it takes her a few moments to get adjusted to the unfamiliar setting. She’s only been twenty-one for two months now, and even though she knows the legal drinking age here is eighteen, she’s still only been inside a handful of bars in her short existence.

Bars in New York City are nothing like the place Nora currently finds herself in. She’s used to proper lighting, sleek bar tops, upholstered seating, and fancy liquor bottles lining the mirrored walls. Instead, she finds herself surrounded by chipped wood, sticky paneled flooring, and string lights fastened to original crown molding. The bar itself has more beer taps than she’s ever seen another place have before, and instead of ornate tequila bottles on thick glass panes, Nora finds numerous bottles of dark liquor haphazardly placed on oak shelving. It’s all wooden stools and high-top tables and stained rims on old surfaces, and when she notices an elevated platform along the farthest wall with musical instruments placed a bit too close together to make up for the lack of room the space provides, Nora finds that she likes this place a little bit more than the ones back home.

Instead of asking Nora what she’d like to drink, Niall just bends down and speaks into her ear, “You trust me, right?” And when she nods and finds that she surprisingly does trust this friendly stranger after only twenty-four hours, he grins and smacks a kiss to the crown of her head, prancing over to the bar with a giddy smile on his face.

Piper just shakes her head with a chuckle, grabbing Nora by the hand and dragging her over to a high-top closer to the empty stage. “Come meet the gang, Rah,” she says, squeezing her palm a little tighter when she notices the nervous look washing over Nora’s features.

With her palm in Piper’s, Nora is happily introduced to a group of five people clutching pint glasses with two plates of chips in the middle of the table. She recognizes two of the girls from her residence hall, and smiles when they compliment her boots and coat. The rest are names Nora tries her hardest to file into her memory, and when she slips into a stool with Piper sliding into the one on her right, she finds herself feeling much more comfortable.

Niall appears with a black tray covered in spilled beer and shorter glasses filled with a deep brown liquid Nora can only assume to be whiskey inside. She gulps, attempting to alleviate her dry throat, mentally preparing herself because she did tell him moments ago that she trusted him. And when she slides the liquor down her throat and feels it burn her insides, she chases the warmth with cold beer and hears Niall’s loud cheer across from her.

“Way to go, Rah! Yer a natural!” Nora feels Piper squeeze her shoulder affectionately, and before Niall can slide another shot glass in her direction, Nora watches his eyes lift over the top of her head to something behind her. His blue eyes suddenly widen and his teeth rip through his skin, grinning widely as he calls out, “Curly! Just in time, mate!”

Nora hears a deep chuckle behind her, and for some strange reason, it sounds all too familiar. 

She’s instantly brought back to a time three years ago in the dead of winter, the rolling green Connecticut hills covered in thick white blankets of snow, in which a boy and a girl spent ten days together without any interruptions. She heard that chuckle enough times in those ten days to permanently have it imprinted in her memory, and suddenly, Nora feels her stomach clench uncomfortably, because how, after all of this time, can Nora still remember that sound?

But then she hears it. His voice—much deeper now, but still gravelly and throaty, forming words slowly with his accent tilting at the end of specific phrases. It’s much thicker now, no doubt from his time spent in his home country, and all at once, Nora feels her face pucker with discomfort. She wonders if anybody else can notice the inner-turmoil wreaking havoc underneath her skin, but then he speaks again, and it’s close enough to cause her to momentarily forget how to breathe.

“What do we have here, then?” Nora can’t bring herself to move. She feels as if her bum is glued to the wooden seat, the soles of her boots are transfixed to the legs of the stool, and her upper body has lost all proper motor function. Nora is almost certain that she’s panicking, but then she’s brought back into focus when Niall’s cheerful voice echoes off the walls of the crowded pub surrounding her.

“This is our Rah! Came all the way from America on exchange, so don’t go and scare her off,” Niall calls out, his grin faltering a little when he notices the alarmed look covering Nora’s face.

“Came all this way and the first person she meets is you? Well, let me formally apologize for that disappointment—” Nora gulps one last time and swivels around in the old stool, finally revealing herself, causing his words to fall flat.

When their eyes finally meet, Nora’s relieved she isn’t holding the pint glass in her hand, because if she were, she’s certain that it would fall to the floor below her, breaking with a resounding crack when she finally faces Harry Styles for the first time in three years.

It feels like everything is happening in slow motion. Sea green eyes widen in shock, and Nora watches as his neck pushes his face outward, as if his body was forcing him to take in every inch of her face to re-familiarize himself with it. He’s a bit taller now, still wearing an expensive dark-colored trench coat, still choosing an inappropriately thin t-shirt underneath. He seems to have grown up in every sense of the word—with the way his chest is a bit fuller and his arms are a bit thicker and his stomach is a bit tighter. His jawline seems to be more pronounced, the bone practically slicing through his skin with the way the lines effortlessly sculpt his face that is still annoyingly perfect. She notices that his hair is pushed back into a low bun, the curls escaping the thin hair tie just kissing the nape of his neck. She can’t help but wonder what the tendrils would look like if she pulled the knotted elastic from his hair, allowing them to fall freely down his back.

“Nora Priestley?” Harry barely calls out. He feels as if he’s hallucinating.

Because the last time he saw Nora Priestley in the flesh, she was all blonde hair and skinny limbs and knobby knees. There’s no denying that this is still her, considering her blue eyes are practically tattooed underneath his eyelids whenever he tries to fall asleep at night, and nobody else can steal that shade. She’s practically a fully-blossomed woman sitting in front of him—all slender legs and tiny waist, long torso that has rigidified over time, undulating hips that truly show a level of maturity that didn’t exist three years ago back in Connecticut. Her face is still angular, her nose is still buttoned, her lips are still pouty, her cheekbones are still high on her face and tinted pink. But when he looks at her hair, he notices that the blonde is gone. In its place is a deep shade of brown, nearly black, flowing over her shoulders and down her back languidly. Her fringe is still there, all messy strands framing a face that she’s finally grown into, and Harry finds a calming sense of familiarity in that.

She’s beautiful—she’s always been this effortlessly cool type of beautiful, and Harry can’t actually believe that she’s sitting in front of him. Can’t actually believe that her lips are moving on her face, forming his two-syllable name. Can’t actually believe that he’s been staring at her hearing white noise flood through his ear canals, blocking whatever else is falling from her mouth.

“Your hair. It’s different,” are the words Harry chooses to say once he realizes her mouth is closed, mentally berating himself for being so wrapped up in this New Nora that he seemingly forgot how to hold a normal conversation.

She seems to be on the same page, with the way she slowly tears her eyes from his own, staring blankly at the wall over his shoulder when an odd sense of déjà vu clouds her vision, before nodding absently.

“Yeah,” she finally voices, bringing her forlorn gaze back to his. “I could say the same for you.”

He smiles a bit, wondering how to maneuver through these unfamiliar waters with her. But before he can even properly locate his mooring, Niall interrupts, causing Nora to swivel back in his direction so that her back is once again facing Harry.

“I’m confused—have you two met?” Niall asks, observing the two with wide eyes, a crinkle in his forehead as he tries to dissect the interaction unfolding across the table.

“Uh, yeah. We went to boarding school together,” Nora explains, filling in the gaps. She sees the pint glass in her periphery and grabs it tightly, bringing it to her lips and gulping three heavy swallows of the bitter liquid to slow down her erratic heartbeat.

“Wait—here? I thought you said you’ve never been on a plane before, Nora!” Piper calls out from Nora’s right side, her auburn hair flicking back and forth when she notices the tension radiating off of their bodies.

“No, in America,” Harry answers for Nora when he realizes her mouth is preoccupied with downing her entire pint in one go. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are darting in every direction that isn’t the blue of Niall’s eyes or the bright green of Piper’s, and Harry can conclude that Nora is uncomfortable.

“Well, that’s a plot twist I didn’t see comin’,” Niall says through a chuckle, moving his eyes away from Nora’s as he takes a long swig of his drink, shaking his head at the uncanniness of it all.

The whole group seems to be a bit shocked by this revelation, and before Nora can suffocate under the unnatural silence surrounding the table, Piper asks the rest of the group a question about the new band performing tonight, and just like that, all is forgotten.

Nora can feel the body behind her disappear, and when she sees black wool material flutter past her eyesight, she breathes in a sigh of relief when she notices the only chair available is the one diagonal from her, almost conveniently out of her line of vision.

She looks up when she sees a fresh pint glass being pushed in her direction, and when her eyes lock with Niall’s and she realizes that he’s given her the second beer he originally saved for himself, she smiles appreciatively before bringing the cool glass to her lips, swallowing deeply with her eyes shut tight.

If Nora’s meant to endure this entire evening, she’s going to need all of the liquid courage she can muster. Because the universe must be playing some sort of sick-twisted game with her, giving her the opportunity to travel to a new city while simultaneously thrusting the boy who almost broke her heart right in the epicenter of it all. She wonders if this is her karma for ending things with Marcus, for not agreeing to move in with him and take the next steps in their relationship.

Nora sighs, wanting so badly to laugh at her situation, but knows deep down that she can’t. Because London is supposed to be a big city—filled with nine million people and her chances of potentially running into Harry were meant to be astronomically low. The numbers should have been on her side—considering Oxford University is sixty miles away from UCL, and Oxfordshire is an hour and a half away from Central London, and out of the three hundred pubs in all of Camden, the probability of running into him at this very one in this exact moment in time is far too outstanding to even be considered a possibility.

But it is, and it’s happening all around her, and suddenly—Nora needs to leave.

She can’t be sat so close to him after all this time and act like everything’s okay. Because it’s not okay and she’s not okay and this whole fucking scenario will never be okay, and in order to be okay, Nora needs to locate the closest escape route and disappear.

Her head is swivelling and she’s not listening to any of the conversations happening around her, and as if the gods were pitying her, sensing her panic attack all the way from the heavens above, they send her a sign in the form of Niall grabbing Harry and bringing him over to the bar with the guys for another round.  

Once they’ve left, Nora abandons her half-emptied glass and grabs her coat, flinging it on her body without even buttoning it properly. Piper looks over, realizing that Nora’s face is flushed and her eyes are a bit widened, and before she can get too far, she asks, “Rah, you alright?”

Shit, Nora thinks, I forgot about Piper.

“Uh, yeah. Just need a smoke,” Nora lies, teeth forming a barely-there smile to try and prove to her new friend that she’ll be okay and doesn’t need to be followed.

Piper warily falls for it, and when Nora watches her freckled face turn back towards the girls at the table, Nora sighs in relief and hurries over to the front door, flying out into the cold January air as she tries to navigate her shaking feet back towards the Underground.

She doesn’t make it very far, barely rounds the corner of the street before she hears her name being roughly called from raspberry lips she’s too terrified to face. But his legs are longer than hers and his strides are more purposeful, because just as Nora’s identified the Underground entranceway, Harry’s large palm wraps around her tensed bicep and suddenly, she’s spinning on the heels of her boots, officially caught trying to run away in the middle of a busy sidewalk surrounded by throngs of people.

Nora immediately flinches, shaking his hand off her body before she becomes familiar with the warmth that encapsulates the fabric adorning her skin. Harry gets the hint and dejectedly brings his hand back down to his side, shuffling in his brown suede shoes as he tries to form the correct words to say to her.

“You don’t have to leave,” he starts, trying his hardest to identify the wary look in her eyes. Because he’s never seen her look like this—so completely and utterly defeated, and Harry almost wishes she would lash out instead of continue to look at him the way she is doing right now.

“I do,” Nora says, moving her eyes down to the cracked pavement. She can’t bring herself to look at his face anymore.

“Piper said you were having a smoke. I didn’t think you did that.” Harry’s words cause her head to lift abruptly, and she’s not sure if it’s because his voice sounds so broken and dejected, or if it’s because he’s insinuating that he still knows things about her.

“You don’t know me anymore, Harry,” Nora spits out, leveling her blues with his greens in a standoff that she doesn’t feel ready for.

Harry frowns, rubbing his palm against the back of his neck, choosing to back down. “I know.”

It’s sad. The whole situation is terribly sad, because suddenly, Pandora’s box has been ripped open—the lid practically flung across the pavement as feelings that have been buried underneath the surface for so long are unforgivingly being unearthed right in front of their eyes.

Nora turns away, knowing there’s really nothing left to be said between the two of them. Not until she’s properly processed it all. Not until she’s dealt with her emotions the right way instead of screaming in his face and never looking back.

“Nora,” Harry tries, his voice pleading with hers. He waits until she turns around before saying, “My birthday is in a few weeks. The first. Niall’s throwing me a party and all that, and uh—” he takes a massive gulp, his entire body riddled with nerves, “I’d really like for you to come.”

“I’ll think about it,” Nora says after a moment’s pause, offering him a shaky smile in hopes that it’ll be enough for him to allow her to enter the Underground without another interruption.

“And Nora?” her eyes find his one last time before he says, “It’s really great to see you.”

The next Wednesday pub night, Nora decides to stay home. It’s not that she doesn’t want to hang out with everyone, because she does—she just knows that Harry will definitely be in attendance, and she still isn’t really sure how to feel about everything. The last thing Nora wants to do is make things awkward with this new group of friends she just met, so staying in was the easiest option.

On the Wednesday after that, Harry decides to skip out. He doesn’t want Nora to feel like she has to avoid her new friends because their relationship (or lack thereof) is stuck in limbo. Traveling to a new country, especially for the first time, is never fun to do alone—and Harry would hate himself if he made her feel that isolating herself is the best option. So he stays home, and tries not to text Niall and ask him if Nora decided to show up (even though he stalks his mates’ social media and finds that she did, in fact, go).

Niall and Piper try not to ask the invasive questions that are dancing on the tip of their tongues, because it’s so blatantly obvious that Nora and Harry were never “just” mates from school. Nora never explicitly tells her new friends about what happened, but Piper can figure it out, because she’s a girl, and girl’s know what Nora’s eyes mean when they twinkle and break at the mention of Harry’s name. Harry, on the other hand, drunkenly spilled anecdotes to Niall in the past about a girl who deserved so much better than what he could offer her, and with one look at the bruised skin underneath Harry’s vacant eyes in the days that follow their reunion, Niall understands then that the girl in question is none other than his special Rah.

The first of February comes along with a dip in temperature, and before Nora can mull over Harry’s birthday party invitation any longer, she decides to throw caution to the wind and go. She shops for a pretty dress with Piper, and when she finds a discounted Topshop number that pairs excellently with the only pair of heels she stuffed into her suitcase, she purchases it without a second thought.

The girls get ready together and Nora lets Piper curl her hair, and when the rest of their friends make cocktails in their tiny shared kitchenette, Nora feels her worries wash away with each sip of fruity liquor that slides down her throat.

When they arrive at the club Niall organizes all their mates to meet at, Nora barely has time to try and locate the birthday boy. Because suddenly, she’s meeting a handful of new people and being dragged to the dancefloor against her will, and after her second (or third?) Sex on the Beach, she’s in that perfect state of drunkenness in which she feels light and airy and nothing but happiness radiates off her sticky skin.

Harry, oppositely, is in that state of drunkenness in which his words are slurring together and his eyes are glossy. He feels airy, practically lightheaded at this point, and his teeth stretch the skin around his mouth wide as he laughs along to whatever his friends are saying.

He’s barely had time to make the rounds, because people kept approaching him left and right with birthday praises and a shot glass filled with pungent liquor for him to shoot back. Niall finally rejoins him at the U-shaped leather booth in their corner of the club, and when Harry asks him something that sounds like Piper, Niall points in the direction of his girlfriend twirling around the dancefloor with a group of her friends.

When he refocuses his blurry vision on the group, Harry instantly notices brown hair floating through the air. The curls seem to have fallen a bit as the night dragged on, and when the girl turns around to mouth the lyrics of the upbeat song to Piper, Harry grins when he recognizes the pouty lips that are painted a refreshing shade of sherbert. Her cheeks are tinged and Harry wonders if it’s from exertion or alcohol, and when she spins back around to shake her hips to the beat of the overplayed pop song, he can’t tear his eyes away. It’s only once her hands scoop the hair at the back of her neck, pushing it upwards to let the prickling skin underneath breathe for a bit, when Harry notices the new etchings of ink on her body.

Three equally-sized birds are tattooed on the back of her right shoulder, swirling on her ivory skin whenever her arms move above her head as she dances. Harry can’t seem to look away—suddenly wondering if there’s anything else about her that has changed in three years. He finds that he wants to know everything about her within the time period when they weren’t in each other’s lives, and it’s that startling realization that causes him to ignore the advances of the yellow-haired girl sitting across the table from him.

“Y’alright, Curly?” Niall asks after Harry waves the girl away, and he nods distractedly, bringing his whiskey and ginger to his mouth to gulp back heavily. Niall shakes his head and tells him that he’s going to go dance with Piper, and Harry just watches idly as his friend saunters away.

For some reason, Harry doesn’t get up. Instead, he pulls more sips from the liquor at his table, watching in curiosity as Nora mingles with his mates and dances with Niall and Piper. He thinks it’s fascinating, thinks that in a parallel universe he and Nora would be doing this every night, and instead of random girls vying for his attention, Nora would undoubtedly have all of it.

With that thought running through his head, he sloppily gets up from his seat, drunkenly hobbling over to his group of friends on the dancefloor near the bar. When he approaches them, he flings an unsteady arm around Niall’s neck for extra support, grinning widely when everyone calls him the birthday boy and pinches his cheeks in drunken adoration.

“Mm, think ‘ve had enough, mate,” Harry slurs in Niall’s direction, resting a good portion of his weight on his shorter friend who has to tighten his grip around Harry’s waist.

“I’ll call a car, have ‘em bring you home. Need me t’come with?” Niall asks, and when Harry looks at each of his mates in their small circle, he shakes his head cheekily and smiles in Nora’s direction.

“No, I want Nora to.” It’s innocent in the way that he just wants to spend time with her, because he hasn’t even had the chance to speak to her tonight, and all he can think about is how much time has passed between them and that he misses her in a way he didn’t think was possible.

Nora watches Harry whine in Niall’s ear, and even though the music is too loud for her to make out everything he’s saying, she somehow manages to hear the words want and Nora and please. Niall looks over in her direction, and when he asks her if she’ll take him home, she considers accepting for some odd reason. Because he’s drunk and needy, and she’s never seen a needy Harry Styles before, and as if the time frame has blurred right in front of her, Nora finds herself in the backseat of a fancy town car driving off into a quieter part of the city.

They sit on opposite ends of the car with the middle seat unused between them, and after a few minutes of silence, Harry decides to break it by saying, “‘M really happy you came tonight.”

Nora’s not nearly as drunk as he is, and she finds it quite adorable the way his deep voice cracks over the slurred syllables, and his lips are bright red from his teeth gnawing into them, and his cheeks are almost a deeper shade from the alcohol surging through his veins.

“It’s your birthday. It would have been mean of me not to,” Nora says softly, watching as Harry tears his eyes away from the blurred streets and onto her face.

He grins. “I don’t think y’know how t’be mean, Nora. Not sure there’s a mean bone in your body.”

Nora just smiles back gently, unsure of how exactly to respond. Thankfully, the car pulls to a stop on a quiet street just in front of a white stucco townhouse. There’s a small iron-clad gate on the sidewalk that comes about waist-high, and when Harry unlocks it and begins his wobbly trek to the navy blue front door, Nora can’t help but look around his neighborhood in slight awe.

The jostling of keys breaks her out of her reverie, and when she finds Harry struggling to place the correct key into the lock, she calmly pushes him out of the way and flicks her wrist to unlock the door, pushing it open and allowing him to step in first.

She barely gets a chance to take in the interior of his home before he’s grabbing the keys from her hand and dropping them loudly in the bowl on the hallway table, unsteadily stepping out of his shoes and leaving them haphazardly on the floor, reaching for her hand and dragging her up the stairs to the loft bedroom above.

Before Nora can even comprehend what Harry’s doing, he’s suddenly flinging his clothes across different surfaces of his room—starting with his trench coat over his desk chair, his belt on the shoe rack in his closet, his wallet on the bureau nearest to the door. It’s only once he starts fumbling out of his jeans when Nora turns around with a squeak, feeling a bit awkward watching him drunkenly scramble out of his clothes.

“What’re you doin’?” He slurs, the sound of his feet struggling to get out of the tight material ceasing abruptly.

“Giving you privacy,” Nora explains, finding herself counting the knobs on his dresser instead of hyperfocusing on the fact that Harry is undressing behind her.

She can hear him chuckle a bit, and then the sound of a body flopping onto a mattress takes over. Harry grunts in frustration, and it’s only once he’s called Nora’s name when she peeks over her shoulder timidly, finding Harry lying flat on his bed with his shirt still on, his feet firmly planted on the hardwood floor as his jeans seem to be stuck around his knees.

“Can you help me?” He doesn’t seem to be making a pass at her, because his voice is whiny and his neck is strained, and he really seems to be struggling taking off his tight skinny jeans.

Nora laughs a bit before walking over, grabbing his jeans by his knees and forcing him to straighten his legs as she pulls. Harry watches, leaning up on his elbows as he wiggles the material off of his skin, gleaming proudly when they’re off and discarded into his hamper.

With her back to him, Harry reaches for a pair of joggers and shuffles them on, swapping his wrinkled dress shirt for an old band tee that he wore the night before. When she hears him trying to untuck his duvet from underneath the throw pillows on his bed, Nora turns around and places her palm on his back in the place just between his shoulder blades, causing him to freeze.

“Go brush your teeth. I’ll do this before you fall on your face,” Nora says through a giggle, and Harry does as he’s told, watching her through the reflection of his mirror with wide eyes as she delicately places the throw pillows on the bench under his window and pulls back the duvet and sheets pristinely.

After he spits out the mint toothpaste and waddles back into his room, Nora pats the spot on his bed that she’s left untucked for him, smiling softly as she says, “C’mon birthday boy.”

Harry grins sleepily, pushing himself on the mattress and burrowing into his pillows, chuckling when Nora pulls up the sheet and duvet until it’s tucked underneath his chin. She checks his nightstand to make sure that his phone is plugged in, and after confirming that everything seems to be put into place, she tries to wish Harry goodnight before he interrupts and asks, “Will you stay?”

Nora attempts to shake her head, telling him that it isn’t a good idea, causing Harry to try an alternative approach. The whiny, annoying kind, that usually works magnificently on the likes of Niall and Piper.

“Please, Nora! ‘S my birthday. ‘S all I want, and you didn’t get me a gift!”

Nora pauses, reading Harry’s face and finding the ghost of a smile hidden underneath his lips. She admires his tactic and decides to play along, stubbornly adding, “I didn’t know what you’d like! Not quite sure I can compete with all of the nice things your friends already got you.”

Harry scoffs indignantly. “I would’ve loved it anyway. ‘Cos it’s from you.”

“Harry—”

“—Please stay,” Harry interrupts, causing Nora to frown as she’s torn. “We can watch a film! Like we used to! I know y’love films, Nora. I even ‘ave a bunch in a drawer over ‘ere, look—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Nora rushes out, placing her hands gently over the duvet covering Harry’s chest, forcing him to lie back down on his bed. “No need to get up. It just took me ages to get you tucked in!”

“You’re right, ‘m sorry. ‘S over there.” Harry aimlessly points in the direction of his television stand at the far end of the wall. Nora nods, turning on her heel and beginning to walk in that direction, bending at her knees as she opens the drawer in question.

As she scans over the movie titles, she’s surprisingly impressed at his collection. They span across multiple genres, although Nora does note that he owns a decent amount of romantic comedies for a twenty-two year old boy. She almost chooses Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to reminisce, but those memories are jaded now, and she hasn’t seen the film since she sat thigh to thigh with Harry in his twin bed all those years ago, so instead, she plucks 10 Things I Hate About You and places it into the DVD player.

When the title screen loads, she checks on Harry over her shoulder and finds that he’s grinning from his position tucked snugly in his bed.

“Did y’know this was based on Taming of the Shrew?” he asks suddenly.

Nora pauses her act of getting up from the floor, shocked at the fact that Harry is willingly giving her film trivia that she used to provide. And when she stands up after a beat, looking down at him from the end of his bed, she smirks and asks teasingly, “Have you been studying film trivia?”

Harry just shrugs, a shy smile covering his face as his cheeks bloom pink.

She turns around then and hits play, and once the opening credits begin to roll on the screen, she rounds his king-sized bed and lays beside him on the other end, making sure to lay on top of the covers in her dress to keep a safe distance between them. Harry tries his hardest not to pout at the absence.

“Does this mean you’re staying?” Harry whispers just as the opening scene flashes onto the screen.

With her eyes trained on the screen, Nora just nods quietly, trying her hardest not to look over in his direction. And around halfway through the film, just after Patrick belts “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” to Kat on the staircase, Harry looks over to find Nora sound asleep on the other side of the mattress. Without waking her up, he grabs the blanket at the end of his bed and throws it over her body, watching as she welcomes the warmth as she snuggles into it.

It’s far too early when Harry wakes up. The sun has barely started to stretch its sunbeams outside of his window, and when he blinks through the dimness of his room, he finds that the first thing he sees is Nora Priestley. They’re both lying on their sides facing each other, a little bit closer than when they first dozed off. Harry can feel their bent knees brushing against the other’s underneath their respective blanket layers, and when Harry focuses on the hand that isn’t buried under his pillow, he realizes that his fingertips are ever so lightly grazing Nora’s much smaller ones. He smiles to himself, and just before falling back asleep, he hooks his pinky finger around Nora’s.

When he wakes up a few hours later, Nora is gone. He looks around his room to see if she’s in the ensuite or banging about downstairs, and finds himself frowning when all he’s met with is silence. Just as his eyes sweep over his nightstand, he finds a note near a glass of water with two paracetamol tablets on top. He scoops up the medication in one hand, and brings the note up to his eyes with the other.

Happy birthday, Harry. Here’s the best I could do on short notice. -Nora

He glances over to his alarm clock and realizes that it’s not even noon yet, and without really thinking, he reaches for his mobile and rings Niall to ask him for directions to Niall and Piper’s residence hall.

“Curly? What’re you doin’ up before noon?” Niall’s loud voice asks through the receiver.

Before Harry can bring himself to respond, he hears a giggle that sounds almost identical to Nora’s in the background, and suddenly he’s asking, “What’re you up to?”

“Hangover brunch, mate. Sunday tradition,” Niall responds easily, the sound of the late morning air ruffling through the speaker.

“Since when?” Harry asks, straining his ear to see if he can try to hear Nora again.

Niall laughs loudly, breaking his focus. “Since always! Yer dead to the world until the afternoon, so Rah always third-wheels with Piper and I—oof! I’m just messin’ around, Rah! You know we love yer company!”

Suddenly, Harry’s springing out of bed, running into the bathroom to brush his teeth and splash cold water onto his face to wake him up. He asks Niall the name of the restaurant, and just as the words leave his mouth, Harry hangs up and throws on the first clean pair of jeans and jumper he can find, shoving a beanie over his mangled hair and flying out the door.

He arrives just as tea gets brought to the table, and when he finds that the only open chair at their table of four is the one across from Nora, he grins and slides right in, watching the way her cheeks blush as her eyes burn holes through the plastic menu.

“Any particular reason why yer up and at ‘em this mornin’, Curly?” Niall asks, a knowing look on his face as his eyes dart between Harry’s and Nora’s accusingly.

“Just felt like waking up, I suppose,” Harry says in Niall’s direction, ordering a cup of tea from the waitress as she passes by. When he realizes that Piper and Niall are indulged in their own conversation, Harry leans forward over the table and asks Nora lowly, “So, what’s good here?”

Nora’s eyebrows dart up in surprise, asking, “You’ve never been here before?”

Harry shakes his head, smiling when he coaxes a pretty giggle out of Nora’s mouth. He finds that she looks cute in the morning, all sleepy eyed and puffed out cheeks. He almost wishes he caught her before she snuck out of his flat. He would have loved to see what she looked like buried in his pillows.

“I usually get a full English and give Niall my tomatoes,” Nora explains, sipping her tea generously.

“Why’s that?” Harry asks.

Nora scrunches her nose. “Not a fan of them.”

Before Harry can say anything else to her, the waitress pops over to take their order, and when their plates arrive and the first thing Nora notices Harry does is eat a bite of his grilled tomato, she pierces her fork through the two on her plate and drops them on his own instead of giving them to Niall.

If anybody at the table notices, they choose not to say anything.

After that Sunday morning, Harry finds that he can’t stay away from Nora. He remembers lurking through her Facebook page a year ago and finding that she has a thing for coffee shops, and after asking Piper for her class schedule, he waits for her outside her lecture hall one dreary Tuesday afternoon and brings her to his favorite café a few miles away from her residence hall.

It’s called the Muddy Cup and Nora’s surprised that it’s a place Harry frequents, considering it’s the complete opposite of his personality. It’s all bright colors and mismatched furniture, uniquely shaped mugs with bluesy, light jazz music playing in the background. It smells of coffee grinds and a hint of vanilla, and after their third trip there, Nora finds that this version of Harry is just like the one she remembers enjoying during their ten days together back in Townbridge—except, it’s heightened here in London. He tells her things without hesitating, he seems to have recognized how wrong his actions were, he seems to have a plan for his life. It’s a lot all at once, but Nora takes it all in stride, constantly reminding herself not to hold grudges and to try to remember that people are continuously changing and evolving, and that if Harry is trying his hardest to let her see this side of her, then she should at least give him the opportunity to allow him to do so.

But she’s not naive. She knows that she can’t just hand him her heart without precautions all because he’s trying to show her how much he’s changed. Because underneath all of her strong walls, all of the barriers she’s constructed to ensure that she doesn’t feel pain again, she knows that if anybody has the power to weave through all of her booby traps and decoys and rattle the infrastructure, it’s him.

Harry knows this, too. Knows that even though this New Nora in front of him changed her hair and grew up a little bit, she is still guarded, and he really can’t blame her for being overly cautious of him. He’s trying though—really trying, because if there’s anybody in this world that can bring out the best version of himself, it’s her.

After a few more coffee dates and a walk around his campus, Harry finally comes up with a plan. He’s not sure why he hadn’t thought of it sooner, because he’s almost positive it’s going to be the best first date Nora Priestley has ever been on. And he wants that for her—so badly, because she deserves it.

Harry schemes with Niall and Piper to make sure that Nora is free on a rare sunny late February afternoon. He shows up outside of her residence hall in his black Range Rover, watching the way she smiles bashfully at him when she notices him leaning against the passenger door of his car, posture nothing but attractive confidence with the way his jean-clad left leg is bent resting on the steel door, the way his emerald green jumper stretches across his chest due to his arms being crossed over the thin material, the way his long hair is free flowing down his shoulders as the wind ruffles the tendrils in the cool air. He weaves his sunglasses atop his head when he sees her exit her building, giving her a one-armed hug as he simultaneously opens the car door with his other hand, allowing Nora to fall into the warm leather interior.

“Where are we going?” Nora asks after they’ve merged onto the motorway. Harry looks over at her then, one hand resting on the steering wheel while the other pushes and pulls at the skin covering his lower lip nervously. He offers her a shy smile, before muttering, “A surprise,” causing Nora to blush immediately.

Once the colorful pastel townhouses flood into view, Nora isn’t sure how she didn’t realize it sooner. The streets are winding and her nose is practically glued to the window as she takes in the flashes of raspberry, lilac, peach, coral, and mint lining Notting Hill. She can’t wipe the aching grin covering her face, and when she whips her head around to look over at Harry and finds that he’s already looking at her, it’s almost instinctual when she slips her hand into his and squeezes it in gratitude.

When Harry has to park the car, he almost whines at the fact that the moment he removes his key from the ignition, Nora’s hand will leave his own.

They spend the afternoon weaving through the crowded streets. Harry leads her through Portobello Road Market and watches as Nora’s eyes flick through racks of clothing and tables filled with various antiques and collectables. She notices Harry eyeing a gold ring from a jewelry stand towards the end of the market, and when he offers to buy them a cup of coffee from a small café across the street, Nora sneakily purchases it for him as a way of saying thank you (and maybe for another reason entirely, too.)

As Nora sips through her warm styrofoam cup of hazelnut coffee, she notices a string of bookshops across the street. She laughs to herself, her memory immediately reverting to three years ago in her tiny twin bed at Townbridge when she and Harry were cuddled up underneath her mom’s handmade blanket watching Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant meet for the very first time. She wonders if Harry is thinking about the same thing, too, but she doesn’t dare ask him. Instead, she links her hand with his and drags him to the first shop she sees, pushing the door open with her hip and letting the smell of old books and worn leather fill her senses.

Harry isn’t sure if Nora is doing it intentionally, but as they scan through the spines of books resting on dusty shelves, her hand never leaves his own. It warms his insides up in a way he’s never experienced, and he feels as if he’s floating through air, and the only thing that’s keeping him grounded is her small hand squeezing his ever so lightly.

Once they’ve rounded the end of the store, Nora looks over and asks him, “Do you have any suggestions?”

Harry’s heart thumps a resounding string of three beats, and he can’t help but wonder if she felt the same whenever he asked her to pick out her favorite films for him three years ago back in her tiny dorm room. From the smile coating the lower half of her face, Harry can assume that she most likely does, and without slipping his hand from her own, he drags her to the classics section and peruses through the titles.

Nora watches as he somehow maneuvers three paperbacks into one hand while keeping her own nestled tightly in his, and when he brings her to the front of the store and easily grabs his wallet from his back pocket, she tries to wriggle her hand from his grasp to stop him from paying for her. Harry doesn’t allow this though, and instead, shushes her by squeezing her hand tighter, looking down at her with his chin resting on his shoulder as he shakes his head with a coy smile covering his face. Nora isn’t sure how to respond—mainly because she’s mesmerized by the turquoise twinkle in his eyes, or the way his large hand wrapped around her own makes her feel overwhelmingly safe, or the way she can’t seem to look anywhere else but at the profile of his structured face. The realization strikes her straight into her heart, an electrical current causing the beating flesh to vibrate almost erratically, making her skin prickle with warmth and her stomach twist and turn with giddiness, and she finds that she never wanted her hand to leave his in the first place.

Before they even realize it, the afternoon is over. Harry intentionally slows his gait so that he can do everything in his power to extend the time he has with Nora’s hand nestled in his own and the left side of her body sidled up to his. But unfortunately, not even Harry has the ability to slow down time, and sadly, they’ve approached the car in despondent silence.

He turns her around just as they’ve reached the passenger side door, Nora’s back resting on the cool steel as she lifts her head up. Harry’s eyes are focused on their tangled hands, toying with her fingertips as he tries to figure out what she’s thinking.

“I got you something,” Nora says after a beat, waiting until Harry’s eyes are on hers before she slips the hand that isn’t knotted with his inside her jacket pocket. He watches as she removes the gold ring from the paper envelope and drops it into his palm gently.

“Nora—” Harry starts, pausing as he stares at the thick gold band with dancing bears engraved in the middle. The sun makes the metal twinkle in the light, and when he shifts his eyes into Nora’s blue pools, he isn’t sure which is brighter.

“Put it on me?” he asks. Harry knows that he’s fully capable of putting it on himself, but that would require removing his other hand from her own. Also, he selfishly wants to feel Nora’s smaller digits tickling his skin, and when she obliges with a gentle smile and grabs the ring from his opened palm, Harry tries to conceal the shudder shaking his body when she obeys his request.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Harry whispers into the small space between them when Nora’s fingers push the gold ring past his knuckle.

She just shrugs, looking up at him timidly. “I wanted to.”

While Harry’s eyes are focused on the newest addition to his growing jewelry collection, Nora decides to be brave and reaches up onto her tiptoes with the intention of planting a kiss on his cheek as a way of saying thank you without having to properly vocalize it. But, Harry notices everything she does, and when he watches her body shift towards him in his periphery, he lifts his head up at the last moment in question, causing Nora’s plump lips to land on the corner of his mouth.

The contact only lasts a measly two seconds, but it’s enough to cause them both to freeze. Nora’s eyes widen, and before she can let her body fall into his own, she springs back and places a generous two foot gap between them.

Harry’s not even sure what to think. He’s almost positive that he’s frozen to the pavement, his thick boots stuck in sludgy cement as he tries to bring them to move forward so that Nora doesn't feel so far away. But he can’t move—the neurons in his brain aren’t connecting to the muscles in his legs, and he has no fucking idea why.

Nora stares at him, trying her hardest to force her mouth to form the words “sorry.” But when she really stops to think about it, she finds that she isn’t sorry at all. The smallest feeling of his mouth on hers was enough to cause her body to zap with excitement, and when she looks up at him underneath the curtain of her eyelashes and find that his pupils are dilated to the fullest degree, she decides to forego her apology and leans in, pressing her lips to his with reckless abandon.

Instinctively, Harry’s arms wrap around her waist to support her body as their lips re-familiarize themselves with one another. The sigh he breathes into her mouth is nothing but relief—because ever since he left her dorm room three years ago back at Townbridge, all Harry’s been thinking about is feeling her lips on his again. And now that it’s finally happening, he feels as if he can’t breathe.

Nora’s hands clutch the lapels of his woolen jacket over his chest to bring him closer to her, because even though his body is flushed with hers, it still isn’t enough. Harry brings his right hand up to cup her jaw ever so delicately, his thumb pulling her chin down so that her jaw falls slack, allowing him to slip his tongue inside to meet her own. The moan that springs from the back of her throat almost causes Harry’s mouth to still, but when her fingertips wrap around the ends of his hair dusting his shoulder, tangling until she pulls at the roots on top of his head, he can’t help but reciprocate the sound.

When Harry’s neck starts to ache from leaning down to meet her lips, he trickles his palms from her temples to the back of her head, threading his fingers through her thick dark hair until they clasp together just above her neck, allowing him to tilt her head backward and kiss her properly. Nora hums inside his mouth, wrapping her arms around the middle of his back so that she can pull him closer to her in order to feel his heartbeat against her chest through all of their warm layers, his heart thrumming against her skin as if the fleshy organ was screaming at her own “I missed you! I missed you! I missed you!”

Eventually, they break apart, sucking in deep inhales of cool February air to try and quell the lightheadedness caused from their second first kiss. Harry rests his forehead on her own, his eyes shut tight as he tries to permanently ink that memory into the pink pillows of his brain. His warm hands are cupping her jaw in order to keep her as close to him as possible, and Nora can’t help but squeeze the fleshy parts of his arms, keeping their fronts pressed together so that the warmth that emanates from his skin continues to stay wrapped around her.

“Go to dinner with me,” Harry whispers against her skin once his eyes blink open, the fuzziness dissipating when he notices the pinkness of her swollen lips and the tinge of red coating the apples of her cheeks. He missed this. He missed her.

“When?” Nora asks, her voice hoarse from the lack of oxygen ripped from her airway.

“Right now, tonight, tomorrow. Don’t want to let you go just yet.” Nora leans in, her nose resting on his warm cheek as she giggles against the smooth skin. Harry brings his hand to rub soothing circles against her back, wondering if they could stay in this position forever.

Harry can feel her smile against his cheek, and when she moves her head to press two subsequent kisses against his ripe lips, he knows that he’s fucked. Because it’s Nora fucking Priestley—it’s probably always been Nora Priestley—and she’s here wrapped up in him nodding against his skin at his outrageous request, and Harry’s never felt this complete in his entire life. It’s like flying and falling, searing warmth and bitter coldness, being too close but still not close enough—a paradoxical rush of adoration shooting to his heart with a loud cacophonous pang that sends his brain into overdrive.

They have dinner together that night, and the night after that, and if not for Harry’s evening lecture, they probably would have gone for a third consecutive date. He takes her to tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants that serve the best food Nora’s ever tasted, and although a small part of her was expecting him to go all out and take her to outlandish posh eateries, Nora finds that Harry knows her much better than she originally thought, and he’s constantly full of surprises.

On the next Wednesday pub night, Harry and Nora show up together. Nobody says anything, but Nora can practically feel the scorching looks Niall and Piper are shooting at her from across the table warming her cheek. And after her third beer, just as the band starts to play their first song, Niall saunters over to her side and wraps a heavy arm around her shoulder, whispering excitedly into her ear, “Knew you were special, Rah.”

Harry's insides are buzzing, whirring to life with each sip of bitter beer that falls down his esophagus. The liquor seems to make Nora a bit looser, and once she’s developed a thin layer of drunkenness that causes her cheeks to flush and her guard to falter, Harry practically explodes when she brings her body to rest against his, her back leaning on his front as she allows his warmth to envelope her as they listen to the band playing on the far side of the room. He wraps his arm around her shoulder so that his right hand is splayed out against her collarbone, holding her close in a protective stance as she lets her head fall back on his shoulder comfortably.

After three songs, Nora finds that she’s had enough. Harry’s hand feels too hot pressed against her chest, his hair feels too silky tickling her exposed neck, his chin feels too heavy sitting atop the crown of her head. She wants more, finds that she suddenly needs more, and when she twirls around abruptly and finds that his green eyes are practically black, eagerly searching for her own, she doesn’t hesitate before whispering in his ear, “Can we get out of here?”

Harry’s pretty sure his pants have never felt tighter around his waist. He doesn’t even care about the unfinished pint in his hand, doesn’t even care to make the rounds and properly say goodbye to his mates, doesn’t even care when he hands Niall too much money to pay for their drinks that are absently left on the sticky high top table, doesn’t even care about the looks he receives when he slips his hand in Nora’s and drags her through the front door and into the Underground so that they can reach his flat before her confident streak runs out.

When they’re both standing in his loft bedroom, hands tangled in each other’s hair and lips pressed to warm skin and clothes strewn against hardwood flooring, Nora finds it easier to forget about all of her past hurt. Because his hands feel that good, and his mouth tastes that good, and his warm body looks that good. But when she backs away to pull off her sweater so that she’s left standing in front of him in just her bra and underwear, she suddenly hesitates to move forward.

The memory hits her like a bullet to the chest. It’s of her, standing in her Townbridge dorm room wearing a sports bra and sleep shorts, her arms wrapped around herself protectively as she tries to stifle the rib-racking cries shaking through her body as she watched Harry disappear right in front of her face, leaving her alone to try and wrap her head around what he had done to her and what it all meant. Because he was her first real sexual experience, something that Nora didn’t necessarily place on a high pedestal, but still ultimately was a big deal for her. It took a lot of trust to allow Harry to take that from her after ten days of unassuming happiness, and just as quickly as he showed her a different side of herself, he simultaneously ripped it away when he left her alone and confused barely eight hours later in the early morning light.

It’s as if the memory is being broadcasted in Harry’s bedroom, Nora’s blue eyes the screen and her bruised heart the projector, because suddenly, her lips are trembling and her hands are shaking and her eyes are staring blankly at the wall over his left shoulder—and he knows right then and there that her walls are now ten times thicker, constructed with stronger material that will no longer allow him to seep through the cracks. Not without an explanation. Not without an apology.

“Nora—” Harry starts, taking a tentative step forward. The small motion of his feet approaching hers is enough to break Nora out of her daze, her head shaking violently as she takes three more steps back, reaching for her sweater and throwing it over her head without a second thought.

“Please, I—” Harry is panicking. He doesn’t want her to disappear, but he also doesn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He wanted to talk to her without the cloudy sexual energy suffocating them, without her dreamy silhouette obstructing his vision, without her sudden desire to escape more prominent than her desire to stay and listen to him.

“I need a minute, we shouldn’t do this, not when—”

“—Just please listen to me. I can’t let you leave, not like this. Not when you’re finally here after all this time. And I’m not saying this because you’re standing half-naked in my bedroom, it’s just—fuck. I should have said this three years ago. I should have said it when I sent you a friend request on Facebook. I should have said it that first Wednesday pub night. I just got distracted and—”

“—Harry—”

“—I’m sorry, okay? I’m truly so fucking sorry.” Harry seems to have taken the breath trapped in Nora’s throat, because suddenly she’s staring at him wide-eyed and frozen in place, whereas Harry’s chest is erratically shifting up, down as he struggles to contain his uneven breathing pattern.

“I fucked up. I was a dumb, stupid kid who hurt you—and you didn’t deserve it. Not one second of it. I thought about what I did all the time in the aftermath, it fucking ate me alive, Nora. And I’m not saying that for you to pity me, because you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t even be here giving me a second chance, because I don’t deserve it. I never deserved your kindness to begin with. You’re too good for me and I just, fuck. I’ll make it up to you for the rest of my life if I have to. I just want to be good enough for you. And I’m so sorry—”

Nora shushes him with a collision of her body into his, her arms wrapping around him tightly as she buries her head into the crook of his neck. Harry’s response is inherent; strong arms encapsulating her smaller body, wide palms spread out evenly along her upper back for support, warm cheek nestled into the velvety waves resting at the top of her head.

“It’s okay, Harry. I forgive you. You’re enough, you deserve kindness too,” Nora mutters into the skin of his neck like a mantra of self-love and acceptance. Because even though Harry nearly broke her heart and made her resent him, she never wanted him to feel hurt, too. Not when it’s self-imposed. Not when it can be dealt with in a different way.

Nora thinks the phrase “an eye for an eye” is ineffectual. Just because you hurt somebody else, does not mean the same fate should be bestowed upon you. Humans are constantly changing and evolving, and pain and acceptance are a part of the long and winding battle in figuring out who you are as a person. If Harry is finally realizing that now, all Nora can do is hug him tighter and forgive him. Because that’s what any decent person would do.

Without unlocking their tangled bodies, Nora slowly steps forward, causing Harry to shuffle backward, until they’re both lying horizontally on his king-sized bed. She turns them over so that his back is flat on the mattress, her leg hooking over his hip as she rests her head against his beating chest, rubbing soothing patterns against the warm skin until he finally calms down.

They spend that night talking for hours. Harry wants to know everything she’s done in their three-year absence, and Nora doesn’t hesitate to give him the details of her new life in New York City. She tells him about Ebony, her roommate-turned-best-friend who supports her without question, who she misses practically every waking moment she’s not with her. She tells him about Marcus, the boy she had more firsts with, who she never found herself loving completely, but still appreciated him for helping her grow up and feel new things. She tells him about the tattoo shop in Brooklyn she went to after her twentieth birthday where a girl with pink hair and purple eyes etched three identical birds on the back of her shoulder.

He doesn’t tell her about the drinking and drugs and blank-faced girls he wasted his time with for the first two years during their time apart, because he’s aware that she already knows—considering his Facebook page holds a track record of every Nadine and Scarlet he toyed around with to fill in the empty hole Nora unknowingly carved into his heart. He doesn’t tell her that hearing about Nora’s ex-boyfriend causes the green monster who has been dormant inside of him for years to suddenly wake up, his blood laced with envy as he thinks of how somebody else got to see her in a vulnerable position he stupidly took for granted.

Harry realizes that this is a bit unfair, considering Nora lived her life without thinking about how it would affect him. And if Nora is jealous of the girls he slept with two years ago, she never shows it. Because she’s much more rational than he is—the calmness to his angst, the mooring to his shipwreck, the comfort to his unease.

They talk until the inky sky turns into an aegean blue, signifying that dawn has begun to break. Nora muffles her yawn into Harry’s neck and he wraps his arm tighter around her body, bringing her against his chest as he closes his eyes, reveling in the feeling of having her close again after so much time apart.

When Harry wakes up well into the afternoon, he can’t stop thinking about Nora’s body, considering she shed her sweater sometime in the middle of the morning when they were sleeping, leaving her in just her black bra and underwear as her warm skin suctioned to his own. He hasn’t felt this close to somebody in so long—probably ever, if he really stops to think about it—and before, when he was mindlessly fucking girls to cure the loneliness aching inside of his chest, he never cared about the act of intimacy surrounding sex. But now, with Nora’s body wrapped around his own and the swells of her breasts moving up and down with each languid sleepy breath she takes, the curve of her ass bending whenever she cuddles deeper into his chest, the stretch of her legs winding whenever she coils them around his sinewy hips—Harry feels like he’s in a fucking trance.

He never pushes it, but it’s practically all he can think about in the weeks that follow. He finds that when they’re together he always chooses a new part of her body to hyper-fixate on—whether it’s the angular cut of her jaw, the long arch of her neck, the thin layer of skin covered in gold necklaces on the top of her chest, the fleshy part of her hips that connect to her thighs—Harry feels completely and utterly famished.

Nora feels it, too. Feels that if she has to stand so close to him on Wednesday pub nights and feel the warmth of his body enveloping her own without him moving any closer, she’ll burst. Feels that if she has to observe the coiled strands of his long hair weave down his neck without her hands tangled at the root, she’ll explode. Feels that if his raspberry lips mouth her two-syllable name followed by his infamous smirk without her own swallowing the last vowel, she’ll shatter.

It finally happens as springtime infiltrates the streets of London, melting any remnants of snow and bringing forth longer stretches of sunlight on the horizon. Nora spent the week studying for a major exam in her Emerging Media Studies course, causing her to miss out on Sunday brunch and Wednesday pub night. Her absence hit Harry the hardest out of everybody, and when she walks out of her lecture hall Thursday night after she handed in her exam, she can’t help but catapult into Harry’s arms when she sees him waiting for her.

They drive to his flat and he cooks her a hearty pasta dish and when he suggests watching a movie tangled in his sheets afterward, Nora finds that she has no interest in absorbing the content on his television screen. She’s made Harry wait long enough, and it feels like the month after his birthday has been a continuous long stretch of unbearable foreplay that Nora can’t wait to act on.

Before Harry has even made it back to bed after setting up the film, Nora’s already pulled his borrowed sleep shirt over her head, leaving her in the matching navy blue lingerie set Piper encouraged her to purchase at Selfridges last week.

Nora’s never seen Harry move faster in his life at the first sight of her. She can barely make out his pupils darting from the exposed skin above the waistline of her underwear to the swells of her breasts uncovered by the lacy underwire bra before he’s jumping on the bed, her entire body shaking with the mattress as he plants searing kiss after searing kiss all over her flushed skin.

He dotes on her body, mumbling praises in between each suction of his lips as he works his way from the top of her forehead to the tips of her toes. “Christ, look at you Nora,” he whispers into the skin underneath her jawline, “All for me? How’d I get so lucky?” he mumbles into the tight skin between the valley of her breasts, pausing to dart his tongue underneath the lacy fabric covering her nipples, pulling a delicious moan from the back of her throat, “You’re fucking perfect,” he purrs into the thicker skin covering her upper thighs as he noses his way teasingly around the edges of her underwear, making her wiggle in want and need.

And when she finally allows him to slowly peel each piece from her body, leaving her bare in front of him as her dark hair fans against his charcoal-colored sheets, Harry’s almost positive he’s forgotten how to breathe. He’s never wanted somebody this badly before—needed somebody this badly before, and when Nora leans up on her elbows and urges him to come closer to her with a slow drag of her fingertip, he almost bursts at the sudden rush of his heart thrashing against the walls of his chest.

All because of her.

“I’m done for,” Harry whispers against her lips before slotting them together with fervor, gripping the skin at the back of her neck tightly to keep her close to him. Nora doesn’t mind, in fact, she absolutely loves his roughness—loves it so much that she can’t help but reciprocate when she wraps her legs around his waist and flips them both over so that their positions are switched and she can be the one to run her lips and teeth down the front of his body in domineering adoration.

Where everything with Marcus was simple and easy, Harry is the complete antithesis. He is everything new and exciting, complex and invigorating, compelling and beautiful. Nora didn’t think it was possible to feel this starved and fulfilled at the same time—but when Harry’s naked body is hovering over her own, his teeth sinking into the fleshy part of her shoulder blade, one hand gripping her ankle and the other holding her hip close to him, she finally feels fireworks burst underneath her eyelids when he enters her for the first time. Her skin feels as if it were bubbling, her heart pumping blood as if it were working in overdrive, and her brain fills with fluttering images of Harry’s chiseled jaw, his matted hair, his supple mouth, his hungry eyes.

It’s everything and more—Harry is everything and more, and when they’re spent and the white noise in Nora’s ears has finally subsided to a gentle hum, she can’t believe that she waited this long to experience this. She wonders if her first time was a dud, a faulty scenario in which her partner didn’t understand how to satisfy her properly. Or maybe, just maybe, it had nothing to do with Marcus at all. That the feeling of her heart exploding and stars bursting through her vision and fireworks cracking in the air above were solely caused by the boy lying beside her, his heart seemingly entangled with hers.

Nora wonders if it's fate or if she’s magnificently cursed for the rest of her life.

As March fades into April, Nora has never felt closer to another person before. It’s incredibly new—this feeling of freefalling off of a cliff into the rocky waters below with nothing but Harry’s strong hand holding hers to remind her that this is all new for him, too, and there’s nobody else he’d rather experience this with than with her.

Harry’s never been the best at giving himself completely over to another person, considering vulnerability is a difficult construct for his mind to wrap around. And when he lies awake at night while Nora sleeps soundly beside him, her arms wrapped around his waist and her head rising and falling with the scattered breaths escaping his lungs, he wonders what’s holding him back. Wonders why it’s so easy for her to talk about family and the future and everything that falls in between—because for the first time ever, Nora is the one that’s completely sure of something in their relationship. Harry, on the other hand, is hesitant. Apprehensive. Scared.

Because it’s so much easier to hide certain aspects of his life from her. Harry has enough skeletons in his closet to fill an entire graveyard, and they all tend to orbit around his shitty relationship with his parents and his innate desire to fall apart whenever he succumbs to the inordinate amount of pressure his father places over his head.

Nora doesn’t deserve to see that. Nobody does. So Harry does what he thinks is right and hides this part of his life from her, lying straight through his teeth whenever she questions where in the world his parents are, and instead of them being in Hong Kong or Indonesia or Dubai, they’re just a forty-five minute drive away. But that’s far too close for Harry to manage, so refocusing her brain on something else is the better option.

Because while Nora was falling hard, giving Harry the directions to make it through the labyrinth to claim her heart, she figured he was doing the same. Letting her in unconditionally and trusting her with this new feeling. But, unbeknownst to Nora, he was shielding her from the life he’s always dreaded being a part of. She was just in too deep to fully realize it.

The first lie starts at the end of April. Harry doesn’t even realize he’s lying in the first place when it falls from his lips that he has to skip out on Wednesday pub night to stay on campus and prepare for a group presentation the following Monday, but once it’s out he can’t force it back into the depths of his being. So while Nora texts him that she misses him and things aren’t the same without him there, Harry’s pushing the lie deeper and deeper inside of him until he’s swallowed the lump whole and it rests heavily at the bottom of his stomach.

Because while his mates are drinking in Camden, Harry’s only eight kilometers away in Knightsbridge wearing a navy blue suit sipping gingerly at a glass of bourbon and initiating small talk with his father’s stuffy work friends. It’s some charity event his father had mentioned in the past, and although Harry’s mind is preoccupied with thoughts of Nora, he suddenly becomes alert when his father introduces him to the only other person that is relatively close to his age.

Harry remembers her from one of the events he was forced to attend during his internship at his father’s office. He doesn’t recall much from meeting her nearly a year ago, considering he was a bit of a dickhead and was more focused on plotting ways to dip out early without being caught to meet up with his mates than trying to mingle with other guests, but now—now that she’s standing in front of him wearing a pretty mauve dress with expensive strappy heels, hair perfectly in place as her almond-shaped eyes gaze into his own, Harry doesn’t hesitate to shake her hand properly.

Her name is Jacqueline Van-Doren, and although she’s the type of beautiful that people can’t help but gawk at, Harry finds that he’s subconsciously comparing her to Nora. Her eyes have more of a greyish tint to them, and while Nora’s sparkle whenever any trace of light reflects off of her irises, Jacqueline’s are more lackluster in comparison. Her cheekbones are higher than Nora’s, but they lack the subtle shade of pink that always appears whenever Nora’s in a close enough radius to Harry. And while she’s much taller, much more confident, much more put together than Nora and all her mumbling and stuttering and clumsiness—Harry finds that he would indubitably pick Nora over a girl like Jacqueline any day.

The second lie happens in the middle of May just as the temperature is rising and the trees are green and blooming. Harry had plans to take Nora on a day trip to Bath so she could tick off another destination on her travel list, but unknowingly, he double-booked himself as his father reminded him he had a familial obligation to attend that same day in the form of an elaborate wedding at The Savoy.

He tells Nora that he has to attend a networking dinner in Oxfordshire, and somehow the lies get easier and easier to tell the more he spews them. Harry’s grateful that Nora doesn’t fact-check his excuse with Niall, but then again, she has no reason to suspect anything, right?

Harry spends the entire reception sitting in the back of the room in his charcoal Louis Vuitton suit with a sick feeling settling inside of him. It grows stronger with each candied sip of whiskey that falls down his throat, and when his father approaches him with a familiar blonde-haired grey-eyed girl practically matching his ensemble, Harry tries his hardest not to laugh. Because his father obviously is not shy in trying to set the two of them up, and although Jacqueline is still undeniably gorgeous after four whiskey neats, it’s not what he wants. She’s not what he wants.

But the pressure of displeasing his father is too much to bear, so he kisses her cheek cordially and allows her to sit with him. They talk the rest of the night but Harry genuinely has no idea what the content was, and when his father tells the pair of them that they’re required to attend an intimate work dinner at the end of the week, Harry just nods and goes along with it.

As May reaches its end, Nora can barely think straight. Her time in London has been nothing but an absolute dream—a whirlwind of newfound friendships, acclimating to her second favorite city in the world, and falling in love with somebody she never thought she would find solid ground with. She’s never felt this way about anybody before—not with Connor, not with Marcus, not with anybody. Nora isn’t even sure if her heart can feel this way about someone ever again. Not after Harry.

She’s hyperaware that her time in London is coming to an end, and reluctantly, she doesn’t want to leave. Not when she’s decided that she’s in love with Harry. Not when he can give her a reason to stay.

Nora has never unexpectedly shown up at Harry’s place before, but after rewriting the conclusion to her final essay for the fourth time and it still not making any sense, she grabs her jacket and oyster card and makes her way to the Underground to head towards Hampstead Heath.

She doesn’t bother calling or texting to alert him that she’s on her way, because in her mad rush to leave her residence hall, Nora forgot to grab her phone that was charging on top of her duvet. Nora’s never been impulsive or brash before—but it’s Harry and she’s in love, and she needs to tell him.

The white townhouse and small iron-clad gate come into view before Nora’s even figured out the words to say to Harry when he opens his navy blue front door. She figures that when she sees his face she’ll finally figure out how to explain what her feelings are, but when his green eyes meet her blues in trepidation, Nora wonders if she made the wrong decision in showing up unannounced.

In the tense silence that follows, Nora pauses for a minute, taking in Harry’s crisp white button down shirt tucked into a sleek pair of slacks. He seems to have been in the process of finishing fastening them, considering Nora can still see the tops of his butterfly tattoo and the swallows underneath his collarbones almost perfectly.

“Nora? What’re you—did we have plans?” Harry’s cheeks are blushed and he’s fidgeting uncomfortably in his fancy brogues and for the first time in months, he looks like he doesn’t want to let her inside.

“No, I uh—” Nora’s confidence is crumbling, and she’s suddenly not sure if this was a good idea at all. Maybe being brash and impulsive is a thing protagonists only do in the movies. “I had to tell you something. But this obviously isn’t a good time, so…”

Before she can turn to leave with her tail tucked between her legs, something inside of Harry clicks into place. He quickly opens his door wider and lets her in, ignoring the warning bells ricocheting inside of his brain as his brain fights with his heart for control over the situation. His heart ultimately wins in the end, and once Nora takes her first few steps inside his home, Harry can feel his insides quiver with nerves.

Nora barely makes it past the foyer, standing just at the cusp of his living room when she notices the expensive blazer thrown over the back of his leather sofa, his crisp black wallet on the fireplace mantle, and the heavy cardstock with cursive script that seems to be an invitation of the utmost importance lying parallel on the surface.

Why didn’t he tell her he was going somewhere? Was he hiding things from her? Was he ashamed to bring her to his gaudy work events? Does she really look that unappealing on his arm? Why has this all of a sudden become too confusing for Nora when just minutes earlier, she was unquestionably sure that she was in love with him?

Harry’s playing with the links on his shiny wrist watch nervously, attaching it with fumbling hands around his inked skin when Nora finally decides to break the silence. “Where are you, uh, going?”

He looks up at her, a bewildered expression on his face, and suddenly, his mouth has gone bone dry. Nora grows more and more skittish with each quiet breath that passes between them, and she’s never felt more unsure about their relationship.

God, when did things get so awkward between them?

“My dad’s back in the country, and it’s just this stupid event he’s making me go to. I tried to get out if it, honest, but it didn’t work. So, uh, I didn’t think it was a big deal to mention it to you,” Harry says quietly, feeling his lungs begin to constrict in the most agonizing way.

This lie feels worse than all the others he’s told her, because for the first time, there’s a crack in his resolve. Harry knows then that he’s done something very wrong, and he immediately regrets it all when he notices the hurt expression clouding Nora’s vision.

Nora knows this, too, because his chest is moving up and down from the thundering beats of his heart inside of his chest, and his hands are shaking against the smooth material of his pants, and his eyes are blown out so wide that Nora can make out all of the different shades of green hidden inside. And when his tremulous pupils finally focus on her own, Nora can see that Harry looks completely panicked in front of her, and she isn’t quite sure what to think.

“Oh,” Nora lets out in a soft exhale. It sounds defeated and she’s not entirely sure why, because nothing has even happened between them yet.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s why she feels so low all of a sudden. Because it’s  been months of almost something’s—of days spent exploring different parts of the city and nights spent exploring different parts of each other. All without a label. All without a conversation. And now, standing in the front room of Harry’s home with shaking hands and trembling lips, Nora doesn’t understand how nothing can be said.

When her blue eyes fall to the floor, Harry springs into action. He’s in full recovery mode, approaching her slowly until the tips of his brogues bump the white of her trainers. His hands find purchase on her shoulders, gently kneading the skin until she finally looks up at him.

“I’ll only be there for an hour. We can do something afterwards, yeah? Just, uh, stay,” he pauses suddenly, eyes wide when he realizes what he’s saying before swallowing deeply, squeezing her soft skin a bit harder. “Stay here while I’m gone. Please.”

“You want me to stay here?” Nora echoes, blinking once, twice, a winsome dumbfounded expression gracing her features.

Harry nods, moving his right hand from her shoulder upwards until his warm palm is cupping the underside of her jaw tenderly, his thumb offering soothing strokes against the pink skin covering her cheekbone.

“Yeah, I do.”

Nora’s doubts are finally subsided, because how can he not feel anything towards her if he’s allowing her into his space for the first time without supervision? He obviously trusts her, and he obviously needs her—and that’s all the confirmation she needs to quiet her racing head and settle her thumping heart.

Her small hands settle on Harry’s waist and he instinctively brings her closer, cupping her jaw with his other hand so that he can angle her head back gently and press his lips against her own. It’s soft and sweet and soothing, and how can he not feel the same way when he kisses her like this?

Before they can get too carried away, his doorbell buzzes and Nora giggles when she feels him groan against her lips, shaking his head softly and backing away, looking down at her with a childlike pout on his lips.

Nora can’t help but trace the protruding flesh with her thumb, causing Harry to shiver. He’s dreading this event even more now, because all he wants to do is drag Nora upstairs and lock her in his room and turn their clock off for just one night.

But the doorbell buzzes again, and he sighs, knowing he can’t do that.

“That’s the car. I’ve got to go,” Harry whispers, giving Nora one last kiss before shrugging his blazer on and grabbing his wallet, keys, and invitation in one fell swoop.

Nora nods, a bit breathless at the sight of him. Harry opens the door, and before he can fully retreat, he peeks his head over his shoulder, long hair tucked behind his ear as he gives her one last small smile.

“One hour. Don’t miss me too much.”

As if she doesn’t miss him instantly when he leaves her.

True to his word, Harry comes back an hour later with a slice of red velvet cake he nicked from the dessert table before sneaking out undetected. He finds Nora burrowed in the thick sheets of his bed wearing the same Rush band tee he wore earlier in the day, her eyes lifting from the movie on the screen to the green of his eyes.

“Hey you,” she says softly, sitting up taller on his bed so that her back is flushed with his headboard and the tops of her thighs are poking out from underneath his duvet.

“Hi,” Harry responds, toeing off his shoes and walking over to her languidly, “Got you a present.” He drops the takeout container on her lap, grinning when she squeals and dredges her pointer finger through the thick frosting.

“Mmm,” Nora sighs, licking her finger dry as she smirks mischievously at Harry, watching as he undresses mindlessly. He isn’t sure if she’s doing it intentionally or if she’s always been a secret seductress, but when she repeats the action and swirls her tongue along her sticky digit, Harry snatches the box from her lap and slides his arms around her waist, switching their positions effortlessly so that she’s on top of him as he falls easily back onto the mattress.

“Someone’s feeling cheeky,” Harry says against her lips, his nose bumping hers repeatedly as she giggles against his skin.

“Can’t help it. I missed you,” Nora explains, adjusting her knees so that her weight is evenly distributed along his lower half, her backside resting against his front as her hands twist in between the curls along the crown of his head.

“Yeah?” Harry coaxes, his fingertips sneaking underneath his shirt as he plays with the lace material covering the bottom of her underwear.

“Always.” Nora seals her response with a fiery kiss, bringing her lips to his and pressing her entire body against his searing torso. She wonders if it’ll always feel like this—white hot electrical current shooting up her veins, warming her entire body up with just one simple press of his lips to hers.

Once Harry starts nipping at the skin of her lower lip, Nora responds by grinding into his lower half, the thin material of their underwear leaving little to the imagination as they garner enough friction to cause Nora’s knickers to dampen and Harry’s briefs to tighten.

They kiss until they’ve reached their very last breath, and when their lips depart, Harry uses this time to throw his shirt off of Nora’s body, leaving her sitting against his lap in just a nude pair of lacy underwear that makes his eyes roll to the back of his head.

With his head resting back against his neck, Nora decides to attach her lips to the column of Harry’s throat, causing his entire body to shudder as a carnal moan rips through his throat and settles between them. Her fingers draw a tantalizing path down his chest and abdomen until they’ve settled along his waist, red lines marking the path Nora’s fingernails greedily traced.

Her small palm cups his growing length trapped inside the strained cotton material, rubbing and squeezing as her teeth bite into the sharp cut of his jaw. Harry hands grip the skin of her waist in anticipation, and once Nora’s decided that he’s had enough teasing, she rolls the band of his briefs down, freeing his length in the stifling air of his bedroom.

“Christ,” Harry whispers, his eyes shut tight as he breathes through the feeling of Nora’s bare hands on his newly uncovered skin. She shushes him with gentle kisses, lapping her tongue against his own once he’s finally calmed down a bit more and begun reciprocating her tenacity.

Before he can take control, Nora makes the decision for him as she slides her underwear down her legs, flinging the thin material against his floor. Harry’s eyes snap open as he takes in the sight of her naked against his lap, the moonlight flooding into his bedroom outlining the curve of her body, the shape of her breasts, the valley of her stomach, the stretch of her legs.

No matter how many times Harry’s seen her like this, he never fails to stop and appreciate her. Because he’s taken it for granted too many times in the past, and every time he sees her exposing herself to him in the most vulnerable way there is, he can’t help but feel his heart grow in his chest, hammering against his ribs as he marvels in the fact that Nora Priestley chose him.

“What?” Nora asks shakily, shrinking into herself when she realizes Harry’s been staring at her for a beat longer than necessary.

“Nothing,” Harry admits, bringing a hand up to her face and tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “You’re just beautiful.”

Nora responds with a smile, pressing her lips to his tightly. “I want you like this.”

“Are you sure?” Harry asks, his hands tightening against her waist as he watches her scoot up higher on his lap so that her core is lined up with his aching length.

Nora nods, her teeth sinking into the plushness of her lower lip as she wraps her arms around his neck. Before he can say another word, she begins teasing her entrance with the tip of his cock, watching the way his eyes widen almost cartoonishly and the vein in his neck starts to pulse.

“Nora, fuck, baby, wait. I need—fuck. Need a condom,” Harry stutters, holding her tightly in his grasp as she hovers over his tip.

“It’s only been me, yeah?” Nora asks, the muscles in her thighs straining as she holds herself in the position over his length.

“What? Why would you ask me that? Of course it’s only you,” Harry says quickly, a look of bewilderment gracing his features.

“Then let’s not use one. I want to feel you like this,” Nora whispers, her hands holding his face tightly so that he has no choice but to stare into the blues of her eyes.

Harry feels his stomach bottom out, constantly amazed at the girl in front of him. “Are you sure? Have you ever done this?” he asks, disquietude lacing his every word.

Nora shakes her head. “Have you?”

“No,” he answers, much to Nora’s surprise. “I haven’t.”

“Well, Harry Styles,” she whispers, rubbing her palms over Harry’s hands that are gripping her waist, signalling that she wants him to loosen his hold, “There’s a first time for everything.”

Harry’s teeth widen at her quip, remembering the way she uttered those same exact words to him three years ago when he was experiencing another first with her. Before he can say anything back, Nora gives him one last kiss before sinking down on his length, causing his brain to forget every single thought rushing through his head other than the fact that he’s inside of her with no barrier between them, and it’s probably the closest he’s ever (and will ever) feel with another person.

They both seem to be in the same headspace, with the way Nora freezes on top of him, her throat pinching when she realizes she can feel every ridge and curve of his length from this position, and it’s only once he asks her his standard question of, “Are you okay?” when Nora starts to lift herself on her knees, before sinking back over him once more.

“Oh my god,” Harry exclaims, wrapping one arm around her lower back and the other gripping harshly at the back of her neck, holding her as tightly and as closely as possible so that he can feel every shudder of her body and every thump of her heart against his own.

Nora angles his head back so that she can crash her lips to his, swallowing his moans as she swivels her hips against his own, feeling his tip bump against the spongy spot inside of her walls that causes her toes to curl. When he expertly hits it for a third continuous time, Nora’s neck falls back as she cries out into the stuffy air.

Harry noses at the clammy skin of her neck before pressing his lips to the spot near her jaw, licking and sucking until she’s whimpering above him. “Feel so fuckin’ good,” Harry whispers against her skin, sinking his teeth deeper into her flesh when he feels her clench around him.

“I’m close,” Nora says through an exasperated breath, weaving her fingers through his long hair until she’s wrapped the strands around her wrist in a makeshift ponytail, pulling just enough to cause Harry to groan against her.

“Fuck, baby. Me too. Do that again,” he instructs, feeling himself lose control when Nora obeys his request.

Nora’s never been on top for this long before, and while her thighs are burning and her lungs are losing air the closer and closer she gets to her release, she’s never had sex feel this good before. The knot inside of her stomach is tightening with every thrust Harry meets her with, and when his right hand sneaks down between them and rubs at her swollen mound, it only takes three rotations until the knot is uncoiled and Nora’s careening towards her end.

She stills on top of him, trembling with the aftershocks as she comes down from the most intense orgasm she’s had yet. Her body doesn’t even feel like her own, with the way she’s vibrating all over and her skin is dampened and her hair is knotted. It’s only once Harry’s pushed her backward, hovering over her as she’s horizontal on his sheets, when the fuzziness finally dissipates from her vision. She’s thankful that she can finally see clearly, because when her blue eyes meet his, she watches as he slips out of her, pumping his length until white ribbons coat the skin underneath her belly button.

They’re both staring at each other with heaving chests and dotted irises, coming down slowly as they realize what had just transpired between them. When Harry finally catches his breath, he whispers, “Shit, I’m sorry I probably should have asked—”

“Shh,” Nora coos, always the one to calm his racing heart and wild thoughts. “It’s okay. That was amazing. You’re amazing. C’mere, please.”

He smiles before crashing his lips to hers, kissing her soft and slow, a thousand words spilling through their lips without their voices ever speaking them. They break away softly so that Harry can grab his discarded shirt from the floor to clean Nora’s stomach, his arm reaching for the article of clothing without getting up so that he can keep her underneath him for as long as humanly possible.

As he dotes on her ever so delicately, Nora’s convinced that he feels the same way. She argues over how to tell him in her head as he wipes at her stomach and in between her thighs, before throwing the shirt into his hamper across the room. She debates the wordage as he wraps his arms around her gently, heaving them up the bed until they’re tangled together underneath his sheets. And just when she’s about to say it, he mumbles against the skin of her neck in his throaty voice, “I wish time could stop and we could stay like this forever. Just you and me.”

Nora freezes. Because suddenly, her heart pangs with the startling realization that she’s leaving London in four days. Moments like these with Harry are dwindling away one by one, and she really needs him to give her a reason to stay.

She needs to hear him say it.

And just as she’s built up the courage to whisper her declaration out into the air, Harry’s soft snores whistle against her neck. So she pushes it down, and waits for another day.

Nora wakes up in the middle of the morning with a nervous knot lodged inside her throat. She’s not even sure what spurred this on—considering she fell asleep tucked underneath Harry’s arm feeling safe and warm, her head lulling against his chest as his sleepy breaths ruffled the brown strands of hair falling against her cheek. But now, at six forty-three in the morning, Nora feels completely unsettled.

Her skin feels hot but she’s shivering for some strange reason, and when she’s reminded of the weight of Harry’s arm wrapped around her waist, she suddenly feels weak under the heaviness of it. She doesn’t feel comfortable, and all at once she feels the urge to get out from under the stifling duvet and get some fresh air.

She sneaks away from Harry’s body, tip-toeing towards his bedroom door with nothing but her cardigan on from the night before. Just as she’s closing the door, Nora makes sure to peek at him one last time, smiling to herself when she watches him flop onto his stomach and clutch the pillow she was just using tighter into his grasp. Nora wonders if he sleeps like this when she’s not with him.

She wonders if he’ll sleep like this when she leaves in three days.

Sighing, Nora makes her way to the sliding door connected to his kitchen, plopping herself down on the brick steps of the tiny porch overlooking his back garden. With her thighs pressed to her chest and her chin resting on the oversized knitted material of her buttoned cardigan over her knees, she despondently watches the blues and oranges and yellows of the early morning sun paint a picture of this piece of London she’s grown to love almost as much as the sleeping boy upstairs.

Nora’s not sure how long she sits out in the cool June air contemplating what the uneasy feeling was that forced her out of bed, but it’s long enough for her to notice the sun rising with the rest of Harry’s neighborhood. Her stomach begins to grumble then, and the thought of making coffee and toast urges her legs to carry her back inside the flat and into the small kitchen.

Just as she’s distractedly buttering her toast, Nora feels two strong arms lock around her waist from behind. She jumps at the feeling of it, even though there’s no other person it could possibly be besides Harry. Nora’s not sure if it’s just a residual effect from this morning, but still, she leans into him when her pulse decides to go back to normal, and she can feel Harry’s nose bumping against the side of her neck.

“You’re up early,” Harry mutters in that raspy morning voice of his that never fails to make Nora’s thighs clench together. There’s just something about him in the mornings.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Nora explains, her teeth ripping a small piece from the corner of her toast before bringing it over her left shoulder for Harry to try.

He hums in appreciation. “Don’t like when you’re not with me when I wake up,” he admits, tightening his arms around her as he swallows so that her backside is fully flushed with his.

“I know,” Nora whispers, the knot suddenly reappearing in her throat without warning. The half-eaten toast in her hand is no longer appetizing to her, and when she places it on a paper towel with trembling fingers, Nora comes to the conclusion that it’s now or never. She needs to tell him—because holding it hostage deep down inside of her is causing her to feel physically ill, and she’d rather face the consequences than always wonder what could be.

Harry notices her switch in demeanor almost instantly, and before Nora can even gather her bearings, he’s spinning her around, one opened palm cupping her jaw with his thumb rubbing her cheekbone delicately while the other tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear as he observes her closely.

“Everything alright?” he asks, nervously watching the way her eyes seem to focus on everything but his own, her hands seem to shake erratically against her sides, her lips seem even darker due to the incessant nibbling she’s done to them throughout the morning, and Harry suddenly wonders if she’s finally caught up to all of his lies.

Nora takes one last breath before bringing her eyes to his own, “I think I’m in love with you.”

Now Harry’s the one that’s panicking.

As if his brain is no longer controlling his body, his hands suddenly disappear from Nora’s face. He takes a tentative step back, leaving a cold space where his warm body was just flushed against her own. Nora watches as his skin turns an uncomfortable shade of pale, and as if they had completely swapped roles, Harry’s now the one who can’t seem to hold her gaze.

“Wait—what?” Harry unnecessarily asks. He mainly utters it as a placeholder, considering he’s let an awkward wave of silence wash over them both with his inability to say anything of importance.

Nora breathes through her nose, concerned. “I said, I think I’m in lo—”

“Why?”

Nora wonders if he’s joking.

“What do you mean, why?” Harry can feel her slowly losing her patience, her arms wrapping around herself slowly, creating a layer of armor that she’s used in the past to protect herself from his callous words.

“I mean—are you sure?”

“Are you serious?”

Sure, Harry knows that he cares for Nora with everything in his being. And sure, a part of him understands that when his heart speeds up and his chest tightens and his cheeks bloom pink whenever he’s around her, it’s all due to his feelings for her.

But even though that all stands true—Harry can’t help but be wary. Because how are you supposed to know how to love somebody when you’ve never properly been loved yourself?

His best times with Nora are always a dream-like trance Harry finds himself reliving over and over again. They’re always short glimpses of time, weeks or months with an expiration date looming over their heads because Harry can only allot himself momentary feelings of bliss and vulnerability before he realizes that his heart has the capacity to break in half if he continues on any further.

While Harry’s heart and mind battle with one another, Nora decides that she’s had enough. There’s only so many minutes she can stand in front of him watching as he silently stares at the linoleum flooring of his kitchen instead of explaining his reasoning to her. It’s only once she feels the pressure of tears welling at her waterline when she ends up slinking around him, gathering the rest of her clothes and belongings in record speed so that she can leave his home before the first tear falls.

Harry’s frozen in place. He’s still staring at the spot Nora once filled, hearing the sounds of her slipping her shoes on by the door and twisting his door knob, but none of it is actually registering in his clogged mind. He’s not sure why—he’s completely and utterly recalibrating the entire inner-workings of his head, body, and heart.

It’s only once he’s heard the navy blue door slam shut when he snaps out of his catatonic state, realizing then and there that even though he hasn’t figured out how to explain his warped outlook on love to her, he still owes it to her to acknowledge her declaration.

But he’s too late—he’s always too late when it comes to Nora Priestley. Because while he’s approached the iron-clad gate wearing just his black briefs, Nora’s already rounded the corner of his street, leaving a flurry of dark brown hair and tears staining the pavement in her path.

Harry knows that his immediate reaction should have been to chase after her, but instead, he decides to grab the first bottle of liquor he could grasp from his bar cart, slinking down onto his couch and bringing it to his lips without an ounce of food in his stomach.

This is where Niall finds him hours later, a nearly-emptied bottle of whiskey at his feet while Harry stares at the black screen of his television with blank eyes, still wearing his briefs from this morning. He’s replayed the conversation so many times in his brain that he can recite Nora’s staggered breathing patterns by heart, and Harry knows that Niall is privy to this because instead of yelling at him, he sneaks off into his bedroom and throws a clean set of clothes at his bare body.

“Up you get, Curly. Time to dilute all that whiskey with some greasy food.”

In hindsight, Niall probably shouldn’t have brought Harry to the pub down the road from his flat. But he couldn’t carry his deadweight any further, and he figured the only place that would be okay with serving somebody who was already drunk was the ancient barman that knows the two by name at this point.

“Where’s that pretty girlfriend you’re attached to?” Said barman asks the moment Harry and Niall fall into the creaky barstools. Before Niall can try and alleviate the situation, Harry’s already ordered a pint of Carlsberg and a shot of Jameson, ignoring Niall’s pleas of trying to urge a burger and chips down his liquor-ladened throat.

He’s rang Nora at least six times now, currently going for a seventh after Niall returned his stolen mobile when Harry refused to put something in his whiskey-sloshed stomach. He obliged, only because he really wanted to get a hold of her and apologize for being an absolute twat. But she’s ignoring him, and he knows deep down that she has every right to, because she trusted him with her feelings and all he did was shut her down in the worst way possible.

Harry’s not sure how Niall agreed to it, but after they’ve closed out and Harry’s capable of standing on his own two feet, they’ve somehow ended up outside of Nora and Piper’s residence hall. Harry knows that Piper has to let Niall in, so in his drunken convoluted mind, he comes up with the plan to sneak past them both and head up the stairs to beg for Nora’s forgiveness.

What he didn’t account for was Piper’s protectiveness over her crying friend upstairs.

“Harry, I can’t let you do that,” Piper says, closing the door a bit so that only her face is poking out from the glass paneling.

“Piper, please. I’ve got—’ve gotta talk to her. ‘S important.” He tries entering the building again but somehow Piper’s much smaller body blocks the entrance, her arms holding the door frame in order to keep Harry out. Niall sighs from behind her, conflicted. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

“Harry, you’re pissed. I can’t—”

“No! Piper, please. I need t’go upstairs. I’ve rang ‘er and texted ‘er and I know—I know her, Piper. Fuck, it’s—” he pauses, breathing in deeply and trying his hardest to straighten out the jumbled thoughts causing his entire body to shake. “It’s Nora. Please.”

Before Piper can close the door on her friend one last time, she feels Niall’s hand on the middle of her back, and she calms almost instantly.

“Let ‘im try, Pipes.”

With a final sigh, she opens the door and Harry sprints up the stairs, nearly tripping over himself as he tries to get to Nora’s door in one piece. He knows he’s drunk, knows he’s probably a mess, knows that she has every right to send him away—but he needs to talk to her or he’ll fucking explode.

He knocks about eight times on the wooden door before Nora appears behind it, eyes puffy and skin pale. Her hair is a knotted mess and her fringe is frizzy and Harry feels his chest crack in half when he realizes that he’s made her cry again.

“Harry—”

“You lov—” he hiccups loudly, causing his words to cut off the moment his body shakes abruptly. He pauses, tries to remember what he was going to say, before starting again, only to fail to pronounce the godforsaken word appropriately. “You lo’ me?”

He knows his mouth can barely utter the word, and his voice comes out a bit more squeaky than he would like, but he can’t help it. That word has always felt foreign coming out of his mouth, and he’s never understood the magnitude of its meaning. Not dead sober, and especially not after drinking the entire pub’s collection of whiskey.

Nora doesn’t say anything, but she does look into his glassy eyes and realizes that it’s from alcohol and not sadness. His hair is somehow knottier than hers and his part is amok, and she knows it’s because he ran his fingers through the tendrils one too many times. His cheeks are flushed, and before she can respond, his mouth is already opening.

“‘Cos I panicked. And ‘m sorry, but it’s just—nobody’s said that t’me before and properly meant it. Like my parents. They don’t lo—. Yeah. They don't. And me, I don’t even think I feel that way about m’self, either. ‘S just—it scares me, and I don’t know how to lo—”

“—No,” Nora says softly, interrupting Harry’s drunken monologue with a sad shake of her head.

Harry blinks once, twice, his blurry eyes trying to focus on her frame as the tears begin to bubble along her waterline. “No?” He’s confused, feels as if his life is completely off-kilter with the short utterance of a simple, two-lettered word.

“I don’t love you like this.”

Harry wonders if Nora can hear his heart begin to rip inside of his chest. “Nora—”

“You can barely even say it! Even when you’re piss drunk, you can hardly say the word love, let alone stick around long enough to hear somebody say it to you!” Her voice echoes through the small hallway of the sixth floor, and Harry stares back at her, flinching with each raise of her voice. “I can’t do this, Harry. I’d rather have you not say it sober than try and spit it out when you’re drunk. I just—I deserve better.”

“Nora please, I—you don’t understand—”

“—No I think I do. Quite clearly, actually.” Before Harry can try to force himself through the door one last time, Nora’s already begun to close it on him. “I think it’s best you go.”

“Nora! Please!” Harry calls out against the heavy wood, but it’s no use. She’s already flicked the lock, already sunk down to the floor with her back resting on the other side of the door, already begun muffling her sobs with trembling hands. And every time Harry bangs on the door with clenched fists and Nora can feel the wood shake, she just clenches her teeth on her bottom lip harder, praying with everything in her that Harry can’t hear her cry.

Harry’s not sure how long he’s stood there pounding on Nora’s door, repeating the word please enough times that it’s somehow lost its meaning. It’s only once he feels Niall’s hand on his back, ushering him out of the hallway and down the stairs, sticking him into the back of a cab when Harry feels the weight of his mistake rest heavy on his shoulders.

The only reason Harry gets any semblance of sleep that night is because he forces himself to swallow back five generous sips of whiskey before collapsing onto his mattress.

When Harry wakes up the next morning, his head isn’t the thing that hurts the most. Somehow, it’s his heart—and even though he’s suffering from the worst hangover he’s had in a very long time, it pales in comparison to the ache resonating through the inside of his chest.

But he can’t feel sorry for himself anymore. Because the longer he sits wallowing in his own self-induced misery, the more Nora drifts away from him. Feeling sorry for himself isn’t going to fix this. He needs to own up to his mistakes, find Nora, and beg for her forgiveness—because even though he doesn’t deserve her, he can’t make her feel horrible anymore.

Just as he’s rummaging through his wardrobe trying to find the cleanest shirt he owns, he hears his mobile ring for the third time that morning. When he looks over at the screen he realizes that it’s his father again, and although they aren’t very close, seeing him try to reach him a handful of times is enough to be worrisome. And just as he’s about to slip his shoes on, his father rings again. Harry begrudgingly answers, wondering what the hell is going on.

“Good to see you know how to answer your mobile,” his father says instead of a normal greeting, his voice filled with sarcasm. Harry almost hangs up the phone on him, his head filled with much more important things than dealing with another ribbing before noon.

“What’s going on? Did someone die?” Harry asks, flying down the staircase in order to locate his trainers that he remembered throwing across the floor in his drunken stupor last night.

“Very funny,” his father retorts, the sound of an unamused chuckle floating through the receiver. “Surprised you haven’t seen it yet.”

“Seen what?” Harry asks, tying the final lace as he begins the search to locate his wallet and keys.

“Page Six. Lovely spread of you and Jacqueline leaving the work event from two evenings ago. That’ll definitely make for some good press surrounding our merger with the Van-Doren’s. Well done, son.”

Harry didn’t think it was possible to feel worse, but somehow, after hearing his father congratulate him for being photographed with the girl he’s been trying painfully hard to set him up with, Harry feels as if everything around him is falling apart.

He doesn’t even respond to his father. Instead, he hangs up the call, typing his name in the Google image search bar. Sure enough, a picture of him and Jacqueline standing close enough to each other for it to be a story is covering his screen. Harry’s never felt more enraged, because he suddenly realizes that if his father has seen it, then Nora definitely has as well.

This can’t be happening to him.

She leaves tomorrow. He can’t let her go like this, not when he wants her to stay. Not when the words are practically at the tip of his tongue, ready to be shouted out into the sky. He’s ready to tell her.

He needs to tell her.

But before he can walk down his front steps and through the iron-clad gate, Niall is standing there blocking his path, a sullen look covering his face.

“Mate, she’s gone.”

*** A/N: I’m sorry times infinity. I know it must seem like I’m torturing you, but I promise I’m not! Everything will make sense in time, even though it’s a bit painful to read. My inbox is open for all complaints/theories/ill-wishes.

Sadly, the time has come that I no longer have completed chapters already written. I've tried to keep up, but real life got in the way. I have like barely half of the next part written, so I’m not entirely positive if it will be posted next Friday. I want to give you guys the best I can offer, and if it feels rushed I know it’ll be quite disappointing! I’m aiming to have it up by Friday, but if it isn't, I will surely keep you posted. Thanks again for sticking with me and this story, please be kind to each other and I’ll see you (hopefully) in one week!

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[wiypt-writes]

Stark Spangled Rebirth

Chapter 1: Flowers In The Window

Summary: Steven Grant Rogers, the dumb kid who was always too stubborn to run away from a fight, was never gonna allow a bunch of no-good low-lives to hassle a dame in the street, even if it was going to lead to him getting his ass kicked. For once, however, the ass kicking has an upside as the dame in question seemed particularly grateful, a fact she displays a few days later at the Stark Expo.

But it wasn’t the only encounter that fateful night that seemed set to change his life when Dr Erskine throws him a bone, meaning Steve can finally do the one thing he’s been desperate to do for years.

Join the army.

Warnings: Bad Language words. Nothing much… Pairing: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

A/N:  So here it is…my take on what would have gone down so to speak should Katie have been part of the CA: TFA timeline and my contribution of sorts to the CATF 10 Year Anniversary Challenge. I’ll be trying to keep this fic as accurate to the time period and the movie as possible, just like with the other SS fics.  I really hope you enjoy this, there will be some creative license because, let’s face it, what is Fan Fic other than self-indulgence?

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Katie Stark and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

SSR Masterlist // Main Masterlist

June 1943

It started just the same as any normal Friday morning for Steven Grant Rogers. He unlocked the back of the Grocery Store on the corner of Berry Street in Brooklyn, using the entrance down the alley way reserved for staff. Once inside, he grabbed his beige coloured linen apron off the hook and smiled at the items he had to work with today. Fridays were always a treat as they took the rare delivery of freshly cut flowers ready to be sold for the weekend. This week there were boxes of bright white gardenias with their waxy petals and shiny, leathery dark green leaves, bunches of bright purple heliotrope which always reminded him of one of his mother’s scarves, and plenty of white, blue and purple asters. Steve bent down to take in the strong, vibrant fragrance of the gardenias, closing his eyes. It was easy to imagine he was in some garden somewhere, or even the middle of central park…not some little shop in Williamsberg.

“Don’t be inhaling enough of that to set your asthma off!” Mr Tromley, a kindly faced, portly man in his fifties greeted, and Steve turned to look at him, smiling a little shyly.

“I won’t Mr T,” he assured him, “they’re just so darn pretty…”

“Well set yourself a few aside.” Mr Tromley smiled, “you can take them home and sketch them.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.” Steve protested, the way he always did when Mr Tromley tried to slip him something for free be it scraps of meat he couldn’t sell from the counter that would be given to dogs, bread that wasn’t as soft as it had been in the morning and would be fed to the birds, milk that was going to turn, cheese that was slightly past its best. Mr Tromley ignored all his protests though, usually threatening to sack Steve if he didn’t take it. The man knew what it was like to come from a hard background, which was part of the reason he’d taken a shine to that sickly, twenty-two year old orphan with a degree in fine arts that had come begging for a job some three years ago. He couldn’t pay him much but he could do other things to make sure he got by.

“Well if you don’t take ‘em Steve they’ll just end up withering and a-dyin’, so reckon you’d be doin’ em a kindness.” Mr Tromley shrugged “Now, my Ada has some coffee going, you want a cup before we open the doors?”

Steve glanced at the clock above the counter, more out of habit than anything as he knew full well that he arrived with an hour to go.

“Mr T that’d be swell.” He smiled.

“Okay, you get started and I’ll fetch it down.”

Steve began in the usual way, pulling some simple bouquets together, varying in size and price, ready for the busy men to pick up on their way home from work, a nice present for their dame’s for the weekend. Once the stalks and lower foliage were trimmed and stripped, he fastened and tied them in simple brown waxy paper using plain brown string. Steve always insisted on using plain wrapping as anything else would detract from the beauty of the flowers. He placed the finished bouquets into one of the green buckets of water Mr Tromley fetched from the back, before he then carefully and delicately trimmed down the remaining flowers before placing them loose in their own buckets according to type, ready for the ladies, and occasional gentleman, who had the time and desire to create their own bunches.

Impeccably organised, as ever, Steve finished his work fifteen minutes before the store was due to open. He then set about helping Mr Tromley as they arranged the buckets outside the shop window on the sidewalk, before they set up the other stalls of seasonal vegetables. There wasn’t much fruit to go by at the moment, but that was a sign of the times really. But what they did have, namely a selection of apples and oranges, they set those out ready too. Once that was done, Mr Tromley handed Steve a thick wedge of fresh bread which had been delivered that morning from the local bakery, along with some of his wife’s home-made jam which was sold from their shop. Steve took his breakfast with a mumbled thanks, averse to taking the daily handouts as ever, and Mr Tromley sighed.

“Steve, when are you going to realise that a piece of bread and jam for breakfast ain’t gonna bankrupt me?”

“I just don’t want to appear to take advantage, that’s all.” “Ah quit it.” Tromley waved his hand, shaking his head “If I didn’t want you to take advantage of it, I wouldn’t offer it would I? Now, eat that and get behind the counter.”

The morning passed much the same as they always did. A flurry of activity at opening, a steady stream of locals and regulars through to the usual peak of activity just before lunch. Like clockwork, Mr Tromley closed the doors bang on midday for an hour and Steve gathered his sketchbook along with the brown paper bag which contained his cheese and bread, and headed outside into the sun. At Mr Tromley’s instruction he selected an apple from the display and crossed the road avoiding the yellow cabs and cyclists and trams, taking up seat on the bench which sat directly opposite the shop front.  He chewed his lunch, washed it down with the tin bottle of lemonade that Mrs Tromley had filled for him earlier, and then once he had finished his apple he tossed the core over to a pigeon who instantly began pecking at it. He then untucked the pencil that was behind his ear, opened his sketchbook and resumed the detailed landscapes he was doing of the buildings surrounding the shop front. Drawing was his escape, something he did any chance he got. He dreamed one day of travelling the world, drawing all the different sights he could, but that was out of the question. Well, until he finally got into the army. With four failed attempts under his belt already, most men would have given up but not Steven Rogers. Stubborn, tenacious and plucky to a fault, he was already planning his next attempt at enlisting, this time he was going to hail from New Jersey. Well, as good a place as any.  

Steve glanced up, checking the detail of the window to the cobblers next door, and that was when he saw her, just walking down the sidewalk. She wore a red high-collared, cap sleeved tea-dress which flared out slightly from her hips and finished just below her knee. It was cinched in at the waist with a black belt, and was detailed round the hem and sleeve edges with pretty white lace. On her feet she wore a pair of simple, elegant black block heel courts with a T-bar buckle. Her hair was a silky, shiny chestnut which hung around her face in bouncy waves and she had a soft, gentle profile with high cheekbones, slightly flushed cheeks and ruby lips. She stopped outside the shop, examining the flowers with a smile, and then she looked up at the shop door and saw the CLOSED sign in the window. She can’t be from around here, Steve thought to himself, everyone in the neighbourhood knew when Tromley closed his doors and opened them, you could set your watch by it. Still, she hung around, softly picking up a gardenia and holding it to her nose, smiling to herself as she inhaled.

Steve found the innocent act breath-taking. He felt a little, well, shameful in a way, to be watching her so, intruding on what was clearly a private moment but he couldn’t help it. She was beautiful, grace personified, and he felt a little sad as she replaced the flower, gave the buckets one last look, before she continued on her way. Steve sighed, wishing to God that the shop had been open, it would have given him an excuse to maybe see her a little more closely. Perhaps talk to her. Or not as the case maybe, Bucky was always telling him how useless he was when it came to striking up conversations with ladies. But, for now, he had to settle for watching her walk away. Only he wasn’t the only one.

“Hey pretty thing…” Steve heard a voice and turned to his left where a group of men, most likely in their late teens or early twenties, had spotted her. As Steve watched he saw one of them push himself off the lamppost he’d been leaning on and cross the street towards her. The lady stopped, looking at him with her eyebrow raised. He spoke to her again, Steve couldn’t hear the conversation but a smile tugged at his lips as the lady looked the boy up and down, disdain etched all over her pretty face before she shook her head and laughed. She made to move past the kid but he reached out and grabbed her arm.

And Steve just couldn’t help himself.

“Hey!” He called, jumping up and hurrying across the street. “Let the lady go.”

“Back off, this has nothing to do with you.” The man rounded on him, looking at him before he snorted at Steve’s stature. “Besides, what you gonna do about it anyway? Runt.”

Steve took a deep breath, he was used to people looking down their noses at him, both figuratively and literally. That was part and parcel of being only five foot four inches tall. He also knew that at hundred pound give or take, he didn’t cut a formidable figure either, but he was damned if he was going to let this bully manhandle a dame in the middle of the street.

The woman wrenched her arm away from the man’s grip and glared at him, furious green eyes bored into his as she snorted and looked the guy up and down. “He’s clearly twice the gentleman you’ll ever be. Didn’t your mother ever teach you basic, good manners jack ass?”

“What did you just say?” a sudden darkness crossed the man’s face as he looked down at the woman who stood, un-yielding, clutching her purse as it hung around her shoulder.

“You heard me, well unless you’re deaf as well as ugly.” She shrugged slightly. At that Steve really couldn’t hold his face straight anymore and he felt the side of his lips curl up into a smirk. He was sure the pretty dame’s eyes flickered to his but he must have imagined it as when he stole a glance back at her she was staring straight back at the man who’d been giving her the trouble.

“Mouthy little broad you ain’t ya?” He snarled.

“Show some damned respect.” Steve shot out, and this time the man rounded on him. Steve stood stock still, his mother’s words echoing clearly in his head- you start running, they’ll never let you stop and he was aware in his peripheral that the other 2 men who’d been observing until now were starting to circle like sharks who had just had their first taste of blood.

He braced himself, ready for the inevitable fight, legs slightly apart, hands balling into fists by his side. But it was no use. He was never going to be fast enough or strong enough for one of these guys, let alone three, and as the fist connected with his face he heard a scream and a yell as he fell backwards into the display of oranges and apples which he had lovingly helped Mr T prepare before.

Steve staggered to his feet, readying himself for another hit but it didn’t come. Instead one of the guys was sent sprawling to the ground besides him, shortly followed by the other. He wheeled round to see Bucky had the one that was left standing pinned up by the collar against the brick wall to the side of the shop and Mrs T was on the door step brandishing a broom handle, a string of Italian expletives leaving her mouth.

“Get outta here!” Bucky shoved the one that he was holding harshly into the road where he narrowly avoided colliding with the side of a yellow cab. Then turns to Steve and pulls him up.

“Seriously?” Bucky groaned and Steve shook his head, dusting himself down “You pick a fight with three at once?”

“He didn’t pick a fight with any of them.” A soft voice spoke and both Steve and Bucky turned to look at the dame in the red dress who was dusting herself down as her eyes flitted from Bucky, to Steve, then back again. “He came to help me when one of those bozos was getting a little too familiar.”

“That’s Stevie, a regular Knight in shining armour.” Bucky ruffled Steve’s hair as he gave an exasperated sigh, pushing himself away from his best friend. “Especially when there’s a beautiful dame involved.”

 The lady looked at Bucky, arching an eyebrow before she looked back at Steve and he gulped slightly as for the first time he took her in properly. There was nothing else to say other than she was drop dead gorgeous. Deep green eyes that sparkled like emeralds looked back at him from a heart shaped face, nose speckled with freckles which twitched a little as she smiled revealing a row of perfectly straight, white teeth

"I guess I should thank you Stevie." She spoke, and Steve felt the heat rise in his cheeks.

"It was nothing...I just.." he stopped dead as she reached out and straightened his tie, long eyelashes blinking against his cheeks as she smoothed over his shoulders and dropped a kiss to his cheek.

"My hero"

Steve swallowed and looked at the woman as she stepped back, smiling at him.

“I err, it was…my pleasure.” Steve stuttered and the lady arched an eyebrow, a grin on her face.

“Interesting choice of words.”

“I mean, not pleasure, obviously. No one likes seeing a beautiful dame getting hassled, I mean woman, not that…” he shook his head, as Bucky nudged him. He was rambling, as per usual. “I err, I should…”he gestured to the shop as Mr and Mrs Tromley were now looking at the mess of fruit all over the floor.

“I’m sorry about that.” She turned to the shopkeepers who looked at her, Mrs Tromley waving her away.

“Not your fault, dear.”

“Can I at least buy some of the flowers?”  She asked, a little shyly. “That is what I actually wanted to do after all.”

“Of course, Steven, can you…” Mr T nodded to Steve and then his eyes fell on Bucky “James Buchanan Barnes, what are you doing here?”

“Got a week or so’s furlough, Mr T and Ma sent me for some stuff, I gotta list.” he nodded, fishing it out of his pocket.

Tromley took it from him, scanned it and then turned to walk into the shop, beckoning for Bucky to follow him. Steve’s eyes followed his friend’s broad back as Bucky paused in the doorway and stopped, turning back to the woman. Steve groaned inwardly, he knew that face, Bucky was about to turn on the charm and she was no doubt going to fall in a pool at his feet, just like most of the other girls in the neighbourhood.

“You’re not from round here, right?” Bucky asked.

“What makes you say that?” She countered with a question of her own, looking Bucky up and down as she spoke.

“Never seen you before.”

“Know all the girls in Brooklyn, do you James Buchanan Barnes?” She asked, and Bucky gave a chuckle as she repeated his name to him and winked.

“Only the pretty ones.” “Well I suppose with most men joining the army the moment, even the pretty ones can’t be choosers.”

At that Steve let out a snort of laughter as Bucky blinked in surprise. “Ouch.” He gave a little scoff and shake of his head before he turned to walk into the shop.

“He always like that?” The lady looked at Steve who took a deep breath and smiled a little.

“Yes Ma’am. And to be honest it normally works.” Steve glanced at Bucky before he looked back at the woman who was looking at him, her eyes twinkling. “Most girls just can’t seem’ta say no!”

“Well, I’ll let you into a secret.” She grinned and leaned closer to Steve. “I’m not like most girls.”

Steve swallowed again, nervously brushing a hand through his hair as she straightened up and smiled at him. “I’m Katie by the way, seems only fair you know my name seeing as I know yours.”

“I err, that’s a pretty name.” Steve smiled and then inwardly cursed himself again.

Pretty name? Really? That’s the best you can do?

“Thank you.” She giggled, and then she turned to the buckets “So errr, do you wanna make me a bouquet Steve? Something pretty for my room.”

Glad of the distraction, Steve nodded and turned to the various bunches of flowers. “I err, I noticed you were admiring the gardenias, so…” “You were watching me?” she spoke and Steve looked at her, ready to start protesting that wasn’t what he’d been doing when he spotted the glint in her eyes and he shook his head giving a sigh. She grinned “I love gardenias, lilies are my favourite but gardenias are pretty too.”

“Yeah we don’t have any lilies, unfortunately.” Steve shrugged “They were my Ma’s favourite too.”

Steve set about gathering a generous bunch of flowers as she instructed him to make it a large bouquet and then she followed him into the shop where he wrapped them in brown paper and string as Bucky was leaning against the counter, chatting to the Tromleys, Mrs Tromley laughing loudly at something he’d said.

“You are a cad, Bucky Barnes!” She looked at him, shaking her head “Isn’t it bad enough you joined the army? You’ll give your ma a heart attack one of these days.”

Bucky shrugged “It wasn’t so bad, he never caught me. Even on a bum ankle I was faster.”

“You been caught in places you shouldn’t be again Buck?” Steve looked at him and he shrugged, grinning.

“You know me, Stevie!”

“Yeah, yeah I do.” Steve rolled his eyes before he tied off the bouquet with the string and then handed it to Katie. She smiled.

“You have talented hands.” She spoke gently and Steve flushed once more, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah, he’s good with them.” Bucky spoke and Steve glared at him. Katie turned to look at Bucky again, a smirk playing on her lips.

“Makes a change, in my experience most men don’t know the first thing about how to use them.”

Mrs Tromley choked a little on her coffee as she looked at the younger woman, flashing her a wink. Katie bit her lip, her mouth curling up into a small smile as she rummaged in her purse, pulling out a small leather wallet.

“How much do I owe you?”

“No charge.” Mr Tromley spoke suddenly but Katie shook her head.

“I insist, I was responsible for your display getting trashed, least I can do is pay for these.”

“Oh trust me,” Mr Tromley smiled, “seeing you put that toe-rag into them was worth it.”

“Yeah, you had some pretty vicious moves for a dame.” Bucky looked at her and she shrugged as Steve frowned.

“Wait, you…” “Don’t look so surprised.” Katie smiled “A girl should always know how to defend herself. But if I’m honest, it’s always nice to have a man do it for you.”

At that she smiled and slapped some money down on the counter, stepping back. “Keep the change in insist.”

Mr Tromley looked at her, then at the note, his mouth falling open a little.

“Thank you again Steve.” She picked up the bouquet. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“I hope so, I mean…yeah…come back soon.”

She smiled and with a final look in his direction she left, the bell ringing as the door opened and shut behind her. There was a pause until Bucky turned to Steve.

“Come back soon?” he looked at him “Really? That’s the best you could do?”

Steve groaned. “Piss off Bucky.” He shot, giving a yelp as Mrs T swatted at his head.

“Language, Steven!” She scalded, as Mr T chuckled and slid the money she’d left to Steve across the counter. Steve blinked and looked at it, before he shook his head. Mr Tromley glared at him.

“You don’t take that you’re fired.”

With a groan Steve folded the $5 note up and slid it into the pocket of his slacks. Mrs Tromley muttered something about going to check on her scones which were in the oven upstairs and Mr Tromley headed into the back, leaving Steve and Bucky alone.

“You know, that dame was practically begging for you to ask her out on a date.” Bucky picked up the paper bag containing the groceries he had come for and Steve looked at him, snorting.

“You’re joking right?” the smaller man shook his head “Dame’s like that don’t want a guy like me.” “Clueless.” Bucky shook his head “Absolutely fucking clueless.” Steve watched him head to the door, before he stopped and turned back. “Oh that reminds me. Ma’s expecting you about 6 for dinner. She’s making meatloaf and told me that if you refuse she’s gonna, and I quote.” Bucky cleared his throat and spoke in a light, airey impression of his Ma, “march round to his house and drag him outta that apartment by his ear.”

Steve rolled his eyes well naturedly. He hadn’t been to the Barnes’ for dinner for a week so he wasn’t surprised Winnie had sent Bucky with an invitation that was more of an instruction than anything. “Okay, thanks Buck.”

Bucky gave him a salute before he headed out of the store, whistling to himself. Steve took a deep breath, shook his head and turned back to his work, pushing all thoughts of the stunning young woman in the red dress out of his mind.

*****

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” She taunting voice of his opponent rang in Steve’s ears as he staggered to his feet. This wasn’t how he’d planned his trip to the movie theatre going, not one iota. But when the loudmouthed asshole had done nothing but show total disrespect to those fighting overseas as the infomercial was showing, his temper had gotten the better of him and once more had led to him getting into a fight. As far as Monday’s went, this one was pretty crappy.

Which of course he could never walk away from.

“I can do this all day.” Steve huffed, swinging his fist at the guy again. The jerk easily blocked Steve’s feeble punch with his arm, delivering a huge jab with his left which sent Steve sprawling straight into the side of the trashcan from which he’d picked up the lid before. As Steve lay dazed, he heard a familiar voice breaking through the fog.

“Hey! Pick on someone your own size.” Bucky yanked the guy backwards by his jacket, shoving him a little down the alleyway. The guy swung at Bucky who dodged it almost lazily, before delivering a punch of his own, placing a firm boot up the guys ass as he retreated hurriedly. Watching as he scooted away, Bucky turned to Steve who was stood with his hands on his knees, steadying himself.

“Sometimes, I think you like getting punched.”

“I had him on the ropes.” Steve replied, pressing the heel of his palm to the cut above his eyebrow, wincing a little from the various blows he’d taken.

Bucky said nothing, instead he bent down to pick up the enlistment form that had fallen from Steve’s pocket and with a sigh he glanced at it.

“How many times is this?” His eyes scanned the information and he arched an eyebrow “Oh, you’re from Paramus now? You know it’s illegal to lie on the enlistment form. And seriously, Jersey?”

Steve ignored him, and then for the first time looked up at his friend to see him stood tall in his full army uniform. Which could only mean one thing. “You get your orders?” he frowned a little.

“The one-o-seventh. Sergeant James Barnes. Shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.”

Steve sighed, great. Just what he needed to hear. “I should be going.” He shook his head dejectedly.

Bucky looked at him sympathetically before he smiled, and looked an arm round his shoulder, pulling him closer in a friendly gesture as they both began to head back down the alley towards the main road.

“Come on, man, it’s my last night! Gotta get you cleaned up.”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“The future.” Bucky handed Steve the newspaper he was holding. Steve opened it to see the ad for the World Exposition Of Tomorrow.

“Buck…” he began to protest but Bucky stopped him.

“Seriously? My last night before I ship off to bust Nazi’s and you’re already tryin’a bail?”

“No, I just…” “Stevie!” Bucky whined. “Since I got my draft last September, I’ve hardly seen you other than when I’ve been home…”

“I know, but…” “No buts, man! I mean who knows when I’m gonna see you again now I’m actually being sent into combat and not just back to Camp McCoy. You know, London is a little further afield than Wisconsin “

“I’m well aware of that.” Steve rolled his eyes.

“So come on! Let’s go, have some fun. Cut loose a little. It’ll do you good.”

Steve looked up to see Bucky’s eyes shining with mischief, his handsome face grinning at him and he rolled his eyes “Fine, but you’re buying the hotdogs.”

“What else is new?” Bucky grinned, grabbing Steve in a headlock and ruffling his hair a little.

“Jerk.” Steve said furiously, pushing him away.

*****

A couple of hours later the two of them entered the Expo, Steve taking in the sights around him. It was crazy busy, a buzz of excitement around the air and it was hardly surprising. Howard Stark, the guy at the centre of it all was somewhat of a celebrity. He’d founded his company some four years ago at the age of twenty-two, and it had grown from strength to strength, with numerous pioneering technological advances to his name. Steve would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little excited to see the latest and no doubt flamboyant invention the guy had come up with, but his mind was still on his failed Army application, the feeling of inadequacy exacerbated even more by the fact Bucky was going to be leaving him behind to serve his country, something that Steve felt he should be doing right along with his best pal.

Sensing his brooding nature, Bucky nudged him and opened his mouth no doubt to make some wise crack, but Steve shook his head.

“Buck, just don’t”

“I don’t see what the problem is.” Bucky shook his head as they wandered down the steps towards the main pavilion area “You’re about to be the last eligible man in New York.” Bucky grinned, and Steve sighed heavily. Yup, there it was. “You know, there’s three and a half million women here.”

“Well, I’d settle for just one.” Steve muttered and Bucky grinned, Steve allowing a little smile to spread across his face at his own joke.

“Good thing I took care of that.” Bucky grinned and waved to two girls, a blonde and a brunette, who stood a few feet away and Steve stopped dead as one of the girls waved back, calling out to Bucky.

Great, here we go again.

“What did you tell her about me?” Steve groaned. “Only the good stuff.” Bucky smirked as they walked towards the girls, Steve brushing his hand through his hair, making sure it was as tidy as he could.

Bucky introduced the girls as Connie and Bonnie. It was obvious from the start that Connie was the one Bucky was trying his luck with, although to be fair Bonnie might as well have been with Bucky too for all the attention she paid to Steve. As they wandered into the Pavilion, Steve stopped to purchase a bag of sweets before he followed on behind the other 3, glancing around at the various exhibits.

“Welcome to the Modern Marvels Pavilion and the World of Tomorrow.” The expo announcer spoke “A greater world. A better world.”

There was a little bit of murmuring from people in front of them as they stopped, glancing at the large stage in front of them which was currently dark, but then there was movement, music struck up and Connie grabbed Bucky’s arm in excitement.

“Oh, my God! It’s starting!” She squealed and yanked on Bucky’s hand, pulling him closer. As Steve stood behind them he saw the stage light up to reveal a row of women all dressed in black and white striped waistcoats, short jackets and top hats. One of them walked across the front of the stage, smiling as she spoke into a microphone

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Howard Stark!”

Smooth and cool as a cucumber, Howard Stark strode onto the stage, taking off his top hat, whilst he smiled, handing it to the announcer before kissing her as the crowd cheered. Howard smirked a little, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket which he used to dab at his mouth before he addressed his audience.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” at that point Steve held the small paper bag over towards Bonnie who looked at it, then him, almost scathingly as Howard continued his speech. “What if I told you that in just a few short years, your automobile won’t even have to touch the ground at all?”

“You know…” A vaguely familiar voice spoke and Steve looked up from where he had been examining his bag of bonbons, wondering what was wrong with them, to see the woman from the shop a few days ago, Katie stood to the side of Bonnie. She was dressed in a simple grey dress which sported a pencil style skirt, with a light blue cardigan covering her shoulders. “When a gentleman offers you a sweet and you don’t want one, there’s really no need to be such a rude bitch about it.”

Her eyes were narrowed as she gave Bonnie a scathing look. Bonnie floundered a little as Katie reached out, dipping her red nailed, manicured hand into the paper bag and taking a bonbon. In doing so, she jostled Bonnie forward a little with her elbow, and turned to the stage, popping the bonbon in her mouth, giving Steve a little wink. Steve felt his cheeks flush as Bucky turned, his attention drawn to the slight scuffle behind him. He saw Katie stood next to Steve and he grinned.

“Hey Dollface!” Katie turned her head and looked at Bucky as Steve rolled his eyes. However, just like at the shop, she payed Bucky no attention other than a flick of her eyebrow, before her eyes moved back to the stage, Steve doing the same to see that Stark was now stood by some sort of podium.

“With Stark robotic reversion technology, you’ll be able to do just that.” Howard spoke, and with that he turned to fiddle with a few switches on the podium and the car started to hover ever so slightly off the ground. Steve felt his mouth drop open in awe as in front of him Bucky let out an astonished mumble.

“Holy cow!”

But he spoke too soon, as the jets making the car hover suddenly malfunctioned and the car fell back onto the stage with a loud crash, sparks flying out round it.

Bucky turned to look at Steve, smiling as Steve’s eyebrows raised, and besides him, Katie gave a snort.

“I did say a few years, didn’t I?” Howard laughed, leaning on the bonnet of the car.

“Few years my ass.” Katie mumbled and Steve looked at her.

“What?”

“Nothing, doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “Listen, I gotta go-”

“Oh, ok.” Steve tried not to sound disappointed but Katie smiled at him softly, cutting him off.

“Meet me at the Cider cart in an hour.”

“I err…” Steve stuttered, before he frowned. “You sure, you wanna meet me?”

“If I didn’t I wouldn’t have said so.” Katie grinned. “One hour, don’t you dare be late.”

“Yeah, an hour, got it.”

Not quite able to believe his luck, Steve watched her go, smiling to himself before he glanced around and his eyes stopped on the familiar Uncle Sam poster pointing at him, with an arrow directing him to a recruitment centre. What the hell, he had nothing to lose…and an hour was plenty of time. Decision made, he followed the signs and jogged up the steps into the building, pausing to take a look around as people were milling in the carpeted hallway.

“Come on soldier!” a woman giggled at her male company, pulling him away from a mirror making him look like a soldier. Once he was gone Steve stepped in front of the mirror but he was too short to fill out the face. His shoulders slumped and then suddenly, a strong hand gripped his right and Bucky chuckled.

“You’re kind of missing the point of a double date.” He said, shaking his head as Steve stepped away, turning to face him “We’re taking the girls dancing.”

“You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you.” Steve replied, hands dropping into his pockets.

“What, you had a better offer? From Dollface?”

“Her name is Katie.”

“Oh my God I’m right!” Bucky laughed. “Good for you, Punk!”

Steve rolled his eyes and then watched as a man strode past him in an Army Uniform and when Steve looked back at Bucky, his friend’s face now sported an exasperated expression as he’d clearly realised what Steve was planning. “You’re really gonna do this again?”

“Well, it’s a fair. I’m gonna try my luck.” Steve answered with a little shrug.

“As who? Steve from Ohio? They’ll catch you. Or worse, they’ll actually take you.” Bucky’s voice was frustrated and Steve gave a little smile.

“Look, I know you don’t think I can do this, but I’m more-“

“This isn’t a back alley, Steve. It’s war!” Bucky cut him off.

“I know it’s a war. You don’t have to tell me that-“ “Why are you so keen to fight? There are so many important jobs.” “What am I gonna do? Collect scrap metal-“

“Yes!”

“-in my little red wagon?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not gonna sit in a factory, Bucky.” Steve argued, shaking his head.

“I don’t…” Bucky protested once more and Steve cut him off.

“Bucky, come on! There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about me.”

“Right. Cause you got nothing to prove.” Bucky said gently and Steve took a deep breath. But before Bucky could say anything else Connie called out to him.

“Hey, Sarge! Are we going dancing?”

Bucky turned back to the girls, his arms held out to the side. “Yes, we are.” With that he turned back to Steve, shaking his head a little, his shoulders slumped in resignation. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.” He instructed as he started to walk away.

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.” Steve shot back and Bucky shook his head, giving a snort.

“You’re a punk.” He walked back towards Steve and hugged him goodbye.

“Jerk” Steve said gently slapping Bucky’s back. “Be careful.”

With a pang of sadness, Steve watched his best friend walking away, not quite sure when they’d see each other again, if indeed ever. He licked his lips and then called out to Bucky once more. “Don’t win the war till I get there!”

Bucky stopped and saluted him before he strode down the steps, “Come on girls. They’re playing our song.”

With a deep breath, Steve headed into the recruitment centre, past an older gentlemen in a brown suit. He was given the usual forms to fill out, this time going with Ohio as his place of birth-thanks for that one, Buck- and he was shown to the medical examination room. After the short physical was over, he was just fastening the sleeves of his long shirt up again when a nurse walked into the room and whispered something inaudible to the doctor.

“Wait here.” The Doctor turned to him, moving to the curtain.

“Is there a problem?” Steve asked, frowning a little.

“Just wait here.” The doctor repeated his instruction before he walked out.

Steve paused for a second, glancing over his right shoulder at a sign warning against lying on enlistment forms before he glanced at the curtain, cold dread filling him. Shit, Bucky was right, they’d caught up with him. Jumping down off the bed he sat heavily in a chair and began to pull on his shoes when someone entered the cubicle. He glanced up and saw a Military Police officer looking at him and he swallowed a little nervously. But before he could say anything another man entered, the man Steve had walked past about forty minutes or so previously in the foyer, and he was clutching a file in his hands.

“Thank you.” The man spoke to the Police Officer who left, pulling the curtains closed behind him. Steve watched as the man turned to face him, his hands behind his back. “So, you want to go overseas.” The man pulled the file from behind him, opening it “Kill some Nazis.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dr. Abraham Erskine.” The man closed the folder and walked over as Steve stood up, shaking his hand “I represent the Strategic Scientific Reserve.”

“Steve Rogers” Steve nodded, noting the man’s accent as he placed the file on the medical bed and started to look through it. “Where are you from?”

“Queens. 73rd Street and Utopia Parkway. Before that, Germany.” He adjusted his glasses as he glanced at Steve “This troubles you?”

“No.” Steve replied honestly, shaking his head.

“Where are you from, Mr. Rogers?” Erskine asked, resting both his hands on the bench “Mmm? Is it New Haven? Or Paramus? Five exams in five different cities.”

“That might not be the right file.” Steve began to try and get out of whatever trouble he was in but Erskine was quick to cut him off.

“No, it’s not the exams I’m interested in. It’s the five tries.” Erskine closed the file, picking it up “But you didn’t answer my question.” He strode over and stopped in front of Steve “Do you want to kill Nazis?”

Steve glanced to the side before he looked at Erskine “Is this a test?”

“Yes.” The man replied bluntly and Steve took a deep breath, before he answered as honestly as he could.

“I don’t wanna kill anyone.” He shook his head, raising his eyes to meet Erskine’s “I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.”

“Well, there are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is the little guy, huh?” Erskine smiled before he turned to leave “I can offer you a chance” he said, whipping the curtains open “Only a chance.”

Steve couldn’t believe his ears. Was this Doctor guy actually telling him he’d done it, that he’d finally made it into the army? He had no idea what the Strategic Science Reserve was, or why Erskine had questioned him so, but right now he didn’t care.

“I’ll take it.” He said, hastily grabbing his belongings and following Erskine out.

“Good.” Erskine placed the file down on the desk and picked up a stamp, before replacing it and reaching for another “So where is the little guy from, actually?”

Steve smiled “Brooklyn.”

Erskine smiled back, stamped the form before closing the file and handing it to Steve. “Congratulations, soldier.”

Steve hastily opened it up and did a double take as he saw the stamp was a 1A this time, not 4f. He let out a deep breath and glanced up to thank the man, but he’d already left.

“You’ll be sent your papers and instructions shortly” Another man spoke to him, taking the file off him and handing him back the recruitment slip. Steve nodded. “Be ready, the SSR are on a schedule.”

Steve nodded, before he was shown out of the room. Still in a daze he clutched the piece of paper in his hand and wandered back to the area where he’d left Bucky before. And then he remembered Katie.

Shit.

He hastily made his way outside the building and headed back to the pavilion, weaving his way through the crowds. He found the cider cart and saw her waiting, chatting to the man behind the counter, her brown hair hanging round her shoulders, rouged lips which curled up into a smile as she spotted him approaching.

“You’re late.” Katie looked at him and Steve flushed. “I was beginning to thing you’d stood me up.”

“I wouldn’t do that, my ma taught me better.” He gave her a small smile “I was just...” he waved his enlistment paper at her and she frowned a little

“You enlisted?”

He nodded “Yup.” “Wow.” Katie blinked, “Erm, congratulations, I guess. Is that the right word?”

“It is when you’ve tried and been rejected several times already.” Steve shrugged before he snorted “Story of my life.”

“That girl before was fuckin’ rude.” Katie’s eyes narrowed and Steve blinked at the profanity coming from her mouth before she rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that!”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact I swore means I’m gonna go to hell.” She snorted “If it does, then I got that particular ticket a long time ago.”

“Sorry, I was…” he took a deep breath. “For such a pretty woman you certainly…er…”

“Have a filthy mouth?” She asked and Steve snorted, shrugging as he looked away, his lips curling up into a crooked smile as he raised his eyebrows. She leaned closer to him, her lips brushing his ear as she whispered “You have no idea.”

Steve swallowed at the blatant innuendo causing her to laugh at him even more before she nudged him with her elbow “Come on soldier, what do you want to drink?”

Soldier…that was the second time in ten minutes he’d been called that, and Steve liked it much more coming from her. He watched her for a second before he realised he was staring and she jerked her head towards the stall.

“Cat got your tongue, Stevie?” She grinned and he took a deep breath. “What do you want?”

“Erm, an ale…please…hang on.” He began fishing in his pocket but Katie gently wrapped a hand around his wrist.

“No need.” She smiled, as the man behind the counter held out the ale for Steve along with a cup of cider for her. She took it with a thanks and smiled, taking a sip. “Put it on the tab, will you?”

The stall attendant snorted and nodded “Whatever you say, Katie.”

She turned away and started walking slowly over to an exhibit, Steve falling into step besides her.

“How does he know ya?” Steve asked. Katie looked at him as she swallowed a sip of her cider

“Because I work here,well, I do at the moment.” She smiled as Steve looked at her blankly “I helped organise this.” She waved her hand around.

“You work for Howard Stark?”

“In a fashion.” Katie shrugged. “Now come on, I’m not working now and I wanna see how everything looks.”

They walked around the expo grounds, taking in the sights and various attractions. Steve was surprised to find his awkwardness ebbing away with each minute he spent in Katie’s company. She was down to Earth, easy to talk to and made him feel comfortable about himself…although his good spirits might have also been due to the fact he’d finally made it into the army. His meeting with Dr Erskine had baffled him a little, all truth be told, but he’d liked the man. There was something about him that told Steve he could trust him, and Steve was normally a pretty good judge of character.

By the time they’d done pretty much a lap of the main area of the Pavillion, stopping to examine The Synthetic Man in great detail, Steve was surprised to find that he’d spent over an hour with a woman who hadn’t been seeking to lose him at the first opportunity, quite the opposite in fact. On more than one occasion he noticed men looking in her direction, then to his with puzzled expressions on their face, and he had to admit was it the other way round he’d also probably be slightly surprised to see them together. She was a good two inches taller than him, but he was used to that, she was pretty, vivacious…well out of his league all things considered. But she was good company, and he was thoroughly disappointed when they seemed to be heading back towards the place they’d started, signalling their time together was likely coming to an end.

“So, do you need to find Barnes or…” she looked at him and Steve chuckled.

“Er no, no. He’ll be busy.” Steve shrugged

“What, he just ditched you for those girls?” Katie frowned.

“No, not entirely. I ditched him, well, I went to join the army. He doesn’t approve.” Steve finished, explaining slightly.

“Approve of what?”

“Me signin’ up.

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t think I can cope.” Steve shrugged. “I wasn’t exactly a healthy kid so…”

“Well they let you in so you can’t be that bad.”

Steve wrinkled his nose and shook his head slightly. “Some doctor in there offered me a chance, what can I say? Said that there were so many big guys fighting, maybe they needed a little one.”

At that Katie stopped walking and looked at him. “Wait, it was a doctor that accepted you?”

“Yeah,” Steve frowned

“You mean one of the Medical Recruitment Officers?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Steve’s frown deepened “He was with some Scientific Division.” He looked at Katie, who was looking right back at him, her eyes wide “Wait, is there something wrong?”

“No, nothing, just surprised me a little, that’s all.” She looked around, as if she was searching for someone and Steve watched her, a little confused as she chewed her lip with an air of contemplation before she looked back at him, her green eyes locking onto his with a softness in them that made him go weak at the knees, well, weaker than normal. “Thank you for keeping me company tonight Steve, I had fun.”

“Me too.” He said earnestly. “Hey, if you want, I mean only if you want, we could maybe meet up again, you know, before I get my posting?” At that Katie’s face fell and Steve sighed, he’d blown it. She’d only asked him to accompany her round he expo out of politeness, duty even as a thank you for his intervention on the street a few weeks back, and now he’d put her on the spot. “It’s okay.” He started to back track. “I get that you’re probably busy and get asked that all the time…”

“No, it’s not that.” She shook her head “I’d love to go out with you Steve, but I leave town tomorrow. I’m needed back at, well, my other job.”

“Oh, okay.” Steve popped a shoulder up, trying to hide his disappointment. “Well, I err…good luck. With whatever that job is.”

Katie laughed. “It’s me who should be wishing you good luck, trust me.” She cocked her head before she took a deep breath. “Just remember Steve, the world needs men like you, be a shame if we lost you all in the war.”

At her compliment he felt himself once more flush, and the heat in his neck rose even more as she leaned down and pressed her lips softly to his cheek. She pulled back a little, locking her eyes onto his and he swallowed, the lump in his throat now only rivalled by the one he was starting to feel in his slacks. And then, he had no idea how it happened but her lips were suddenly pressed to his. He froze momentarily, but then he went with his instinct and mirrored her movements, his eyes fluttering closed. Her hands gently curled over his shoulder, his automatically falling to her hips, shaking a little against the fabric of her dress as the kiss deepened slightly, the warm edge of her tongue flicking at his lips. He parted his mouth a little, allowing her to curl her tongue against his, a movement that made him shudder and he was beyond disappointed when she pulled away. She smiled against his mouth, her nose bumping his slightly as his cheeks felt hotter than the sun. He knew he was blushing, furiously, having just had his first proper kiss in the middle of a huge exhibition, but Katie seemed completely nonplussed as she smiled at him.

“For luck.” She whispered, stepping back slightly, before she turned and headed away, casting a glance back over her shoulder at him, flashing him another cheeky little wink. “See you around.”

Steve floundered a little, mouth gaping as he watched her disappear into the crowd, and with a final shake of his head and a deep, steadying breath he headed for the exit.

*****

 As it turned out Steve didn’t have long to wait for his posting at all. The following day he received his papers assigning him to Camp Lehigh in New Jersey as part of his recruitment to the SSR’s “Operation Rebirth” programme, whatever that was. He assumed he’d receive more details upon arrival. It wasn’t that which surprised him the most however, it was the date upon which he was ordered to report. Wednesday. As in, tomorrow. Whilst it didn’t give him much time to prepare, it didn’t bother him too much. He had meagre belongings anyways and anything he didn’t want to take with him he packed up into smaller boxes with the help of Bucky’s teenage sister Rebecca, Buck’s dad promising to keep it safe for him until he got back.

Winnie was beside herself when Steve broke the news that he too was enlisting, but she wished him well and made him promise to write. As did the Tromleys, who both took the news even worse than Bucky’s family had. Ada having first burst into tears then hugged him so hard he thought she was going to crush him half to death, whilst Mr Tromley had shook his hand and warned him that if he didn’t come back alive, with all 4 limbs, he’d kill Steve himself.

The morning rolled round ridiculously fast and both the Tromleys and Mr and Mrs Barnes insisted on seeing him off.  Once more Ada and Winnie hugged him tightly before Mr Tromley and Mr Barnes shook his hand, the latter promising Steve he would sort out everything with his landlord, taking the key to his small apartment in the tenement building where Steve had lived in all his life. Steve felt a little pang of emotion at that point, this was the last physical tie he really had to his mother but he took a deep breath letting it go slowly. She’d been dead now for seven years and anything that remained of hers in the building was all safely stored.

No, Steve had absolutely no doubts about what he was doing. This was all he had ever wanted, to follow in his father’s footsteps and so, at six am on the 16th June 1943 Steve Rogers boarded the Army bus that arrived at the bus station to take him and a number of other recruits to New Jersey, leaving the place he’d called home for his entire life behind.

**** Chapter 2

[gorture]

6, 8, 19, 20!

𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄  𝐅𝐎𝐑  𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘  𝐌𝐔𝐍𝐒   /    accepting    /    @confiinement 𝟲.  𝗡𝗔𝗠𝗘  𝟯  𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦  𝗬𝗢𝗨  𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘  𝗠𝗢𝗦𝗧  𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧  𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥  𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗘𝗦.

WELL  a  lot  of  the  things  I  love  about  Ruvik  and  James  are  pretty  similar,    ironically.     They’re  in  my  top  three  favorite  characters  holy   ( or  unholy? )   trinity  for  a  reason. 1.)  I  love  their  depth;      James  is  such  an  ordinary,     everyday  guy  you’d  see  on  the  street  and  find  nothing  remarkable  about  him,    forgotten  by  next  week   —  yet  look  at  the  masterpiece  of  a  story  that  was  shaped  around  him.      Twenty  years  later  I  still  find  myself  thinking  about  the  machinations  of  his  tortured  mind.      Ruvik  on  the  other  hand  is  a  prodigy,     unforgettable  in  both  personality  and  appearance,     and  is  also  a  victim  of  trauma  and  grief   —  though  sadly,     he  also  becomes  a  perpetuator  of  both,    but  I’m  a  sucker  with  sympathy  for  the  devil,     and  as  someone  who  has  dealt  with  a  few  things  he  has,     I  can’t  help  but  feel  that  empathy. 2.)  The  nostalgia  they  invoke.      With  James,     Silent  Hill  2  was  one  of  the  very  VERY  few  things  in  fiction  that  managed  to  send  shivers  down  my  spine,      from  the  story  to  the  soundtrack  to  James  as  a  whole,      it  will  forever  be  with  me  and  is  just  as  powerful  now  as  it  was  to  me  as  a  child.      Even  though  The  Evil  Within  is  much  more  modern,     in  my  opinion  it’s  one  of  the  limited  modern  horror  games  that  was  actually  good,     with  a  compelling  story   —  Claire  de  Lune  gives  me  chills  as  a  result. 3.)    Character  design.      I’m  a  big  fan  of  horror,    and  especially  grotesque  visual  FX  and  body  horror.      Ruvik  is  the  epitome  of  that.      And  where  would  we  be  without  James’   iconic  green  jacket?

BONUS:    Writing  these  two  is  very  cathartic  for  me  for  various  reasons.

𝟴.  𝗗𝗢  𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥  𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗦  𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗦𝗜𝗗𝗘  𝗧𝗛𝗘  𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗘𝗧  𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪  𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥  𝗥𝗢𝗟𝗘𝗣𝗟𝗔𝗬?

Other  than  my  boyfriend   ( who  also  rps! )   I  don’t  have  any  friends  LMAO.     However  an  old  school  friend  of  mine  did  briefly  on  Myspace  when  I  introduced  them to  it,    whether  they  still  do  or  not  I  don’t  have  a  clue.

𝟭𝟵.  𝗪𝗛𝗢  𝗜𝗦  𝗔𝗡  𝗔𝗨𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗥  𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗧  𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗣𝗜𝗥𝗘𝗦  𝗬𝗢𝗨?

Okay,     I  won’t  lie,     I’ve  read  very  little  fiction  in  my  life.     Last  things  I  read  were  over  ten  years  ago,    those  being  A  Clockwork  Orange  and  American  Psycho   ( which  just  so  happen  to  be  two  of  my  all  time  favorite  movies ).      Other  than  that  I  usually  read  stuff  on  medieval  torture,    biology,    and  surgery  LMAO.     But  I  will  say  Anthony  Burgess  has  one  hell  of  a  mind  for  coming  up  with  A  Clockwork  Orange;     I  have  respect  towards  any  author  who  can  invent  a  whole  new  language.    I  know  Nadsat  is  a  mix  of  Russian  and  old  Northern  English  so  it’s  more  hard  slang  than  anything,    but  still.      I’m  also  a  big  Junji  Itou  fan  for  obvious  reasons.

𝟮𝟬.  𝗗𝗢  𝗬𝗢𝗨  𝗡𝗘𝗘𝗗  𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗖 / 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘  𝗧𝗢  𝗪𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗘  𝗢𝗥  𝗗𝗢  𝗬𝗢𝗨  𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗘𝗥  𝗦𝗜𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘?

Absolute  silence  UNLESS  the  music  is  purely  instrumental  and  not  ridiculously  upbeat.     Any  voice  be  it  in  person  or  in  music,     and  I  am  instantly  disrupted  and  thrown  off  my  train  of  thought.     If  someone  is  talking  to  me  then  rip  my  writing  groove.

[sambergscott]

you're my dream come true (aka the palm springs au 🏝)

Summary: Jake has lived this day a thousand times, and he's destined to live it a thousand more, stuck in an infinite time loop at a wedding in Palm fucking Springs, miserable and with a girl who doesn't love him. Then the Maid of Honor follows him into a cave.

for @nylesniall. thanks for putting up with me this week as i wrote this, thanks for being the one to encourage me to write it in the first place, and thanks again for letting me watch the movie with you at 5am. love you sm!!!

as this ended up being a ridiculous 17k words, this is only a snippet and the rest is on ao3 (also it *is* 17k words and was a helluva lot of work so pls do let me know what you think)

9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA. “Wake up,” a familiar voice whispers. He opens his eyes immediately, a quick assessment confirming that, yes, he is still in the same bed, wearing the same blue t-shirt as the day before and has the same sinking feeling in his stomach that has become synonymous with his morning routine. A notification pings on his phone, reminding him that it’s November 9th, the day of the wedding. He slams it back on the nightstand, cracking the screen. He doesn’t need a reminder. In his world, it’s always November 9th. Jake has lived this day a thousand times, and he’s destined to live it a thousand more, stuck in an infinite time loop at a wedding in Palm fucking Springs, miserable and with a girl who doesn’t love him. At least he doesn’t have to do laundry. 

He rolls over and is greeted with the same sight as always, Sophia wrapped in a towel, her leg extended as she moisturizes. She got up early to do her hair and make-up and he grins, knowing that in a few short minutes she’ll be running back to the bridal suite, sweaty, her hair mussed and make-up ruined; it will be his fault that the wedding is late and the bride will shoot daggers at him as she walks down the aisle. Worth it. He’s gotta have some fun stuck in this nightmare. Plus, after seeing the ceremony he doesn’t know how many times, finding a million ways to disrupt it has become a bit of a pastime for him. “Good morning.” He knew she would say that, too. “That’s a good leg,” he responds automatically. And it is a good leg. He tells her so everyday. And everyday she puts down the moisturiser, declares “this is happening,” and practically jumps him. Once upon a time, he would’ve been thrilled. An equally enthusiastic participant in their pre-wedding hook-up. She’s beautiful and smart and smells amazing. She likes Die Hard and hot wings and playing ping pong and, for some reason he has yet to discover, sex with him. He sees the stares from the other dudes at the wedding, knows he is punching way above his weight, that he should be so lucky to date someone like Sophia Perez, and yet every morning he lies there as she rides him, staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing. He hasn’t felt anything for a while. She’s cheating on him with Terry, the super buff officiant that cries every time he pronounces his friends husband and wife. He found out on the original November 9th… years… maybe decades ago. He has no idea. Time is meaningless now. He has no annual holidays to mark it’s passing; no getting drunk on New Year’s and kissing strangers, no Halloween, Thanksgiving or Fourth of July. He’ll never light another candle on his mom’s Menorah. All he knows is that he caught her and Terry in this very room, ran off to the desert to cry, wandered into a glowing orange cave and now he’s stuck with her forever and ever, unable to break things off. No matter what he does, what he says or where he goes, he ends up right back here in their hotel room, admiring Sophia’s smooth, silky leg. He flips her over because his day is always easier if he makes her come and kisses down her body, putting that big mouth of his to good use. He knows exactly what she likes and smirks in satisfaction when she orgasms in record time. He initiates Round Two in the bathroom as she tries to fix her hair, more because he has nothing better to do than out of an actual desire to be with her, and afterwards when she’s running to the bridal suite to have her make-up redone, he pulls on his blue palm leaf Hawaiian shirt and matching blue shorts he wears everyday, his only decision whether or not he can be bothered to button it. 

Today, he cannot.

Jake heads for the pool and his beloved pizza-shaped float, bailing on Sophia and the ceremony. There’s only so many times you can hear two people you don’t care about compare their love to a Nancy Meyers’ movie before you want to kill yourself. He passed his limit a long, long time ago.

He climbs aboard the pizza, takes a sip of his beer, and, underneath the warmth of the Palm Springs’ sun, he relaxes.

If this was all there was to the time loop thing, floating on an inflatable pizza, drinking beer and humming his favourite Taylor Swift song, he’d be all in. No complaints. But despite the good, the no laundry, the pool, and the ability to hook up with anyone and everyone at the wedding without having to deal with any repercussions, it’s a lonely existence here on his own.

Well, not completely alone. He has Charles; a small, mild-mannered man who asks him how is day is, everyday, even though nothing in this time loop ever fucking changes.

“Today, tomorrow, yesterday, it’s all the same,” he recites from the standardised script of his life, rolling his eyes when Charles tells him to be positive, that anything could happen.

Like clockwork, the wedding guests clap and confetti catches in the gentle breeze. He pats his only friend on the shoulder and sails his pizza to shore, ready to get his party on.

read the rest on ao3!

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week - 41

A short film about love, .expanded Part Six of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s Decalog. A shy, young man spies on his neighbor with a telescope, and inspite of his stalking, she is moved by his love to her.

What is the meaning of ‘Milk’, that apparently shows up in nearly all 10 parts of the series?

✴️       

Palm Springs - Again?!?!

Again! I think I am stuck in a time loop where I am destined to watch this movie every month!

And like the “dinosaurs on fantastic mushrooms” I am very pleased with that. (Photo Above)

✴️   

Night And Fog, a horrifying non-fiction short, directed by Alain Resnais about the Nazi concentration camps. Made on the tenth anniversary of the liberation of the camps, the horrors were still fresh. Unflinching look at extermination, unspeakable terror, genocide. I didn’t dare watch it before.

✴️        

5 from 1971:

✳️✳️✳️ ...”FOOD ALL RIGHT??”... 

Clockwork Orange, so shockingly horrific that Kubrick himself asked it to be withdrawn shortly after its premier. The Ultra Violence that exploded on the screen together with Wendy Carlos electronic score were indeed terrifying. I saw it originally in 1971. 8+/10

✳️✳️✳️ Mahler! Visconti! Bogarde! Thomas Mann! Death in Venice - Indulgent but tragic and gorgeous. Celebrated old composer Gustav von Aschenbach falls in love with Polish boy Tadzio, and chooses to perish just to be near him. 9/10

✳️✳️✳️ George Lucas and Walter Murch’s underground sci-fi THX 1138, a world-building experiment with Young Men/Film School vibes. Bold, original visuals with all-bald cast and constant 1984 messages in the background. Had it succeeded, there may have been a THX empire, instead of Star Wars.

I want to see a movie about first-time actress Maggie McOmie (who starred as LUH 3417 and) who chose not to play in any other film after that. 5/10

Plus 2 ‘Making of THX’ Extras:

- Bald, a short about the shaved heads.

- Artifact from the Future from 2004.

✳️✳️✳️ Nicholas Roeg’s second feature film, the "Back to Eden" allegory Walkabout, about two white schoolchildren who are lost in the Australian outback and who are helped by an aborigine teenage. I adored it when I saw it first many years ago,

“... Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again...”

✳️✳️✳️ The French Connection, a humdrum crime story until exactly half way through when Popeye and Fernando Rey start playing cat and mouse on the train.  

✴️        

Roadrunner: A Film About chef-storyteller Anthony Bourdain. I read ‘Kitchen Confidential’ 20 years ago, but I never saw any of his TV appearances or shows. A big time celebrity who became mythological when he killed himself. Like Hemingway, Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe, Aaron Swartz, Abbie Hoffman, my friend Danny, and other suicide heroes. In a way, it’s good he never got to be too old and boring.

But his 2 year old daughter was so so cute in the film. 6+/10

✴️       

2 with Swedish actress Karin Franz Körlof:

✳️✳️✳️ A serious Game, An obsessive love story from 1901 that ends in heartbreak and tragedy. 5/10

✳️✳️✳️ The Wife, brilliantly written by Jane Anderson, starts with two seventy year old writers having sex while they wait to hear if he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Glenn Close is magnificent as the loyal wife who lives in the shadow of her famous husband, unacknowledged as the only writer in the marriage.

Best film of the week. (Re-watch)

✴️     

Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, one of the few CdS films. A thin story about a girl who falls in love with a trapeze artist at a traveling carnival show. But it opens up a chance to display acts from various Cirque shows: O, Mystère, Kà, Love, Zumanity, Etc. Pretty, but the 2D does not translate the live shows well.

However, unexpectedly and all of a sudden at half-point (at 0:42) they start playing “Black Bird” and it turns into a full-blown Beatles extravaganza (From their Beatles/Love show), and that makes it up for its flatness. 7/10

✴️                 

White Heat - Mommy’s boy, murderous psychopath and leader of the Jarrett gang, James Cagney, is the master criminal who ends up in a giant fireball “On top of the world”. Virginia Mayo here looked like 1940′s Jennifer Lawrence. 4/10

✴️    

3 X Francis Ford Copolla’s Re-watches:

✳️✳️✳️ ’”He’ll kill us if he got the chance...”

The Conversation, a complex character study about paranoia, and one of my personal Top 5 films ever. With the best 3-minute opening shot in film history, when right off the bat surveillance expert Harry Caul is himself being spied on from above. And the first close-up of him putting his lips to the Saxophone and starts playing, alone in his apartment, the last refuge from loneliness and guilt...  Another sound design masterpiece from Walter Murch. 10/10

I also love ‘Enemy of the state’, but that’s a different story.

✳️✳️✳️ Apocalypse Now, Coppola’s Wagnerian epic ‘Heart of Darkness’ folly, with many of his then-collaborators, Duval, Frederic Forrest, G.D. Spradlin(!), Harrison Ford, Walter Murch, Brando... As horrific as any other anti-war film.

✳️✳️✳️ The Rainmaker, Coppola’s well-made Memphis Courtroom Drama. with Matt Damon, made at the height of the John Grisham’s-Young-Lawyer-Fight-Evil-Corp. boom, and at the same year (1997) as 'Good Will Hunting'. 2/10

✴️       

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen’s European wet dream fantasy, an escapade to a touristy Threesome romance. Young Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall meet parody of a Latin lover Javier Bardem.

The superficial flesh wound that the woman suffers after all her relationship turmoils echos the indulgent clichés of this story. Forgettable softcore vacation told in voice-over.

✴️                  

I liked the first season of Ted Lasso, and I even binged it for the second time a few weeks ago. But as I wrote then, I suspected that the second season will disappoint. And indeed, I could hardly slog through the first five episodes before giving up on it: In S1, Coach Lasso’s folksy wisdom and saccharine naivete seemed genuine and appealing. So after amazing success, Season 2 dumbed down every shred of fun and ‘sincerity’. What started off as a Fish out of Water comedy became a boring attempt at a sitcom. It actually offended me when the contrived sentimentality tugged so obviously at my heart strings to create ‘touching’ moments.

✴️     

Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat - Re-watch No. 4 (or 5?), a comedy about The Panama Papers. Down with Late-stage capitalism! 8/10

✴️   

Run Forever, (2021) a generative Vimeo short artwork is actually a Hyundai’s TV commercial for clean energy.

✴️      

Rick Steves' Iran, in what he calls ‘the most surprising and fascinating land he ever been to’.

✴️       

American Chaos, another 2018 liberal documentary, like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9, about the months leading to trump’s 2016 victory. A mainstream democrat, James D. Stern, travels to “trump country”, talk to his supporters, and try to understand & explain them. Too Late. Opens with Edward Sharpe’s Man on Fire.

✴️       

Rowan Atkinson’s James Bond spoof, Johnny English, was considered a legitimate comedy 20 years ago, and was financially successful. 1/10

- - - - -

Throw-back to the art project:

Death in Venice Adora.

Apocalypse Now Adora.

Adora With Rowan Atkinson.

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

[thisdreamplace]

How do I trust myself? Cause I know this is real, time and time again I’ve seen evidence of the law (although small) there’s still something within me that’s like “no you have still have to work hard or do this and that to prove yourself”, like it’s too good to be true. And I really don’t want to be like that anymore. I really want to get out of my own way? I really want to have a different reality, I just don’t know how to do it. I really want to go within, stay within, and be confident in myself. Even with eiypo, I keep seeing “others” mirroring my questions that I constantly wonder about the law or just things I think about (I’m a very quiet person and I barely speak to others, so I know it’s not a coincidence) and also I’ve thought of a funny story my mom told me when I was really young and then she randomly mentioned it a few weeks ago , so I know everything has to be real but for some reason I’m making it hard for myself, I still have that fear that everything is truly out of my hands, I feel powerless, and still have anxiety about “others” controlling my life cause that was how it was like in my childhood. I wanted to try a different route like how you said about focusing and going within and I want to stay there cause the outside is not ideal at all but I don’t how to go about things. I’m spiralling and I’m all over the place. I’m so confused and lost.

To be real honest, you just do it. Because you have run out of options, really. This is a very on-time post by the way. Because of course, here the law is at work again. Everyone is you pushed out. I have definitely thought such similiar things and as I reply to you, this is basically how I have worked out answering these same questions in my own head for myself as well. Hopefully this makes sense.

So, to hit your first point, needing proof is a trap. I recently realized this. As humans, we love reassurance. How many success stories have we read, how many of our own successes have we had? And yet... it’s like, never good enough. I remember reading something one time when someone was like, would God need to prove this works? Or would God just step into their power and get what they want? I think it’s time we step into our power and stop taking no for an answer. Easier said than done. But that’s where going within comes in. You may have to interact with the outer world and do what you need to there, but there is never anyone stopping you from getting what you want within. Like clockwork, practice choosing your preference. Why are you thinking about what you don’t want when you can be thinking about what you do want? Your mind can be your own Heaven with practice.

As for your fears and anxieties, what if you changed your perspective a bit? So like, I noticed that I am always saying “when your fears and doubts pop up, know they are no longer true for you. That’s your moment to let them be and know they are meaningless.” Well I advised this and I practiced it too. I definitely follow my own word. But... when doubts and fears such as what you listed came up, like not truly being in control or the law not being real, I let them go unchecked. It’s like my brain categorized them as something different, so I didn’t even notice I was doing it. Like, why don’t I just start rejecting those thoughts too? Like, yeah, I used to feel the law might not be real. But not anymore. I know it’s real. It’s always working. I used to think I wasn’t the operant power... but now I know I am and being fearful of such cannot hurt me. Like everything else, an assumption persisted in must harden into fact. So why not try shifting the focus a bit?

Further, to address going within, always do it because it is real. It is when you get to connect with who you truly are, and take back full power as the creator. There’s no need to fight against the 3D anymore. The 3D is faithful to who you are within. Understand this, and it can become a tad bit more easier. Turn your back on the world of shadows and change within. We must be it all within, that’s the thing about it. It’s a lot of responsibility to take. But that’s why you may choose your focus one day at a time. It never needs to be all at once. It’s not a race, it’s truly a journey and you can never do anything wrong.

Like right now, I know the one thing I want more than anything and I have chosen the experience over something specific. So I persist in that. Being so specific can be so heavy. Like, instead of wanting a specific amount of money (and you don’t feel good about it), why not just go to the end of being someone who is incredibly rich? Let the rest handle itself. I am doing the “live in the end - if it’s mine what the hell do I have to worry about anymore” because I am tired of worrying.

As the day goes on, I am careful and try to stay within. I try to choose my preference every chance I get.

Choosing your preference looks like: I ordered food and it was a little cold. That’s fine, because I know I always get perfect meals and on top of that, I always get them for free.

Then you move on. An unwanted thought comes up and you sit with it and know it is not true. Then you focus on what you do want instead. Plant little seeds throughout the day of things you’d like to experience. The sun shining, someone offering you a free meal, an orange cat, and so on and so on. Get used to always doing things how you want to in your mind. Get used to things going your way in your mind. Practice and persist. Take the emphasis off of manifesting for results and for once, just practice changing from within because you deserve to feel better.

I’ll try to put this into words but like, we get so caught up with our specific manifestations we do 20% when we could really be building these beautiful, phenomenal lives simply from retraining our minds. No need to affirm on loops or anything, but simply no longer taking the outer world as the final say. Your mind gets the final say. We think about the outer world so much as the day happens and that keeps us in the same reality. It’s like a loop. Practice going within more often. Choose to focus within more often.

As always, go easy on yourself. It’s okay. Take a step back and feel free to love yourself like you love your favorite character. Yeah, sometimes they do silly stuff or maybe things get heavy for them. But you always cheer them on and want the best for them. Give youself that kind of love and grace, because that is the kind of love that lives within you. That kind of love is the reason the law exists at all.

The funniest thing to me is I read all these types of advice in the beginning of my journey months ago and I really said... “ehh, no thanks.” And now here I am going, “damn... actually let me try that.” lmao This isn’t a manifesting journey for nothing, huh? But my point here is, it’s probably best to just take the advice. To just surrender to it and allow it to be and see what happens. For your own peace of mind. And give it a real good shot. Don’t worry about anyone else or how long it took this or that person. Give yourself a fair chance and persist for at least a month and see what happens. There’s no way you will not begin to see changes in your life. And not just the cute manifestations here and there, but the ones that are literal old stories being flipped into new stories in your life.

Remember, there is no one to change but self. We all got this!! Hopefully this was helpful and made sense. I really tried to be clear but please feel free to ask any questions if you have any. You have so many successes you will be sharing!! Keep persisting!! 💖

[lovemesomesurveys]

Do you have any tan lines? Nope. Have you ever wished you could stop time? Yes. I’ve also wished I could speed it up. Is there any pictures on the wall you're in? Yeah, there’s several. Who was the last person who called you? My mom. Did you make any money today? No.

Have you ever fallen and twisted your ankle? No. What was the highest place you've ever jumped from? I haven’t jumped from anywhere. Have you ever gone swimming in a river? No. Ever been so unfortunate to slip on wet rocks? Nope. When was the last time you got completely soaked by rain? It’s been a long time. One of the times that comes to mind is when my mom, aunt, a former friend, and I were at an outdoor festival and we got caught in an unexpected rain storm. It just started pouring down hard and we were not prepared at all. We had to run back to our car, which was parked a good distance away and yeah we were absolutely soaked. 

Is there something you really want to buy at the moment? I’d love to be able to book a beach vacation getaway. Would you ever consider culinary school? No. I’m not a cook and have no interest in trying to become one. Do you ever watch the clouds, to see if they look like objects/animals etc? I did when I was a kid sometimes. When was the last time you didn't want to get out of bed? That’s me everyday. It’s a real struggle. Are you excited for anything coming up in the near future? No. My foreseeable future consists of more doctors and appointments and struggles and spending most of my time in bed. Speaking of dancing, do you know any real dance moves? I know them, but I can’t do them. Do you save cards from your birthday/x-mas, etc? Yes. What was the last souvenir someone got you? A shirt. Do you have a favorite remix of a song? One of my favorite covers is Adele’s cover of George Michael’s “Fast Love” that she preformed at an award show in honor of him after he died. I can only describe it as hauntingly beautiful. I really wish she would have released a studio version of it. When was the last time you printed something off? I don’t recall; it’s been awhile. Are you one of those people who can learn music/songs by ear? No, I wish. There was a guy in my piano class I took my senior year in high school that could do that. It was really cool. Has the power gone out recently? No, but I have a feeling it will happen soon. It always does when we have a lot of triple digit degree weather, which is what this week has consisted of. Do you like driving at night? I don’t drive, but I like nighttime drives. Like, whenever I travel I love leaving really early when it’s still dark out. It’s a different experience. Does seeing roadkill make you sad, or just grossed out? Both. Does wearing heels make you feel sexier? I don’t wear heels. What do you think is the most saddest sounding instrument? The piano can sound that way. What day do you go back to school (if you're in school)? I’m forever done with school. When was the last time you've gone shopping with a friend? It’s been a few years. Do you ever go out to dinner with your Mom? We haven’t physically gone out to eat for dinner in quite a long time.  What is your favorite kind of salad dressing? Ranch. Have you ever bought fireworks? Not me personlly, but my dad and brother do every 4th of July. Do you really pay attention to the ratings on movies? Sometimes, but I ultimately decide if I want to see it or not. Have you ever snuck in to a theater/dance/bar etc? No. If given the chance, would you go to Ireland? Sure. Who was the last person/website to send you an email? I don’t feel like checking. Has your phone ever rang and scared you? Yeah. I’m such a jumpy person anyway. If you have a cat, does it ever "converse" with you? I don’t have a cat. If given the chance, would you ever fly in a fighter plane like the F-16? No. Are you afraid of standing on the edge of hills/skyscrapers/cliffs etc? Uh, YES. Do you have a favorite species of wild cat (tiger/lion/cougar etc)? No. Do you support the funds designed to protect endangered animals? (Like WWF). I haven’t done much myself to support them, but I’m glad they exist. What type of a drunk are you? (Obnoxious, calm, emotional, violent, etc) I was a chatty drunk. I feel like I was annoying, ha. I was also the sad drunk. Do you have an absolute favorite name (boy or girl)? I love the name Alexander. Are you good at pronouncing foreign words? Uhh, depends. If you're not already, when do you plan on getting married? I don’t want to get married. Can you tolerate the smell of cigarette smoke? Nooo. It honestly makes me sick, like I get lightheaded and dizzy, I get nauseous, and I get a really bad headache. When listening to music, do you usually tap your foot etc to the beat? I sometimes tap my fingers and hands. Have you ever literally cried on a friend's shoulder? No. Was there something that "made your day" today? It literally just turned midnight, so today is just now starting. Do you have a favorite kind of chocolate bar? White chocolate. Are you happy that it's summer? Ugh, no. It’s hot and miserable. Is there anything that you should be doing right now? I’m about to make my nightly bowl of ramen.  Has anyone had expectations that you just couldn't live up to? (finishing this a couple hours later...) That’s how I’ve been feeling. Are you currently in a relationship? If so, how long have you been dating? Nope. Would you ever consider being a DJ at a party if you were paid? Nah. Have you ever tried those electric toothbrushes? Wow, this question makes it seem like they’re so futuristic and rare lol. Yes, I use electric toothbrushes. Are you or anyone you know devoted to "being green"? Not overly so, no. When it comes election time, do you vote (if you're old enough)? Yes. What was the last movie you watched that was on TV? I watched Fear 1994 on Netflix recently if that counts. How long have you had an account on bzoink? I don’t have an account on bzoink. Do strapless bras work for you? I don’t like them. I only wear them if I have to, like with a dress. Do you have a favorite hair elastic that you use almost always? No. Has anyone told you that they wanted to marry you/ were planning on it/etc? No. When you were younger, did you have a yoyo? I did. I couldn’t do any tricks, though. What was the last video game you played, if any? Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Has anyone ever called you nerdy? Yeah. Have you ever had to call 911? Yes. Has there ever been a tornado near where you live? No, fortunately. Are you a rollercoaster addict? Noo. I’m a big scardy cat. Do you feel comfortable enough to wear short shorts? No. I’m very self-conscious about my legs. About my body in general, really. If you have iTunes, do you find the Genius recommendations helpful? I don’t even recall what that is; I haven’t used iTunes in almost 10 years. Are you quick at looking up numbers in phonebooks/ words in dictionaries? Phonebooks, wow.  I haven’t used a phonebook or actual dictionary in yearsssss thanks to the Internet/Google.  Have a favorite actor/actress from Old Hollywood? (Marilyn Munroe, etc) Lucille Ball. Out of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, which are you the best at? None of those. Is there a friend you can always talk to about anything? I don’t have any friends. Can you stand spicy foods? Not anymore. :( It’s gotta have like barely anything like McDonald’s or Taco Bell mild hot sauce type of stuff. It’s wild because I used to be obSESSED with spicy food. I put hot sauce on everything and had a high spicy tolerance. Then a few years ago I developed a sensitivity and I can’t even have red pepper flakes now. It sucks. What's your opinion on people who stretch their ears? Hey, do what you want. I’ll admit the really stretched out lobes freak me out, though. Do you think tattoos are expressive art or unattractive? To me they can be either one, it just depends. What is your school mascot? -- Do you find black and white photos to be pretty? Yeah. Food you make doesn't taste as good as food made by others, true? Sometimes. Especially foods like sandwiches for some reason. I think they’re way better when my mom or a deli makes them.  Is there a certain color that doesn't look good on you? I don’t think I look good in anything, so. Have you ever heard anything interesting about Nova Scotia, Canada? Not that I can recall. Have you ever seen a bear in the wild? No, thankfully. Do you know when you will get to see your significant other next? I’m single. What's the book you're currently reading? ”Such a Good Girl” by Willow Rose. Is your room currently a disaster? No. If going to a concert, do you prefer it to be outside or in a stadium? Definitely in a stadium.

Do you have a case for your camera? I use the camera on my phone, which I do have a case for. Can your cellphone take a beating? I’ve dropped it a few times and so far so good. Is there a month you prefer over others? October and December. Do you ever buy lottery tickets? Just a couple of times. Can you recall the most disturbing movie you've ever seen? A Clockwork Orange is one. Are you more of a tape or a glue person? Tape. Of course, it does depend on what I’m doing. In some cases, glue is the better option.  Has anyone you know gotten mono? Not that I know of. What is/or was your graduating year? I graduated UC in 2015. Have you had a weird dream lately? All my dreams are weird. Have you ever gotten an autograph from someone famous? Yes. Do you own a pair of slippers? No. Do you ever watch VHS movies anymore? No. I don’t even recall the last time. Has your computer ever decided to completely erase itself? No, but I’ve lost stuff because of viruses back in the day. :(

Only when the power goes out do we realize how much we rely on it, true? It definitely becomes quite apparent quite quickly. Have you ever picked an apple off the tree and eaten it? No. Can you say yes / no in different languages? ”Si” and “No”, ha. Are you good at styling your own hair? No. Especially not anymore since I just don’t have the motivation or energy to do anything with my hair, which is why it was always up in a bun. I finally just cut it really short and have been wearing a cute wig if I go somewhere cause that’s all I can to do right now. I am sad, though. It was so long.   Out of the traditional superheroes, which one is your favorite? The Scarlett Witch and Iron Man. What color is the shirt you're wearing right now? Black. Have you ever been lost? Physically and figuratively, yes.

[faces-in-unexpected-places]

Do You Have the Time? Episode 017: Under Pressure

Synopsis: While Leopold and Leslie work to ease their newfound professional discomfort, Jeremy has the unique opportunity to experience both professional and personal discomfort.

--

[To: loonely.lm@cvu.edu, brilliant.jf@cvu.edu, goodchild.la@cvu.edu, hyde.da@cvu.edu,  moreno.br@cvu.edu, ramone.ag@cvu.edu, mendez.se@cvu.edu, nguyen.ch@cvu.edu, murphy.ma@cvu.edu, lawrence.gl@vcu.edu, solis.dt@cvu.edu, molina.mo@cvu.edu …]

[From: nguyen.xv@cvu.edu] [Received: 9:54 (1 hour ago)] [Subject: CVU Research Symposium]

Hi all,

I’d like to address the rumors that have been circulating in our building for the past few weeks. After a lot of deliberation with my peers in the CVU Board of Research, it has been decided that our yearly conference – which is often hosted here in Curiesville – will be relocated this year. Proposed by B.S. Dexter Hyde and Dr. Blythe Moreno of the CRISPR-Cas-9 molecular biology lab, we will be hosting our research symposium in San Diego California this year at the San Diego Convention Center. This change in venue was made in hopes of generating more interest in us as a research-driven university. The goal is to expand on the population that will attend the conference for better name recognition and to open us up to more potential sources for grant money. To be economically sound, we are combining our conference with the interests of numerous other universities in California that will also be presenting at the symposium. Thus, the symposium will not only last one day as it has in the past.

The symposium will start on Friday, August 17th at 9:00am, and will officially end on Sunday, August 19th at 5:00pm. Presentations will end each day at 5:00pm. We are currently working to have a portion of the Mission Beach reserved in the evenings for the participants to relax, network with one another other, and discuss research in a casual environment along with some fun activities.

As for transportation, there are a few options. Most of you who planned on participating anyway will likely be able to afford your own airline tickets with the grant money that you already have. If you are short, then you may apply for the numerous grants that will become available to the university over the upcoming months. I will send a separate email listing the institutions that are likely to be the most helpful.

Lastly, if the grants do not work out, then your lab may write a proposal that explains your research topic, how it is beneficial, and why it is important for you to present at the symposium. Send these proposals to Dexter Hyde, and he will review them. Calculate your projected expenses for your trip, and the Board of Research will cover up to half of your expected costs if your proposal is sufficient.

In order to participate in the symposium, your lab must email your abstracts to me by June 15th. Your completed papers should be submitted by July 30th along with an appropriate slideshow presentation.

If you plan to participate, then please email your general topic and a list of all the members of your lab that will be involved in the presentation to me by the end of this week at 5:00pm. I will be able to keep track of everything much more efficiently this way, when I start getting everyone’s abstracts and papers down the road.

Expect more emails during the week for more detailed instructions on the upcoming deadlines. I look forward to reading your papers over the subsequent months. Have a good week.

Best Regards,

Xuan “Sophia” Nguyen CVU Board of Research Secretary Center for Advancement in Technology and Science (219)-555-6295

[April 24th, 2018, 10:57]

           Leopold’s eyes frantically jumped through the email from paragraph to paragraph. Down, down, up, down, up again. He took an anxious drag from his cigarette, then crushed the half-used remaining butt beneath his foot. He blew the smoke out, tucked his phone away in his pocket and burst back through the doors to the Center of the Advancement in Technology and Science. Martha waved to him, and he gave a forced smile and nod as he maneuvered through the sea of lab technicians that were scurrying back and forth between their labs, cluttering up the lobby. Normally he’d feel reassured if he wasn’t the only one rushing last minute to finish before the deadline. But he knew how much further behind his lab was compared to everyone else’s. This meant that he needed to accomplish years of research in a couple of months.

[04-24-2018; 11:00_Research_Video_Log_007_Start]

           He plunged through the front double doors to his lab to check in with Jeremy and Leslie who were hard at work on experiment one, still.

           “Sand in place to block excess heat transfer?” Jeremy said.

           “Check,” Leslie replied, “heat resistant gloves?”

           Jeremy’s hands were bare. He rifled through the pockets of his lab coat, pulled out the gloves and donned them.

           “Yeah…” he said hesitantly as he slipped his fingers into place.

           “How’s the piston doing?” Leopold asked.

           Over the last few days, Leopold managed to construct the final piece to their microscale time machine prototype from the parts that Jeremy gathered. It was a singular piston with the crankshaft that allowed it to go up and down secured to a rotating, circular platform on the table. The battery was built into the base of the platform that powered both the spinning and up-and-down motions. It looked like a record player. Very simplistic, but effective. Flip one switch, begin rotating the platform. The piston spins and eventually wraps the cosmic string around it to form a loop. Flip the other switch, the piston pumps up and down, thereby pushing the newly made cosmic loop toward the object intended for time travel.

           “It’s all intact! We’re going to try again right now,” Leslie said.

           Leslie lit the fuse on the thermite reaction. Just like the previous time, brilliant light and sparks erupted from the powders in the ceramic pot. She jumped back and Jeremy strenuously turned the crank to spin the metal pipe just above the fiery pot. The glowing redness of the reaction snaked its way along the pipe towards Jeremy’s hand. Leslie watched cautiously. He gave her a subtle nod to indicate that the gloves were still working. There were popping and clanging sounds in the metal bucket as the ceramic pot blew to bits inside.

           Wearing oven mitts, Leslie pushed the metal bucket out of the way and replaced it with Leopold’s piston-platform. The first switch was flipped, and the platform whirled around almost too fast for comfort. Jeremy clenched his teeth as his arm and hand began to cramp from rotating the crank so vigorously. He let go and jumped back next to Leslie to watch. Their motions were like clockwork from repeating the experiment so many times. The pipe rattled in its ring stand supports as it compacted the string of heat together.

           The redness at the far end of the pipe began to fade in exchange for a bright, golden thread-shaped mass that lazily slid out the other end towards the spinning piston. Leslie’s jaw dropped and Jeremy pointed forcefully at it.

           “There it is!” Jeremy shouted.

           “It’s working!” Leslie joined.

           They eventually had to shield their eyes; the energy made from the reaction was so great and so compact that some of the heat energy had to be converted into light-emitting energy. As more of the thread came out, the heat became more apparent. It felt like standing in front of an industrial oven. The string glared like a shimmering sunset reflecting off a body of water. The end of the thread reached out towards the spinning piston. The concentrated heat and light immediately dissipated upon contact. For a split second, the world went quiet with only a low hum to be heard followed by a resonating bass drop. 

          The room’s lighting promptly shifted from glistening and golden to shadowy and moody as the light scattered to the corners of the room before completely vanishing. Simultaneously, a forceful gust of hot wind burst forth from the pipe in all directions. All of the papers, folders, books, and the pack of orange sticky notes on the meeting table went flying along with Leslie’s half-empty coffee cup. The shear force and surprise knocked her off balance into Jeremy, which knocked him into Leopold standing behind both of them. Jeremy caught and held Leslie just as Leo had done for him. Leopold helped them both back to their feet.

           “That was great!” Jeremy exclaimed, “We have to do it again. Leslie let’s make another pot of reagents,” he said with determination. Jeremy took his first step and the world began to spin around him. He tipped forward, but was caught by the forearm by Leopold whose reflexes kicked in. Feeling dazed himself, Leopold led the two of them to the recently cleared meeting table to sit down.

           “We should wait a minute, Jeremy,” Leslie suggested, sluggishly, “the lab isn’t going anywhere,” she weakly chuckled while holding her head on discomfort.

           “The more progress we make, the more unexpected things we’ll find. We’ve got to be careful from here on out, boy,” Leopold said with a smirk.

           “We need to be focused from here on out,” he said, “Leslie and I saw this email that Sophia sent out with all the deadlines—”

           “I know, I read it before I came in,” Leo assured, “We do need to be focused. But we can still do that while resting a minute.”

           “We can still talk about it while we rest,” Jeremy suggested.

           Leopold laughed wryly.

           “Why do we think the string dissipated?” he continued, “Is the temperature difference between the piston and the string too small? Since energy flows from hot to cold, maybe the string doesn’t want to flow towards an already hot piston?”

           “I actually don’t think so,” Leslie interjected, lightly smiling at Jeremy’s determination to analyze the experiment, “The strings are very hot and condensed into an extremely small space for the amount of energy it holds. Even if the piston were on fire, the string would still be magnitudes hotter, so the piston would still appear ‘cold’ to the string.”

           Jeremy spotted a pen and notepad on the floor that had been blown off the table. He held up his finger while Leslie was talking and slipped out of his chair to retrieve them.

           “Boy, be careful!” Leopold urged.

           “It’s fine,” he said, limply falling to his knees from the vertigo. He landed near the notepad and pen. Keeping his head still to stop the world from spinning again, Jeremy made himself comfortable on the floor.

           He cleared his throat.

           “I’ll just work from here,” he said and began taking notes on what Leslie had said already.

           “Okay, come on, boy,” Leopold said, raising himself out of his seat and approaching Jeremy, “The only one who actually likes working on the floor is me, so— whoaa-a-a-oh.” he stumbled and cautiously lowered himself to the floor after becoming light-headed, himself. He sighed as he plopped himself down next to Jeremy who looked at Leo with a faintly smug grin.

           “I’m not sure that I see the appeal of working down here, but I can make do with it,” Jeremy poked fun.

           Leopold laughed.

           “We make one little break in our research and suddenly he’s a wise-ass,” he commented to Leslie who pulled her chair over to them, away from the table. Jeremy chuckled and continued writing with part of his tongue sticking out as he concentrated.

           “I think I have an idea of what it is, actually,” Leslie said. The boys looked up to her to continue, “It’s like what we saw in GraviTime, Jeremy, remember?”

           “Mmm, can you be more specific?”

           “When we made the cosmic strings, and we saw them dissipate! What did we do that made them dissipate?”

           “Oh, we stopped spinning them!”

           “Exactly!”

           “So, if we keep spinning the pipe, then it should… ohh… aww, that’s not going to be easy,” he said, realizing that he would have to be the one spinning the pipe.

           “Okay, so, we’ll automate it,” Leopold said, shrugging.

           “Really?” Jeremy said.

           “Of course! If that’s what we need to do, then that’s what we’ll do to begin the next phase of the experiment. We’ll make a jig for the pipe like I did for the piston. It’ll be easy. I just need another motor and a few other parts.”

           “Are we up for a trip to Home Depot?” Leslie asked.

           Jeremy’s phone abrasively rang, scaring him to his feet. He looked at his messages to find another graduate student who TAs the same class as him. He’d just been reminded of the class he taught at noon. There wasn’t much time before then. He sighed in disappointment and gathered his things; the world had finally stopped spinning.

           “I actually have to go TA today and it looks like there might be a problem with the class, so…” he let out a frustrated exhale, “I can’t go today,” he said hesitantly.

           “That’s okay! It’s just a run to the store, anyway. You were here for the important part!” Leslie consoled.

           “We’ll be just fine, boy,” Leopold said with a relaxed grin, “Those students need you, too. Just come back when you’re able. We’ll hold down the fort while you’re gone.”

           Jeremy relaxed with their assurance.

           “Thanks, you guys,” he said softly. “I should be back between 3:30 and 4:00. I’ll see you both then.”

           They said goodbye and carried on their plans as he left the lab. As he wandered through to the exit of the building, he opened up the messages he’d received.

[JEREMY_RANDALL_CONVERSATION_START_11:29]

RD: hey bud i’ve got a student who overslept and missed my 8:00am lab RD: they said they wanna attend a different lab section so they don't get marked absent and yours is the only one that works with their schedule RD: you mind if they sit in? i’ll still grade their assignments B)

JB: Hi, Randall. JB: I’m heading over to campus right now. JB: Unfortunately, all the seats in my class are filled; I can’t let anyone new come in without going over the capacity. Are you sure there’s nobody else who can take them?

RD: yea :/ RD: we could just steal an extra chair from another lab that doesnt need it RD: tbh i don't think the boss would mind too much RD: its the end of the semester, i know he doesnt really keep track of that kinda stuff too much RD: if she misses this class and gets a zero on the last two assignments, shell probably fail the class

JB: Could she get at least a D if she does the assignments?

RD: yea i think

JB: Okay. I guess that’s fine. We’ll find a place for her to work so she can attend. What’s her name? I’ll make a space on my attendance sheet for her.

RD: her name is madison brilliant

JB: It is?

RD: yea RD: why you kno her or somethin? RD: … RD: dude you there? RD: hellooooo

JB: Yes, she’s my younger sister.

RD: omg no way! RD: lmao thats hilarious RD: tbh didn't know your last name so i didn't make the connection lol

JB: Well, now you know. JB: Thanks for the heads up. JB: I’ll get her assignment to you as soon as I can.

RD: shaka B)

[JEREMY_RANDALL_CONVERSATION_END_11:37]

 [April 24th, 2018, 11:49]

           Jeremy approached the classroom in which that taught every week. The remaining few students from the previous class finished leaving just as he walked in. The TA that taught before him had seemingly left already, despite still having students in the class. Didn’t seem to be the most responsible move, in Jeremy’s eyes. He made his way to his desk in the front of the room, facing all of the laboratory tables. There was a large cart in the front of the room containing piles of electronics for circuits like batteries, lightbulbs, resistors, and the like.

           He placed the attendance sheet at the end of his desk and wrote the instructions for the class on the board. Students began filing in, and quietly going through the motions that he had ingrained in them from the beginning of the semester. Come in, sign the attendance sheet, turn in the homework, pick up the graded assignments, and repeat. It was a well-oiled machine, likely out of indifference on the students’ part. And also their tendency to comply with the way Jeremy structured the class at the risk of losing points. But Jeremy liked to think that at least some of them appreciated the system.

           He faintly smiled and greeted each student who approached his desk to sign in. Some responded to him, others didn’t. Some only replied with zombie-like grunts of acknowledgement when he’d asked how they were. An odd one or two students replied audibly with a smile and asked how he was in return. He appreciated those students the most. They also tended to be the ones to turn in their assignments on time and get the most consistently good grades.

           Madison walked in, unassumingly, if a bit drowsy looking. She registered that she was attending Jeremy’s class and perked up on her way over to his desk. Jeremy felt a sinking feeling in his chest. His shoulders felt like they weighed a ton.

           “Well, well, well, look at what the cat dragged in!” she said in her goofiest tone.

           “I walked in of my own volition, Madison; cats are not allowed in the lab.”

           “Oh, that’s right, you don’t understand metaphors, I forgot,” she sighed.

           “Please sign in and turn in your assignments,” Jeremy changed the subject.

           “Oh. Uh, sure. You make your students write their names down?”

           “Yes.”

           “Randall just calls our names,” she said.

           “I prefer it this way,” Jeremy countered.

           Madison reached into her backpack and slapped her assignment down on Jeremy’s desk.

           “Bam! Turned in!”

           “Great. I got an extra chair for you for this class,” he said.

           “Gucci,” she said, “You gonna give your favorite sister an A today?”

           One of Jeremy’s other students walked in and recognized Madison. She squealed when she saw her.

           “Mads! What’re you doing, you in my class now?”

           “Hey girl! Nah, just for the day since I missed my class. Just shootin’ the shit with Jay, the TA who is also my fam!”

           Jeremy rolled his eyes and sighed.

           “Oh my god, no wayyyy! That’s definitely going on my story. Hit me up after class, let’s get lunch!”

           “Okay, good afternoon everybody, we’re going to get started with class, now,” Jeremy announced, walking to the front-center of the room and ushering students to their seats, “Hopefully all of you did the assigned reading because you needed it to complete the assignment you just turned in, and you’ll need it again for the activity today. We’re going to be building electrical circuits today, both series and parallel. If you flip to page 150 in your workbooks, you’ll find the procedure for the activity. I’ve listed a few modifications on the board, so make sure you take note of my changes while you’re working,” he paused to read the room, “Does anybody have any questions?”

           Silence.

           “Okay. Get to work. You can work in pairs or by yourself,” he projected his voice through the room.

           The students began talking and working as soon as he finished. He wondered if the lab would go faster because it was the last of the semester and they likely wanted to be done as soon as possible. He sat himself back down at his desk for only a brief moment before multiple students formed a line at his desk. It always perplexed him that he can ask the class if there are any questions and nobody speaks up, but the minute it’s time to work, suddenly there is a pile of students with questions.

           “Hi,” the first student said.

           “What can I do for you?” Jeremy asked politely.

           “So… I forgot to do the assignment for today, I was wondering if I could work on it in class while we do the lab and turn it in at the end of class?”

           “No, our class time is meant to be spent on the activities we had planned, sorry.”

           “It won’t take that long; I can do both!”

           “The syllabus outlines that assignments have to be turned in at the beginning of class. I can’t accept it if it’s late,” he explained.

           “So, there’s nothing I can do?” the student asked anxiously.

           “No, there isn’t,” Jeremy said bluntly.

           “Okay. Well, thanks anyway,” they said and returned to their seat.

           The next student froze a moment and began walking back, as well.

           “I had the same question as them,” the student said.

           “Okay,” Jeremy nodded.

           The third and final person was Madison. Her hands were locked together by her fingers and she meekly drew closer to Jeremy.

           “Hey, friendo, sooo… I forgot my workbook,” she said quickly, “What’s the, uh, the dealio? What should I do if I can’t do the activity?”

           Jeremy took a deep, stressed out, breath and thought about it.

           “Umm… why don’t you just partner up with someone who has their book. Just write down the answers on some loose paper. Make sure you number it so Randall will be able to tell which answers go to which questions.”

           “Gotcha. Alright, thanks, bud,” she said and returned to her desk.

[sophrosinn]

the (un)lucky ones

story description:

“the story’s great, but I think it would be better if the story ended like this”

Affronted at the audacity of the comment, she furiously replies, “then write your own story, asshole!”

word count: 2,048

a/n: happiest solar anniversary to one of my best girls @vanaera! thank you for being the bestest friend a girl could ever ask for. this short story, which is loosely based irl, serves as my gift to you. i hope you’ll like it! 

shout-out to @senfleurs for being the best gal and helping me out with this. she even stepped up and edited this omg, and i cannot stress how much I’m thankful, lol especially she made sure that I get to finish this on time

—

3.

In retrospect, she knows better than to let some dumb comment, especially from someone on the Internet, rile her up this much. Even her followers tell her as much: it’s unwarranted, insensitive even. One of her followers, hippopopo tries to take it a step further, justifying by saying, verbatim: It’s her story anyway!!! So only she knows how the story should end best, okay! 😤😠💢

(in actuality, she has qualms about that, mostly because she had read some books which she thought didn’t end well. but that would take time to unpack and this story isn’t about that, no. she’s flattered at the support, nonetheless.)

And yet, there she is at 8 in the morning, her fingers furiously gliding across her keyboard as she writes a spite-filled story in response. Oftentimes, her muse for writing comes from movies she watched with her family, or from songs she heard on Korean dramas, or those meet-cute scenarios she gushed about with her best friends. This time, however, spite’s her main gal.

She finishes at 10. Later at 4 in the afternoon, she posts it. About an hour later, she doesn’t even try to contain the smirk lighting up her face when a familiar notification pops up.

—

1.

The story starts with an inconspicuous like from a user named agust-d five months ago. Back then, she thought nothing of it. A day later, agust-d comments on a story from her drabble series. Since then, every day without fail, agust-d leaves a small token of their appreciation for her works; brief, concise comments such as, “nice job on the flower descriptions,” or “i liked it.” 

Belatedly, she wonders if agust-d is a person of few words, because why else would they leave comments with only six words or less, even on her works with over 30k words? Don’t get her wrong, of course she’s eternally grateful for all the support she receives from her affectionate dears. But sometimes, especially on days her self-confidence plummets and she’s in need of reassurance, she ponders if all her efforts are for naught. (of course not, never, she gently reminds herself.)

And each day, she resists the growing urge to reply: don’t you have anything more to say!!! (but alas, she isn’t a rude person—unless provoked—she can’t so she settles with letting her mind wander.)

Three months of this and she finally caves in. With her interest piqued, she browses through agust-d’s posts. After two hours, she learns that agust-d goes by suga online. Coincidentally, Suga is a male student at the same university she’s currently attending. For a moment, she briefly considers a possibility—what are the chances that they’ve met, have fallen into step alongside each other, have passed by him in the large hallways, or have shared her table with him at the library during exam season? The possibility of knowing someone without actually knowing them? 

(that’s the funny thing about the online world, she supposes. you may know all that matters about someone: their likes, dislikes, kinks, fears, and horrid taste in music, absolutely everything except that one thing that matters the most: their names.)

Suga, she eventually learns, is not a man of few words. In truth, he’s got a few words too many to say about a diverse range of controversial topics. In his words, his passion burns bright and clear, but for her, he doesn’t shine any brighter than when he talks about music. It shows in his blog, which consists of a myriad of album reviews across different genres (fascinating, she notes, their music interests align as well).

Occasionally, he posts his renditions of some popular rap music, and as sporadic as this happens, she admits that his covers are her favorite part of his blog. And naturally, she refuses to acknowledge that it has everything to do with her fascination with deep, raspy voices, which, (un)fortunately for her, Suga undoubtedly has.

After some serious debating with herself, she decides to not follow him back. But she makes sure to check his profile every other day for no real reason, really, her soul wallowing in denial. In her defense, when did anyone need a reason to stalk someone?

And so, it begins, her fascination with this stranger on the other side of the screen. Never in her whole life did she imagine herself harboring a (teeny-tiny, infinitesimal) crush towards someone on the Internet. Certainly, she knows there’s always a one-in-a-thousand chance that it happens in real life, it’s just that out of all the 7 billion people in the world, she wasn’t expecting herself to be the (un)lucky one.

—

2.

The fateful day begins like any other. She wakes up to a brand new day, at 7 am, and like clockwork, she begins to stretch atop her pink yoga mat. Halfway through her workout, her phone pings with a new notification. Immediately, her phone screen lights up: agust-d has left a comment on your work!

Her traitorous heart skips a beat in the utmost display of betrayal. It’s Suga!

Ever since she scrolled through his blog two months ago, she has been exchanging messages with Suga. Her covert mission to surreptitiously listen to his song covers ends miserably when she accidentally double-clicks on a post he made two years ago. A string of expletives followed as she stared agonizingly at the post. She attempts to remove her blunder, but soon accepts defeat as it doesn’t even take a full minute until she receives a message notification from Suga. The internal debate resumes as her finger clumsily hovers on the computer mouse and she hesitantly clicks. From thereon, the rest, as they say, is history.

She ends up following his account the day after.

Although, if she were being truthful, all they’ve been sending back and forth are pleasantries. Suga seems hellbent on keeping the conversations polite and distant. She doesn’t understand, it’s not like she’s flirting with him! All she just wants is a compelling conversation with someone (because the Lord knows how much she needs an intellectual to talk to; and suga seems like an intellectual, if his posts are anything to go by).

She unlocks her phone and throws herself onto her bed. Normally, her lips quirk up automatically in response to seeing his name pop on her notifications, but it is not the case for this time. Instead, a frown mars her forehead as she reads his comment.

agust-d: the story’s great, but I think it would be better if the story ended like this

For a moment, she can’t believe her eyes. She blinks a few more times in the hope that her eyes were just playing tricks on her. Nada, it remains the same. 

If there’s one thing to know about her, it’s that she meticulously plans out every detail in her stories. She even spends weeks to outline a draft, and even then, it must be decent enough before she puts it in writing. Publishing her works online, for all the world to see, still intimidates her even after all this time. Not knowing how people will respond to her works frightens her, but what is life without a little fear?

In addition, she’s receptive to constructive criticisms, but criticisms that come from those she looks up to? It’s a bitter pill to swallow sometimes. Suga—he’s become one of those people, and seeing his comment really hurt. She turns her phone off and does her chores for the time being. The moment she logs back in, she is taken aback by the multitude of comments expressing the same sentiment. 

bubbleboy: “Yeah, I agree, I think it would be best if the story ended in this manner.” 

She can’t help but feel the bubble of anger gradually rising. Another even started with, 

orange-gloss: “No offense, but the ending being suggested by others is kinda good.” 

The audacity and the entitlement in this comment! Asking her to not be offended when it is within her right to take offense is absolutely laughable. Furthermore, who are you to even tell me how I should react? 

When she reaches the 20th comment, she explodes. The next two hours find her furiously typing out a decent response disguised as a story, albeit with passive-aggressiveness, addressed to all of the comments, but primarily to the one left by Suga. She talks to the rude commenters with the sweet addition of a phrasing 101 lesson. In her contained rage, she ends with the note: remember, it doesn’t hurt to be nice, and if you have qualms about how I ended my own story, do me and yourself a favor and write your own story!

She makes up her mind to take some time off her blog for a while. But after a familiar notification pops up at 5 PM, she resists the urge to run away and instead, opts to open the messages he sent.

agust-d: i’ll admit, the way I said it was rude

agust-d: but I stand with what I said

agust-d: you should consider the possibility as well

seen

(In hindsight, she realizes that, for once, Suga’s comment surpasses 25 words.)

—

4. 

After the whole debacle with the barrage of rude comments and her consequent outburst, everything has never been the same. Understandably, some of her fans have left since then, but the majority stayed with her and for that, she’s eternally grateful. Although she still publishes her stories and interacts with her followers, a certain emptiness fills her at times. 

A part of her thinks it has a lot to do with Suga, who she doesn’t talk to anymore. She… doesn’t know how to respond to him after her outburst. In a span of a moment, she manages to both defend her honor and drag agust-d through the mud, which was never her intention to begin with. Okay, well, maybe just a little bit. But she’s hurt, so it only makes sense to retaliate.

If only she could easily strike back in her current situation. 

Unbeknownst to her, someone with the handle void-mayo tags her on a malicious post the night before, calling her out for being fake. Apparently, she’s a ‘copycat writer wanna-be with no real ideas of her own.’

She only discovers it when her followers start sending her messages of reassurance and appreciation. Of course, she checks the post at once, reading carefully and taking in everything that was written. (Shit, at least I have a better username, she muses). And not for the first time, she feels hurt, uneasy, and anxious at the same time. Void-mayo is already an established writer, with years of exposure under her belt and a large army of rabid fans at her disposal. Meanwhile, she’s just started her writing blog. And although she’s diligent, thorough, and ensures that each of her stories has its own personality and flavor, most of void-mayo’s fans wouldn’t care. She can’t risk losing her credibility over a baseless accusation such as this! 

And with that, she feels anger bubbling from the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t get the purpose behind the destructive post. She gets humiliated, her reputation tarnished, and worse just because she had written a similar scene with an ice cream . It certainly doesn’t help that others are quick to join in calling her names and ‘cancelling her’ without even bothering to check the facts. 

And as she contemplates on how to proceed with such a delicate situation, her dashboard refreshes. At the top, she notices that agust-d reblogs void-mayo’s post with the addition of his response and for once, the word count exceeds 100.

—

5. 

In a roundabout way of saying sorry and expressing her gratitude, she proceeds to write the ending Suga requested. And illuminated by the dim light of her laptop screen, she can begrudgingly admit that he does have a point; his version of the ending does make sense.

—

fin.

—

omake

agust-d: so am i forgiven yet?

you: i don’t know

you: maybe you’ll have to make it up to me

you: and get me some coffee first?

you: 😉

—

a/n pt. 2: happiest birthday to you again! i’m so grateful to have met you in this lifetime. truly, like you’re the best. even if your internet connection’s always shitty, you always find ways to join our chats and discord parties. just thank you, for all the countless laughs that i’ve had with (and because of) you, for the counsel with my writing, and for the stories and advice you’ve willingly shared with us. here’s to our three years of friendship and counting! i love you so much! enjoy this day and stay safe! 

p.s. keep rocking and keep writing! we’ll always be here with you! muah! ❤️❤️❤️

p.p.s. hihi 🦆🍄