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They’ve a lot in common. They’ve a lot in common and at first that’s all it is. Two friends, both in the music industry, chilling and hanging out and Harry finds he doesn’t want to leave, really, because being friends with Taylor is easy, so easy. It’s like with the lads; they just sort of click.
And she likes to sing under her breath in the kitchen and Harry likes to hum when he cooks and they pass evenings like this over the course of a few months, tranquil and relaxed. A lone candle flickers on the coffee table and feet are propped up in front of them as they chat over food about TV and music and recording.
Outside their little world the magazines are already playing up the relationship that doesn’t yet exist – but for the moment, it doesn’t touch them.
They’re in London, this time, on Harry’s home turf. Taylor’s over here for a performance at Westfield’s, and Harry’s only got a couple of days before he flies off to LA. They take advantage of every second, barely leaving Harry’s house – and certainly not together. They’re curled up on the sofa, Taylor leaning her head against Harry’s side, legs covered by a blanket even though it’s not yet that cold for early November.
“Remind me, when do we next see each other?” Taylor says, voice muffled by his jumper. “Can’t live without my pillow.”
Harry laughs, shrugs his shoulder just to annoy her and shift her head. “Is that all I’m good for?” he teases. “See if I come see you in LA.”
“You love LA,” she retorts. “You’re like a lizard, soaking up the sun. It’s unnatural for a pale British guy like you.”
“Says the Northern girl. You love the heat more than I do.”
“Pennsylvania isn’t that cold you ignorant Brit,” she sends back, tickling his sides and moving off him. He laughs, wriggles away and tries to retaliate.
“Get off me you weirdo,” he gasps, falling off the sofa with a clunk. She stops at that, laughing too hard to get any words out.
“Ow shit,” he complains, lying on the floor with his head tipped back and his legs sprawled. “This is abuse, I’m telling you.”
“Don’t be a baby,” she needles him, a grin on her face. He looks up at her, blonde hair curling gently around her face, seeping out from where she has it pulled back into a loose ponytail. They’re both in pyjamas, determined to laze around during the day. It’s a sign of true friendship, he thinks, when you can both look like shit and not care at all.
“You’re such a twat,” he tells her, smiling like an idiot. He loves her. As a friend, as family, as . . . does it need to be defined? They’ve known each other for seven months now, closer than he would have dreamed of when they first met, awkwardly, backstage at the Kids Choice Awards. They’ve texted a lot since then, met up whenever they were in the same city and just lounged in each other’s hotel rooms or houses, picking up their friendship as easily as if it hadn’t been weeks since they’d seen each other.
“You’re the twat,” she says, mimicking his accent badly and laughing. “Oh my god, how can you say that with a straight face? It’s, like, the weirdest word.”
“What, twat?”
“Yeah!” she giggles. “Seriously, your swear words are crazy. What’s wrong with fuck or shit or something?”
“We say those too!” he protests. “We just have more than you. Swearing is, like, a national past time. Especially if you’re Scottish.”
“So weird,” she says, turning on the sofa so that she’s on her back, looking up at the ceiling. Harry pulls himself off the floor, just looking at her for a moment. She’s gorgeous; no one can deny that. But more than that, she’s lovely. Kind, soft hearted, and so determined to achieve what she’s dreamed of. He wants just an ounce of that ambition. He did X Factor and worked hard to record their albums and touring but the rest of it? The fans? It all came pretty easy for them, the X Factor giving them a national platform that Taylor had to work her way up from the ground to gain.
He’s proud of her, in a weird way. Is it weird? They’re not dating, not doing anything serious at all, just meeting up every so often as friends.
“Stop thinking so hard,” she tells him softly, pulling him down next to her on the sofa. He goes willingly, flopping down so that one of his arms rests across her waist and his head is tantalisingly close to hers. He can see every freckle and spot and fleck of make up on her face from here, see the pale pink of her lips and the blue, almost grey, tint of her eyes. She’s so close he can feel the heat of her skin and smell the deodorant she’d sprayed this morning. He can only imagine what she can see of him.
“Tay,” he says, then stops. Because the world seems to have stopped here too, colour fading from their surroundings and all he can focus on is her eyes, locked with his. He wants to kiss her, wants to lean forward and show everything he’s feeling through the press of their lips and the caress of their hands, but something is holding him back.
It doesn’t matter, because Taylor is a far more confident person than he will ever be, and joins their mouths together with a firm kiss. She pulls back a little, looks at him, and asks, “Is this okay?”
Harry merely nods, a smile on his lips, because he may be internationally famous now but he’s only a boy, okay, and Taylor Swift has just kissed him. More than that, the girl he’s been semi-in-love with for seven months now has just kissed him, and that means more than any fame either of them may or may not have.
They kiss again, and his world explodes into colour.
They have a lot in common and their friendship is easy. So is their relationship at first.
Harry has to leave the next morning, and they’re both aware of that the moment they wake up, entwined in Harry’s bed. The morning is quiet but comfortable, exchanging hesitant kisses over breakfast and when getting dressed. They’re still friends, still easy, just with another added layer, but it barely throws them off at all.
“I’m going to miss you,” Taylor says at last, when they’re both getting ready to leave – Harry for the airport, Taylor to her hotel.
“Yeah,” Harry says, and feels inadequate because he can’t make his words pretty like she can, can’t put his tangled emotions into poetry without the aid of a guitar and a notebook.
She smiles though, and that’s maybe why they work so well, because they’ve never really needed words. They fell into friendship and they fell into a relationship and it’s so simple, together, a constant in their crazy and wonderful lives. When Harry was homesick on tour and called Taylor, she didn’t ask why he didn’t call his mum, instead. She just talked, and sang, and kept him company through the night so that when he had to get up the next day he was exhausted – but content again.
He leans forward for a kiss, wraps a hand around her back and holds her close like he’s committing her body and her smell to memory. They’ll see each other in less than a week, when Taylor flies to LA to perform, but they’ve only just started something new and it seems strange, somehow, to be leaving so soon. Their friendship wasn’t fragile but Harry can’t tell if their relationship will be.
“Here,” he says when they end the kiss, leaning his forehead against hers for a second before pulling back. He takes off his necklace, kisses the paper airplane, and gives it to her.
“Romantic,” she teases, but her tone is gentle and her eyes soft. She slips it over her neck and tucks it under her jumper so it isn’t visible. “Thank you,” she says, and kisses him again.
“Don’t forget me,” he says jokingly.
“But your face is so average,” she says in return, grinning at him. He groans.
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” he asks, sighing heavily but unable to restrain his laughter after. He knew it was a mistake to introduce her and Grimmy – because, of course, she listened to Lads FM straight away, much to Nick’s delight.
“Never,” she says, and it sounds like a promise.
“Looking happy today, Styles,” Lou says when he gets to the airport later. Harry picks Lux up to help Lou out and sticks his tongue out.
“Don’t know what you mean,” he says airily, but knows he has a wide grin on his face that just won’t go away.
“Nothing to do with a certain American blonde then?” Lou checks, her tone teasing.
“Not at all,” he lies, and she smiles at him.
“Idiot.”
It starts off with good days. They ring and skype and text each other stupid messages, and when they meet up again the next week it is a very very good day, and they do stupid romantic shit all day. When Taylor finishes her X Factor rehearsal, he picks her up and swirls her around, old fashioned style, until they’re both giddy with laughter and he has to put her down before he gets too out of breath. She kisses him as soon as they get somewhere private though, and he ends up losing his breath anyway.
“Lose the love-y dove-y crap, you two!” Mario yells at them, and Taylor waves at the X Factor host with the hand that isn’t holding Harry’s.
“You’re just jealous,” she says back, and Harry laughs, tugging her away and back to her dressing room.
“Jealous of who?” he asks when they’re walking, hands swinging between them, his huge hand dwarfing her own.
“Of you, obviously,” she says, and he smiles, soft and gentle and he is so, so, in love with her he can’t breathe for a second.
“Obviously,” he echoes, and his chest stays tight.
Taylor wears his paper airplane necklace around the world and people see. Rumours spark and the pyre is lit.
The flames don’t burn their relationship down. They manage that all by themselves.
“I want to go out,” she says, early December in New York. It’s cold and damp and Harry knows the world outside awaits them, a crowd gathering for the circus that is their relationship, and he can’t today, he can’t do it at all.
“No,” he says, and it’s harsh and cold and she scowls at him, anger growing in response to his words. He hates himself for this, hates her, too, because it falls apart so quickly as they, too, shatter into pieces.
“Why not?” she demands. “We never do anything! We’ve never even had a proper fucking date!”
Harry knows she’s right, can sense the truth, but knows the train wreck that will occur if they do go out. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?” she spits. It’s what he’s always loved about her, her fierceness, her fucking strength of belief in herself. She knows what she wants and what she needs and above all, what she deserves, and he is attracted to that, he knows. He was with Caroline and he is with her, and it ultimately will always lead to their downfall because he never, ever, can give them the relationship they deserve to have.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” he says, and it’s a lie, of course it is, because right now he does want to scream at her just as much as he wants to kiss her and love her and give her everything.
It’s a pretty accurate summation of their whole relationship to be honest.
He walks out that day, leaves her angry and upset. He sends her a text, later, with three x’s and a heart. He gets back, oh so you can do this now then?, and senses the frustration still there.
A few days later, and he takes her out on a date to Central Park Zoo with Lou and Lux.
“Thanks,” she says that night, when they’re lying in bed in her hotel room, the lights off and shadows dancing on the walls as lights flicker past outside the blinds over the windows.
He turns, presses a kiss to her forehead, and says, “I love you.”
It’s not the first time he’s said it, and he hopes it won’t be the last.
Paps see him going into Taylor’s hotel the next night with a large bag, and he gets practically mobbed by cameras and flashing lights and yells as they try anything to get a reaction out of him, to get some gossip. He arrives at her room pale and tense.
“Paps are outside,” he says as explanation when she opens the door, and her open face shutters as the frustration builds in her too. Their relationship is being played out on the front cover of magazines and they feel helpless in the face of it all.
“Come in,” is all she says, and he presses a kiss to her warm cheek and wants nothing more than to curl up next to her and sleep the world away. It isn’t fair to her, though, and he hates this relationship sometimes because it makes him feel so, so, happy but at the same time he hates himself a little more every day because he is turning into this self-absorbed person that he swore he never would be.
They grab a drink from the fridge and sit in silence – a quiet that is not quite awkward but it is getting there, a far cry from their friendship days. The watching eyes of the world weigh on them, even here where there are no cameras in sight.
“Fuck this,” she says suddenly, standing up and spinning to face him. Her face is fierce and beautiful, and he is reminded of why he loves her so much. “Fuck everyone else, right?”
“Right,” he says, and hasn’t got a clue what she’s on about.
She starts to move the furniture around, pushing everything to the side so that there is a space in the middle of the room. She sets up her laptop, loads some music, and plays it loud, loud enough that Harry can’t feel his own heartbeat, can’t hear the thrum of expectations any more. The only sense he has left is his sight, and all he can see is Taylor standing in the middle of the room, her hand outstretched and a wild grin on her face.
“Dance with me,” she shouts.
Harry doesn’t think about how many complaints they’re going to get, or how he doesn’t know how to dance or how the paparazzi are waiting outside for him. He grabs her hand, lets her pull him in, and dances until his feet are sore and his ear drums are nearly burst and, eventually, morning dawns.
Some days they’re flying, dancing as if their feet can’t even touch the ground.
Some days they crash back down to earth and Harry’s reminded that paper airplanes can’t ever fly for long.
They go on holiday to Utah, just a few days after they get back from England. They’d argued on the way back to America over something incredibly stupid, and they’re barely speaking as they arrive at the skiing resort. Taylor tries to give him his necklace back, and maybe it’s an insult or maybe a peace offering, but Harry is fed up and tired and so fucking exhausted with the drama of it all.
“Do you want the whole world to think we’re breaking up?” he snaps, and she takes back her outstretched hand with the necklace in.
Her face and voice harden. “Aren’t we?” she says, and it’s such a strange conversation to be having on their way to a joint romantic holiday that he doesn’t even know what to say.
“I love you,” he says at last, but she’s turned away, metaphorically and literally.
“I love you too,” she replies quietly, but it doesn’t feel like reconciliation.
The second day, they go out on snowmobiles, racing each other all over the slopes, wind pushing their hair back and making their eyes water even behind the goggles. Harry’s laughing, completely and exhilaratingly happy, and glances over to see Taylor driving beside him.
“You’re beautiful!” he yells over the wind, and watches as she shakes her head at him. She’s grinning too, face split by her smile and she’s so gorgeous like this, and Harry’s heart feels like it might explode with everything he’s feeling. They’re free like this, both of them, free to love and enjoy and be whoever they want to be. He never, ever, wants this to end.
Of course, he then sees a tree coming up and instinctively, instead of swerving around it, he slams on the brakes. His snowmobile skids, catches on something, and he’s spun off, falling down and down and down.
Paper airplanes don’t fly for long.
In the hospital, Taylor flutters around. Harry’s chin is bleeding all over the place and he’s sore, muscles protesting. He’s so tired and in pain and he can’t decide if he wants to kiss Taylor or tell her to go away.
“Don’t cry,” she says suddenly, sitting down next to him and wrapping her arm around his back. She presses a kiss into his hair, and he becomes aware of the tears dripping slowly down his face. He shakes his head but makes no effort to wipe them away. He doesn’t know if they’re because of the pain or the exhaustion or just the fact that he loves Taylor with everything he has but he can’t stop it collapsing into pieces.
“I love you,” he says, voice low and rough and chin so painful when he moves to speak. She kisses him again, and they lean against each other as tears start to form in her eyes too.
This is how it goes. They fall apart and sometimes they stitch each other back together and sometimes, only occasionally, the wounds never heal, just lay under the skin as fractures in their skeleton.
They’re silly on New Year’s Eve. They get ready together; Harry tries and fails to do Taylor’s make-up and she in turn makes him into a Goth. They take another shower, fall over each other in laughter and he picks her up to spin her around again when his favourite song comes on the radio.
“Careful!” she laughs, clinging on to him with strong hands, and he pretends to drop her only to actually lose balance and fall. They lie on the floor on top of each other and laugh until they lose their breath and start, instead, to kiss.
They kiss that night as the clock strikes midnight, and Harry’s heard that you’re supposed to start the new year doing something you’d like to spend the rest of the year doing. He clutches Taylor to his chest and kisses her hair and thinks, I love you.
If he can spend the next year being in love with her, he’ll be happy.
The next day, he watches the video of them kissing and reads the headlines from all around the world. Haylor, they call them. He watches his mouth meet Taylor’s and hates it, hates that everyone watches everything they do.
They break each other and mend each other. Medicine in one form is poison in another, and the two of them crash and burn on a daily basis.
On holiday in the Virgin Islands, they fight over sex. Taylor likes to be in charge, Harry wants a go at gaining control over one part of his life. But Taylor needs the control, too, and a small disagreement turns into a flaming bonfire that spreads to everything else.
The world takes their control over their relationship, and they seize it elsewhere in whatever way they can, but all it makes them do is spiral into freefall.
It ends quietly, weirdly. Taylor says, “We can’t keep doing this,” and Harry doesn’t feel his heart breaking because they’re both so worn down they can’t feel anything anymore.
“I know,” he says.
“I’m setting you free,” she tells him, and he smiles gently at her.
“Both of us are free now,” he says. Then, to be clear, he adds, “This is it then? Finally?”
She nods. “We’re breaking up,” she agrees. There’s a beat of silence, then, “I love you,” she confesses.
“I love you too,” he says truthfully, softly. Loving each other was never the problem, never will be. They just couldn’t make it work with the rest of the world, couldn’t reconcile their love with the resentment that their relationship built from the very first day.
They sleep together one last time and in the morning Harry kisses Taylor on the forehead, writes her a short little note, and leaves before she wakes.
He’d thought, once it was over, that he’d be a mess. But they’d both been a mess whilst together, and he still feels nothing but love towards Taylor. He’s sad, more than anything, because it could have been beautiful and life-changing and so much better.
But some things just aren’t meant to last that long, and paper airplanes can’t fly forever.