Archive of Our Own ^beta

Harry pulls out his phone and flops on his hotel bed. He lies on his side facing the wall with the window, where he’s got a perfect view of the Vegas strip. It’s still light outside, but he knows in a few hours the sun will dip out of the sky and the lights of the strip will come alive, illuminating the entire panorama. It’s a sight to see under any standards, but Harry’s not really in the mood for any sights.

Harry hates complaining about anything. He’s never returned a meal at a restaurant in his life no matter how far it is from what he actually ordered. Whenever he’s been asked “On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad does it hurt?” he’s never said anything above a 3, even if the pain was excruciating. He hates worrying people, especially those he loves, disappointing anyone, and being a troublesome burden in general. So he just doesn’t complain, no matter how bad or uncomfortable things get.

But no matter how hard he makes sure to avoid letting complaints slip out, he can’t help the way he feels about it all inside. And lately he’s been stuck in a rut. People warned him and the boys about this all along, that eventually this nonstop cycle of touring and recording and touring and recording would get tiresome, but he never really believed it. “How could I ever get tired of my dream?” he remembers insisting with big eyes and a full heart. And when he looks back on it all, he feels so guilty for the way he sees things now, and how jaded he’s become. Because this is his dream, and it’s what millions would kill for, and he has the nerve to feel sick of it. It doesn’t seem right.

And so that’s what the cycle of his life has been recently. Checking into a hotel room, flopping on the bed, scrolling absentmindedly through his phone for a beat, feeling disillusioned and disenchanted with his life, immediately feeling miserable and guilty for thinking such thoughts, shaking them out of his head, and carrying on with his life. Lather, rinse, repeat. He’s been doing it for so long that he even can’t remember what he did before.

His phone vibrates, bringing him out of his stupor. It’s Ed telling him to come to sound check at the arena, and Harry’s more than welcome for the distraction. That’s what everything feels like these days, a distraction. Any interaction with friends, any activity to do that isn’t performing or something related to the band, is something to do to keep him from being alone with his thoughts. And God, he smirks to himself as he puts on his boots, that sounds so fucking dramatic. But it’s so true. He can’t be alone in his head these days without all the thoughts coming to a boil in his mind and threatening to spill over and out onto the floor. He does anything he can to avoid himself.

X

The hotel is a short drive away from the MGM Grand Garden Arena so it doesn’t take long before Harry’s wrapped up in one of Ed’s bear hugs.

“I missed you mate, feels like we haven’t properly seen each other since Lou’s book launch,” Ed tells him before pressing a loud kiss to Harry’s neck until Harry’s wiggled out of his clutches.

“I missed you too man,” he says and grips Ed’s shoulder. It’s undoubtedly one of the worst parts of this life, never getting to have anyone he loves in his life for more than a few moments at a time before he’s whisked away somewhere else. It gets extremely hard constantly missing people.

“I’m just hanging around waiting for Taylor to finish up, and we were gonna go grab a bite after before she has to come back for her performance.”

“Oh nice, do you mind if I tag along?”

“Of course, she’d love to see you,” Ed nods his head as they reach a catering table and he grabs two water bottles off it, throwing one at Harry. For a second Harry regrets inviting himself, and considers making something up about actually having dinner plans with Lou instead. Sometimes it’s awkward hanging with just Ed and Taylor, and he can’t help feeling like the biggest third wheel. It’s strange and unfair seeing as how him and Ed have been friends for ages, and him and Taylor dated, so one would think he’d be closer to either of them then they are to each other. But after him and Taylor called it off the first time things were rough for a while, and then she had to go and take Ed on her massive nationwide tour, and for seven months the two of them shared a stage every night and wrote songs and told secrets and became the best of pals apparently. Harry’s not jealous or anything, he just kind of gets bummed about it is all. Cause now Ed and Taylor have this killer dynamic and it’s hard not to feel like an outsider sometimes.

He shakes the thought out of his head and follows Ed down the hall to wait with him in Taylor’s dressing room. It’s been ages since he’s seen her anyways, and they don’t get chances like this where they’re in the same city at the same time very often. He can put aside his dramatic feelings for the night.

Him and Ed catch up for a bit while they wait in the room. They’re all in Las Vegas for the annual iHeartRadio Music Festival, so it’s one of those special times a ton of musicians are in all one place, and even Harry will admit that it’s a very cool atmosphere. Chris Martin pops his head in the door at some point and lights up when he sees them both, and Harry gets to make small talk with him for a few minutes as well. It’s one thing he’s always thankful for: getting the chance to meet his idols and other incredible people in the industry. He doesn’t get star struck nearly as often anymore, tries not to credit that to his general sense of jadedness, but he still enjoys getting to meet the people that sing both his favorite songs growing up and his new favorites as well.

That’s another thing. Harry constantly finds himself making charts in his head over what’s good about his job, and what’s quite frankly wretched. He doesn’t know when he became a walking Excel spreadsheet, but somewhere along the way he began calculating every experience he has, and places it under either “This is why my life sucks” or “This is why I’m the luckiest man alive.” Also somewhere along the way, the first column began getting longer and longer and eventually a little out of hand. Harry would never dare say this to anyone out loud, once again the whole ‘refusing to complain’ rule applies, but sometimes it’s impossible to find the good in things. He feels like a spoiled and ungrateful brat when he thinks this, but the only person he hasn’t lied to yet is himself, so the least he can do is be honest with his own thoughts.

A few minutes after Chris leaves, Taylor finally gets back from her rehearsal. She raises her eyebrows and her face breaks out in an open-mouthed smile when she spots Harry.

“Harry! This is a surprise!” she squeals and crosses the room to give him a hug. He wraps his arms around her and kisses her cheek. She’s still in platform booties from sound check so she’s a good few inches taller than him, and her short hair is slightly ruffled and wavy. She smells the way Taylor always smells, like a garden and a kitchen with cookies in the oven and a woody fairyland all at the same time, some strange mix of flowers and vanilla and mahogany that’s very classically girly yet at the same time entirely and uniquely Taylor.

“I’m glad you’re here, I wasn’t sure if you wouldn’t be getting here until tomorrow or not,” she tells him once she’s pulled back from their embrace.

“Yeah, me and some of the boys got here a day early. Wouldn’t want to miss tonight’s set, it looks great,” And he’s only partly lying. He doesn’t really know who’s playing tonight or what the set looks like. But he knows Taylor’s opening, and he so rarely gets a chance to see her perform live that given the opportunity to give up a day off and get to the gig a whole day early, the decision was easy to make.

“I know right? I’m so excited to watch Ari and Nicki,” she gushes as she makes her way over to hug Ed before sitting on the couch to take off her heels. “I’m also excited for both of you guys tomorrow. Are your sets ready?”

Ed instantly goes into a mini spiel about his loop pedal set and what song he’s opening with and how he’s throwing in a Chris Brown cover somewhere into the mix that he didn’t expect to fit so well but surprisingly sounds amazing. He talks with such excitement about his preparations, and Taylor listens intently and nods and looks at him with wide eyes and takes it all in, so genuinely interested. And Harry feels like such a phony. He’s so jealous that they’re so creatively invested and have such passion over everything they do, and all he does is show up, walk around the stage for a few songs, and go home. Nothing he does with the boys is genuine anymore. It’s all a way to churn out as much profit with as little effort as possible, and none of them have the energy to change the way things are. Yeah shows get boring, and yeah sometimes they wish they could try something new, but it’s much easier to stick to the status quo then try to fight against any of the suits or contracts that tell them to just stick to the bare minimum and reap the benefits. It isn’t until Harry hears someone like Ed or Taylor or any of his other musician friends talk about what they do, that he feels a sharp pang deep in his chest. The same feeling you get when someone talks excitedly about their pet cat and, and you’re happy to listen but you can’t help but feel sad because your own cat died two years ago. It’s dramatic and corny and unnecessary, but regardless he can’t help it.

Harry snaps out of his trance and finds both Ed and Taylor laughing at him, Ed waving his hands in front of his face.

“Are you alright there mate? We asked you how your rehearsals were going?”

“Oh, uh, yeah they’re going well. Are you guys ready to go eat?” He knows he didn’t really answer the question and he seemed short and even kind of rude, so he throws in a fake smile for good measure. If Ed noticed he doesn’t say anything about it, just nods his head that he’s ready. Taylor gives Harry a weird look and frowns, but she finishes slipping on her other pair of shoes and stands up nonetheless.

“Ready. My car’s waiting for me out back so you guys can just ride with me.”

They go to a tiny Mediterranean place that’s not too far away, and it’s lucky enough that they’ve chosen a strange eating hour that’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so the restaurant is fairly empty. Taylor’s people had called ahead, and there’s already hummus and pita bread waiting for them when they get to their booth near the back.

Dinner isn’t as third-wheely as Harry had worried it would be. Occasionally Ed brings up an inside joke that results in him and Taylor bursting into uncontrollable laughter, but for the most part Harry feels very included in the conversation. They talk about how well Ed’s newest album’s been doing, and how Taylor’s getting ready to drop hers, and various other music-related things. Harry tries not to stare at Taylor’s lips when she talks, and only catches himself lost in her eyes twice.

It’s been weird for Harry with Taylor for a while. A couple months back when she sent him her new record to listen to before it came out, he felt the strangest shift inside him. He’s pretty sure his feelings for her never actually ended at all, but if he needed confirmation of that, hearing her songs about him proved it. It was like every word she sang carved itself into his skin and by the time he had heard all the songs, he felt like his body was a walking lyric booklet. It was weird having so many memories between them presented the way she did in her music, and all Harry wanted to do was hold her in her arms and try again. But things were complicated, and Taylor was trying to go it alone and she’ll tell anyone who will listen that she’s the happiest she’s ever been, and Harry wasn’t going to try to wreck that. If he has to give her up so that she can be happiest, he’s okay with that.

Once they get dropped off back at the arena, Ed gets a phone call from Athina which means he goes into Everyone leave me the fuck alone mode, and he hangs back by catering to talk to her as Harry walks Taylor to her dressing room.

“Hey, are you okay?” Taylor asks him, gently nudging his shoulder with hers. “You seem a little…off.”

“Yeah, I’m completely fine,” he gives a half smile and tries to sound as reassuring as possible. Harry doesn’t even know if this counts as lying at this point. He’s repeatedly given the same answer a hundred times. He thinks about those sociopath criminals that are mentally unstable and pathological liars and tell the same lies so many times that eventually they begin to believe them themselves. Harry’s still waiting for the moment when he’ll believe his own.

Taylor doesn’t push but she hardly seems convinced. “Okay, well I just wanted to make sure. It’s been a while since we hung out so I wanted to check that things were good on your end.”

Harry makes a point to punctuate his words by excessively nodding. “All good on this end,” he grins.

She stops and just looks at him for a second. It almost seems like she’s trying to figure out what words she needs to tell him something, but out of nowhere one of her assistants pops up and pulls her away to get ready for the show.

“I’ll be trying to spot you guys side stage, you better be there!” she yells over her shoulder as she’s being dragged off.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Harry says softly, more to himself than anyone else.

Taylor’s performance goes phenomenally. She has always known how to command a crowd and tonight is no different, and Harry looks on proudly as she nails her set. He doesn’t catch the entire thing, as side stage starts getting a bit crowded and he doesn’t want to draw any attention by being there, but he’s happy to have seen what he got to watch.

Afterwards the three of them meet in Ed’s room and drink to celebrate her opening the show. At one point Ed laughs so hard that he snorts vodka, and Taylor’s a lightweight so her cheeks are blood red after only a couple drinks, and Harry’s so happy to be with them both. Even if he is just filling his life with people so he never has to think about how alone he really feels, he’s happy to have people like them in his life anyways.

X

Harry wakes up to the sound of someone banging on his door. He groans loudly and begrudgingly drags himself out of bed, throwing on a pair of boxer shorts on his way to go answer the door and tell whoever’s behind it to piss off. When he finds Niall and his signature innocent-excitable-puppy-dog demeanor his plan changes slightly, as Niall’s one of the only people on earth who’s incredibly hard to stay mad at.

“What do you want, Ni? It’s like seven in the morning,” he asks, voice gruff from sleep.

“Let’s go get breakfast, I’m starved!” Niall exclaims, pushing into the room past Harry and flouncing on the bed.

“The sky is blue, Niall’s hungry, what else is new?” Harry mumbles as he rolls his eyes. Nevertheless he cards his hands through his hair and begins rummaging through his suitcase for something to wear. It’s the day of their performance and he knows they have to get an early start if they want to do anything on their own, since they’ll be expected at the arena in a few hours to begin sound check and prepare for the performance.

They decide to try a pancake place Niall found on Urbanspoon (Honestly, Urbanspoon? Who is this kid?) and hope that they can go relatively under the radar. It’s rare that Harry can go anywhere with any of the other four boys and not draw an excessive amount of attention, but it’s still pretty early in the morning and he hopes fans will either be asleep or on the hunt for celebrities elsewhere. He thinks back to the days when the five of them could all sit in a booth at Milkshake City and share jokes and stories about Simon or any of the X-Factor contestants over their favorite milkshakes. Harry doesn’t want to outright say that he’d trade all of this for the innocence of sharing a milkshake with four of his best friends before they exploded into worldwide pop stars and everything changed, but honestly, sometimes he thinks he would.

As they make their way across the lobby to where security is waiting for them, Harry hears his and Niall’s names being called. He looks in the direction it came from, and sees a little girl wearing pigtails and holding a guitar sitting in the waiting area of the lobby. She smiles shyly and waves at them. Harry calls out to Niall, who had kept walking after Harry stopped, and signals for him to join as he walks over to the little girl.

“Hi love, were you talking to us?” he kneels next to her.

She looks down at her feet and nods, then stares up at him with big, brown eyes through her long eyelashes.

“Hey, sick guitar!” Niall grins and lightly runs his fingers over the strings. The little girl nods again, and proudly stares at the instrument next to her. She can’t be more than five or six years old, and it seems as though her and the guitar are almost the same size.

“I’m not actually sposed to be here,” she says, and she doesn’t make eye contact with either of them so it seems as if she’s speaking to the guitar.

Harry’s brow furrows with concern. “Are you lost?”

She shakes her head quickly and looks at him. “No, I’m with my mom. She works here,” she says with a slight smile.

“Ah sick, shouldn’t you be with her though?” Niall asks, ruffling her hair slightly.

The girl giggles at his hands. “I snuck away because I wanted to see you guys.” And then she takes a deep breath and seems to summon all the courage she can find before looking up at Niall. “Will you please sign my guitar?”

Niall’s face instantly breaks out into a huge smile. “Of course!” The girl breathes a huge sigh of relief, and pulls a sharpie out of the pocket in her dress. Niall scrawls his signature in big letters by the top and hands it back to her. “Keep playing, kiddo. Some day you could be a star you know,” he nods his head enthusiastically.

Harry gets up from where he was kneeling and motions to hug the girl and say goodbye, but she pushes the guitar into his face instead.

“You too,” she says, matter-of-factly, before blushing and adding, “Please.”

“Oh,” Harry says quietly as he takes the guitar from her hands. “Alright.” He feels weird about signing it since he barely plays himself and isn’t known for it like Niall is, but he wasn’t going to turn down this adorable little girl, so he signs his name near the left side.

“Here you are,” he hands it back to her with a smile. They both hug her and she thanks them before scurrying off to the elevators.

“Cute kid,” Niall muses before they continue on their way out of the hotel.

They get to the pancake house with little other fanfare, and breakfast is good. Once again hanging out with friends proves to be the best distraction from feeling down, and Niall is as good a friend as they come. He tells Harry about what he missed last night while he was at Taylor’s performance, how Zayn and Louis caused the hotel smoke detector to go off because they were smoking in a non-smoking room, and it caused a scene within the entire floor. Niall’s great at telling stories, and Harry’s glad to start his day off laughing.

As they exit the restaurant, a group of about ten fans are huddled near the door waiting for them. They instantly start talking over each other and begging the boys for photos, and Niall and Harry both make sure they get to everyone before they head back. By the time they arrive at the hotel, a car is waiting to take them to the arena.

About an hour later, Harry’s eating an orange in their dressing room as their team is running through details for tonight.

“So do you guys want to close with Best Song Ever or What Makes You Beautiful?” one of their managers asks from where he’s seated on a stool with a clipboard.

A chorus of noncommittal “I don’t care’s” are shrugged across the room. The manager gives them all a pointed look.

“What Makes You Beautiful is more well-known, yeah?” Louis asks from the couch.

“But Best Song Ever is so much funner,” Niall adds.

“That’s true. Let’s do Best Song Ever.” Louis confirms.

“Alright, and do you guys want to do red carpet?” the manager asks without looking up from typing something on his iPhone.

“No.” all five of them say in unison. At the start of it all, they used to love doing interviews and getting photographed and getting to talk about themselves. But it got so old so fast, and whenever they can get out of it they do. It’s much easier to just be in, do the performance, and be out. Like ripping off a bandaid. Harry winces when he realizes he compares his lifelong dream to ripping a bandage off of a wound.

“What’s the matter with you? Sour orange?” Liam asks after seeing Harry’s expression. Harry raises his eyebrows and shrugs, tossing the rest of the orange in the wastebasket by the vanity mirror.

They head on over to sound check. They half rehearse and half dick around, nobody really taking anything seriously. They meet Lou and Caroline back in the dressing room afterwards to get them showtime ready.

The performance is decent. It’s always a rough crowd whenever it’s an award show or a festival, nothing compared to the screams and enthusiasm they’re received with when they play at their own shows, but it’s not too bad. Harry goes through the motions as if he’s on cruise control, which is how he’s been performing for a while now. Sometimes he likes comparing it all to a relationship. When you’re with the same person for years and years, things will eventually get boring unless you spice it up to keep the flame alive. Or so he’s heard. He’s never been in a relationship for longer than a few months, as all the flames seem to fizzle out before there’s even a chance for them to be lit for too long. Well, all except one. And that flame’s still going strong, on his end at least. Anyways, he wishes he could spice up the One Direction flame, but it seems to be disappearing quicker than he can figure out how to fix it.

After their set, the boys disperse. Liam and Louis head back to the hotel to meet their girlfriends, and Zayn fucks off to God knows where like Zayn always does. Niall’s going to meet Ed at a club for drinks, so Harry tags along. He lays low in a back lounge while Niall and Ed both pose for pictures and take shots with all the fans there. Harry’s normally the social butterfly, anything to put on a fake face for the cameras, but tonight his heart isn’t in it. He just wants to drink alone, but doesn’t want to be alone, so he hides in plain sight. He doesn’t drink enough to get drunk, but just enough so that when his fingers find themselves texting Taylor and asking her what she’s up to at one point, he doesn’t stop them. She calls him a few minutes after that.

“Where are you?” he asks her as soon as he picks up the phone, since apparently that’s a standard greeting these days.

“Hello to you too,” she chuckles. “Where are you? I can hardly hear you from all the background music,”

“’M with Ed and Ni, ‘avin a bit of fun,” he says, and he doesn’t think he’s slurring but he could be imagining things. Honestly, how many drinks has he had? It couldn’t have been that many. What the fuck do they put in these Vegas concoctions?

“Ah, a bit of fun. Alright then, I’ll let you go,”

“No, wait!” he shouts, drawing glances from the people near him in the lounge. “You can’t just call me and then let me go,”

She laughs again. “I’m sorry! I actually do have to go though. I called because you texted me. But I’ve got an early flight tomorrow.”

“I want to see you,” Harry says, and it’s brazen and forward and something he usually wouldn’t outright say to her without the assistance of a few drinks, but he figures he has nothing to lose.

“You’re drunk Harry. I don’t think that’s a good idea,” She almost sounds disappointed, and normally it would be a cue for Harry to stop, but tonight he’s got no boundaries. He’s drunk and he’s in Vegas and he feels like shit and he needs her.

“Please. You didn’t watch my show,” he pouts, because he’s hoping he can make her feel bad and guilt trip her into seeing him.

“I did. I watched from the monitors backstage. I didn’t want to cause a scene by being side stage,” she tells him. “You guys did really well,” she adds.

Harry laughs at that, because it’s such bullshit. They never “do really well.” They’re in and out with as little exertion as possible. They haven’t done well in years, and most of the time they look as if they’re being held at gunpoint to perform, and Harry knows it.

“What’s so funny?” she asks.

“Nothing. I want to see you,” he says again.

“I can’t.” she says firmly and sighs.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Go to sleep Harry.” And with that she disconnects the line.

“Fucking hell,” Harry murmurs to himself as he stares at his phone in his hands. And he wants out, right away. So he sends Niall a quick text letting him know he’s leaving, and he stalks out the back to where a Range Rover is waiting. He slinks into the backseat and closes his eyes as the vehicle starts moving. Maybe if he goes to sleep he can forget any of this happened. Maybe tomorrow he can wake up and distract himself with more people and more bullshit, to try and forget about why he can’t stand his life or can’t have his girl. It’s a tried method that has worked in the past and will keep working as long as he uses it. Of this he is certain.

Once he’s back in his room he doesn’t bother changing or washing his face. He collapses on the bed and closes his eyes, wishing the room would stop spinning, wishing the world would stop spinning, wishing it would all just stop.

X

Harry wakes up to the sound of someone banging on his door. He rolls over in bed and groans. “Not again,” he says loudly, hoping whoever is behind the door will hear him and fuck off. Suddenly he remembers they’re flying out this morning, and realizes he hasn’t packed his things yet. “Fuck,” he whispers, before calling out “One second!” towards the door. If it’s a member of his team they’ll be on his case for not being ready yet, so he haphazardly throws all his clothes in his suitcase and zips it up. He puts on some boxers before answering the door, only to be faced with Niall.

“Let’s go get breakfast, I’m starved!” he exclaims, pushing into the room past Harry and flouncing on the bed.

“What?” Harry frowns, closing the door and turning to stare confusedly at Niall. “Again?”

“What do you mean again?”

“We got breakfast yesterday. Aren’t we leaving today?” Harry asks him, looking at him suspiciously.

“What are you talking about, we didn’t get breakfast yesterday? I always remember who I have breakfast with, and it wasn’t you yesterday.” Niall states simply, and he seems nonplussed by Harry’s extraordinarily confused demeanor.

“Mate, stop dicking around,” Harry says, shaking his head. “We went to that pancake place yesterday morning,”

“How did you know about the pancake place?” Niall shouts as his eyes light up. “Did you finally download Urbanspoon like I’ve been telling you to for months?”

Harry smirks and walks over to the bed to sit next to Niall. “Okay haha, very funny. I’m serious, aren’t we flying out today? Where are the others, are they ready?”

Niall shakes his head and chuckles. “Haz, I have no idea what you’re on about. We’re performing tonight, we’re not going anywhere,”

Harry furrows his brow and gives Niall a look before turning his head to stare at the floor. He scratches his head slowly and tries to make sense of everything going through his head at the moment. He could have sworn they performed last night. Maybe they were scheduled for two nights in a row? Maybe he really didn’t get breakfast with Niall yesterday?

“Christ, Harry,” Niall speaks again when Harry’s silent for a beat. “Did you get shitfaced with Ed and Swiftie last night or something?”

Harry turns to look at him. No, I got shitfaced with Ed and you. At a club. After our performance. And then I went to sleep and now we’re supposed to leave Vegas. He thinks about saying all this but then he realizes how crazy it sounds. Maybe he did get slammed with Ed last night? Maybe after Taylor’s performance he couldn’t stop thinking about her and it hurt so bad that he drunk himself into a coma. That sounds like something he would do.

“Yeah, maybe,” he settles for. “Let’s go get food.”

It’s easy for Niall to bounce back and within a few minutes he’s chatting normally, as if Harry didn’t just accuse him of something incredulous. They make their way out to the car, and Harry once again hears someone calling their names. He turns and finds the same little girl from yesterday sitting with the same guitar on the same couch.

Okay, this is getting really fucking weird. Is everyone in on this? What’s going on? But he doesn’t say anything to Niall or the girl, and he signs her guitar again, and they go to the pancake house again. And Niall tells the same stories while they eat as he did yesterday, and laughs at all the same places, and Harry thinks he must be losing his mind.

“…and after the smoke detectors went off, you’ll never guess what happened before we could figure out how to make them stop,”

“Let me try. This old lady in her nightgown with rollers in her hair banged on your door, and when you opened it she came storming in and started yelling at you all,” Harry drily states.

Niall puts down his fork and stares at him. “Did Louis already tell you this story?”

Harry shakes his head and sighs, but says “Yeah,” instead of putting up a fight. “I’m full, let’s go.”

Outside, the same group of fans are waiting for them. Once again they take a few minutes to pose with everyone.

“I’m so happy to finally meet you Harry, I’ve been wanting to meet you for two years!” A girl with curly red hair squeals before snuggling next to him to pose for a selfie. Sure. Harry thinks. You met me yesterday but sure, it’s been two years.

The rest of the day goes by in a blur. They’re whisked off to the arena, go through prep and rehearsal, and get ready for performance. Harry wonders if he’s just done this whole shebang one too many times and is caught in a serious case of déjà vu. He doesn’t feel sick or hungover, so it couldn’t have been an effect of any alcohol he had the night before. Nevertheless, he can’t shake off how weird it all feels. How he’s literally doing everything he did the day before all over again. Maybe this is a dream. he thinks at point. Maybe none of this is real.

They perform and then go their separate ways again. Niall invites Harry to go clubbing with Ed, but Harry declines. The entire day has been the strangest sensation and he can’t make any sense of it, so all he wants to do is climb into bed and forget it ever happened. Maybe this really is the world’s worst fucking hangover. He drinks a tall glass of water before bed, squeezes his eyes shut, and wills the feeling away.

X

Harry wakes up with a jolt the next morning. He lays in bed and stares at the ceiling with wide eyes before moving to get up.

“What a weird fucking dream,” he whispers to himself.

Suddenly someone begins banging on his door.

“No, no, no,” he shakes his head and jumps out of bed, not bothering to put on any clothes but wrapping his covers around him. He bounds towards the door and opens it.

“Let’s go get breakfast, I’m starved!” Niall exclaims, pushing into the room past Harry and flouncing on the bed.

“No!” Harry shouts, shaking his head profusely. “What the fuck is going on!”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, what do you mean? I just wanted to go get pancakes, it’s not a big deal,” Niall holds his hands up defensively, slightly startled at Harry’s borderline lunatic state.

“I can’t get pancakes with you! I’ve eaten pancakes with you for the past two days in a row! I at least want to eat something new!” Harry’s voice cracks at the end and he can’t stop shaking his head and staring at Niall as if he’s got eight eyes.

Niall doesn’t say anything and just stares at him, lost, until Harry kicks him out and locks his door. He’s adequately sweating at this point and he starts pacing the room. Is this a movie? Is this real life? Is this a dream? Is this purgatory? What on earth is happening to me?

He spends the day avoiding everyone. He makes his way to the arena alone, but finds an unused storage room near the back to chill in by himself. He scrolls through Twitter and sees tweets about Taylor’s performance, and he desperately hopes to find something about his own but comes up short. It’s as if they haven’t performed yet at all, even though he can swear on his life he’s already done it twice. This cannot be happening.

Everything carries on like normal. As soon as they’re done performing, Harry leaves the venue and heads back to the hotel without speaking to anyone. He’s sufficiently spooked and has done a proper job of being an ass to everyone all day, but he can’t muster up the strength to play along. He can’t live the exact same day for the third time in a row. Maybe he’s got a brain tumor? Maybe he was drugged? There’s got to be an online forum where he can research this kind of shit.

Before the car arrives at his hotel, he pulls out his phone and dials Taylor’s number. He doesn’t know why really, it just seems sort of fitting that he reach out to her in a crisis. She’s so good at putting out fires herself that maybe she can somehow help him figure out this one.

“Hello?” she answers on the second ring.

“Hey, I was wondering if I could come hang with you for a bit,” He thinks it comes out fast and desperate, and hopes she doesn’t think weirdly of him.

“Um, what’s up? I’m leaving early tomorrow so I wasn’t really planning on going out tonight or anything,”

“No no, it’s fine, me neither. Can I just come over? I just want to chat for a second and then I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.” Harry never talks this fast unless something is up, and he knows she knows that. When she agrees to him coming over, he hears that she’s worried about him in her voice, and a tiny part of him forgets about his possible descent into madness and just revels in the fact that she cares enough to be concerned.

She answers the door dressed down in leggings and a t-shirt, and he feels bad that she was probably getting ready for bed and he intruded.

“Sorry for being so annoying,” he offers as he sits down on the bed next to a sleeping Meredith and gently scratches her ear. “I didn’t want to bother you I just…really needed to talk to someone.”

“It’s no problem Harry,” she smiles and sits down on a chair across from the bed. “You sounded really weird on the phone so I’m glad you’re here now and that I can see you’re okay,”

Again, Harry is happy to hear her say something like that. He knows she’s Taylor Swift, and her heart is ten times the size of a normal person’s and that she cares about pretty much everyone on this entire planet, but it’s still nice to hear she has genuine concern for him specifically. And he knows caring about someone is not the same as loving them, but he figures the two are distant cousins, and that’s something he can work with.

“So what’s up?” she asks him. He stops petting Meredith and looks up at Taylor, and suddenly he doesn’t know what to say. Because this is new. This isn’t something he’s done over and over again, and he’s excited to be treading new territory. He’s alone in Taylor’s room with her, and they haven’t been alone together anywhere in months, and all thoughts of his Twilight Zone experience have suddenly evaporated out of his head. Suddenly all he wants to do is just sit here and be with her for a minute.

“Nothing, what’s up with you?” he says casually.

Taylor smiles and laughs, scrunching her face and shaking her head at him. “You came over here to make small talk with me, Styles? Really?”

He looks down and scratches the back of his head, smiling slightly sheepishly at the ground. “I actually…I just miss you,” He looks back up at her and sees her smile is fading, but her eyes still look warm so he takes it as a good sign to keep talking. “I know you’re leaving tomorrow, and so am I, and then we’ll never see each other again and I hate that we just keep seeing each other for a few seconds before never seeing each other again,”

Taylor laughs again at that. “What do you mean? We’ll both be in LA for an awards show in November. That’s like two months from now,”

“Might as well be forever,” he insists, drawing a smile from her. “Look I’m just saying, it’s hard enough as it is to see each other with…everything we have to deal with.” He waves his hand abstractly, but she knows exactly what he’s referring to. “So as long as we’re in the same place at the same time, we should make the most of it.”

She pauses and doesn’t meet his eyes for a second, before nodding firmly. “Okay, I agree with you. Let’s talk,”

She gets up to sit on the bed next to him, and Meredith scowls at the movement disrupting her slumber before stalking away. Taylor sets up the pillows near the headboard so that they can both lean against them, and they settle into an easy conversation. And Harry really did miss it. He missed being alone with her, just getting to hear her voice in person and hear her laugh when she finds something funny. He missed how easy conversations seem to flow between them and how she’s one of those special kinds of people that actually listens when you’re speaking, and isn’t just waiting for their turn to speak. He’d forgotten how good of a friend she was.

Hours pass and eventually they’re laying instead of sitting. They’re both on their sides and the only thing in between them is a small throw pillow. Harry hasn’t felt this close to anyone in a while.

Taylor yawns and turns to glance at the clock on the nightstand behind her. “It’s late,” she says drowsily.

“Mhmm,” Harry replies, looking at her with lidded eyes.

“Hey,” she says, gently poking his cheek. “Are you okay? Honestly?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve just been weird lately, and I can’t help but feel like there’s something you want to say and you’re not saying it.”

Harry’s creepy crisis then drifts back into his head and he realizes that while he’s been sitting and talking with Taylor, it’s the first time in the past two days he hasn’t thought about it.

“Everything’s fine,” he insists. Even if everything’s not fine. Crisis aside, his life is still stuck in a rut and he doesn’t know how to get out of it. Even before the same day began repeating itself, he felt like he was stuck in an endless loop. But he doesn’t know how to put any of that into words, and he especially doesn’t want to scare her away by sounding insane.

She doesn’t look angry or frustrated at his answer, just kind of sad and let down. Like she knows he’s keeping something from her, which he is. And Taylor always knows when he is, and he feels bad because he once laid in bed with her in his hometown and told her every secret he’s ever kept from the world and told her that he never wanted to share his secrets with anyone else. Even though the circumstances between them have considerably changed since then, he still feels the same.

“Well, okay, not everything is fine,” he begins, and the flicker of hope in her features is worth trying to figure out a way to state his problem without stating his problem at all. “I guess, lately I feel like I’m sort of stuck. Like I’ve been living in a pattern and, maybe I liked the pattern once but I don’t like it anymore. And I can’t figure out how to get out of it.”

She blinks and nods, immersed in what he’s saying. Her blonde hair is spread across the pillow and the only light in the room is coming from the lamp directly behind her, and she looks sort of angelic.

“So that’s probably why I’ve been weird,” he continues. “Cause nothing feels right anymore lately, and I don’t know how to make it stop feeling the way it does.”

He realizes he’s being super vague and feels like an absolute fool, but Taylor doesn’t seem to think that at all, and it eases him. “I know exactly what you mean,” she says. “Sometimes I get stuck in a rut too. I think when I do though, I usually just try to change something around me to help bring some newness to the mix.”

Harry looks away and shrugs. “Yeah, newness. I guess.”

He must seem unconvinced so she presses, “Well have you done anything to try to get yourself ‘unstuck?’ Have you tried anything new?”

“What do you mean by new?”

“Just try something new. If you don’t like how things are going, or if you don’t think you’re getting out what you’re putting in, you should try a different approach. Isn’t that like a saying? Trying to get different results by doing the same thing over and over is the definition of insanity, or something like that.”

Harry’s eyes widen as something clicks in the back of his brain. “That’s it,” he whispers. “Taylor, you’re brilliant!”

“What?” she shakes her head and laughs. Harry’s already bounded off the bed and runs over to his shoes, gently lifting up Olivia and setting her on the ground from where she had been nestled on top of his left boot.

“Where are you going?” Taylor asks and sits up, evidently confused at Harry’s sudden burst of energy and eagerness to leave at once.

“I’ve got to run, I’m sorry. I really have to get to sleep. But thank you Taylor, you have no idea how much you’ve helped me,” He runs over to the bed and kisses her cheek before running out the door. He knows exactly what he needs to do, and he can’t remember the last time he was so excited to go to sleep.

X

Harry bounds out of bed the next morning before Niall can knock on his door and wake him up. He showers, brushes his teeth, and is already dressed and ready when Niall gets there.

“I can’t believe you’re already awake,” Niall muses.

“You better believe it, pal. Now let’s go get some breakfast.”

The entire time they’re eating at the pancake place, Harry’s mind is elsewhere. He thinks about what he can do to make this day unique and special, and not relive the same one he’s been doing for a few days now. If he can bring something new to the day, maybe he can break out of the funk and be set free. Maybe tomorrow he can wake up and it will actually be tomorrow.

As they’re taking pictures with fans outside, a thought suddenly hits him.

“Hey, what are you guys doing after this?” Harry asks the group of girls.

They all look amongst each other with wide eyes and shake their heads as they all start talking at once and insist they’ve got no plans for anything.

“Do you guys want to go to an amusement park with me?”

The girls start screeching and jumping up and down and yelling “Are you serious?!” to each other, and Harry just grins at them all. Niall pauses from where he’s taking a selfie with one of the girls, and shakes his head at Harry.

“What are you talking about mate? We have to get down to the arena,” And he’s smiling and still seems relaxed, but Harry knows he’s immensely confused as to why he’d just proposed that to a group of fans in the middle of Las Vegas.

“No, I really want to go to that one park. And I figure why not take these nice girls with me?”

The screeching from the girls gets even louder and Niall’s smile fades. He pulls in close to Harry and tries to keep his voice down so he isn’t heard by anyone else. “Are you insane? You can’t go to a fucking amusement park with these girls, it will be all over Twitter in a minute and you’ll be hounded by thousands of people in no time. And you know if you’re late to rehearsal the suits will have your head on a platter.”

Harry shakes his head and keeps his cool, patting Niall’s shoulder. “Relax, man. I’ll take security with me. It’ll be fine,”

Niall shakes his head and looks at Harry as if he’s just eaten the last slice of Niall’s favorite cheesecake. “You’re insane, but suit yourself” he says. “If you’re going down, I’m not going down with you.” He heads back into the restaurant to call another car, and Harry manages to squeeze himself and nine teenage girls into the Range Rover that drove them this morning. The girls are slightly sullen that Niall didn’t join the party, but soon Harry switches on Top 40 radio and the entire car is belting out Bang Bang and screeching with laughter.

And that’s how Harry Styles spends his day at Adventuredome with nine fans. It’s absolute chaos at first, but once Harry calms them down and tells them if they keep their cool he’ll make sure each of them gets one-on-one time, it gets a little more controlled. He politely asks them to keep their little tryst off social media, and they’re so excited to even be breathing the same air as him that they easily promise not to until afterwards. They end up being a fun bunch, and Harry enjoys himself more than he thought he would. He takes turns pairing up for rides with each girl, and they’re all brave enough to try even the craziest coasters. Word doesn’t get out for a while, but eventually he’s spotted by someone else and at one point the swarm does begin. Soon there are even BuzzFeed articles about Harry Styles taking a few lucky Vegas fans on a magical day of fun. He’s annoyed at that. He didn’t mean to do this for press or attention. He just wanted to have fun, and he wanted something new.

Once the swarm gets too hectic, they all leave. Harry drops the girls off at the same pancake restaurant and thanks them for an incredible day. They’ve all simmered down considerably from the beginning, but they’re still emotional when they say goodbye and some of them even cry as they thank him for “changing their lives.” He’s smiling to himself as the car drives away, and it’s a strange feeling. He hasn’t smiled by himself in a long time.

When he gets to the arena, he knows how late it is. Judging by previous days, he knows the boys should have already done rehearsals and be getting dressed and ready for the show. He knows he’ll be in trouble for missing it all.

In the dressing room he’s greeted with a plethora of “What the fuck’s?” but one of the managers comes up to him and pats his shoulder.

“Well done, Harry,” he grins. “Everyone on social media is talking about Harry’s Vegas Fan Day. You did good son,” he nods before shuffling away. And Harry can’t believe it. As Lou grabs him and forces him into a chair to start styling his hair, he looks blankly at his reflection in the mirror. Everyone in the room is back to focusing on what they were doing before he entered the room. Did anyone even care that he was gone? Did anyone even care that he missed sound check and that he’s not ready for the show at all? Does no one have anything else to say?

He doesn’t know why he feels like he wants a reaction, but he does. Trying something new was good, and it made him feel good, but he wants to rock the boat a little bit more. He wants to see how far he can push his limits until people start snapping. Because someone has to snap soon, something’s got to give or Harry’s going to officially be off his rocker.

That night Taylor texts him and tells him how cool she thought it was that he took the girls to the amusement park. He smiles and feels glad to have her approval, but nevertheless he remains focused on his big plans for the next day. The world isn’t gonna know what hit it.

X

Harry’s out of his room the next morning before Niall can wake him up. He heads down to the hotel bar and orders a drink, ignoring the polite “It’s 7 am, sir,” he gets from the bartender. If today’s going to go like he has planned, he needs to be spectacularly wasted.

Once he’s sufficiently pissed, a car takes him to the arena. In the dressing room, a suit asks them all the protocol questions about the performance. If anyone notices he’s drunk from his demeanor or breath smell, no one says anything.

“Alright, and do you guys want to do red carpet?” the manager asks without looking up from typing something on his iPhone.

“No.” the other four boys say in unison.

“Yes, I would quite like doing the carpet,” Harry states with a smirk. Everyone turns to stare at him.

The manager had been expecting a solid ‘no,’ so he doesn’t really know how to respond. “Um, well, uh…boys?” He looks around expectantly at the others.

“We hate doing carpet, Harry,” Liam looks at him pointedly.

“Come on, please? We could talk about the new album,” And he knows that’s a keyword to get the manager on board, and that since Harry’s up for it the others can be convinced as well.

“Harry’s right, it will be good for you all. Let’s schedule it then,” The manager gets up to make a phone call and the lads all groan and turn to look at Harry.

“What’s your deal, mate? We hate doing interviews,” Louis says, evidently frustrated.

“It will be fun, trust me,” Harry grins slyly and gets up to rummage through Caroline’s bag for some gum. He doesn’t want anyone to catch his whiskey breath and spoil his plan.

People began noticing something was weird during rehearsal. Harry could barely get his lyrics straight, and though even sober he stumbles about the stage less than gracefully, he was even more a mess today. Zayn pulled him aside midway to ask him what was up, but he shook him off and insisted he was fine.

On the red carpet, he can barely keep his eyes open at all the flashes. The five of them pose for a bit before heading over to talk to Elvis Duran.

“So, boys, tell us about the upcoming album?”

Liam takes the hit with that one and begins spouting some bullshit about it being a rockier and more mature sound than the last album, his standard go-to answer for the past three years. They answer a few more questions about the songs and the tour as well.

“It seems like you boys are always touring, does it ever get to be too much? Do you ever get tired of it?”

Harry suddenly sweeps in and pulls the mic out of Elvis’ hands.

“Actually, mate, now that you mention it. It gets fucking abysmal,”

Liam’s eyes go wide and Louis bursts into a laugh that’s half nervous and half genuine. Niall reaches over to grab the mic from Harry but he pulls out of his hands and continues. “Touring is awful. Our job is awful. Honest,” He puts a hand over his chest and makes the best solemn face he can muster.

Elvis looks out of sorts. He glances at the others and chuckles, and other reporters and interviewers nearby start leaning in and noticing.

“Well, I’m sure it’s not that bad Harry, come on,” he improvises, but he’s still without a mic and he isn’t sure what to do. Harry walks over to the middle of the carpet.

“Actually, everyone, I want you all to know this. We fucking hate this job. We hate being One Direction and we hate being famous and we hate all of you!”

Zayn’s looking at him kind of enthralled and Louis’ still laughing, as a terrified Liam and Niall look back and forth between Harry and each other, wondering where their team is to stop this.

“We hate the media, and we hate performing the same songs, and we hate not getting a say in any of this. Nobody asks us what we want. Did you ever ask us what we want?” Harry stops and points at a petite, female interviewer, and she doesn’t say anything but motions for her cameraman and whispers, “Are you getting this right now?”

“Honestly, everything’s about the money and nothing’s about the art, and none of us can fucking stand it.” Harry finishes and drops the mic, bowing as he exits the press room. The entire room, which was completely silent the moment before, is suddenly up in arms and yelling at each other. Everyone starts fighting for the attention of the other four boys, but Liam gathers them and pushes them towards the exit as well.

Harry’s in deep shit. Videos of his spiel hit the internet in seconds and he becomes the Worldwide trending topic in even less time. He sits in his dressing room eating an orange as chaos flurries around him. Half of his team is trying desperately to douse the fire, making calls and sending emails, and the other half is spitting curse words at him and hitting him with “How could you be so careless? How could you be so selfish? Do you know how many people look up to you?” And he rolls his eyes and tosses the orange peel onto the floor. Because he knows the suits don’t care about who looks up to him. The suits care about who spends money on him. And if he fucks up, that will end, and they won’t get their percentage anymore. He’s glad to have ruffled their feathers. There are only four opinions he really cares about anyways.

He’s backstage with Niall, Zayn, Liam, and Louis before their set a few hours later. The storm is still raging around him, but the show must go on, and they have to perform as if everything is still okay and Harry didn’t just confess that he hates his career to the world.

“Are you guys mad at me?” he asks and looks around at the four of them. Both the drunkenness from the liquor and the high from his epic speech have worn off, and now he just feels vulnerable and naked standing next to his band mates.

The four of them look at each other for a minute, as if waiting for someone to speak first. Harry thinks he’ll die if someone doesn’t say something soon. Finally, Liam smirks.

“Mate to be honest, that was kind of wicked,” he says to Harry, shaking his head as if he can’t believe what he’s saying. Niall bursts out into one of his loud guffaws, and Louis and Zayn both nod and agree that it was one of the most incredible things they’ve ever witnessed.

Harry lets out a sigh of relief. He knows what he did was fucked up, and part of why he did it is cause he’s sure none of this will matter when he repeats this day tomorrow, but he’s glad to know his boys are on his side. It’s not like he didn’t know they feel the same way about things as he does, it’s just nice to get vocal confirmation, that’s all.

They all agree to maintain a unified front and support Harry’s rebellion by absolutely destroying their performance. Louis fucks up all his lyrics, Liam tries to play Niall’s guitar, Niall spends most of the set step dancing, and Zayn sings more riff’s from the last Miguel album than their own songs. Harry feels like his face is about to rip apart from smiling so wide. They run off the stage mid-song at the end, feeling more alive than they’ve felt in ages. They disappear before they can be lectured by their team and run off to meet Ed at the club. It’s the first time all five of them have been to a party together in years, and Harry feels on top of the world.

On the way home, he stops by Taylor’s hotel instead of going to his own, cause he wants to share tonight with her too. He’s slightly tipsy and he feels unstoppable and he’s pretty sure that he is. After doing all he did tonight, he can do anything, maybe even including telling Taylor how he really feels. Maybe that’s the newest new he can add to his life, being honest with her for once. By the time he knocks on her door he can hardly contain his excitement, but when she opens it standing in leggings and a t-shirt, she doesn’t look happy to see him at all.

“What do you want?”

Harry’s taken aback. “Um….I just wanted to drop by and say hello,”

“Okay. Hello. Anything else?” she says shortly. She’s scowling at him and he’s trying to remember if he did something to mess things up with her, but he’s lived the same day so many times at this point that everything from before is a jumble.

“Um…did I do anything wrong?” he asks.

She raises her eyebrows and shrugs. “I don’t know, what do you think? Do you think you did anything wrong today?”

“Oh,” he nods and smirks. “Did you hear about that? Wasn’t it wild?”

“Wild?” She shakes her head and looks at him as if she pities him. “That wasn’t wild Harry, that was fucking pathetic.”

“What?”

“What you did wasn’t cool or funny. Telling people off like that? Disappointing people and hurting people and letting people down? That’s not wild, that’s being a coward.”

Harry doesn’t understand what she’s saying at all. If anyone should have been on his side for telling the media off, he’d have expected it to be Taylor. After everything they’ve been through, together and apart, she’s the one person who he thought for sure would take his side on this one. And ‘being a coward?’ What he did today took more guts than anything he’s done in his entire life. Albeit, most of it was liquid courage in the form of alcohol. But nonetheless.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he shakes his head. He wishes she would just let him inside as he hates having this conversation while he’s still standing in the hall, but she doesn’t seem like she’ll be inviting him anytime soon. He searches for the right words to say but can’t think of anything clever or compelling, so he settles for, “I didn’t hurt anyone that didn’t deserve to be hurt.”

She laughs bitterly and shakes her head. “That’s just it. Why are you trying to hurt anyone? If you fight fire with fire, both sides get burned.”

And now Harry’s annoyed. “Okay, Confucius. Don’t start writing a song on me, now,”

Her eyebrows shoot to the sky. “Excuse me?”

He narrows his eyes. “What I did took courage, okay? I stood up to the same people that have been walking all over me, all over us, for years. And it felt fucking exhilarating. And tonight was amazing and all I wanted to do was to share it with you, because you’re the one who even told me to try something new in the first place. You said doing the same thing over and over was insanity, and if I wanted to get unstuck I should be new. And I’m trying to fucking be new and I don’t need you telling me that it’s cowardly and that I should stop.”

Taylor shakes her head. “What are you talking about? When did I tell you to ‘be new?’”

“Forget it.” Harry gives her a last look before shrugging and walking away. She seems happy to end the conversation there as it is, evident from her slamming the door once he’s walked off.

He can’t bear going home so he ditches his driver and walks around the strip for a while. It’s always a risk wandering off alone, but he’s past the point of caring. Let them find him. Let the fans find him, let his team who wants to kill him find him, let creepy murderous stalkers find him. Harry’s so over it.

He winds up at the Venetian and the normal crowds have thinned out. Everyone’s either at a casino or a club at this hour, so there’s not too many tourists milling about. He sits down on a bench and stares up at the building’s fake sky.

“What have you done?” he says out loud to himself. He’s starting to realize he must have royally fucked up somewhere along the way for what’s been happening to him to keep happening. He’s not sure he can take another day of this. It’s getting out of hand and he has no idea how to solve it and he can’t even tell anyone to get help without sounding like a lunatic. If only he could make things right. But what does making things right entail? What does ‘right’ even mean, isn’t it all subjective anyways? What is the answer to all of this?

Harry lays down on the bench without taking his eyes off the sky. He closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep.

X

Harry spends the next several days making a mess of everything. One day he gets shitfaced and crashes a bachelorette party at some casino, ending the night marrying one of the bridesmaids in one of those famous chapels. One day he tries to leave the city, thinking that maybe it’s a Vegas thing and that if he can drive far enough away he can escape the clutches of the time loop. He gets to his house in LA, let’s himself in, and spends the night looking at old pictures from his school days in Holmes Chapel. But he still wakes up back in Vegas the next day. Every time he misses his iHeartRadio performance the disappointment he’s faced with is agonizing, so he tries not to do it as often. He tries to do “new” things, but really all he does it fuck things up and hurt people. And when he doesn’t do anything, he just lives the same average day. He’s run out of ideas and he feels absolutely hopeless.

One morning he dodges Niall’s offer of breakfast and insists he has other plans, but once Niall leaves he just gets back in bed and lays there for a few hours. He feels absolutely listless and has no desire to do anything. This is his fate now. This is his destiny. He will wake up every morning in this hotel room and he will perform at the MGM Arena every evening and he will live this way until the day he dies. This has to be okay. He has to come to terms with this and accept this. Maybe this life isn’t so bad. Maybe he’s not even aging? Maybe he won’t die and he’ll just do this for all of eternity. He's going to have to make it work.

A minute later there’s a knock at his door. This is new. he thinks as he gets up to answer it, coming face to face with Ed.

“Hey mate,” Ed greets him and enters the room to sit on his bed.

“Hey. Are you alright?”

“Yep, actually gonna head over to the arena in a bit. Thought you’d already be there, actually.”

“Nah, still here.” Harry shrugs. Still here. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Still always here.

“Well, I’m glad, cause I actually wanted to talk to you about something,”

“Sure, what is it?”

“It’s about Taylor,” Ed says her name slowly as if he’s in a mine field and saying it could cause the entire place to blow up.

Harry looks at him suspiciously and walks over to sit next to him. “What about Taylor?”

“Well, nothing really, I’m just. I’m tired of this sort of dance you two have been doing. I think it’s time you grew a pair and proper asked her out again already.”

Harry’s taken aback by how quickly the conversation escalated. He’s about to start explaining how he’s really messed things up with her the last couple nights, but then he remembers the whole time loop thing. So things with Taylor are still okay. That’s good news, he supposes. As good as news really gets when you live the same day every day.

He tries to approach the subject with Ed anyways. “I don’t know man, I think things are good between us now. And she’s got that killer album coming out and her life’s about to change and she doesn’t have time for anything else right now, you know that,”

Ed chuckles and shakes his head. “Stop making bloody excuses! You’re always trying to find a reason to get out of things. You still love her and she still loves you, why do you insist upon wasting so much time?”

Harry doesn’t really know how to respond to that one. “I’m not wasting time,” he begins. Believe me, if only you knew. I have nothing but time. “And you don’t know that she still loves me, and I can’t fuck it up again, okay? Whatever we have now is safe. So just let it be,”

Ed sighs and lays back onto the bed. “God, when did you get so boring? ‘Whatever we have is safe,’” he mocks. “I miss the old Harry.”

Harry picks at his fingernail to avoid eye contact. “Yeah well, me too.”

They don’t talk for a bit after that, and Harry knows he’ll have to leave for rehearsals soon. He knows how every following tick of the clock pans out, and he knows how everything starts and everything ends. He knows what every person will say to him today, and he knows that Lou will run out of hairspray halfway through Zayn’s hair, and he knows Cal will have forgotten one of his camera lenses at the hotel, and he knows at exactly which moment Niall will trip over a chord on stage tonight. And the thought of all of that makes him almost lose his mind, if he hasn’t already anyway. So he can’t keep it in any longer.

“Ed,” he says abruptly. “I need your help,”

Ed looks over at him. “Yeah?”

“I…I have to tell you something, and you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I’m going to do it anyways. Because nothing really matters at this point, so I’m just gonna go for it.”

“Okay….” Ed barely gets the word out as he tries to see what Harry is getting at.

“Alright. Don’t talk until I’m finished okay?” Ed nods. “Okay. Well basically, I’ve been living the same day over and over.” Harry pauses for effect before continuing. “I’ve been waking up every single day and it’s always today. And I do the same thing give or take, and I’ve performed that fucking iHeartRadio set like a million times. And I’ve also done some pretty dumb things as well, and I kind of half did them to get a reaction out of people and half did them cause I knew none of it would matter, cause the next day I’d wake up and I’d just be at square one again. And I want out of this, big time. But I have no idea how to get out of it. I just keep living this day and I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

Ed silently stares at him as he speaks and once he’s finished, just keeps staring for a whole minute.

“Mate, are you stoned?” he finally gets out.

Harry exasperatedly sighs. “No,” He defeatedly flops back on the bed to lay next to Ed. “It’s okay if you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either. Let’s forget I said anything, okay?”

But Ed isn’t satisfied. He props up on his elbow and curiously looks at Harry. “Are you being serious right now? Like, serious serious?”

“Serious as the plague, sir” Harry nods.

“Wow….wow.” Ed lays back down and it’s quiet again. Harry doesn’t know if Ed actually does believe him or not, but he figures it’s a decent enough reaction for now. They both stare at the ceiling for a few minutes.

“So you’ve done this day, like, more than once?” Ed finally speaks up again.

“Yes, Ed. Like many times.” Harry chuckles.

“Hmm,”

And Harry doesn’t know what else to say to him, or what he was expecting Ed to say in the first place. Sure, Ed is wise and all-knowing, but what advice can he really offer him at this point? What help can anyone give him? Regardless, it was nice getting it off his chest.

“I just wish that God or whoever is doing this to me could’ve chosen a different day, to be honest,” Harry finally muses. “Maybe the day me and the lads got put together as a band, that was sick. Or the day we played at Madison Square.”

Ed laughs quietly to himself and shakes his head.

“What?” Harry prods.

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me why you’re laughing. You don’t believe me do you, you think I’m taking the piss,”

“No, no, it’s not that really,” Ed insists. “It’s just that…it’s funny to me, kind of. You’re Harry Styles. You’re an international pop star with a sick life. I mean, granted, we all have our shit days. But I feel like, on average, there shouldn’t be a single day you don’t want to repeat.”

Harry turns his head to look at Ed. “Well, I mean yeah, life is good but. I dunno, I’m just kind of sick of some things I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Ed shrugs, but he seems unmoved. Harry turns back to look at the ceiling and suddenly feels stupid. This is what you get for complaining about things. This is why you keep it in and act like everything’s peachy. This is why do or die you keep your game face on and act like everything’s just fine even if it’s all burning down around you. But it’s too late to go back now, and he’s already said too much, so he might as well keep going.

“You mean to tell me,” he begins. “That if you had any average day of your life repeated, you’d enjoy it?”

Ed nods. “Honestly, yeah. I mean look at us mate, we’re in fucking Vegas playing at one of the biggest shows on earth. We’ve literally made it. It doesn’t get better than this. I don’t have anything to complain about.”

It hits Harry kind of like a punch in the gut. Leave it to Ed to be wise and all-knowing even in the most insane situations. He knows he’s absolutely right. Harry’s life is fucking ace by any standards. He has what he’s always wanted. But why does it feel so fucked? When did the list of “This is why my life sucks” become ten times longer than “This is why I’m the luckiest man alive?” When did he start being so repelled by everything? When did the flame die and when did he stop being in love with it all? He thinks back to what Taylor said about the “newness.” He thinks he might finally know what she means and what he should do.

After thanking Ed profusely and insisting he’ll be okay, Harry gets dressed and the two of them head to the arena together. He goes through prep, sound check, and styling, and that night the performance goes well, as usual.

Right before they get ready to sing Best Song Ever and close it out, Harry starts talking to the audience.

“Thank you, Las Vegas, it’s been an absolute pleasure singing for you beautiful people tonight.” he speaks to the roaring crowd. “We’ve got one more song for you, and it’s kind of an oldie but goodie, if you will. We never got to play this one live actually, and I know a lot of fans out there really loved it, so here it is now and if you know the words, please sing along.”

The rest of the lads look amongst each other, obviously very lost. Harry jogs on over to where Sandy is at the keyboard and whispers in his ear. Sandy looks tentative for a minute, but after a moment he seems to be won over and nods his head.

“Alright, everybody,” Harry shouts. “This one’s They Don’t Know About Us!”

Sandy starts playing the opening piano notes and the entire arena bursts into screams. Harry wasn’t even expecting that kind of a reaction from the people here. This was more for all the fans back home than anything.

He looks over at Liam and nods for him to start the opening verse. Liam shrugs his shoulders as if to say “Why not?” and then lifts his mic to start singing. Harry laughs out loud and smiles at the others.

They’ve never performed it live once and they didn’t rehearse it at all, but somehow it goes off without a hitch. The rest of the instrumental band catches on fast, and it’s all a big laugh. Zayn fucking kills the last chorus, and Harry thinks it must be the most genuine fun any of them have had performing since the Up All Night tour. They end the song to roaring screams and run off on some kind of high.

“That was a brilliant idea, Haz,” Niall laughs as he slaps Harry’s shoulder. The rest of the boys agree and they’re all high-fiving and smothering Harry with hugs and sloppy kisses.

“Thanks, thank you,” he tells them all.

Niall pinches his cheeks. “You gonna come party with me and Ed tonight?”

“Nah,” Harry shakes his head and grins. “I’ve got somewhere else I need to be.”

Harry’s sweating by the time he gets to Taylor’s hotel room, just cause he remembers what happened here last time and he doesn’t want to fuck it up again.

“Just be cool,” he whispers to himself before knocking on the door. She opens the door and smiles when she sees him, which is already a good sign.

They spend the night ordering room service and messing around on her guitars. Taylor practices throwing grapes into Harry’s mouth, and he lets her braid his hair, and they fight over what to watch on TV. He tells her all about the band’s impromptu performance and she gushes over how incredible it was. He shows her how he much he’s progressed in learning the chords thanks to Niall’s patient guitar lessons, and she’s impressed.

He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor and strumming a really simple melody as Taylor lays with her back on the ground and her head near his knee.

“You know,” she begins. “You never said what you think about it,”

Harry stops strumming. “About what?”

She looks up at him. “Don’t stop playing,” she says gently. He slowly smiles and starts again.

“About the new album.” she finally says. “With all the songs about you,”

“Oh,” Harry says quietly. And he wants to put the guitar down and have a proper conversation, but if Taylor likes the melody he’ll keep playing it. If Taylor likes the melody he’ll keep playing it every day for the rest of his life.

“You know what I think about it,” he responds. He looks down at her face for a reaction, but she’s closed her eyes, so he keeps talking. “I think it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. I think it’s one of the best things anyone has ever done. And I think…I feel very honored to have played a tiny, miniscule part in its creation.”

Her eyes flutter open and she laughs. From where they’re positioned, he’s sitting and looking down at her face and it’s upside down and seems kind of distorted. Her smile looks like a frown and her nose is upturned. The only thing that looks normal are her piercing ocean blue eyes. So Harry just focuses on staring at them.

“I guess I should thank you if I win any awards for it then, huh? ‘Thank you to Harry Styles for inspiring my magnum opus.’” she mimics as she motions accepting an imaginary award, leaving them both giggling.

“I wouldn’t accept anything less,” he smiles. They both stare at each other for a second. Harry wonders what she sees, what he must look like from upside down. He wonders if everything is distorted but his eyes too. She always loved his eyes most, it felt like.

“You know,” Harry breaks the silence. “I’ve always wanted to write a song with you.”

Taylor’s eyes widen. “Really?”

Harry resists pushing back a blonde strand of her hair from where it's resting on her forehead. “Yes, really. Why are you acting so surprised? You’re easily the greatest songwriter of our generation,” He puts on a phony accent when he says the last part to be goofy, but he’s not even close to kidding.

Taylor laughs and looks away, finally breaking their eye contact.

“Well, maybe someday we will,” she says, and she sounds as hopeful about it as Harry feels. She gets up and goes to get her other guitar before sitting down on the floor right next to Harry again. He’s been playing that same, simple melody this entire time, so she starts trying to improvise something on her own guitar that fits with it. Before long they’ve got a nice little harmony going. Part of the song is in B Minor so it sounds a little sad, but for the most part Harry thinks it’s one of the most beautiful things he’s ever heard.

“Taylor,” he says and abruptly stops playing. She looks up at him but doesn’t stop playing herself.

“I miss you,” he says.

“I’m right here, Harry,” she smiles at him and looks back at her fingers on the guitar.

“No, I miss you. You know what I mean,”

She stops her own melody and looks back up at him. She doesn’t say anything but she looks terrified. “Don’t say that,” she whispers.

“I have to,” his voice slightly breaks as he shakes his head. “I have to say it. I miss you and I miss you all the time and I’m still in love with you. And I think you know that and I know it too so I think we should do something about it.”

She looks down at the ground but she’s smiling, thank God. He scoots closer to her and pulls the guitar from her hands, and she lets go of it willingly. She looks up to search his face, her eyes darting around it as if he’s possibly hiding something behind it, deep within his skull. That’s what a lot of their relationship has always been, trying to figure out what the other is thinking, and what they’re not saying, and how they’re really feeling. Harry doesn’t want to do any of it anymore. He wants to spend the rest of his life letting her in on every little part of him. And if he’s destined to live this day over and over for all of eternity, he wants to spend it trying to win her back every day. He funnily enough can’t think of anything else he’d rather do.

“I love you too, Harry,” she finally breathes out. “You know I do.”

It’s so good to hear those words come out of her mouth, and Harry can’t help himself as he cups her face and leans in to kiss her. It’s a slow kiss, chaste at first but then slightly open-mouthed. Neither of them are really looking for anything overtly passionate tonight, this just felt right.

But then she pulls away and shakes her head. “We shouldn’t. I can’t,”

Harry shakes his head. “What do you mean you can’t? You just did,” he smirks.

“No,” Taylor laughs. “I don’t think I’m ready. I’m just not sure.”

Harry nods firmly. “Alright. We’ll wait until you’re ready.”

And she looks up at him like she hadn’t been expecting him to say those words, and it seems like a load has been lifted off her shoulders. She whispers “Thank you,” and presses another light kiss to his lips before getting up and putting the guitars away. They cuddle and talk for a bit longer before Harry leaves and heads back to his own hotel.

Once he’s in his own bed, he stares up at the ceiling for a minute before he goes to sleep. He can live every day trying to get her back. He can live every day trying to make his life better. And maybe one day it finally will be.

X

Harry wakes up to Niall banging on his door. He gets dressed and they head down for breakfast, and Harry feels good. He feels good about life even if it’s the same day for the millionth time in a row. He feels like he must be figuring it out, and even if he’s not, he doesn’t mind trying out different scenarios to feel like he is. It’s the most sense he’s made out of his entire time loop situation since it first began.

When they walk past the little girl with the guitar in the lobby and she calls out their names, Harry stops to talk to her.

“Hi love, are you alright?” he kneels next to her.

She looks down at her feet and nods, then stares up at him with big, brown eyes through her long eyelashes.

“Hey, sick guitar!” Niall grins and lightly runs his fingers over the strings.

“What’s your name?” Harry asks her.

“Emma,” she says quietly, more to her guitar than to either of them.

“Hi Emma, I’m Harry.” He holds out his hand for her to shake it, and she takes it. Her hands feel so tiny in his.

“Do you know how to play anything, Emma?”

She shakes her head. “No,”

Harry raises his eyebrows. “Oh, well we can’t have that Emma, can we? I’m not sure we can,”

He insists Niall go get breakfast without him and spends the rest of his morning teaching Emma a few basic chords in the lobby. Her fingers are so tiny so she struggles with the ones that require a lot of stretching, but for the most part she seems to catch on fast. Once her initial shyness wears off, she looks at Harry like he puts the sun in the sky and keeps squealing on about how this is the best day of her life.

“Do you like to sing, Emma?” he asks her at one point.

She nods her head. “I love singing. I love singing your songs, specially,”

“Really? That’s a coincidence, because I love hearing you play. Looks like we’re both each other’s fans,” he laughs as he lightly bops her nose.

That night at the iHeartRadio performance, before the last song, Harry speaks to the crowd.

“Thank you Las Vegas, you guys have been brilliant tonight.” he announces to the screams. “Before we leave you, we’ve got one more song, and we’ve actually got a very special guest here with us to help us sing it. Ladies and gentleman, can you please give a warm Vegas welcome to one of my dearest friends, Emma!”

The tiny girl teeters onto the stage holding her guitar in front of her with two hands and looking at the thousands of people in the crowd like she’s just seen a ghost. Harry chuckles and walks over to kneel next to her.

“Just like we practiced, okay?” he whispers to her, and she nods with wide eyes.

“Ladies and gentleman, this is Best Song Ever featuring Emma!”

She begins strumming the basic chord and Niall joins her. After Zayn’s bridge, Emma does the chorus with only minimal assistance from the rest of them. The entire arena is awwing at her, and none of the boys can stop smiling. By the end of the song she’d broken out of her shell completely and was even doing Niall’s jumps along with him. It’s one of Harry’s favorite performances he’s ever done.

A few hours later when he’s alone with Taylor in her room, he can’t stop rambling about how it went.

“She just picked up so fast, and she was so adorable with her little hands on her huge guitar. It was one of the most satisfying things ever, helping teach her a few things and then see her on stage? It just felt incredible,”

Taylor hangs on his every word with a huge smile of her own on her face. “Everyone thought it was wonderful too,” she agrees. “No one backstage could stop talking about it.”

Harry grins and picks at his pizza slice for a second before looking up at her. “You know your Music Education Center thing?”

“Yeah?” she questions.

“How did you get that started? I feel like that’s something I’d want to do one day,”

And the biggest smile erupts onto her face as she launches into telling him all about where she started and all she came across. They spend the rest of the night talking about scholarships for kids and different program ideas, and Harry can’t remember feeling this passionate about something in so long.

Some time before the sun’s about to rise, Harry gets up to put on his shoes.

“Wait,” Taylor stops him. “You don’t have to go.”

“I don’t?” He’s not sure if this is a test or not, but he doesn’t put on his other boot and waits for her to say something.

“I mean, you’re already here, and it’s almost morning. Just crash here,” she says nonchalantly, but to Harry it’s the sweetest invitation he’s ever received. He takes off his shoe and climbs back into bed. He’s hesitant to cross any boundaries, but Taylor snuggles up next to him and cuddles around his torso, so he figures it’s all good. He wraps his arms around her and breathes in her flower-y, vanilla-y, mahogany, Taylor-y scent and falls asleep with the biggest grin on his face.

X

Harry wakes up in his own, empty bed. He wrestles with the covers for a second, convinced that maybe there’s a possibility Taylor’s hiding in there somewhere. But he’s all alone, just like he is any other morning. He hangs his head and gets out of bed to look out the window. Another day in paradise. Or hell. Or whatever it is this is.

But no. He knows what he has to do. He thinks he finally knows what he has to do to make it right.

When Niall comes over to get breakfast, he rejects the offer and says he needs a meeting with all the boys immediately.

“Right now? You know they’re all asleep,” Niall insists. But Harry is persistent and together the two of them manage to wake the other three up. Louis looks murderous and Zayn is very clearly miffed, but nevertheless they’re all awake and seated on Liam’s bed.

“Okay,” Harry takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how to say this,”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t say it and we should all go back to bed,” Louis snarls, and Niall shoves him and shushes him. Harry disregards the encounter.

“Basically…I don’t think I want to do this anymore.”

And maybe under any other circumstance with any other group of people, Harry would need to explain exactly what “this” is referring to. But with these four boys, and as is evident by the sudden changes in their expressions, he knows they know exactly what he means.

“What do you mean?” Niall asks, more of an effort to get Harry to continue than to explain what he’s talking about.

“Well, I just feel like it’s sort of run it’s course," Harry begins. "And I don’t think I want this anymore. I want to write music and I think I want to help other people find their talents, so that maybe they can live this life and feel excited and happy about it every day, because those are the people that deserve it. I don’t think I deserve it anymore, at least not like this. And I love you all and you lads are like my brothers. But I don’t want to have to keep pretending it’s all okay, because it’s not, and it’s not what I want and I don’t think it’s what any of you want either. But if I’m wrong, please tell me and I’ll take it back,” he finishes quickly and takes another deep breath.

The other four look at each other glumly without speaking for a minute. Harry feels like his heart is about to rip through his chest and roll onto the floor and out the door and find its way onto a roulette wheel in one of the casinos and just keep spinning and spinning and spinning. If they don’t say something soon he just might reach down his throat and grab his heart himself, just to stop it from pounding so hard.

After what feels like hours, Liam heavily sighs. “Thank God someone said it, I didn’t want to be the first one.”

And then they’re all heaving and breathing out sighs of relief and nervously laughing and patting each other with sweaty palms. They’re all so anxious.

“It hasn’t felt the same in months,” Zayn agrees, and everyone’s surprised to hear him speak so soon in the matter. “More than a year, even,”

They’re all reminiscing on how good it all used to feel and how now it feels more like a chore than anything, and Harry’s so thankful for them. He wants to tell them how amazing it felt to burst out into an impromptu They Don’t Know About Us or to bring Emma out on stage, but he knows they won’t have a clue what he’s on about and it’s better that he keeps that to himself anyways. He knows they’ll be able to figure out that kind of happiness one day on their own too. It’s just probably not destined to be as a part of this group anymore.

That afternoon in their dressing room at the MGM Arena, they get ready to make it official.

“Alright, and do you guys want to do red carpet?” their manager asks without looking up from typing something on his iPhone.

All five boys look at each other, smile, and in unison give a resounding “Yes.”

On the carpet, Liam takes the lead as the spokesperson, as he’s always done best in those situations. After the initial “This next album and tour will be our last as One Direction,” the press room erupts into a circus. Everyone’s pushing microphones and cameras into their faces, and Elvis struggles to maintain his balance and regain control over the moment.

“Are you really telling us all that One Direction is over?” is all he can muster.

Liam nods his head and gently smiles. “We’ll still very much be in each other’s lives, and who knows, maybe we’ll be back again some day in the future. But for now, we all want to do our own thing for a bit.”

They perform like it’s their last time ever. Even though they’ve still got a tour coming up, they know each time they do something for the next few months is going to be the last time they ever do something as a unit. Or at least for a long time. Or at least until tomorrow. Harry muses. If he never gets out of this funk, he’ll figure out more ways to make it work. There are hundreds of possibilities and opportunities, and the future looks so bright. But if this day is all he’s given forever and ever, he can figure out how to make it look bright too. He can spend forever working on making that “I’m the luckiest man alive” list longer. After all, he’s gotten loads of practice in it.

Harry’s silently laying on Taylor’s bed that night as she draws on his arm with a sharpie. He feels the lightest he’s felt since he was a kid.

“That was pretty crazy, what you guys did today,” she muses, frowning in concentration as she focuses on not messing up what she draws. “It was kind of a bomb drop,”

Harry laughs but tries not to move so that he won’t screw up her drawing either. “Yeah, it was kind of a bomb drop on us too. But we were all ready. It was time.”

She doesn’t say anything and just nods, finishing up her work of art. It ends up being two tiny birds with stars and hearts near their beaks. Harry ponders getting it permanently tattooed.

“It’s lovely,” he says gently and smiles at her. Even though she’s finished, she doesn’t show any intention of backing away from how closely she’s nestled on the bed near him.

“I have to tell you something,” he whispers, and rolls over so he’s fully facing her.

She looks excited and anxious and happy and scared all at once, but she quietly replies, “Yeah?”

He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and takes a deep breath. Hopefully the last deep breath he’ll take in a while. Hopefully the last plunge out of a plane without a parachute pack.

“I have to tell you that I love you.” he starts. “And I know we’ve tried it a few times and it always gets messed up but I still love you. I always love you. Even when we fight or when we confuse each other or when there’s a thousand miles between us. You are one of the best parts of my life. You’re the first person I want to tell the news to when anything in my life happens, good or bad. You’re my best friend. And I have to tell you this because I’m making my life new and that means being honest with myself and with everyone around me. So you don’t have to say anything back. But I just had to let you know.”

Taylor blinks back tears and doesn’t say anything, just leans in and kisses him. It’s the sweetest kiss and Harry thinks back to when they shared their actual first kiss at a pool party in Los Angeles over two years ago. And he was so nervous and his palms were sweaty and he had just spent the last three hours trying to impress her, but when they were in the kitchen getting ice she leaned over and kissed him. And then Harry spent the next two years falling in love with her, and he’s pretty sure he’ll spend the following hundred years continuing to fall in love with her, if she’ll let him.

She pulls back but keeps her forehead resting against his. “I love you, Harry.” she replies simply. Harry kisses her again and they fall asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. And that’s that. They don’t talk about the future, or what this means, or what’s going to happen next. All Harry knows is that he loves Taylor, and she loves him, and it’s more than he’ll ever need.

X

Harry wakes up the next morning and slowly blinks his eyes. He’s got a little time before Niall’s going to knock on his door, and he starts trying to figure out if it’s enough time to shower and get dressed beforehand, when he notices a pair of dainty arms wrapped around him from behind. He runs his fingers across them and looks down to see a manicured hand resting near his chest.

“No way….” he whispers. He turns around slowly and comes face to face with a sleeping Taylor. Jolting up he looks at his surroundings, realizing he’s in her room. He’s in her room and he’s with her and it’s the next day. It’s finally tomorrow.

“Holy shit!” he exclaims, freaking out. And Harry cannot contain himself. He wants to jump out of the window and land in the hotel pool and then go streaking down the strip and tell anyone who will listen all about what happened to him. But maybe it didn’t actually happen. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe he stumbled into a black hole and landed in an alternate universe for a few weeks. Either way he doesn’t care.

“What’s wrong with you?” Taylor groans from the bed as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes, having been awakened by Harry’s movement and exclamations. He rushes back to the bed and climbs on top of her, starts smothering her face with kisses.

“Stop it!” she shrieks, but she’s giggling uncontrollably and her arms are wrapped around his neck and she can’t stop smiling.

Harry finally stops for a second, just long enough to tell her “I love you,” before gently kissing her nose and her eyelids.

“I know that, you told me already,” she smirks, and leans up to capture his lips. And Harry can’t wait. He can’t wait to live today and then hopefully live tomorrow and the next day too. He can’t wait to be with Taylor and try it again and try until they get it right. He can’t wait for his new career, to start figuring out how exactly he wants to be involved and what he can do to make people’s dreams come true, and he can’t wait to feel passionate about music again. He just can’t wait to do any of it.

He looks into Taylor’s eyes and thinks spending the rest of the morning memorizing them is a good place to start. “I’m the luckiest man alive,” he whispers.

And the funny thing is? He actually means it.

Fin.