Summary: Niall has been best friends with Harry Styles his entire life, even up until now, at the age of 17, when he has to put up with Harry’s hipster tendencies and rather hipster new friends. See, Niall has nothing against hipsters (although he considers himself much more of a mainstream guy), but hanging out with Harry makes him quite wary of befriending one. a ziall one-shot.
“do you mind?” niall snapped, although not as harshly as he wished, but really, when had he ever been able to really snap at anyone?
he almost wished he was able to because he really needed to ace this test at the end of the week and studying with Harry’s obnoxious music was difficult.
the curly-haired lad kept bobbing his head to the very loud beat, his brown hair flopping this way and that with each bob and his large headphones doing very little to contain his nest of a mane.
“harry,” niall tried again, louder this time, and finally, piercing green eyes were focusing on him instead of the worn out novel that Harry had in front of him.
“wah?” harry mumbled, drawing out the syllables and vowels as he paused his music, seemingly annoyed at the interruption.
his long fingers twitched over the play/pause button anxiously.
“the point of noise cancelling headphones isn’t supposed to be that everyone else can hear what you’re listening to,” Niall stated, frustrated that harry’s iHome headphones put harry in his own little world, while also projecting the music loudly to the otherwise silent room.
one would think they’d have figured something out about that before selling the product, but sometimes, little things like that must be too hard to ask of large corporations…queue sarcasm.
“you can hear it?” harry asked, slipping them off his neck and holding them an arm’s length away before pressing play with the finger that had never left the play button in the first place.
as soon as he did, the music reverberated loudly throughout the room- niall’s room, to be specific- and although it wasn’t as loud as speakers, the music was perfectly clear and understandable.
“oh, oops,” harry shrugged, slipping them back over his ears and turning the music down a notch or two, although not nearly enough for the room to be silent like the way niall needed it to be.
he sighed, turning back to the open book in front of him and tackling another maths problem.
fucking maths.
he struggled through a few more problems, trying his hardest to ignore Harry’s obscure music as it seeped through the headphones.
see, harry was crazy about music.
crazy meaning, he spent his weeks either downloading music, finding random unknown bands at random unknown pubs, or thrifting for random unknown bands in sketchy towns.
he just…liked music?
at least that was what niall had concluded.
the curly-haired lad also worked at a little cd/tape/record/coffee shop downtown, and he even dressed the part of the record store worker, wearing random unknown band apparel and skinny jeans tight against his thin legs and ratty converse and occasionally those hipster glasses (harry claimed his were special because they were his grandfathers and all that was left of the actual lenses was a quarter of the right side).
in any case, his love for music meant that when they hung out, which was often, niall had to listen to harry’s random unknown favorite bands because harry claimed niall’s music was too produced and while, sure, the artists (if they could be called that) were talented (meaning they could kinda sing and sorta dance), they didn’t write their own music and the songs weren’t mentally stimulating.
