hariana drabbles

041

- Her [part 4/?]

Author: Me (2017)
Summary: Harry and Ariana remain friends after their breakup. Harry's been in relationships after Ariana while she hasn't, or so he thought.

The one where Harry is a little shocked to hear that Ariana's been in a secret relationship for a while now and is eager to know who the new guy is.

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Harry was determined to have a good time. After two drinks he'd lost his bandmates in the crowd, and resolved himself to remain close to a wall so he wouldn't get noticed or crushed.

He was excited to be with Niall again, who he hadn't seen in a while. Drinks with him were a regular thing when the band was touring as they grew closer as friends and colleagues through their taste in music and the direction their solo work was going.

As a teen in a successful band, touring the world with four of your best friends, surrounded by eclectic people, parties weren't uncommon. Though these communal experiences were coupled with fame, a roaring music career, and (what seemed at the time to young Harry) boundless money to go towards the otherworldly cause of, as young Harry would have put it, "Getting so fūcked up that The Rolling Stones are no more than The Tumbling Pebbles.", Harry would argue that some of the best parties he's gone to were the ones that you had to have your name on a list to get in.

Harry reconciles his younger interest in these parties as a means of validation.

It's these parties where the people who attend them matter, and like any teenager struggling with their identity, Harry contributed to his long struggle by pretending to be someone he wasn't. Meeting her brought more clarity to his life. She was someone Harry was so sure about. She taught him new ways to discover himself and things about life that Harry hadn't gotten to wrap his head around because of how fast pace his life was.

Harry likes to make trivial things matter, because it's how he is, and who he is; if it'll help him understand himself, a trivial thing to the world, then he'll take his chances. So, he often thinks about why he went to those parties in the first place, and now, standing in a dark corner with his drink, watching Niall enjoy himself with the young lady who had spent the evening following them around, vying for his attention, Harry sees a distant memory of himself doing the same years before.

Picture Harry, softer features, longer hair, but with somewhat of a harsher passion towards having a good time. Which by the way, he'd typically forget the memory of, but the one night where she stormed straight into his life and never shut the door; annoyingly so, an unforgettable moment in his life that changed him forever.

He remembers her smell the most, embarrassingly enough. She smelt like spring flowers embarking on summer fields, and he learned she was a June baby, but unlike the other June babies he's met in the past, she was the only one who could knock him down with that killer right-hook.

Literally and figuratively speaking, Ariana knew how to put him in his place, and it was something Harry grew quite dependent on. Her voracious habit of being critical about everything, including him, was something Harry learned to admire and desire from time to time.

He loved her blunt honesty, the way she didn't give a fūck about him. Some people were just too nice around him, pouring glasses of praise yet never accompanying it with a slice of critique. Harry's friends weren't like that, and he liked that, because then friendships didn't feel forced, and were more genuine.

All the girls he'd been with before Ariana were like that in the beginning. He thinks some felt the need to tip toe around him at first because of who he was. In the end, it was true for some, and for some others, their intentions were clearly bad from the start and Harry was just too young to care to notice.