Joy of Missing Out

Chapter 9: Maybe we're fireproof

We were three months late for the Rio carnival but Harry obviously dressed in spirit of it. We had arrived from Montevideo in the early morning - we went to bed around 4 am - but the fatigue apparently hadn't stopped Harry's experimental fashion sense to activate when he wore silky red pajamas to bed. I honestly forgot about it so it freaked me out when we woke up six hours later. The alarm woke me up first. Harry was just waking up and every time he moved I got a glimpse of his bottom pajamas. It was too hot in Rio so he took off his shirt during the night. I lifted the sheets to make sure I wasn't still dreaming. He felt the breeze so he moved and opened his eyes.

"Good morning," Harry said while stretching in the bed, then clasped my hand on his chest, his eyes yet again closed and his voice hoarse.

"Slept well in...that?" I asked ironically.

"Like a baby! Until it became too hot."

"I don't mind you without it," I teased him. He smiled.

Liam texted me asking if we were up. We had to go down, have breakfast and then go sightseeing until we're swarmed by fans. Harry was putting on his clothes in the bathroom. Liam and Zayn entered our room.

"You really are messy, aren't you?" Liam scolded me.

"No, Harry is," I blamed him, but it was obviously all my stuff on the floor. They always complained about it but it was like that because there were two people in a room, Harry had lots of outfits and I was just naturally messy. Come to think of it, sharing a room with Harry financially benefited us all. I bet we got at least a penny more for not booking another room we wouldn't use anyways.

"Innit! Where is he?" Liam asked.

"In the bathroom. Where's Niall?"

"He's difficult to reach in the morning so we got Paul to go and wake him up."

"Goddamn!" Zayn exclaimed when Harry walked in. Of course he was wearing something crazy.

"No, absolutely not"

"What's wrong with red leather?" I think he felt those words coming out of his mouth sounded wrong and he could read our faces telling him it definitely looked wrong.

"What's not? Come on, if you ditch it, you can ask me to do anything and I won't say no. But, like, one thing. Once," I wanted to be clear.

"Fair deal," the conservative Liam agreed.

Harry gave it a bit of thinking and finally agreed, with a mischievous smile. "Okay then."

I immediately regretted it. Somehow I forgot about that promise as soon as he changed into the usual black pants and a fedora. He still looked elegant compared to me. The rest of us looked like tourists and Harry could easily walk the carpet in that outfit. There were cameras filming us but also lots of cellphones. Unlike elsewhere, we took pictures with many adults. Of course, Niall wanted to take a selfie of all of us. We took it. Then he dropped his phone down the 2300 feet high mountain. We never saw the photo but the incident made Niall storage everything on iCloud.

"Such a weirdly romantic place. I really want to hug you and hold your hand," I told Harry, aware it is impossible.

"Then give me your hand" he replied and switched his orange juice to his left hand.

"No, we're in public. There's so many cameras."

"Remember what you promised this morning?"

"I gave you one wish and this is how you're using it?"

"I really want to hold your hand too!"

We were leaning over the stone fence. I gave him my hand. I tried not to think about the fact we were doing something we weren't supposed to.

"Isn't it wonderful?" I said, genuinely amazed by the view, not so much the statue.

"You are!" made me smile. "You know, this is a pretty religious place to be. Some of my tattoos are not appropriate here," he said referring to the Bible tattoo which he got in a few months back and which scarcely covered his previous, Things I can't, tattoo. I don't know if many people realized this but by leaving it somewhat transparent he condemned the church and its disapproval of homosexuality. We never wanted to marry in a church anyways. And we love indirect bashing.

We left quickly afterwards but not before taking photos with our arms spread like the statue. We might be worldwide famous but when we go to new places we still act like basic tourists. None of us really enjoyed black coffee but we tried that too. I pressured them into briefly visiting the Maracanã, afterwards we enjoyed a few hours relaxing by the pool and in the evening Harry got a tattoo. We had a few more amazing days in Brazil that by the end of it not only did I grow to like Harry's tattoo but I regretted not getting one myself. Brazil was something! Or is it...Brasil?

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I shame myself for just recently finding out Harry had 'Brasil' tattooed near his butt. Something obviously happened there and it makes it yet another Wellington moment. Unrelated..I did know about this seemingly hand holding so I had to make it into a scene. The chapter photo is an edit, I don't know who made it, but I kept the blurry logo. They are not photoshopped but people around them. It remains a wonderful photo. Maybe Brazil is special because they kind of rebelled by doing this?

Q: To me, they looked really good during WWA tour and by the end of OTRA they just looked all grown up. Do you prefer their boyish looks or the more serious (2015-today) style(s)?