i remember the feeling

 

ok my sister sent me this photo with the text “this photo is giving me very specific vibes,” to which i said “70s SoCal rock vibes?” and she said “yes also something about the hand is giving me kinda skeezy daddy niall vibes??” and then proceeded to ignore all of my texts demanding MORE HEADCANONS AND A FULL FIC OUTLINE. but SURELY WE CAN DO THIS OURSELVES. help me friends!!

here are my initial thoughts.

as you probably know, i LOVE trashbag!1d in fic. i had never considered a trashbag!niall before, probably because my two favorite fics in this genre, do you wanna and proper groupie, do not even include niall (or barely include him). SO MY EYES HAD NOT EVEN BEEN OPEN TO THE POSSIBILITY and that feels like a crying shame!!!! i am imagining like, some kinda fic that is not exactly celeb/groupie fic but has celeb/groupie or famous/nonfamous vibes + vague sugar baby vibes. it feels narry to me although i am open to other ships. and it definitely features niall as a kinda older (late 30s maybe?) guitarist in an Eagles-type band and harry as a youngish (19-22 maybe?) kid who moved from some small town to LA a few months back and thinks he's adapted to city life but is 100% still a total innocent. (you'll have to pretend like niall doesn't look totally baby-faced in that picture and imagine him as having a sort of rugged older Californian vibe.) i know nothing about the 1970s but it's the '70s and niall's got a house in laurel canyon and everybody knows his name. I have NO idea what would happen in the plot but harry's a little breathless and wide-eyed and niall's a little weathered, a little jaded, a little distant.

OK you can stop reading there and just speculate in the comments about niall's past if you want!! or you can read this possible outline for the first chapter IDK. im interested in both general speculation about a sugar baby!harry/older famous niall and specific speculation about this version of the plot!!

possibly harry meets niall at some party he's charmed his way into attending? i am kinda thinking that he's hanging out with these LA girls he's met who think he's adorable and let him hang around them, and then louis (who is also older and maybe in niall's band) is out at a club or a restaurant or something and the girls are flirting with him and he invites them to a party at his later. and one of the girls is like "can our friend come?" re: harry and louis looks at harry, kinda sizing him up, and then maybe says something under his breath to whoever he's with, they both laugh, and louis's like "yeah bring him too, got somebody who might like to meet him," kinda smirking as he says it. anyway maybe louis even sends a car for them or something, and when they get to the party the girls head off and harry's left alone at this party where he doesn't know anyone, in this huuuuuuge obscenely gorgeous california mansion, and he keeps seeing famous people and he's just sooo wide-eyed, keeps bumping into people and furniture because he's so busy staring around the room trying to take it all in. he doesn't know anybody but he can tell that a lot of the people there are famous -- some of them he recognizes but a lot of them just have that kinda aura about them, like everybody's intentionally not gaping at them but the intense casualness with which they're not being watched is basically like everyone staring at them... anyway he's just wandering around, hardly able to believe he's there, trying to commit every single detail to memory so he can tell his roommates about it later (zayn? liam? dunkirk boys?).

anyway the whole evening kinda goes by like this, with harry sort of drifting from room to room, drifting around the edges of people's conversations and being sort of coolly acknowledged but not addressed, which is fine by him!! he's totally overwhelmed and just trying to play it cool!!! i think at one point maybe louis is sort of holding court somewhere and spots him drifting past and is like c'mere, and harry goes over to him, and louis makes him sit down next to him and introduces him to like, the fifteen people who are sort of lounging around him, most of them with kinda improbable names or nicknames that harry's never gonna remember, and harry's just kinda dazed and nodding. probably he smokes a little himself when someone passes him a joint even though pot always makes him a little vague and hazy round the edges and horny. louis then seems to forget that he's there, and harry just sort of sits in a daze watching everyone talk, watching louis talk, and maybe louis's got a girl half draped over him and he's got a hand on her thigh but he's got his leg pressed up against harry's just sitting there all hazy and not really following the conversation anymore, just watching louis talk, feeling the warmth of his thigh against harry's. and he's kinda working himself up to developing a crush on louis, watching louis talk, thinking about louis's thighs, thinking about louis's dick, thinking about sliding to his knees and getting his mouth on him later. maybe fantasizing about doing it now, even, with all these people around watching, louis's hand in his hair, pulling a little.

ANYWAY harry definitely starts getting an inopportune boner and is like umm.... i gotta... be right back, and louis, who's got this lazy smug grin on his face again like he can tell exactly what harry's been thinking about, makes some joke and everyone laughs. maybe he's also like, don't leave yet, kid, i want you to meet someone, and harry, who's blushing now, is like ok!! and flees the room.

somehow he runs into niall who’s somewhere else in the house on his own? maybe harry wanders into one of the unused bedrooms looking for a bathroom and then after he sees that the balcony door is open and he steps out to look at the view and niall’s sitting out there in the dark drinking and watching the waves break on the shore. when Niall sees Harry in the dark he gives a little jerk of surprise, like something's startled him badly, and almost knocks over whatever he's drinking. Harry recognizes him, goes all wide eyed and confused and clumsy again, and is like sorry! sorry!!!!! and then niall looks at him again and seems to really see him this time. he seems to sot of shake out of something and is gruffly like, it's fine, sorry, thought you were someone else.

harry offers to go, but niall's like no it's ok, stay if you like. and it feels awkward to leave so harry sits down near him and they watch the ocean together for a while. harry's kinda watching Niall out of the corner of his eye, because he's not a fan fan but he knows exactly who niall is and he's trying to be casual and cool about it like the people at the party but is failing miserably. except he notices that niall keeps stealing looks at him too, almost like he can't help it, and harry's internally like "hmmm. HMM!!! very interesting!!!!" and takes it as a cue to start flirting a little, because he probably is not going to get to suck louis off tonight but maybe he can still hook up with a famous person before he has to go back to his real life, which is much less exciting.

idk maybe they start talking. niall's quiet and doesn't contribute much to the conversation but he's a good listener, and every time harry stops talking he asks some question that sends harry off again, and harry winds up telling him all about his hometown and moving to LA and the dishwashing job he's doing until he can make it big in acting or something (he has no idea what he wants to do, he just has vague romantic notions about LA and being in a profession where his job is to be adored). and he just sort of talks and talks, with a bit of bravado mixed in because he wants niall to think he's worldly and sophisticated and unfazed like everyone else at the party. but he's got this earnestness and he even makes niall laugh a couple times. but then at one point he realizes he's been talking for a long time and niall's probably just being polite, and he gets a little self-conscious and is like 'sorry' and niall's like 'for what?' and harry doesn't know how to say 'for boring you, probably' so he just sort of awkwardly ignores it, and then casts around for something to say instead and settles on asking niall who he was expecting. niall's like 'what do you mean?' and harry's like 'when i came out here you thought i was someone else, who were you expecti

except that somehow it's the Wrong Thing to say. immediately niall goes all reserved and distant again, and harry hadn't realized how much niall had relaxed in the space of their conversation until suddenly his walls go up again. harry's confused and tries to muddle through an apology, but niall just sort of brushes it off and is like 'you're probably missing the party' in a way that's clearly like, you should go now. but harry doesn't want to go!!!!! anyway i think maybe he sort of panics and decides to just GO FOR IT, i don't think he would actually kiss niall but maybe he puts his hand on niall's thigh, pretty high up, and then Looks at him. and niall kinda freezes, and there's this half second where harry's afraid he got that wrong too and he doesn't know if niall's going to be angry or have a gay panic moment and his mind's kinda spinning off thinking about what might happen, and then niall kinda surges forward and puts a hand on the back of harry's head and kisses him, not gently, and things get very heated very fast. it's very intense, and there's this weird undertone to it -- it's not at all violent or dub con-y, but it's rougher and more impersonal than harry was expecting, and niall's just a bit like.. idk. like on the balcony when they'd been talking harry had had this feeling sometimes that he'd taken niall by surprise -- he'd made him laugh when he wasn't expecting to, or said something that niall hadn't expected to hear, and it had made niall sort of focus on him and look at him like he was really seeing harry, and was surprised by what he saw. and it had sort of thrilled harry, this feeling of being sort of the focus of niall's attention like that. but now that they're hooking up it's sort of like niall's not focused on him anymore? (i can't decide if niall is thinking about the person harry reminds him of and responding to his feelings about that person in this scene, or if he's just had a lot of sex with people who want to sleep with him because he's famous and he's just kinda falling into the role he usually plays in these casual, kinda ultimately meaningless sexual encounters. possibly some combination of both!! im still getting a feel for his character.)

anyway it's hot but also it's all happening very fast, and probably harry goes down on niall on the balcony and that's excellent and he feels very accomplished and worldly bc look at him, blowing a celeb at his very first real famous LA party!! but then niall's like 'can I fuck you, i want to fuck you,' and harry is like yes, 100%, immediately, but once they get inside he starts getting a little nervous because actually he has not done this part before!! but possibly he has sliiiiightly misled niall on that front, aka sort of exaggerated / embellished his sexual history in the attempt to impress niall. and he is definitely game to have sex but also is nervous and hiding it, possibly by being even more like 'i know EXACTLY what i'm doing, obviously, ahaha! very good at sex, that's me! experienced lover harry styles!' and he sort of rushes through the prep and then when they actually start having sex it hurts a lot more than he expected and he can't relax but he doesn't want to stop because he doesn't want to mess up!! except then he winds up getting overwhelmed and sort of freaking out a little, bc Feelings!!! and niall's like 'whoa what ok let's just - let's stop' and harry's like 'NO KEEP GOING' bc he's just being stupid obviously and he doesn't want to fail at losing his gay virginity to a famous rockstar who's probably slept with so many people!!! but it's not ok and now he's gotten himself all worked up and niall's like 'ok actually let's just.. take a break yeah' and goes to get him a glass of water.

when harry's calmed down a bit he's soooo embarrassed and gets tearful again over it. at this point niall is still concerned, but also pretty convinced that harry's got a few screws loose and probably it would be best to just disentangle himself from this situation before things get any weirder. except that idk they have some kind of moment and harry just ditches the worldly act altogether, confesses that he has no idea what he's doing, and also winds up having a lot of Feelings, and it's so earnest and just.. obviously genuine that niall once again seems to be kinda taken by surprise? and once again it's like he's still kind of reserved/not exactly warm or forthcoming, but harry's willingness to be very unselfconscious and unguarded in front of him sort of makes him respond in kind, to an extent. and they get to have a do-over, which I will not describe here bc i actually wrote this part of the sex scene, except to say that it is totally different from what came before and it surprises them both and is weirdly intimate in that narry bizarro soul connection kinda way. 

AND THEN, OF COURSE, HARRY WAKES UP IN THE MORNING AND NIALL IS GONE, and has left him all alone in a strange house, and when harry stumbles out of the bedroom and wanders the house looking for a telephone or the way out he accidentally wanders into the kitchen, where famous rockstar louis tomlinson is sitting in his pants eating breakfast with a girl harry's never seen before, and it is very clear that 1) neither of them knew anyone was still in the house, 2) louis doesn't remember who harry is or much about the previous evening, and 3) niall must've cleared out first thing and definitely did not mention to louis that he'd left harry sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms.

[INSERT REST OF FIC HERE]

hi i promise i did some actual writing today but also i spent an hour texting hannah a long description of an XTREME SLOW BURN narry fic where narry are teen dads together but there is lots of PINING and it takes them YEARS to actually get together!!! OK FIRST HAVE SOME TEEN DAD NARRY VISUALS.
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OK SO. NOW THAT THE SAD NIALL BACKSTORY IS ESTABLISHED, LET'S JUST RAMP UP THAT ANGST SHALL WE??? (previous parts: barry POV/general plot outline is here, part 1 of the niall POV/outline is here.) content warnings in this section for dubcon, emotional manipulation/abuse, and brief, nongraphic mention of physical abuse.

as Meghan suggested, when he meets the older guy at first it’s incredible. maybe he meets him when he’s taken the train into the city or something to go to this record shop, and he’s sitting out in the park or in a café or something, looking at the CDs/records he’s just bought and daydreaming, pretending that he lives in the big city, maybe watching some boys skateboarding across the street or something and imagining what it’d be like if he went to uni here and they were his friends. idk how exactly their first encounter goes but the rich old guy starts talking to him somehow, and realizes pretty fast that niall’s a lonely, lonely kid, and that nobody’s ever really listened to him before. I don’t know how exactly he chooses him, if it’s just luck or chance or whatever, but he keeps asking him questions, drawing him out, seeming interested in the answers.

they talk for so long that niall winds missing his train. the guy offers to drive him home in his fancy car, and then he suggests that they stop for dinner or something, maybe, gets niall a little drunk. niall’s just, like, totally dazed by it all, sort of intoxicated on the interest this guy’s showing him, and the guy’s obviously so rich and well-connected, he’s telling niall all about his collection of records and about the artists he knows, saying casually that he could introduce niall to some of them, maybe, if niall’s ever in the city again… etc. he’s not outright hitting on him, but it’s very suggestive, and he sort of lets his gaze linger, and when he drops niall off he gives niall his business card and maybe writes his home address on the back, tells him to drop by the next weekend and he’ll show him that autographed record he was telling him about or something like that. niall thinks he must just be joking, this guy can’t honestly want to see him again, but then the guy’s like, I’ll send a car for you on Saturday, how does that sound, and niall’s dazedly like, okay, yeah. no, I don’t have any plans.

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wow well... i guess i'm a niall/barry shipper now. i have no idea how it happened. do i regret it? i don't know yet? but how about: a niall/barry au where they’re rentboys with superpowers.

HEAR ME OUT!!!!

it would be loosely misfits-inspired, or set in a verse similar to that. in the first episode of misfits there’s a weird electrical storm. a bunch of people across the city are struck by lightning and develop superpowers as a result, including a group of juvenile delinquents who are doing court-mandated service work at the local community center. the show is SO GOOD, but mostly I just love the concept of kids who have zero interest in Defending the Community getting superpowers and… not being emotionally transformed by them, lol. they just keep being disaffected misfit teenagers with bad attitudes who mostly want to use their powers to get out of having to do any work. except that it turns out that other people have also been affected by the storm, and some of those people are trying to kill them, or kill everybody, or turn the whole city into zombies, or whatever, and the teenagers are like “ughhh are you KIDDING?? fine. FINE!!!!!” and reluctantly use their powers to save the city, but usually in like, very self-centered ways that are still not about the Good of the City but are more in the vein of “this is going to become super fucking annoying if we don’t do something about it, isn’t it.”

(it’s also suuuuch a hilarious take on the “found family” trope, because they do become a little misfit oddball family, obviously, and they care about each other, but they’re also soooo annoyed by each other most of the time, and they form these little shifting sibling alliances against whoever’s being most annoying that week. (like, imagine a found family whose dynamics are less ot5 and more like, harry, zayn, fionn, louis, and liam getting repeatedly thrown into life-or-death situations and having to decide if working together is preferable to dying a gruesome death. and at times everyone (esp fionn and zayn lol) are like “…but is it? IS it preferable?” because everyone is so fucking obnoxious. BUT ALSO THEY LOVE EACH OTHER. IT’S JUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW OK!!!!!!!)

ok but forget all that for now haha, the dunkirk boys/ot5 come in MUCH later. the story starts with barry, who ran away from a shitty foster home situation when he was fifteen, had a very rough go of it at first, but has carved out a little space for himself in the past few years and is doing all right for himself. he’s had a couple jobs here and there, mostly washing dishes in restaurants, but he kept getting let go and left shorthanded, and sex work pays better, especially now that he’s got a handful of regulars. sometimes it’s shit—he’s had his share of bad clients and close calls with the police—but he thinks of it as a job, and he’s never been the type to complain, especially when all he has to do is look to see a dozen people whose luck has been way shittier than his. he’s a bit of a loner—he’s a friendly guy, says hello to people in his building, never has any trouble making friends down at the pub, but he doesn’t let people get too close. his life’s just fine as is, thanks very much, and he’s not looking to be responsible for anyone else. (there’s some more Backstory there, but that's FOR LATER.)

I can’t decide if barry and niall meet before or after the storm. I think the storm happens first, about a week before they meet. barry’s one of the people who gets struck by lightning, but he doesn’t realize that he’s got a power. he doesn’t even fully understand what happened—it felt like he got struck by lightning, but that’s impossible, because he’s pretty sure if he had he’d be dead, all his circuits fried. and he’s not dead, or even hurt, though he skinned his elbow when he fell, and he’s pretty sure his eyebrows got singed a little by—by whatever the hell that was. anyway, he’s not about to go to the a&e and sit around all day waiting for some doctor to tell him there’s nothing the matter with him, so he patches himself up and goes about his day. if he drops dead of a heart attack or something later, well, at least it’s end of the month and he won’t have to pay the landlord next week.

maybe he’s out working one night about a week after the storm. he's got his first job of the night, nothing big, just a quick handjob in the back of some guy’s car. when he gets out of the car, though, he sees this kid hanging around by the corner. the kid’s young—not, like, jailbait young, but eighteen or nineteen, maybe, with a baby face and a jacket that’s way too big with him, makes him look even skinnier. he’s sort of slouched against the streetlight, surveying the street, and he looks unsure of himself but he’s obviously on the pull.

barry’s not gonna be an asshole about it or anything—kid looks scared of his own shadow—but he’s also not gonna let some new guy who doesn’t know the rules take business from him, so. he saunters over and is like [insert casual friendly irish small talk] and the kid’s wary but talks to him, starts to relax just a fraction when he realizes barry’s irish too. they chat for a bit—the kid’s new to the city, like he thought, and he’s cagey enough about where he’d come from and what brought him here that barry thinks there’s probably a story there. he doesn’t ask, though, just keeps it light and friendly, and then after a couple minutes he’s like, all right, well, nice talking to you, if you’re working you’d better try a couple blocks down. And he he watches niall kinda realize that oh, barry’s also working, and this is his block or whatever, he’s not just being friendly, he’s warning niall off. and niall immediately tenses back up, withdraws again. maybe there’s a momentary flash of disappointment in his eyes, but he’s immediately like, right, yeah. okay. sorry, and barry’s like, no worries, guess I’ll see you around. and that’s that. maybe he will see niall around, maybe he won’t. his money’s on won’t, because niall seems like a nice kid and scared shitless, too, and there’s plenty of people out here who’ll smell that on him a mile away. but that’s niall’s lookout, not his.

anyway, niall wanders off and some guy comes by, starts talking to barry, and barry’s talking back, negotiating a price or whatever, when he sees over the guy’s shoulder that some super fancy car has pulled up alongside niall and someone’s talking to him from the driver’s seat. at first barry’s pissed off, because didn’t he just tell niall to keep moving. but then he sees that niall hasn’t stopped walking. he's ignoring whoever’s in the car, but the car’s still following him, just crawling along the curb.

something about it doesn’t sit right with barry. niall's whole posture is defensive: his shoulders hunched, his hands jammed in his pockets. when whoever’s driving reaches out and tries to snag his arm, he jerks away so hard he almost stumbles, catching himself at the last minute. he doesn’t look around him, doesn’t look at whoever’s in the car, just keeps his eyes fixed on the sidewalk. he doesn’t look back at barry, either. like he already knows that nobody’s going to help him.

the guy barry’s been talking to is like, ‘so what, do we have a deal?’

niall’s reached the end of the block and rounded the corner, the car turning smoothly after him. that’s a blind alley down there, no windows onto the street. which niall doesn’t know, obviously, because he’s new.

‘oh, for feck’s sake,’ barry says under his breath.

‘what'd you say to me?’ the guy says, lurching closer like he’s trying to be threatening, breath stinking of whiskey, and barry’s like, ‘oh, piss off,’ and shoves him out of the way, taking off down the street after niall.

OKAY AND THEN STUFF HAPPENS!!!!!! WHO IS THE GUY IN THE CAR????? WHAT'S NIALL'S DEAL???? WHAT KIND OF SUPERPOWER IS BARRY ABOUT TO MANIFEST???? HOW DO THEY MEET UP WITH THE OTHER DUNKIRK BOYS AND WHEN DOES THE REST OF OT5 SHOW UP AND WHAT ARE THEIR POWERS????? THESE ARE QUESTIONS I HAVEN'T ANSWERED YET SO IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS LEMME KNOW. but i am pretty sure I know what niall's superpower is and it's GONNA BE ANGSTY!!! (in misfits the deal is that people's superpowers amplify some aspects of their personalities and are usually tied to like, some deep-rooted insecurity or past regret sooooo that's something to chew on. lol what do you think harry's is gonna be. is there narry in this backstory? time will tell.)