i remember the feeling

this is a little prequel scene to what a sweet sound it makes. it takes place after this fic, which I did not write but felt so strongly about that i decided to write fix-it fic (plus more hurt/comfort) in that world. this scene takes place after harry’s gotten pregnant (by simon) and decided to have an abortion, without even telling nick he’s had his first heat. now harry’s come home to spend time with nick before the next tour starts, but he's not doing so well, in his head and heart.

alpha!nick, omega!harry. warnings for distorted/depressed thinking and vague allusions to a past dub/noncon encounter with simon.

*

"We’ve talked about this.” Nick’s voice is edged with frustration. "We've been over it a million times. Is that what you’ve been sulking about all week?"

"I'm not." Harry says, stung. "I haven't."

Harry keeps petting Pig's ears, though he can tell, from the way she's twitching them irritably, that she wishes he would stop. He knows Nick's right. He's ruined their two weeks, the last bit of time they'll have together.

When he doesn't say anything, Nick sighs. "I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't - I'm sorry, all right? It's just, it feels like we've barely spoken in months. You're always busy, and then you come home and you're like a zombie or something. You don't want to go anywhere, or see anyone - "

"I think we should break up," Harry says abruptly.

Nick stops pacing. He stares at him.

"What?" he says. "God, we’re just - we’re having a row, that’s all, we're not splitting up."

"I'm going to be gone for eight months," Harry says. "Like you said. It's a long time."

Nick moves closer, sinking into a chair opposite him.

"I know," he says. "But we've managed it before, haven't we? I'll come visit you, and you’ll come back to London when you can, and we can talk every day, if you want."

If you want.

Harry thinks about what he'd wanted, all the things he'd imagined for them. His first heat, the two of them together, Nick easing him through it. And later—when the band ended, when things quieted down—something else, something more. Moving in together and doing it all properly. Waking up next to Nick every morning, Pig curled up at their feet. A baby, maybe, someday. He's gone and ruined it, all of it. Because he was selfish and greedy, thinking only of himself. Because he'd wanted a knot more than he wanted Nick.  

"I'm going to be away," he says again, dumbly, still not looking at Nick. "And I’ve been thinking for a while, we’re not - I  mean, it’s not like this was going to last anyway." It feels like someone's cracking his ribcage open, exposing the softest, most vulnerable parts of him, but he still forces the words out. "And we should probably - I mean, I’m going to want to sleep with other people.”

"Oh," Nick says.

[cross-posted to tumblr]

The first time his body changed he was fifteen, alone in his room late at night, listening to Greg snore through the paper-thin walls. That afternoon, walking home from school, he’d passed the fields where boys from the local high school played pickup games sometimes, skins versus jerseys, kicking a football around for hours across the grassy field. One of Greg’s friends had been there, a boy with fair hair called Conor, stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat. When he saw Niall trudging past he had called his name and lifted a hand to him across the field before turning back to his game, as if they were friends.

Lying in bed that night Niall thought about Conor, about his quick easy smile and the light sheen of sweat on his naked chest. He thought about the broad stretch of his shoulders, kicking the blankets down round his ankles when he started feeling too hot, a restless energy coursing through him. He rolled onto his side first, then his stomach, pressing his hips down into the mattress, then again, as if he was only shifting around trying to settle. Like it didn’t count, not really, so long as he didn’t have a hand on himself.

He’d felt the change coming on that first time, though he hadn’t clocked what it was. He’d been too focused on the pressure against his groin, by the feeling of the soft, worn sheets rubbing against his belly where his sleep shirt rode up with each roll of his hips. He’d cleaned himself up after, cramming his pants down at the very bottom of his laundry hamper—not that anyone would find then, he did his own washing by then—and then passed out. When he’d woken a few hours later, just like that: no dick.

It doesn’t bear thinking about, that first morning. He hadn’t gone to school that day, had simply locked himself in his room and prayed, genuinely prayed, for the first time in years–not the mumbled recitations of chapel but a frantic bargaining with the divine: please god please god don’t do this please i’ll do anything i’ll be good i’ll never look at a boy again. Because of course it was an act of God. Divine retribution, he’d thought most likely. The only conceivable alternative was that he was being tapped for sainthood, and Niall thought that all the not-quite-wanking he did over boys like Conor probably excluded him from the latter.

He went down to the shops, dressed in a huge, bulky jumper that used to belong to Greg, keeping his head down in hopes that no one would notice that his face was a bit fuller, softer, than it had been. The Ace bandage was an inspired purchase, discovered in a little display of sports injury-related goods.

Back in his locked bedroom he’d stripped down to his pants, careful not to glance down at himself too long, lest showing interest in this naked body be weighed against him in the final calculus of his sins. It had been awkward at first, getting the bindings right. The first time he’d left the bindings too loose; the second time too tight, so that it felt as if an iron band was closing round his lungs, compressing them, crushing them. After a few more efforts, though, his chest was as near to flat under a shirt as he could get it, and he could breathe, more or less.

He’d expected to get a hiding for cutting classes. The school must’ve called his dad at work. But at eight when Bobby got home, he collapsed onto the sofa in front of the telly without mentioning it. It hadn’t been until he saw the cold syrup Niall’s arranged on the bathroom counter that he seemed to remember. But it’s the bandage wrapper, dropped carelessly into the wastepaper basket, that catches his attention.

“I thought you said it was your throat was hurting,” he said, showing it to Niall.

Niall swallowed. “Knee too,” he said. “Just thought - if I was going down to the shops already.”

Bobby hadn’t responded to that. He just looked at the torn plastic packaging in hi hands for a long moment, a frown creasing his forehead. He looked tired, exhaustion written plain on his face, but there was something else in it too, a sadness Niall hadn’t then understood.

“You’ll go tomorrow,” he said finally. “If you’re well enough to be down at the shops, you’re well enough for school.”

“Yes sir,” Niall said, and then fled, though whether from punishment or the threat of some new revelation, he hadn't been sure.

just reposting this other snippet I wrote in the BSG nouis verse, then I'll post a little snippet of the drabble I stayed up till 3am last night feverishly writing lol.

*

for this prompt, I wrote a little excerpt from a Battlestar Galactica AU. basically all you need to know is that the Cylons (a race of artificial intelligence created by man) have exterminated all of humankind except the ~45,000 survivors on board the Galactica and across the Colonial Fleet. New Cylon (“toaster”) models who perfectly imitate human beings have infiltrated the fleet, making it difficult to tell friend from foe. In this drabble, Louis is the captain of the Command Air Group and the fleet's most daring Viper pilot. Niall is a mechanic, far below Louis in rank, and Louis’ best friend/sometimes lover.
 

things you said when you were hurting

“Maybe they can feel stuff too,” Niall says, listing against Louis’s side. He takes a swig from the bottle of moonshine, grimacing at he swallows. “If they look like us.”

“Give me that.” Louis snags the bottle out of his hands. “Reckon you’ve had enough for tonight, if you’ve started thinking toasters have fracking feelings.”

“Just wonder, that’s all.” Niall hunches his shoulders up inside Louis’s flight jacket. It looks good on him, Louis thinks with a pang. It’s always looked good on him, and if it weren’t a violation of military code, dating his junior officer, he’d have Niall wear it all the time.

“Well, you don’t need to wonder,” he says aloud. “Blown enough of ‘em to bits, haven’t I? They’re hunks of metal, Nialler. Machines. Only difference with the human models is they’ve got synthetic skin.”

“Yeah,” Niall says.

He still looks troubled, though, and Louis doesn’t like that one bit. It’s one thing for him to have to live with it–the uncertainty, the fear. It’s what Louis had signed up for when he enlisted in the fleet, even if back then he’d expected to spend his career as a pilot flying endless border patrols. Niall, though– Niall had only entered the service to pay for school, like most of the maintenance specialists on board the Galactica. No chance of combat, not stationed aboard an old museum piece like this one.

Then came the attack on the Colonies, and the end of the world as they knew it. And the Galactica had become humanity’s last hope of surviving extinction. Everyone’s a soldier now.

“Don’t worry about them,” Louis tells Niall now. He bumps his shoulder against Niall’s, the most contact he’ll allow himself when they’re both like this, tipsy and prone to making bad decisions. “We’re gonna find ‘em, Nialler, the ones who look like us. Root ‘em out of the fleet and vent them out the airlock, every last one of them. And then once we’ve got enough Viper pilots in the air, we’re gonna attack every fracking Resurrection ship they’ve got, prevent those fuckers from regenerating.”

Niall doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s staring out across the abandoned hangar, pulling Louis’s coat tighter around his shoulders. “Emotions aren’t that different from software,” he says. “Not really. Don’t you ever wonder, Lou? If they can feel stuff too. If some of them want different things than the rest, and –”

Louis snorts.

“You’ve been talking to that crazy priest Styles, haven’t you,” he says. “All that rubbish about trying to find common ground. Like the Cylons aren’t dead set on exterminating the human race.”

“It’s diplomacy.” Niall’s not looking at him. “That’s all Harry wants, just a chance to end the bloodshed in both sides.”

“So it’s Harry now, is it?” Louis can’t quite ignore the hot twist of jealousy in his gut. He knows they’re friends, knows they’ve gotten closer since the attack. Knows that Styles keeps Niall company when Louis and the rest of the CAG are out on long missions.

“It’s not like that,” Niall says. “And you know it, so don’t be an arse. Harry’s just my friend.”

“Yeah, well,” Louis says dismissively. “Might not be around for much longer, if he’s not careful.”

“What do you mean?”

Louis shrugs, playing casual. It’s classified, but he can’t imagine the rumors haven’t already begun percolating down to the crew. “Apparently Dr. Baltar’s finished developing his Cylon Detector Test,” he says. “Commander’s orders are every member of the Colonial Fleet’s got to be tested, starting this week. Reckon there’ll be some unpleasant surprises in store. And there’s loads of rumors flying around about your precious Harry –”

“Harry’s not a Cylon,” Niall says, with such conviction Louis breaks off mid-sentence. “And there’s nothing happening between me and him, either, if that’s what you’re insinuating. Not that it’s any of your business.” He gets clumsily to his feet, nearly knocking over the half-empty bottle of moonshine, and starts shrugging his shoulders free of Louis’s flight jacket.

“Oi, don’t be such a baby.” Louis scrambles to his feet, but Niall jerks away from his outstretched hand. “I was only joking about Styles. You’re so bloody sensitive, Neil, honestly.“

The flight jacket hits him full in the face.

“Fuck off, Lou.” There’s a tremor in Niall’s voice. “You’re such a fucking dick, you know that?"

Louis tenses. He knows this fight. Doesn’t want to have it, not now, not when he’s leaving tomorrow for another recon mission into Cylon-occupied territory. Not when it might be the last thing he ever hears Niall say.

“Come on,” he says, in what he hopes is a conciliatory tone, but it’s too little, too late.

“You’re the one who wanted to be just friends, Lou,” Niall says bitterly. “You’re the one who finished with me, yeah? Didn’t want me anymore. So you’re not allowed to be jealous if somebody else might.”

“I didn’t - it’s not like that,“ Louis says helplessly. “There’s rules, Niall. You’re my junior officer, technically, and we can’t–”

“Didn’t seem to bother you before,” Niall says. “Why’s that, d'you reckon? How come I was good enough for you to stick your dick in back then, but now, now you’re some hotshot Viper pilot, you’re the bloody hero, and everybody wants a piece of you. Is that it, Lou? Don’t need your dirty little secret anymore, now that you can shag anyone you like–”

“We’re at war now, in case you hadn’t fracking noticed!” Louis yells, loud enough that Niall shuts up. “We’re out there every fracking day fighting for our lives, and I can’t be distracted, all right? Those pilots are counting on me to keep them alive. I can’t do my bloody job if I’m thinking about you the whole time, and going crazy worrying about you back here on. And gods, Ni, if somebody found out, if they transferred you to another ship, and I - I couldn’t come home to you anymore, I – ” He breaks off, turning so Niall won’t see the tears pricking at his eyes. He feels exposed, raw. Weak. Like he’s flown a bad mission, lost a pilot, fracked things up in a way he can’t fix.

He hates it. Hates that Niall can make him feel this way, still, despite how careful he’s been, despite how hard he’s worked to keep his emotions separate from the job he’s got to do. He can’t be weak, not anymore. If he fails they’ll all die, the whole fleet. If he fails he’ll lose Niall too: the last of his family, the only person he’s got left. It’s better to lose him like this, to give him up like this, than to lose him forever.

“Lou,” Niall says softy, but Louis’ already picking up his jacket, shoving it under his arm.

“There’s a war on, Horan,” he repeats, his voice unsteady. “And you and that toaster-loving freak Styles are busy wondering if the machines that murdered my mum and sisters have fracking feelings. They don’t. Maybe some of ‘em look like us now, but they’re not like us, Niall. They’re not human. And I swear to the Lords of Kobol that I’m gonna kill them, Niall. I’m gonna take out as many of those evil frackers as I can before they take me down.”

“Lou,” Niall says again, taking a step towards him, but Louis can feel tears pricking at the back of his eyes – his mum. His sisters. He shoulders past Niall and out the hatch, taking deep, gulping breaths of the ship’s recycled air.

*

[edit: they might be on the Pegasus and not the Galactica, bc shit gets way darker on the Pegasus? haven't decided yet. anyway, on the mission Louis's about to fly, he encounters a Cylon who's the same model as Niall (a Nine) and discovers that Niall's a Cylon. Niall doesn't know it himself - he thinks he's human.]

OK AND PART THREE! (previous parts: barry POV/general plot outline is here, part 1 of the niall POV/outline is here, part 2 is here.) content warnings in this section for description of a panic attack.

Niall’s been living rough for a week since the storm. He doesn’t go to the police because he’s pretty sure the guy was telling the truth about having influence there, and he doesn’t want to be arrested or handed over to the guy. the money runs out fast, though, and he’s hungry and cold and scared. Maybe he sees a female prostitute on the street somewhere and he thinks, I could do that, maybe, because hasn’t he been doing it already, hasn’t he been whoring himself out to this rich old guy for nice clothes and presents and a roof over his head. So he starts hanging around places where he thinks maybe he could pick someone up, trying to look available.

Maybe the first night he doesn’t have much luck, loitering around. Or maybe he does pull, but he fucks it up somehow. He’s so nervous he feels sick to his stomach, and as soon as he gets into the guy’s car he starts feeling super claustrophobic, like the walls were closing in on him. He can’t stop thinking about how it could all go wrong—what if the guy just turns the car on and drives off with him, locks the doors so he can’t get out, what if he takes Niall somewhere and kills him and dumps his body in a ditch by the side of the road. He tries to keep a lid on his panic, but for some reason he can’t shove it down like he normally does—maybe it’s because now he knows that somebody could do that to him, and he keeps hearing the rich guy’s voice in his head, telling him that nobody would even miss him, nobody would even come looking for him. Then the john starts acting really fucking weird, like he’s drunk or on drugs or something—he’d seemed normal when Niall got into the car, but all of a sudden he’s breathing weird and his pupils are weirdly dilated, his skin all cold and clammy.

I was thinking more about Niall’s character in the fic and where he comes from and what’s going on with him, and then meghan left this comment about a possible explanation for the guy following niall:

okay this is a rather dark option, but uh... perhaps niall did not have such a great home life and was targeted but an older man who seemed nice and handsome and bought niall nice things and treated him so kindly. and it was the best thing to happen to him! and he left his shitty family situation and was head over heels for this dude, but in reality the dude was an abuser grooming niall, and the second niall made noises about trying to reconcile things with his dad or whatever, dude turned violent.

and well that is RIGHT UP MY ALLEY in terms of dark fic backstories + niall suffering, and it also fits PERFECTLY with my idea for niall’s superpower. idk if anyone remembers the little empathy fic outline I did a while back for an angsty narry canon fic (https://saysthemagpie.tumblr.com/tagged/empathy-fic), but the basic premise of that fic was that niall has a condition that makes his feelings contagious, which means that if he’s feeling something very strongly anyone who’s physically close to him will ‘catch’ his mood. it’s not like he’s mind controlling them or anything, sometimes it’s very subtle, but niall’s learned to be very, very careful about controlling his emotions and not letting them seep out into the room, and he’s also become very watchful/observant/attuned to how other people feel, because he needs to know how they were feeling before or how they usually act so he can tell if his mood has been unconsciously influencing them in some way.

ANYWAY SO, as I said before, in Misfits people’s powers amplify some aspect of themselves, or are tied to a deep-rooted insecurity or past regret, so people’s powers are tied to their backstories and often tell you something about the person. and in this fic, the power niall gets is kind of a variation on that emotional contagion premise. when he gets struck by lightning, it’s like it reverses something inside of him, or recircuits something, and so now all of the feelings that he’s been internalizing and tamping down for his whole life are suddenly projected outwards into his environment, and other people feel what he feels, in ways that are often super amplified or unpredictable or out of control. (I was discussing this idea with Hannah last night and she said: “I just love the thought of two essential Irish personality traits being taken away from Niall, 1) not being a burden and 2) being emotionally controlled,” which, YES. YES EXACTLY!!!!!

For a while they just lie there, sprawled out next to each other, the spare blanket rolled up and pillowed under their heads. Harry doesn’t seem inclined to speak, so Niall keeps quiet too, staring up at the night sky, picking out the familiar shapes of the constellations. It’s easy, instinctive, though it’s been a long time since he’s looked up at them like this.

“So,” Harry says finally. He rolls over onto his side, looking at him. Niall doesn’t look back, eyes still fixed on the stars, but he’s acutely aware of all the places their bodies aren’t touching, of how little effort it would take for someone - Harry - to change that. “That button, the one on your backpack. You want to work for NASA or something? Be an astronaut?”

“I don’t know,” Niall says. “No. I mean - I used to, when I was a kid. Kind of stupid.”

At his old school, the science teacher had organized a trip to Houston for the whole eighth grade class. Niall still remembers it: forty kids packed onto an old yellow school bus, sweaty bodies sticking to the hot plastic seats in the late September heat. He remembers the huge drafty airplane hangars and the intricately built model rockets in the museum display cases, each individual part neatly labeled. In a darkened auditorium the whole class had sat and watched a video about the moon landing: grainy black-and-white footage Niall’d seen in school, Neil Armstrong’s voice crackling over the speakers.

He’d been too nervous to ask the tour guide, but later, in the school library, he’d tried to look it up, hunched furtively over the computer like the boys who searched for naked photos of girls when the librarian wasn’t watching. It’d made him feel almost as queasy as looking for porn, shame mixing with anticipation as he typed the words into the search bar. How do you get to be an astronaut.

“Doesn’t sound stupid to me,” Harry says. He shifts a little, reaching out to trace the sleeve of Niall’s t-shirt. “Why don’t you want to anymore?”

“I’m not - I don’t think I’m smart enough,” Niall says. “You have to be really good at math and physics, stuff like that.”

Whatever he’d wanted back then, it’s not going to happen now, no matter how much Ms. Teasdale talks about the SAT and scholarships and a ticket out of Dillon. Niall doesn’t need to be some kind of math prodigy to calculate that one. A scholarship won’t pay for a nurse for Bobby, or the loans they’ve taken out on the diner, or the legal fees they’re still paying off four years after Greg’s accident.

“You are smart, though,“ Harry says. “You were in honors calc last year, weren’t you? With Corden?”

“I - yeah,” Niall says, slightly thrown. “How’d you know that?”

Harry shrugs. “Just saw you, I guess,” he says. “Couple times. Had English across the hall, same period.”

“Oh,” Niall says, and can’t think of anything else to say. It’s weird. Even though he’s literally lying in the bed of Harry’s truck, sprawled out next to him, it feels like some part of his brain’s still trying to process the fact that Harry Styles knows his name, let alone Niall’s junior year course schedule. “Was that - Teasdale’s class, right?”

Harry nods. “Definitely not honors,” he says. “My dad, he always said my sister got all the brains in the family.”

“Only seems fair,” Niall says. “Seeing as how you got the best arm in the state of Texas.”

Harry smiles at that, dimple flashing. It’s his camera-ready grin, the one he gives the interviewers when they’re asking him questions after a big game: half cocky, half sweet, a smile to make a hundred thousand people fall in love.

“Yeah?” he says. “You think so?”

His gaze drops to Niall’s mouth, just for a second, then flicks back up again. Niall’s pulse kicks up a notch.

“S'what everybody says, isn’t it,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady. “That you’re the best. In the state. In - in the whole country, maybe. That’s what they say.”

“Don’t want to know what they say.” Harry’s voice has gone low and husky. His fingers trail lower, brushing over the crook of Niall’s elbow. “Is that what you think?”

If Niall were a girl, he’d know what it meant, the way Harry’s looking at him now, talking to him, touching him. Or he’d be able to fill in the details, at least, from movies and country songs, from the things boys say in locker rooms while the coaches pretend they can’t hear. But there’s no script for this, as far as he knows – for two boys in the back of a pickup truck, for two boys when one of them’s somebody like Harry. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say next, how he’s supposed to act. How much he’s allowed to want.

He’s not even sure if it matters. Probably he could be anyone right now, and the fact that it’s him here and not some girl is just chance, just blind, stupid luck. For all he’s turned it over and over again in his mind, maybe it’s as simple as this: Harry turning his head in the hall. Harry picking him out of a crowd.

Niall swallows hard. He looks down at where Harry’s fingers are stroking the soft, exposed skin of his inner arm. He tries to remember the question.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Yeah, I reckon they’re probably right.”