fic: Turning Something Inside Out, Harry/Nick (1D/BBCR1 rpf), 1/1
Title: Turning Something Inside Out
Author: matchsticks_p
Pairings/characters: Harry Styles/Nick Grimshaw, featuring cameos by Niall and Louis and random Radio 1 crew.
Summary: Nick has a mental breakdown about three times a day, and sometimes it's not even about Harry Styles.
Rating: NC-17 (there's a short explicit scene but this fic is more about banter than porn)
Length: 5000 words
Notes: Thank you to junkshop_disco for Britpicking and beta-ing and writing a better fic than I did in half the time it took me.
Disclaimer: I neither claim nor believe the following story to be true in any way. This is a work of fiction intending to depict personas rather than people.
-The first time Harry is on tour in America:
It's nearly 3:00 a.m. and Nick is sat on a stone bench in front of the tapas bar they've decided to converge upon after the radio show. He's got his phone in his hand and he's dialling Harry's number before he remembers that America has different time zones. The cold of the bench seeps through his jeans and bites at his thighs, but the ten billion glasses of sangria he's consumed keeps him from feeling it too much.
Harry answers before Nick can talk himself into hanging up, and before he even says hello Nick blurts out, "Important question, Harry Styles: are we really friends?"
There's a pause and some muttering (Harry's calculating the time difference under his breath, Nick realises, and he curls in on himself a bit because no amount of sangria can protect him from how fucking endearing that is), and then Harry says, "Why are you even asking me this? At three in the morning?"
"I don't know, because you're proper famous and you're young and you aren't anything like Henry or Gells or anyone I know, really." Nick has to clench his free hand between his knees to keep it from flapping wildly as he says this.
"Oh god, are you out with Henry and Gillian?"
"Yeah, they came to keep me company at work and then we were too awake after the show to go straight home, so we went out to get a bite to eat. Only we've been drinking more than eating, whoops."
"Did they say something to you about us not being real friends? You know they're only joking."
"No, Harry, we don't just sit around talking about you, believe it or not. It's just...someone in the restaurant had a One Direction ring tone, and it was horrible and funny but then I got to thinking about how you're an actual international popstar, and wondering why would you want to hang out with me. Gells says you're probably pulling a really long prank. Is this a long con? Do you and the rest of the lads laugh at me?"
"I mean, at this specific moment, yeah, I'm laughing at you," Harry drawls, "because you're acting like you're seven years old. But not in general, no. And you know the rest of the lads love you. Stop listening to Henry and Gells. Especially Gells. Have you had any food yet? Don't drink on an empty stomach all night."
"Yeah, I had some prawns," Nick says. He runs his fingers through his hair and tries not to be too charmed by Harry's occasional tendency to act like his mother. "I'm just really tired and I kind of want to go home, but everyone else is still inside and they don't want to leave yet, and now I feel totally stupid for calling you, sorry. Oh no, what time is it there? Am I keeping you up? Did I interrupt something important?" Nick sits up straighter on the bench again.
"Nah, I literally just got off stage."
(Unbidden images of Harry all sweaty and red with exertion and curls sticking to the collar of his shirt pop into Nick's mind. Nick carefully dismisses them as drunken lunacy and brushes them aside.)
"Did you have a good show?"
"Yeah, it was great. And now I'm in the dressing room, putting my regular shoes on. Niall's here too. Say hi, Niall."
"Hi, Niall!" Niall's voice rings out from somewhere further away, echoing slightly. Niall chortles at his own terrible joke and Nick can practically hear Harry roll his eyes.
"That's very funny," Nick says. "Tell Niall he's very funny."
"I thought you called to talk to me, not to pass on messages to Niall."
"Is that Grimmy?" Niall's voice sounds closer now. "Hi, Grimmy! I love you!"
"See? The lads love you," Harry says. There's the static sound of rustling fabric, and then Harry says, "Alright, I have to go now. You should get a cab home and ditch your friends. They're being cunts."
"Our friends, Harold. These cunts are yours too, I refuse to take full ownership."
Harry laughs. "Alright, our friends. Tell them I said hi, and then tell them bye and go home."
Harry says goodnight and Nick has to hang up without saying it back because he wants to say "I miss you" and that is just completely unacceptable. He does call a cab like Harry told him to, though, and on the ride back to his flat he almost succeeds at not mentally replaying their conversation to over-analyse every single word.
-The first time they go to that pizza place Nick's always wanted to try:
Nick has ordered a medium margherita supreme, but there is currently a bite of quattro formaggi in his mouth and Harry has put it there with his actual fingers, and Nick isn't entirely sure what's happening because somewhere between jokingly saying "I'll pick you up at seven-it's a date" and the feeling of Harry's index finger skimming across the side of his tongue, Nick has lost the plot.
He swallows before he remembers to chew and it's a minor miracle that he doesn't choke.
"It's good, that," Nick lies when Harry makes a questioning sound at him. As though he's capable of doing something as strenuous as register his taste buds right now.
Harry smiles at him, tears another piece off his pizza, and tries to stick his fingers in Nick's mouth again.
It's not wholly abnormal for Harry to act like an over-affectionate pet, but Nick's not sure he's equipped to handle it when they're sitting alone in a rather secluded corner of a restaurant that plays Puccini over the sound system, lit by nothing but two candles and the dim light of the rising moon.
"So, Fincham and Pounder couldn't come out with us tonight?" Harry asks, faux casual with his eyes shining brightly over the rim of his wine glass. "Just you and me, alone in an Italian restaurant on a Saturday night."
Nick knows what he's insinuating and it's so unfair, because he did invite others to come with and they really had cancelled last minute. He hasn't set this up like some sort of predator with an elaborate trap, but then the realisation hits that it looks rather like that from the outside and suddenly he feels like he might want to cry. Not pathetic cry, obviously, but that angry sort of crying, like when he was a child and his parents punished him for something that was actually his sister's fault: the teary throat lump of the unjustly accused.
It must show on his face-he has a damnably expressive face, which makes it good for the telly but not for private meltdowns-because Harry leans forward and says a very, very quiet, "Hey."
Nick stares at Harry's stupid single dimple and doesn't look up any further. He absolutely refuses to look at Harry's eyes when Harry says, "I'm glad they didn't come. I'm glad it's just the two of us tonight."
The kiss happens so fast that Nick thinks he must have imagined it. Harry darts forward and presses his lips to the corner of Nick's mouth, in quick and out quick like some sort of pecking bird. Like a kingfisher maybe, nipping in to jab at Nick's lips, which fittingly enough would be horrible slimy fish in this metaphor.
Harry keeps shooting him smiles throughout the rest of dinner and all Nick can think in a repeat loop is Well, that's it, then. I've kissed Harry Styles. That is it.
They have to walk back to Nick's flat when they're done because it had been a warm evening and they'd thought it would be nice to go for a bit of a stroll, but obviously Nick hadn't thought it through because he didn't think it'd get this cold after sunset and he didn't think Harry would finger his mouth and then kiss it.
"Why are you being weird?" Harry asks, in a tone that Nick might call 'teasing' if he could read tones or understand people, which he can't because he's kissed Harry Styles and that's it.
"I'm not being weird," Nick says, utterly convincingly.
They're nearly two streets away from Nick's flat (and he's kissed Harry Styles, that's it) when Nick feels Harry reach across what little space there is between them to first grasp his wrist and then manipulate his hand into a full-on, palm-to-palm, fingers-intertwined handhold.
The last time he can remember holding anyone's hand, he was trying to keep Alexa Chung from falling over. He can't remember the time before that. Nick goes still like a small animal hoping it won't be seen and tries to find out if there's a casual way to avoid eye contact with the person stroking his thumb across the backs of your knuckles. Turns out, there isn't.
Harry grips his fingers harder and just when Nick's about to pull away or maybe have a panic attack, Harry yanks him into an alley and reels him in like a fisherman (kingfisher, Nick distantly thinks in the terrified roaring blood rush of his mind; his metaphors tonight seem to have a theme) and pulls him in for a kiss.
It's a real one this time, with coordinated movement and everything. Harry kisses like he talks, slow and deliberate and it's difficult to tell if he's being sincere or just being nice. Nick's flirting with the idea of having a panic attack about his own kissing technique instead of their hands when Harry whispers "oh, for fuck's sake" against his lips and kisses him deeper. He tilts Nick's jaw until they're at an angle he likes and presses his tongue into his mouth, between his teeth. He doesn't let them come up for air until Nick's lips have gone completely numb.
So.
Breathing.
That's a thing.
Nick looks down at their still entwined fingers and wonders, "Can I have my hand back?"
"No. It's mine now."
Harry pulls Nick by that hand all the way back to Nick's front door. Nick lets him go in first, and then follows behind him.
-The first time it really sinks in that Nick's taking over the breakfast show:
Nick gets out of Harry's Range Rover in a strop. They wasted their morning having a stupid argument over who should drive today and now he's running late. Harry has to go into the recording studio and Nick has a meeting, and what started out as an agreement that they should carpool turned into pointless bickering about who's a better driver.
Nick is annoyed that Harry made a dig at his age ("you drive like the granddad you are," he'd said, and as silly as it is Nick feels like he crossed a line, because he knows how Nick gets about the age thing sometimes. But of course that's Harry-he's too kind and pleasant to press an advantage until he doesn't want to be kind and pleasant anymore), and he's annoyed that he'll probably be done work before Harry so he'll have to hang about waiting to be picked up, and he's annoyed that despite these two facts, he still gave in and let Harry win.
He doesn't say goodbye and neither does Harry.
He walks into the building rerunning their argument over and over in his head, and it distracts him enough that he's almost done compiling his meeting notes before he realises that it's the sixth last meeting he'll ever have about his late night show.
All his producers are sitting at the big glass-top table like they've done for the last three years, laughing and taking notes and vetoing all the fun ideas, like they don't realise that this is their sixth last meeting. After this one there'll only be five more, and then four, and before they know it they'll be brainstorming ideas for the goodbye party. Nick looks around the table and all of a sudden he really, really misses everyone. Which is stupid, because they're all right there. The show hasn't even ended yet but Nick feels like everything has already been over for years, like he's looking back on this moment in his old age with nostalgia. He looks down at the biro in his hand and thinks, I should keep this as a memento, something to remember this meeting by, and slips it into his breast pocket.
"Next up, we should confirm if DIIV is coming in to the studio on-Grimmy, are you alright?" Producer Clair looks up from her notes to glance at Nick.
"Um, yeah, yes," Nick says, looking at the floor and at the table and at the tattoo on his wrist, at anything other than another human being's face. He wills his eyes not to tear up. "I just need to run to the toilet quickly, sorry."
And then he does literally run to the toilet, practically sprints there and locks himself into a stall. Maybe if he doesn't come out, they won't be able to finish the meeting, and then it'll never have to be over.
Normally he'd already be on the phone with Harry, getting his opinion on whether he's freaking out appropriately or freaking out for no reason. But Nick's not sure if their morning tiff has blown over or if they're still fighting, and this is why he doesn't do relationships. He already worries constantly about what other people might be thinking of him even though it doesn't matter, only now it does matter; it matters a lot what Harry thinks and he can't stand it sometimes, the way Harry can be so eighteen about things, his entire willingness to not really give a shit encapsulated in the cavalier way he shakes out his fringe.
Nick twitches and fiddles uneasily with the pen in his pocket. Harry is eighteen and probably doesn't really give a shit, but Nick just stole a generic biro that doesn't even have a BBC logo on it because he's unfit for the adult world. He might as well text Harry.
don't pick me up this afternoon because i'm never leaving this toilet ever
Nick settles back to have a secondary freak-out-within-a-freak-out over whether Harry will respond, but his phone thwarts his plan by buzzing almost immediately.
I'm in the recording booth, not allowed to talk, sorry. What's wrong?? .xx
if this meeting ends there'll only be 5 more
You'll have hundreds more for the breakfast show. Or is that the problem?
not sure
You sad cos your old show's ending, or frightened cos your new show's starting? .x
not sure
There's no reply for a while, and Nick wonders if he's meant to be inspecting his conscience for the answer or if Harry's just been told to get off his phone. He takes his stolen pen and starts drawing a complicated nonsensical maze on the back of the stall door and waits. He's in the middle of designing a five-way dead end when he gets a message that says:
If you take it like a man and go back to your meeting, I'll send you a gift. ;) .xx
harold are you trying to bribe me with a sexy winky face
No, I mean an actual gift. We were planning to send something over anyway but now I'm withholding it unless you finish that meeting. .x
oo cryptic, a mystery gift. with a promise like that how could i refuse
I'm texting Fincham right now cos I don't trust you to walk down the hallway without breaking down over something else. You have five minutes.
i liked the bribing more than the threat :(
Xoxo.
Nick runs a hand through his hair and thinks that it's okay, he can do this. As long as he avoids any close examination of how Harry's able to make him feel loads better with nothing but some mild flirting over SMS, he can do this.
When he takes his seat back at the table, Fincham tilts his head and shoots him a weird look before tapping out a quick message on his phone. So Harry wasn't even kidding. Nick smothers a grimace and says, "Sorry I was gone for so long-I'll spare you the horrible details of my extended bathroom visit. How are we doing on getting Deap Valley in for Fresh Off Stage?"
They move through their order of business. The meeting ends, and the world doesn't.
It's rather embarrassing for Nick, this failure of the world to end, since it really puts into perspective the pointlessness of his earlier nervous collapse. It's doubly embarrassing when Nick has to admit to himself that he's already getting sort of anxious at the thought of the fifth last meeting looming on the horizon.
There's a parcel on his desk when he gets back to it. Fearne tells him it was dropped off by a courier just a few minutes ago. He unwraps it to find a framed copy of his own promotional headshot, scribbled over with all of One Direction's autographs. He rolls his eyes at the speech bubbles and the cock and balls. Lovely gift to get when you're feeling like you need a bit of reassurance. Very encouraging. Very heartening. When he pulls the frame away from the packaging, a note flutters out onto his desk.
Nick can tell before he even looks that it'll be in Harry's chunky printing. It reads, "You're supposed to celebrate promotions, not mourn them. This picture should remind you you're being a knobhead every time you forget that. xx"
Nick props the picture up against his cubicle divider and takes a picture of it for Twitter. He mentally repeats, yeah, okay, I can do this and doesn't let himself specify what he means by 'this.'
-The second time Harry goes to perform in America, but the first time it's for the VMAs:
Nick speed-walks across the street, clutching his egg salad sandwich in one hand and his phone in the other, hoping against all hope that Harry will have time to answer.
The call connects and he sags with relief for half a second before everything is horrible again, because that's not Harry's voice greeting him. It's Louis.
"Hiya Louis," Nick says, trying to keep his voice steady, forcing his legs to keep walking. "Can I talk to Harry?" Nick sends up a prayer that Louis won't be in a playful mood even though he knows full well that the only time Louis isn't in a playful mood is when he's dead to the world.
"Harry's getting fitted for his performance outfit right now. Do you want to leave a message?"
"No, I don't want to leave a bloody-Louis, stop giggling. I'm having a very humiliating crisis right now and I need to talk to Harry."
"You can talk to me. You know Harry tells me everything anyway, right?"
"Louis. Louis, I'm being serious. If I tell you about this, you'll never be able to look me in the eye again because you'll remember what I said and realise I'm so uncool that you feel nothing but embarrassment every time you see me."
"But I'm already pretty embarrassed by how uncool you are every time I see you," Louis teases.
Nick finally reaches his car and practically dives into it, slamming his door shut. He kind of wants to just curl up and make the keening noises of injured livestock, but then he remembers that it's Louis on the other end of this call. "Listen, this banter is adorable but I'm not kidding," Nick says, voice toeing at the borders of hysterical. "I'm three seconds from losing it."
"Relax," Louis says. Through the phone, Nick can hear the sound of a heavy door being pulled open. "I've been going to get him this whole time. I just didn't want to put you on hold and leave you to freak out alone."
"Louis Tomlinson, I am going to dedicate every love song I play between now and the end of the show to you. Live on air. For Louis, my knight in shining stripey shirts."
"Do. I dare you." Louis pulls the phone away for a quick whispered conversation, and then he says, "Alright, I'm handing it over to Harry now. You should really think about taking some depressants or at least drinking less coffee, yeah?"
Before Nick can muster a scathing retort, he hears Harry say hi.
"Something really awful has happened," Nick says. "I was at Pret getting a sandwich, and you know Gladys at the counter? I've called her Gladys for ages because I heard someone call her that once, like, two years ago, but today as she's giving me back my change she says, 'sorry, I can't take it anymore' and taps on her nametag and gives me a really harsh look, and her nametag says June because her name is June. It's been June this whole time. I've been calling her Gladys for two years! Now I can't ever go to that Pret again, but it's the one that's exactly on my way to the office, so now I'll have to leave twenty minutes early everyday just to get a coffee, or not have a coffee at all, and the show will be crap because I'll be tired and hungry, and Harry, are you laughing at me?"
"No," Harry says through his laughter.
"I am in genuine distress, Harold."
"I know you are," Harry says. He's still laughing. "Sorry, sorry, I know you are. That's sort of what makes it so funny? I'm sorry. Okay. Let's run through the Nick Grimshaw diagnostic. How much do you actually care about what Gladys from Pret thinks of you?"
"Her name is June."
"Tell me anything else you know about her, other than what she looks like and where she works."
"I don't...why?"
"Because you don't know her, Nick. It doesn't matter that you got her name wrong, because she's a stranger. How much do you want to bet she wouldn't even be able to recognise you on the street? Do you really care what she thinks, or is this about the breakfast show again?"
"Not everything is about the breakfast show, Harold. You make me sound like a loon, always obsessing about how I could massively fail and ruin the breakfast show."
"You are a loon who's always obsessing about how he can fail, though. You'll be fine. You haven't ruined your relationship with the Pret lady. You're probably the only one who even tries to call her by name-people just grunt as her all day, and walk off without saying thank you. You've seen people at Pret, right? You haven't ruined Pret, and you won't have to skip your coffee, and even if you did skip coffee your show won't be shit. Okay?"
Nick spends long moments just looking out his windshield, gnawing on his bottom lip between his teeth, thinking. "You have a Nick Grimshaw diagnostic?"
"Basically, yeah." Harry shifts around on his end, and there's people in the background yelling at him, and there are probably a million things he still has to do for this important live television broadcast he's doing in two days, but he still doesn't hang up. "Um, can I just say, that uh..." and it's Harry's turn to sound self-conscious now, like he's not sure if he's being daft. "I miss you?"
"I miss you too."
"You do?" Harry answers, surprised.
"Course I do."
"Great. I have to go now, I'll see you later," Harry says, all in a rush, and then he's hanging up, but not before Nick hears just how pleased he sounds, like Nick had given him the world instead of just confirmed a banal fact.
Nick makes a mental note to be nicer to Harry. He shouldn't have to be surprised that Nick feels the empty spaces Harry leaves behind when he's away. He does have a special diagnostic procedure just for Nick, after all. It's the least he deserves.
-The first time Nick says "I love you":
It's in the throes of orgasm that he says it, of course, because he's nothing if not a sad cliché.
Harry wanks him slowly, with a sure hand. The quiet hum of late Sunday morning traffic leaks in through the half-shut window, and it sounds the way Nick feels, lazy and soft and removed from the mad rush of weekdays. He's lying mostly on top of Harry, forehead pressed into the pillow next to Harry's ear, chest sticky, and if he moved a bit Harry would have much better access to his cock and be able to tug him off a lot better. But he's in no hurry, neither of them are, and he would be happy if the steady, insistent press of Harry's slightly calloused palm against the underside of his dick went on forever.
They've both come twice already, and it's filthy; they should really go and take a shower instead of luxuriating in bed like this. But Nick is boneless in Harry's arms, his hips hardly jerking even when Harry does that thing where he flicks his wrist and runs a fingertip over the wet slit of his cock. Harry's whispering some nonsense into his hair, hot steam of breath against his skin, his hand so loose around Nick's cock that it'd be like the worst kind of torture if he weren't already sated. For a second Nick feels like he's having an out of body experience, like he's looking down on this scene from above and seeing his own pale legs tangle between Harry's strong thighs, and proclaiming I have found perfection and it is this moment.
When he finally comes with a weak spasm, it's not with the rushing pleasure of the first two times, but it's still enough to scramble his circuits briefly, and before he realises what he's doing he's groaning "I love you" into Harry's ear.
When his brain finally catches up to what he just said, his whole body twitches with a horrible falling sensation, like missing the last step on the stairs and stumbling onto air. He feels a rush of cold, then hot, and then he thinks he might actually be sick and he runs to the bathroom.
Harry might be calling his name as he chases after him, but Nick wouldn't know because he's slamming the door shut and then hugging porcelain.
It's a lucky thing they've spent all morning fucking instead of getting up to eat breakfast, because at least now there isn't too much for Nick to throw up.
He flushes the toilet quickly, and groans when he realises Harry is probably laughing at him. Again.
"I can't believe you actually vomited."
"Shut up," Nick says, voice wrecked by the bile he's just been heaving. He runs the tap and gargles for about a billion years.
"I suppose it could be worse," Harry yells over the sound of the water. "At least you didn't try to take it back right after and blame it on drinking too much cider."
Nick freezes, cheeks bulging with his mouthful of water. It takes a while for him to remember to spit. "How do you know about that?"
"You talked about it on the radio, you knob," Harry says. "You said it was at Reading, in 2010. Who was it? Have I met him?"
"Aww, Harry, you were such a big fan of my nighttime show. Did you listen every night? Do you want me to autograph something for you?"
"I'm a big fan of Annie Mac. You just happened to be on when she was." The doorknob jiggles and Nick thanks himself for his own foresight in locking it. "Stop deflecting and tell me who it was. Do you still hang out with him?"
Nick ignores him and brushes his teeth for a very long time. He's not stalling. He's just making sure that his teeth are immaculately sick-free.
"Should I actually be worried?" Harry says at the same time Nick finally turns off the tap. His voice sounds slightly more serious now, like he thinks maybe he should worry about this Reading 2010 guy after all, like maybe he's abso-bloody-lutely insane and doesn't realise he's Harry and Nick is Nick and Nick is fucked.
"It doesn't matter who it was," Nick says, yanking open the door.
Nick steps forward until he's toe to toe with Harry. He meets Harry's eyes and for once he doesn't try to stop his insides from going silly or berate himself for feeling the way he feels. "It's you now," Nick says, and his voice is steady.
-end
Endnote: The title is taken from the lyrics of 'Bikes' by Lucy Rose, which is a song that Nick Grimshaw constantly played on his nighttime show and also a song I've cried to more than twice. Thank you to junkshop_disco for our epic 99-message-long email thread about Grimmy (lol losers), and thank you to you for reading.
Author: matchsticks_p
Pairings/characters: Harry Styles/Nick Grimshaw, featuring cameos by Niall and Louis and random Radio 1 crew.
Summary: Nick has a mental breakdown about three times a day, and sometimes it's not even about Harry Styles.
Rating: NC-17 (there's a short explicit scene but this fic is more about banter than porn)
Length: 5000 words
Notes: Thank you to junkshop_disco for Britpicking and beta-ing and writing a better fic than I did in half the time it took me.
Disclaimer: I neither claim nor believe the following story to be true in any way. This is a work of fiction intending to depict personas rather than people.
-The first time Harry is on tour in America:
It's nearly 3:00 a.m. and Nick is sat on a stone bench in front of the tapas bar they've decided to converge upon after the radio show. He's got his phone in his hand and he's dialling Harry's number before he remembers that America has different time zones. The cold of the bench seeps through his jeans and bites at his thighs, but the ten billion glasses of sangria he's consumed keeps him from feeling it too much.
Harry answers before Nick can talk himself into hanging up, and before he even says hello Nick blurts out, "Important question, Harry Styles: are we really friends?"
There's a pause and some muttering (Harry's calculating the time difference under his breath, Nick realises, and he curls in on himself a bit because no amount of sangria can protect him from how fucking endearing that is), and then Harry says, "Why are you even asking me this? At three in the morning?"
"I don't know, because you're proper famous and you're young and you aren't anything like Henry or Gells or anyone I know, really." Nick has to clench his free hand between his knees to keep it from flapping wildly as he says this.
"Oh god, are you out with Henry and Gillian?"
"Yeah, they came to keep me company at work and then we were too awake after the show to go straight home, so we went out to get a bite to eat. Only we've been drinking more than eating, whoops."
"Did they say something to you about us not being real friends? You know they're only joking."
"No, Harry, we don't just sit around talking about you, believe it or not. It's just...someone in the restaurant had a One Direction ring tone, and it was horrible and funny but then I got to thinking about how you're an actual international popstar, and wondering why would you want to hang out with me. Gells says you're probably pulling a really long prank. Is this a long con? Do you and the rest of the lads laugh at me?"
"I mean, at this specific moment, yeah, I'm laughing at you," Harry drawls, "because you're acting like you're seven years old. But not in general, no. And you know the rest of the lads love you. Stop listening to Henry and Gells. Especially Gells. Have you had any food yet? Don't drink on an empty stomach all night."
"Yeah, I had some prawns," Nick says. He runs his fingers through his hair and tries not to be too charmed by Harry's occasional tendency to act like his mother. "I'm just really tired and I kind of want to go home, but everyone else is still inside and they don't want to leave yet, and now I feel totally stupid for calling you, sorry. Oh no, what time is it there? Am I keeping you up? Did I interrupt something important?" Nick sits up straighter on the bench again.
"Nah, I literally just got off stage."
(Unbidden images of Harry all sweaty and red with exertion and curls sticking to the collar of his shirt pop into Nick's mind. Nick carefully dismisses them as drunken lunacy and brushes them aside.)
"Did you have a good show?"
"Yeah, it was great. And now I'm in the dressing room, putting my regular shoes on. Niall's here too. Say hi, Niall."
"Hi, Niall!" Niall's voice rings out from somewhere further away, echoing slightly. Niall chortles at his own terrible joke and Nick can practically hear Harry roll his eyes.
"That's very funny," Nick says. "Tell Niall he's very funny."
"I thought you called to talk to me, not to pass on messages to Niall."
"Is that Grimmy?" Niall's voice sounds closer now. "Hi, Grimmy! I love you!"
"See? The lads love you," Harry says. There's the static sound of rustling fabric, and then Harry says, "Alright, I have to go now. You should get a cab home and ditch your friends. They're being cunts."
"Our friends, Harold. These cunts are yours too, I refuse to take full ownership."
Harry laughs. "Alright, our friends. Tell them I said hi, and then tell them bye and go home."
Harry says goodnight and Nick has to hang up without saying it back because he wants to say "I miss you" and that is just completely unacceptable. He does call a cab like Harry told him to, though, and on the ride back to his flat he almost succeeds at not mentally replaying their conversation to over-analyse every single word.
-The first time they go to that pizza place Nick's always wanted to try:
Nick has ordered a medium margherita supreme, but there is currently a bite of quattro formaggi in his mouth and Harry has put it there with his actual fingers, and Nick isn't entirely sure what's happening because somewhere between jokingly saying "I'll pick you up at seven-it's a date" and the feeling of Harry's index finger skimming across the side of his tongue, Nick has lost the plot.
He swallows before he remembers to chew and it's a minor miracle that he doesn't choke.
"It's good, that," Nick lies when Harry makes a questioning sound at him. As though he's capable of doing something as strenuous as register his taste buds right now.
Harry smiles at him, tears another piece off his pizza, and tries to stick his fingers in Nick's mouth again.
It's not wholly abnormal for Harry to act like an over-affectionate pet, but Nick's not sure he's equipped to handle it when they're sitting alone in a rather secluded corner of a restaurant that plays Puccini over the sound system, lit by nothing but two candles and the dim light of the rising moon.
"So, Fincham and Pounder couldn't come out with us tonight?" Harry asks, faux casual with his eyes shining brightly over the rim of his wine glass. "Just you and me, alone in an Italian restaurant on a Saturday night."
Nick knows what he's insinuating and it's so unfair, because he did invite others to come with and they really had cancelled last minute. He hasn't set this up like some sort of predator with an elaborate trap, but then the realisation hits that it looks rather like that from the outside and suddenly he feels like he might want to cry. Not pathetic cry, obviously, but that angry sort of crying, like when he was a child and his parents punished him for something that was actually his sister's fault: the teary throat lump of the unjustly accused.
It must show on his face-he has a damnably expressive face, which makes it good for the telly but not for private meltdowns-because Harry leans forward and says a very, very quiet, "Hey."
Nick stares at Harry's stupid single dimple and doesn't look up any further. He absolutely refuses to look at Harry's eyes when Harry says, "I'm glad they didn't come. I'm glad it's just the two of us tonight."
The kiss happens so fast that Nick thinks he must have imagined it. Harry darts forward and presses his lips to the corner of Nick's mouth, in quick and out quick like some sort of pecking bird. Like a kingfisher maybe, nipping in to jab at Nick's lips, which fittingly enough would be horrible slimy fish in this metaphor.
Harry keeps shooting him smiles throughout the rest of dinner and all Nick can think in a repeat loop is Well, that's it, then. I've kissed Harry Styles. That is it.
They have to walk back to Nick's flat when they're done because it had been a warm evening and they'd thought it would be nice to go for a bit of a stroll, but obviously Nick hadn't thought it through because he didn't think it'd get this cold after sunset and he didn't think Harry would finger his mouth and then kiss it.
"Why are you being weird?" Harry asks, in a tone that Nick might call 'teasing' if he could read tones or understand people, which he can't because he's kissed Harry Styles and that's it.
"I'm not being weird," Nick says, utterly convincingly.
They're nearly two streets away from Nick's flat (and he's kissed Harry Styles, that's it) when Nick feels Harry reach across what little space there is between them to first grasp his wrist and then manipulate his hand into a full-on, palm-to-palm, fingers-intertwined handhold.
The last time he can remember holding anyone's hand, he was trying to keep Alexa Chung from falling over. He can't remember the time before that. Nick goes still like a small animal hoping it won't be seen and tries to find out if there's a casual way to avoid eye contact with the person stroking his thumb across the backs of your knuckles. Turns out, there isn't.
Harry grips his fingers harder and just when Nick's about to pull away or maybe have a panic attack, Harry yanks him into an alley and reels him in like a fisherman (kingfisher, Nick distantly thinks in the terrified roaring blood rush of his mind; his metaphors tonight seem to have a theme) and pulls him in for a kiss.
It's a real one this time, with coordinated movement and everything. Harry kisses like he talks, slow and deliberate and it's difficult to tell if he's being sincere or just being nice. Nick's flirting with the idea of having a panic attack about his own kissing technique instead of their hands when Harry whispers "oh, for fuck's sake" against his lips and kisses him deeper. He tilts Nick's jaw until they're at an angle he likes and presses his tongue into his mouth, between his teeth. He doesn't let them come up for air until Nick's lips have gone completely numb.
So.
Breathing.
That's a thing.
Nick looks down at their still entwined fingers and wonders, "Can I have my hand back?"
"No. It's mine now."
Harry pulls Nick by that hand all the way back to Nick's front door. Nick lets him go in first, and then follows behind him.
-The first time it really sinks in that Nick's taking over the breakfast show:
Nick gets out of Harry's Range Rover in a strop. They wasted their morning having a stupid argument over who should drive today and now he's running late. Harry has to go into the recording studio and Nick has a meeting, and what started out as an agreement that they should carpool turned into pointless bickering about who's a better driver.
Nick is annoyed that Harry made a dig at his age ("you drive like the granddad you are," he'd said, and as silly as it is Nick feels like he crossed a line, because he knows how Nick gets about the age thing sometimes. But of course that's Harry-he's too kind and pleasant to press an advantage until he doesn't want to be kind and pleasant anymore), and he's annoyed that he'll probably be done work before Harry so he'll have to hang about waiting to be picked up, and he's annoyed that despite these two facts, he still gave in and let Harry win.
He doesn't say goodbye and neither does Harry.
He walks into the building rerunning their argument over and over in his head, and it distracts him enough that he's almost done compiling his meeting notes before he realises that it's the sixth last meeting he'll ever have about his late night show.
All his producers are sitting at the big glass-top table like they've done for the last three years, laughing and taking notes and vetoing all the fun ideas, like they don't realise that this is their sixth last meeting. After this one there'll only be five more, and then four, and before they know it they'll be brainstorming ideas for the goodbye party. Nick looks around the table and all of a sudden he really, really misses everyone. Which is stupid, because they're all right there. The show hasn't even ended yet but Nick feels like everything has already been over for years, like he's looking back on this moment in his old age with nostalgia. He looks down at the biro in his hand and thinks, I should keep this as a memento, something to remember this meeting by, and slips it into his breast pocket.
"Next up, we should confirm if DIIV is coming in to the studio on-Grimmy, are you alright?" Producer Clair looks up from her notes to glance at Nick.
"Um, yeah, yes," Nick says, looking at the floor and at the table and at the tattoo on his wrist, at anything other than another human being's face. He wills his eyes not to tear up. "I just need to run to the toilet quickly, sorry."
And then he does literally run to the toilet, practically sprints there and locks himself into a stall. Maybe if he doesn't come out, they won't be able to finish the meeting, and then it'll never have to be over.
Normally he'd already be on the phone with Harry, getting his opinion on whether he's freaking out appropriately or freaking out for no reason. But Nick's not sure if their morning tiff has blown over or if they're still fighting, and this is why he doesn't do relationships. He already worries constantly about what other people might be thinking of him even though it doesn't matter, only now it does matter; it matters a lot what Harry thinks and he can't stand it sometimes, the way Harry can be so eighteen about things, his entire willingness to not really give a shit encapsulated in the cavalier way he shakes out his fringe.
Nick twitches and fiddles uneasily with the pen in his pocket. Harry is eighteen and probably doesn't really give a shit, but Nick just stole a generic biro that doesn't even have a BBC logo on it because he's unfit for the adult world. He might as well text Harry.
don't pick me up this afternoon because i'm never leaving this toilet ever
Nick settles back to have a secondary freak-out-within-a-freak-out over whether Harry will respond, but his phone thwarts his plan by buzzing almost immediately.
I'm in the recording booth, not allowed to talk, sorry. What's wrong?? .xx
if this meeting ends there'll only be 5 more
You'll have hundreds more for the breakfast show. Or is that the problem?
not sure
You sad cos your old show's ending, or frightened cos your new show's starting? .x
not sure
There's no reply for a while, and Nick wonders if he's meant to be inspecting his conscience for the answer or if Harry's just been told to get off his phone. He takes his stolen pen and starts drawing a complicated nonsensical maze on the back of the stall door and waits. He's in the middle of designing a five-way dead end when he gets a message that says:
If you take it like a man and go back to your meeting, I'll send you a gift. ;) .xx
harold are you trying to bribe me with a sexy winky face
No, I mean an actual gift. We were planning to send something over anyway but now I'm withholding it unless you finish that meeting. .x
oo cryptic, a mystery gift. with a promise like that how could i refuse
I'm texting Fincham right now cos I don't trust you to walk down the hallway without breaking down over something else. You have five minutes.
i liked the bribing more than the threat :(
Xoxo.
Nick runs a hand through his hair and thinks that it's okay, he can do this. As long as he avoids any close examination of how Harry's able to make him feel loads better with nothing but some mild flirting over SMS, he can do this.
When he takes his seat back at the table, Fincham tilts his head and shoots him a weird look before tapping out a quick message on his phone. So Harry wasn't even kidding. Nick smothers a grimace and says, "Sorry I was gone for so long-I'll spare you the horrible details of my extended bathroom visit. How are we doing on getting Deap Valley in for Fresh Off Stage?"
They move through their order of business. The meeting ends, and the world doesn't.
It's rather embarrassing for Nick, this failure of the world to end, since it really puts into perspective the pointlessness of his earlier nervous collapse. It's doubly embarrassing when Nick has to admit to himself that he's already getting sort of anxious at the thought of the fifth last meeting looming on the horizon.
There's a parcel on his desk when he gets back to it. Fearne tells him it was dropped off by a courier just a few minutes ago. He unwraps it to find a framed copy of his own promotional headshot, scribbled over with all of One Direction's autographs. He rolls his eyes at the speech bubbles and the cock and balls. Lovely gift to get when you're feeling like you need a bit of reassurance. Very encouraging. Very heartening. When he pulls the frame away from the packaging, a note flutters out onto his desk.
Nick can tell before he even looks that it'll be in Harry's chunky printing. It reads, "You're supposed to celebrate promotions, not mourn them. This picture should remind you you're being a knobhead every time you forget that. xx"
Nick props the picture up against his cubicle divider and takes a picture of it for Twitter. He mentally repeats, yeah, okay, I can do this and doesn't let himself specify what he means by 'this.'
-The second time Harry goes to perform in America, but the first time it's for the VMAs:
Nick speed-walks across the street, clutching his egg salad sandwich in one hand and his phone in the other, hoping against all hope that Harry will have time to answer.
The call connects and he sags with relief for half a second before everything is horrible again, because that's not Harry's voice greeting him. It's Louis.
"Hiya Louis," Nick says, trying to keep his voice steady, forcing his legs to keep walking. "Can I talk to Harry?" Nick sends up a prayer that Louis won't be in a playful mood even though he knows full well that the only time Louis isn't in a playful mood is when he's dead to the world.
"Harry's getting fitted for his performance outfit right now. Do you want to leave a message?"
"No, I don't want to leave a bloody-Louis, stop giggling. I'm having a very humiliating crisis right now and I need to talk to Harry."
"You can talk to me. You know Harry tells me everything anyway, right?"
"Louis. Louis, I'm being serious. If I tell you about this, you'll never be able to look me in the eye again because you'll remember what I said and realise I'm so uncool that you feel nothing but embarrassment every time you see me."
"But I'm already pretty embarrassed by how uncool you are every time I see you," Louis teases.
Nick finally reaches his car and practically dives into it, slamming his door shut. He kind of wants to just curl up and make the keening noises of injured livestock, but then he remembers that it's Louis on the other end of this call. "Listen, this banter is adorable but I'm not kidding," Nick says, voice toeing at the borders of hysterical. "I'm three seconds from losing it."
"Relax," Louis says. Through the phone, Nick can hear the sound of a heavy door being pulled open. "I've been going to get him this whole time. I just didn't want to put you on hold and leave you to freak out alone."
"Louis Tomlinson, I am going to dedicate every love song I play between now and the end of the show to you. Live on air. For Louis, my knight in shining stripey shirts."
"Do. I dare you." Louis pulls the phone away for a quick whispered conversation, and then he says, "Alright, I'm handing it over to Harry now. You should really think about taking some depressants or at least drinking less coffee, yeah?"
Before Nick can muster a scathing retort, he hears Harry say hi.
"Something really awful has happened," Nick says. "I was at Pret getting a sandwich, and you know Gladys at the counter? I've called her Gladys for ages because I heard someone call her that once, like, two years ago, but today as she's giving me back my change she says, 'sorry, I can't take it anymore' and taps on her nametag and gives me a really harsh look, and her nametag says June because her name is June. It's been June this whole time. I've been calling her Gladys for two years! Now I can't ever go to that Pret again, but it's the one that's exactly on my way to the office, so now I'll have to leave twenty minutes early everyday just to get a coffee, or not have a coffee at all, and the show will be crap because I'll be tired and hungry, and Harry, are you laughing at me?"
"No," Harry says through his laughter.
"I am in genuine distress, Harold."
"I know you are," Harry says. He's still laughing. "Sorry, sorry, I know you are. That's sort of what makes it so funny? I'm sorry. Okay. Let's run through the Nick Grimshaw diagnostic. How much do you actually care about what Gladys from Pret thinks of you?"
"Her name is June."
"Tell me anything else you know about her, other than what she looks like and where she works."
"I don't...why?"
"Because you don't know her, Nick. It doesn't matter that you got her name wrong, because she's a stranger. How much do you want to bet she wouldn't even be able to recognise you on the street? Do you really care what she thinks, or is this about the breakfast show again?"
"Not everything is about the breakfast show, Harold. You make me sound like a loon, always obsessing about how I could massively fail and ruin the breakfast show."
"You are a loon who's always obsessing about how he can fail, though. You'll be fine. You haven't ruined your relationship with the Pret lady. You're probably the only one who even tries to call her by name-people just grunt as her all day, and walk off without saying thank you. You've seen people at Pret, right? You haven't ruined Pret, and you won't have to skip your coffee, and even if you did skip coffee your show won't be shit. Okay?"
Nick spends long moments just looking out his windshield, gnawing on his bottom lip between his teeth, thinking. "You have a Nick Grimshaw diagnostic?"
"Basically, yeah." Harry shifts around on his end, and there's people in the background yelling at him, and there are probably a million things he still has to do for this important live television broadcast he's doing in two days, but he still doesn't hang up. "Um, can I just say, that uh..." and it's Harry's turn to sound self-conscious now, like he's not sure if he's being daft. "I miss you?"
"I miss you too."
"You do?" Harry answers, surprised.
"Course I do."
"Great. I have to go now, I'll see you later," Harry says, all in a rush, and then he's hanging up, but not before Nick hears just how pleased he sounds, like Nick had given him the world instead of just confirmed a banal fact.
Nick makes a mental note to be nicer to Harry. He shouldn't have to be surprised that Nick feels the empty spaces Harry leaves behind when he's away. He does have a special diagnostic procedure just for Nick, after all. It's the least he deserves.
-The first time Nick says "I love you":
It's in the throes of orgasm that he says it, of course, because he's nothing if not a sad cliché.
Harry wanks him slowly, with a sure hand. The quiet hum of late Sunday morning traffic leaks in through the half-shut window, and it sounds the way Nick feels, lazy and soft and removed from the mad rush of weekdays. He's lying mostly on top of Harry, forehead pressed into the pillow next to Harry's ear, chest sticky, and if he moved a bit Harry would have much better access to his cock and be able to tug him off a lot better. But he's in no hurry, neither of them are, and he would be happy if the steady, insistent press of Harry's slightly calloused palm against the underside of his dick went on forever.
They've both come twice already, and it's filthy; they should really go and take a shower instead of luxuriating in bed like this. But Nick is boneless in Harry's arms, his hips hardly jerking even when Harry does that thing where he flicks his wrist and runs a fingertip over the wet slit of his cock. Harry's whispering some nonsense into his hair, hot steam of breath against his skin, his hand so loose around Nick's cock that it'd be like the worst kind of torture if he weren't already sated. For a second Nick feels like he's having an out of body experience, like he's looking down on this scene from above and seeing his own pale legs tangle between Harry's strong thighs, and proclaiming I have found perfection and it is this moment.
When he finally comes with a weak spasm, it's not with the rushing pleasure of the first two times, but it's still enough to scramble his circuits briefly, and before he realises what he's doing he's groaning "I love you" into Harry's ear.
When his brain finally catches up to what he just said, his whole body twitches with a horrible falling sensation, like missing the last step on the stairs and stumbling onto air. He feels a rush of cold, then hot, and then he thinks he might actually be sick and he runs to the bathroom.
Harry might be calling his name as he chases after him, but Nick wouldn't know because he's slamming the door shut and then hugging porcelain.
It's a lucky thing they've spent all morning fucking instead of getting up to eat breakfast, because at least now there isn't too much for Nick to throw up.
He flushes the toilet quickly, and groans when he realises Harry is probably laughing at him. Again.
"I can't believe you actually vomited."
"Shut up," Nick says, voice wrecked by the bile he's just been heaving. He runs the tap and gargles for about a billion years.
"I suppose it could be worse," Harry yells over the sound of the water. "At least you didn't try to take it back right after and blame it on drinking too much cider."
Nick freezes, cheeks bulging with his mouthful of water. It takes a while for him to remember to spit. "How do you know about that?"
"You talked about it on the radio, you knob," Harry says. "You said it was at Reading, in 2010. Who was it? Have I met him?"
"Aww, Harry, you were such a big fan of my nighttime show. Did you listen every night? Do you want me to autograph something for you?"
"I'm a big fan of Annie Mac. You just happened to be on when she was." The doorknob jiggles and Nick thanks himself for his own foresight in locking it. "Stop deflecting and tell me who it was. Do you still hang out with him?"
Nick ignores him and brushes his teeth for a very long time. He's not stalling. He's just making sure that his teeth are immaculately sick-free.
"Should I actually be worried?" Harry says at the same time Nick finally turns off the tap. His voice sounds slightly more serious now, like he thinks maybe he should worry about this Reading 2010 guy after all, like maybe he's abso-bloody-lutely insane and doesn't realise he's Harry and Nick is Nick and Nick is fucked.
"It doesn't matter who it was," Nick says, yanking open the door.
Nick steps forward until he's toe to toe with Harry. He meets Harry's eyes and for once he doesn't try to stop his insides from going silly or berate himself for feeling the way he feels. "It's you now," Nick says, and his voice is steady.
-end
Endnote: The title is taken from the lyrics of 'Bikes' by Lucy Rose, which is a song that Nick Grimshaw constantly played on his nighttime show and also a song I've cried to more than twice. Thank you to junkshop_disco for our epic 99-message-long email thread about Grimmy (lol losers), and thank you to you for reading.