Tangerine

Chapter 86

Soundtrack: Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade of Pale

I highly recommend you listen to this song while reading :) what a dream. x

Dedication: (Justreading94) hi :) just wanted to say thank you for being a fan of this story and sharing my struggles with scarlet's indecision between louis and harry :) you're great! i'm sure you're used to fanfics with millions of reads, so thank you for choosing to read tangerine among the cool kids!

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"Mmm," Louis hums softly into my lips, "I like your kisses..."

I smile against Louis' mouth, taking in the contrast of his stubble against his soft skin, "I like your kisses..."

Louis chuckles, "Bit rough... hm?"

I kiss his lips tauntingly, "I like it like that..."

I sling my leg over Louis' thighs, "your scruff... mmm..." I straddle his torso, kissing over his cheeks, neck, jaw, lips.

"You like it rough," Louis implies with a smirk.

"Shush," I beam bashfully, pinching his side.

Louis squirms under my body, fucking giggling, "You do. Don't deny it," he pulls me to his chest, giving a sharp nip to my collar bone and whispering this time, "you do."

My breath hitches. I feel so much darker than I did a moment ago. I moan with my mouth against Louis' shoulder, dragging my lips over to his collar bone and giving him a nip in return.

Louis paints his hands down my sides, connecting our lips once more in a session of heated snogging.

And this is the point where I need to mentally take a step back.

Because, listen. How long has it been? Nine months?

Under a year ago, I was rolling joints in the bathroom stall of the local Firkin so I could get a buzz before meeting up with my mates at the next bar. I was tagging along for a ride with people I'd only met twice, so I could go to music festivals by myself. I was listening to vinyl in my bedroom and pinning up Polaroids of stupid pictures I took with my old friends. I was hooking up with people I'd just met, sleeping in until three in the afternoon some days, and noshing out on a can of cold mixed vegetables, because that was all I could afford for dinner at the time. And if I were to play the odd show, it was only once or twice a week, in a dingy, watering hole of a London pub.

I played a lot of shows, with a lot of different stages -- so many, it's hard to recall half of them. I played dirty stages, decent stages, stages with half-empty beer bottles littered by my feet, stages with a nice view if anyone was there to see it, outdoor stages, artsy stages, stages covered in graffiti done by people I knew on a first-name basis, stages that weren't even stages because I was on the same floor level as the crowd, and stages where the soundchecking was up to me, because God knows where the audio people ran off to. I played a bachelorette party once, a couple of eighteenth birthday celebrations and a going away shindig for a group of rowdy, drunken construction workers. I played handfuls of shows, because that's what musicians do, but none of them were like what I'm facing today.

I wasn't by any means performing for thousands of people every single evening, save for the occasional day off needed to travel to the next country. Sure, I wanted to make it big in the music industry, but back then, I wasn't entirely up-to-date with what that meant; making it big.