BLACKOUT :: REWIND // A Harry Styles AU

ONE :: INCEPTION

Distinctive, unwelcome and alien-like noises began chiming through the room from the alarm on the windowsill. The flat was cold - bitter and strangely unhomely, and wind whistled through the large sash window. The storage heaters clearly had a mind of their own this year.

Madeleine grunted, lifting her head up with her eyes squeezed shut. "Alexa," she called through a weak, cracking voice.

The alarm quietened anticipatively, the blue and green ring light around the top wavering as the device listened.

"Shut the fuck up." Madeleine muttered, dropping her head again to fall into her pillows.

Having not heard her properly, the Amazon device started bleating at her again.

"Alexa!" She squealed, turning a glare on the tech by her bed. "Stop."

The room fell silent again, only the wind hissing through the window and filling the early morning quiet. Madeleine took a few long breaths before she rolled onto her back, staring up at the white chiffon draped over the top of her bed like a canopy. She was reminded of what her mother said the first time she'd seen it - that it made her small studio flat look smaller. She'd only shrugged in response.

Dragging her hands down her tired face, she sat up, glancing around the room. A content sigh left her, with an easy smile on her lips.

If there was one thing to know about Maddy, it was that she loved the colour green - in any shade. So when she bought her studio flat three years ago, and had the opportunity to decorate it however she wanted to, her main colour scheme was green. Jade and emerald mostly, against stark white walls and fluffy charcoal carpet. One wall only in her studio flat - a feature wall, if you like - had been painted dark green. Dulux called it 'Highland Green', and every morning she felt just that - like she was waking up in the Scottish highlands, even though she was much, much further south.

According to her mother Mandy, decorating any wall in such a dark colour would shrink the room, but Madeleine didn't care. She'd always felt cosy in it.

Her apartment was small, yes - a bedsit in central Bristol comprising only two rooms. In the main room, her custom-made beechwood four-poster was pushed into the right-hand corner against the window and facing what was technically the front of the building. She'd conveniently placed her TV on that wall, since there was no room for a sofa. The front posters of the bed were fixed with small pocket shelves climbing upwards from the base like a ladder, each one filled with a plant of some shape and variety, ranging from snake plants to peace lilies to aloe to monstera. Since she was reluctant to raise a pet in such a small space, her plants were her babies. Being a heavy sleeper, she only covered her window with another sheet of white chiffon to act as a curtain.

Beside her bed on the left was her large wardrobe, again handmade out of recycled mahogany by a carpenter friend she met through work, and on the other side of that, a small entryway into her flat where her coats and shoes lived.

The kitchen stretched the length of the left wall, corderned by a cheap linoleum, with cream cabinets and brass handles, a flat-top electric cooker and the same beechwood surfaces as her bed frame. The splashback tiling along the wall was created and fitted by Madeleine herself - a mosaic that looked like deep woodland, in-keeping with the colour scheme.

A feature fireplace completed the room, blocked inside and unusable, but one of Madeleine's favourite parts of the flat. Again, it had been filled with plants, and painted the same green as the opposing wall. Above the mantel hung one of her favourite pieces of art on a canvas print - Monet's Waterlillies. She was by no means a painter, but she had always loved the colours, and this one in particular complemented the room well, or so she thought. Her mother disagreed.