the royal family of the music industry

08. Best Song Ever

And Taylor doesn't.

Instead she asks, "how are you, Harry?"

Harry furrows his brows and stares at the floor. Taylor has such a force in her voice, indicating she wants an honest answer and won't stop until she gets one.

"I don't know. He confuses me." Harry says after a while and Taylor nods, thinking.

"I have an idea how we can get your mind off of everything right now." She says eventually.

"Write a song?" Harry asks and Taylor laughs.

"I mean I would love to do that with you one day, but that wasn't my idea. I thought about going down into the basement. Rihanna said there is a dungeon and an old library and something like that. Maybe there are a few cool old expensive things I could use for the upcoming music videos for Reputation."

Harry looks at her and shrugs approvingly. He doesn't have anything else to do anyway.

"Great." Taylor claps her hands excitedly and grabs a grey cardigan that hangs on a chair and swings it over her shoulders.
"I guess it will be cold down
there." She explains as she sees Harry's amused look.

Harry quickly pulls a hoodie out of one of his still unpacked boxes and pulls it over his head. Taylor looks at it for a moment, before bursting into laughter and Harry glances down.

Oh.

It's 1989 merchandise.

"What." He whines, not completely able to hide the laugh in his voice. "It looks cute on me."

He rethinks his sentence for a moment. "But then again, everything looks hella cute on me."

Taylor laughs even harder and walks past him.
Harry shakes his head fondly and closes the door behind them.

When they make it down to the first flight of gigantic staircases, they find Zayn and Niall on it.
Zayn holding an old-fashioned camera and Niall sliding down the golden handrail of the stone staircase. At the end of it he nearly loses his balance and Zayn quickly steadies him, laughing uncontrollably.

"You got it?" Niall asks when he calms down. Zayn looks at the camera and nods proudly.
"Great I could use that for a fancy music video. The fans would go wild when I tell them it's directed by Zayn Malik. But then again my new album doesn't really have the vibe of this castle. Maybe next one." He rambles to himself and Zayn spots Taylor and Harry at the top of the stairs.

"You want to come with us to the dungeons?" Taylor asks smiling and Zayn nods shrugging while Niall completely overreacts.

He jumps up and down, squeals and all that.

Just Niall Horan.

Taylor grabs his hand and pulls him with them to other, more hidden staircases. Each one is smaller than the last until one is behind a door that creaks scarily as Zayn opens it.

There are no windows and no light switch so the four of them pull out their phones to use the flashes.

"Where's Liam?" Harry asks conversationally while they walk down the cold steps.

"Playing footie with Tommo." Niall replies and with that, the conversation is already over.

Harry doesn't know what to say and apparently nobody else does either.

The walls are cold, wet stone with rusty torch holders. It smells of mold, rain and monarchy. 

Nothing but darkness surrounds them where their phone flashes don't reach and Harry wouldn't be surprised if there was a skeleton at the end of this corridor that had been a poor human protecting the treasures of the castle that are hidden here.

"This is fucking scary." Zayn speaks up and they all jump at the noise.

"Wait I have an idea." Niall says excitedly and taps on his phone, stopping in his tracks.

He looks up at them grinning while Look what you made me do starts playing.

"That's the vibe." Zayn says approvingly and the two start singing loudly, their voices echoing off the empty walls.

Taylor quickly gets into it and beatboxes the background noises and Harry laughs at them before joining in the chorus.

They walk into through various doors into small or big rooms, listening to reputation on shuffle.

A room full of actual torture tools, which they leave pretty quickly again; a smaller room stacked from floor to ceiling with faded portraits of unknown royals in golden frames; a few that are empty and a big room with mannequins wearing fancy ball gowns and wooden chests that are filled with other dresses and amazing looking suits. But they smell very bad. Harry and Zayn take a few of them with them anyway.

The next room has a dusty chandelier laying in the middle, broken. It probably fell from the ceiling at one point a long time ago because there are cobwebs all over it.

The rest of the room is full of very old silver chests, some of them have a rusty lock on them, some of them don't. Niall opens the first unlocked one and they hold their flashes over his shoulder.
Niall gasps and Harry raises his eyebrows.

The chest is filled to the rim with diamonds.

Diamond necklaces, pocket watches, bracelets, rings, earrings, a belt, a bag and even suspenders.

The light of their flashes is reflected by the clear surface of the small and big stones that are so detailed engraved into the jewellery.

"Holy fucking shit." Zayn breathes and they all agree with speechless nods.

In the corner is a dirty and dusty bathtub and Taylors gaze flickers between it and the diamonds.

"What are you thinking about?" Harry asks smirking and nudges her arm with his elbow.

"This is it. This is going to be the look what you made me do music video. I'm telling you now."

*****
A/N

suppp
i won't do authors notes that often bc i personally find them pretty annoying. yet here i am. just because i wanted to inform you that life's a bit stressful rn so the chapters might take a while. I WON'T STOP THIS UNTIL IT'S FINISHED NO WORRIES......
also this was a boring filler chapter but i really wanted to show the progress of all of them growing closer and kinda reuniting with zayn.

and i KNOW the flashbacks HURT AS FUCK but i wanted to show you what kind of relationship they had. and it's one to die for honestly. i'm crying. (i'm also currently listening to falling which doesn't help at all) (and because there are people out there who see harry live RIGHT NOW and i'm here in my bed writing fanfiction about said man ALONE)

and yes i'll explain why they broke up very soon. in a few chapters. maybe it'll be another flashback to BREAK A FEW BITCHES' HEARTS.

tpwk.

another question: do you want smut in this or not? i would of course do a warning when we get there for everyone who's uncomfortable with that to skip it. but i think it can be really good to idk make the relationship more real and stuff when the smut is good and story (or past-) related. it would actually be my first time writing smut but i would definitely put a lot of thoughts into it and try to make it as good as i can <3

so just tell me if i should write it or skip it. comment here>>

the next chapter will be a lot funnier bc harry's always so sad in this and i hate it. i'm looking forward to writing terrible jokes :)

all the love, p