BLACKOUT :: REWIND // A Harry Styles AU

TWELVE :: CONVULSION

"Is it warm out?" Madeleine asked quietly as she opened her wardrobe door. She clung her towel around her body, forgetting to choose her outfit before she went for a bath.

Mason and her dad hadn't taken too much longer with getting breakfast after Harry had left. They'd eaten in relative silence when they did return with food, only really with Martin passing the odd comment about something on the news. Mandy had tried to converse with Mason, but he was equally as sulky as he was before he'd gone out. The fresh air apparently hadn't done him any good.

Once breakfast was finished with, Mason decided to go home, and Madeleine did very little to stop him. Neither Mandy nor Martin commented on his mood, though it was obvious that something wasn't quite the same.

Even though it had only been a couple of hours since Harry left, Madeleine couldn't get the image of his face out of her head. There was something utterly hypnotising about him - almost paralysing, and it consumed her. As she watched the TV with her parents while their breakfast went down, she wasn't really paying attention to it. She was only thinking about that t-shirt he'd chosen to wear to visit her - as if it was some kind of joke, like he was playing with her, even though he'd been nothing but kind the entire time he was in her flat. While she bathed she wasn't really focussed on washing herself, but rather thinking about how Harry's hair had fallen - parted straight down the middle and tickling around his ears and the side of his face.

She was embarrassed, frankly. This stranger had entered her life yesterday, and now he seemed to be her every thought. Her only thought. Was her brain making up for lost time given all the near-meetings they had? Was the universe correcting itself? Because, really, now that she thought about it, Harry had been existing in her life for much longer than 18 hours. He'd just not been the focal point - he was a character she'd been in close proximity with on multiple occasions and had just never seen his face. Was the total consumption she was experiencing actually the world righting its wrongs?

Perhaps that was all a dreadfully optimistic approach to her newfound infatuation, but it was a nice change from pessimism.

"It is quite, yeah." Martin smiled from where he lay across Madeleine's now made bed. Mandy must've done it while she was having a bath.

"Warm enough for a skirt?" Madeleine asked over her shoulder.

"I'd say so."

"You're going to wear a skirt?" Mandy was almost in shock. "You never wear anything but leggings or jeans."

"I know." Madeleine mumbled as she took the garment from its hanger - an a-line black and white vertical stripe maxi skirt - along with a white t-shirt with another Steven Rhodes 'Let's Sacrifice Toby' print on the front. "Mason will be disappointed he missed it."

"He'd still say you're ruining it with that t-shirt." Mandy muttered.

"I love those t-shirts." Martin smirked.

"So do I, Martin. But Mason doesn't, because apparently he hasn't got a sense of humour."

"You're not wrong there." Madeleine murmured. "I'm just going to change."

"What are you going to do with your hair?"

Madeleine paused, looking back to her mother. "I don't know, probably let it dry down."

Mandy's gaze flattened. "It needs a cut, Maddy. Let me plait it for you?"

"Alright, fine."

So, after she dressed, Madeleine sat on the floor in front of her bed and let her mother braid her hair. She did one braid diagonally across the top of her head, so that the tail fell neatly over her left shoulder.