sweet disposition | haylor au

11- didn't you calm my fears with a chesire cat smile

"And I had forgotten that I kind of suck at ice-skating," Harry yelled back. The two had started a game of tag, but Harry was starting to dread even suggesting a game of such, considering how bad he was at keeping up with Taylor's pace. He didn't understand how she could skate so beautifully despite being so bundled up in the harsh cold. He was struggling in trying to not trip over his layers of clothing. Harry had been chasing her for minutes, which was abnormal for a simple game of tag. It was very embarrassing, and Taylor taunting him as she skated ahead was definitely not helping. 

"Do you give up?" Taylor stopped for a second, considerable distances away for him to tag her. 

"You wish," Harry groaned. 

"Still very persistent, huh?" She teased, "fine with me!" Harry sighed when she started to lift her pace further. She was an absolute tease and he hated it. He decided that he had enough of chasing after her for this long, and the only way to call this round off was by bringing in a little cheat into the game.

"Taylor, stop!" He cried, making Taylor stop dead in her tracks. He was impressed by the fake alarmness in his tone, but then again, the Christopher Nolan had cast him in one of his films for a reason.

Taylor blinked twice and mouthed a concerned 'what?' 

"The paps. They're here," He said quietly, loud enough for her to go into a state of panic. She froze then and there while Harry gestured his gaze over her shoulders. She followed his gaze, slowly turning around, giving Harry the perfect chance to make his move. In a swift motion, he rushed over, almost wobbling over for a second, before snaking his arms around Taylor's shoulders. "gotcha!" He grinned in victory.

Taylor didn't even have the time to turn back around as the sudden collision had sent them collapsing on the smooth ice. She had fallen atop of Harry, and confusingly lifted her face up from his chest, taking a few seconds to digest his sneaky tactic. Once everything processed through, she gave him a big scowl, smacking him in the ab. "That wasn't funny!" 

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes it was. I fooled you and I won the game," He declared confidently. 

She shook her head, in the process of lifting herself off of him. But Harry grabbed onto her wrist, keeping her from getting back up. "You used my weakness against me."

Harry shrugged, "yes and it worked." 

Her scowl did not fade. In fact, it had deepened.

Harry gave a small frown. "Oh come on, it was getting tiring. The round was going on for too long, I had to beat you somehow."

She tilted her head to the side in challenge. "So you cheat?"

"It's the only way to beat you!"

She smirked at his excuse, failing to conceal the pride that was evident in her expression. Here she was, breaking into the ice rink and falling flat on Harry Styles himself. She would have never though of seeing herself doing any of this. She had risked a lot when she was alongside Harry's company. She had broken the rules by trespassing but being with Harry was the biggest risk of them all! But she was having fun and she could not deny that truth.

"I think I got what was coming for cheating anyway, so you can stop being mad. My ass hurts like hell; I had a pretty rough fall." Harry mumbled out in a jiffy groan.

Taylor gave a soft giggle before lifting herself and bringing herself on upright. She nodded before lending him a hand which he gladly accepted. "I believe it's your turn to chase after me now." 

-

They had stopped playing tag in the rink a little over an hour ago. Now they were back to strolling the park again. The area they were in now wasn't flooded with that much snow as before,  so it was smoother to walk through. 

"I caught you within seconds Harry!" Taylor laughed as they were back to talking about how badly Harry had been in their little game of tag. 

"That's because we were playing on ice! I can't skate, I think you know that by now. How about I challenge you to a game of tag on ground?" Harry challenged, his confidence growing back after the amount of embarrassment he'd received from Taylor concerning his bad skating skills. 

"That's quite tempting but we're gonna have to wait on that challenge for a bit," She responded. 

"Once the snow's gone."

"Once the snow's gone." She repeated. 

"I'm a very fast runner Tay, so be warned." 

"Yeah, yeah, whatever!" 

They continued walking and continued to make teasing remarks about each other. It was quite an entertaining conversation until it was rudely interrupted by the snap of a camera and the translucent whispers that soon followed it. Two teenage girls stood a three yard distance away, observing the two of them through their camera lens. Taylor had stopped walking immediately, tensing up through her body. Her worst fear of the day had come true.

Harry noticed her sudden tenseness and went to grab her hand to remind her that he was here too. To comfort her in that very moment. "I'm here," Harry reminded, "it'll be okay. We'll get through this one too." Taylor slowly looked to meet his gaze, almost melting at the sight of his warm smile.

-

5 days later

Taylor was back in her home, sitting down on the windowsill as she scrolled through her Twitter. It had to be at least 2 am in the night, but she was wide awake in the full moon. She knew Twitter was bad news, that was why she always deleted the app after making important announcements. But she couldn't resist tonight, not right now. Those pictures had been leaked today and the internet was already losing it. 

It wasn't a bad losing it. It was surprisingly a curious losing it. Of course haylor was trending #1 but most of the tweets were.... she didn't know how to word it. She couldn't say they were positive because they weren't dating, so the tweets that were romanticizing her and Harry weren't really positive. They also weren't negative because she didn't see any hate tweets... which she had feared the most. She really didn't know what she expected the positive tweets to be like. Here and there, she had found some tweets from the occasional larries.

She was startled by their vengeful tweets. She didn't know that they still existed. Even back in 2012, out of all the hate tweets aimed at her, the larrie ones were the ones that she felt most unbothered by. They fantasized a fictional ship so there wasn't anything really to be afraid of. 

She turned off her phone and put it down on her lap. She began to bite her nails- a habit of hers when she became extremely nervous. The full moon outside looked beautiful and it was all she could concentrate on amidst all the turmoil circling around her thoughts. She was so deeply clouded by the beauty of the moonlight that she almost missed the sudden headlights that had just appeared right outside her house. It was deja vu again and it didn't take her long to figure out whose car it was waiting for her outside. 

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my third favorite 1989 track tease