#unable to hear anything bc the music was so fuckin loud i could feel the bass in my bones

[strawberriestyles]

Part 2: The Creeps

(BANNER BY THE GODDESS HERSELF @adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy​)

Harry X Reader (AU)

In which you try to resolve the case of a fraternity’s haunting in a single night.

Read previous part here.

Word count: 2.9k

Author’s note: I actually forgot I was writing this when Lights Up came out bc I was so distracted and then I’ve had an eventful week but we back!! Hope y’all enjoy. I had a ton of fun writing this one. XX

“Where do we start?”

Harry’s looking at you expectantly, leather gloves curled around the sticky edge of the island countertop. You shrug, peering through the doorway into the dining room, where wispy smoke is spiraling through the air. It could be from the fog machines hidden in the corners of the house, but the smell suggests something else entirely.

“You’re the one who lives here,” you reply. “Where do you think we should start? Do you know any of the house’s history?”

“Nope. And unfortunately, I don’ think the city library’s open this late.”

“Then we’ll just have to find clues here, right?” You think your reasoning’s sound, but you’re not absolutely sure. You feel loose, foggy like the other room, and what you’ve learned in your classes sits at the peripherals of your mind, just beyond reach, unattainable. You take a firm step forward, though.

“I guess so.” Harry follows closely behind as you lead the way back into the thick of the party. It’s still a lot, all of the noise and the smells and the flashing lights at the other end of the house, but it’s no longer too much. You don’t feel the need to process it all at the same time; you can pick and choose pieces of your surroundings to focus on.

“We do have an attic, yeh know.” You turn to your right and find Harry looking out at the rest of the party. “I’ve never checked it out, but I imagine that if we could find anythin’ from the past it would be up there. Landlord’s told us to stay out, though.”

“What your landlord doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” You sweep a quick glance around the room and a quirked smile finds your lips. The scent of marijuana is only growing more potent, and against the wall, behind the sofa jutting out into the center of the living room, is a giant tub of water filled with fruit for apple-bobbing. You shiver to think of the saliva floating on its surface as the girl that fell down the stairs shoves her face into the tub’s depths. Water sloshes over the rim and forms puddles atop the wooden floorboards. “Especially if all of this doesn’t bother him.”

“Let’s check it out, then.” Harry’s fingers close over yours but you don’t have the chance to react before he’s leading you back toward the stairs. You shift through the crowd behind him until you reach the stairwell and then he drops your hand, motioning for you to precede him up the steps. The window has been closed again. Steam coats the upper pane but the lower is blocked by a couple of boys groping at each other, mouths stumbling against lips. The air, however, is still more comfortable than the rest of the house. You suck in a lungful as the two of you skirt around the other couple.

The upper floor seems like nothing but a maze of hallways and doors to you. Harry steps in front of you again and navigates quickly. A sharp right turn leaves you in a short corridor with only a single door at the end. But there’s a panel of plywood set into the ceiling just before that door, and a knotted string hangs down, taunting you.

Harry gives you a brief contemplative look before he yanks on the cord. A cloud of dust falls with the door. You cough immediately, waving a hand in front of your face to disperse the particles, and you don’t even notice the ladder falling from the ceiling before you’re yanked out of the way so hard that your shoulder twinges. The bottom of the ladder hits the floor where you were standing not a moment ago.

“‘M sorry,” Harry says when he catches sight of your wince. His fingers trail up your arm, just brushing your skin, until they reach your shoulder and peel back the strap of your costume. “Are you okay? Didn’ mean to pull yeh so hard.”

“I’m fine,” you whisper as he runs his thumb over the junction of your collarbone and the socket of your shoulder. There’s a brief flicker of pain, but it’s gone just as quickly when Harry jerks his fingers back.

“Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

Harry’s grinning, mischief glinting beneath his features. You roll your eyes at him but his lips have settled against your skin before you’re finished. They remain there, warm and moist, for one second, two, three. When Harry’s knuckles brush your elbow and he finally pulls away, your fingers are twitching, aching to reach out and touch him again, but he says nothing, just motions you toward the ladder.

“You think I’m going up there first?” you ask when you’ve found your voice again. There’s a circle on your shoulder that chills as air presses against it.

Harry grins again. “What, are yeh scared?”

“No, you just wanna look up my skirt while I’m climbing.”

Harry belts out a laugh. “I wasn’ even thinkin’ about that.”

“Liar.”

“Okay, maybe I thought about it for a second. But it was only a second.”

“Well, get climbing,” you tell him with an arched brow.

His eyes linger on you for another moment before he follows your orders, gripping the rung at eye level and hoisting himself up to the opening of the attic. It’s dark and quiet up there, and you’re just thinking about what might be creeping in the corners when there’s a reverberating snap that makes you flinch. On the last rung, Harry’s foot has broken through the wood and he slips, smashing through the rung below that one as well, but he catches himself on the attic floor.

“Christ!” he shouts.

“Are you okay?”

“‘M fine,” he grumbles before pulling himself up the rest of the way. He swings around to look down at you from his vantage point and all you can see are his head and shoulders. He nods at you. “C’mon, then.”

You shake out your painful shoulder and start climbing. When you reach the last intact rung of the ladder, Harry stretches down to catch your wrist. He pulls you toward him and then grips your arms, just below your armpits, to swing you up and into the attic. The light from the second floor doesn’t reach anything past Harry’s face up here.

“Ow, fuck,” you mumble as your shoulder smarts again.

“‘M sorry, sorry.”

“It’s fine. Is there a light up here? I can’t see anything.”

“Let me look. Hold—Fuck!”

“Harry?”

“I tripped.”

“Be careful.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“I’m just saying. Watch where you’re going.”

“Well, I bloody well would if I could see where I was—”

There’s a loud bang, so close and so sudden that you can’t help the petrified shriek that you let out. Your phone, which you were in the process of removing from your bra to use the flashlight, skitters across the room into some faraway corner. The soft light from the second floor has disappeared altogether. You’re not sure if there are any windows up here, but if there are, they’re covered. It’s pitch black. You can see nothing, not even your fingers as you hold them up an inch from your nose. Adrenaline flits through your body, your muscles tensed. Your shoulder aches but you ignore it.

“Harry?” Silence. All you can hear is the distant pump of music. “Harry?”

“‘M here. ‘M right here. You okay?”

“Yes."

All of the air leaves your lungs in a relieved sigh. You shift onto your knee and attempt to stand, but something ghosts over the nape of your neck. You gasp and fall back to the floor.

“Sorry, sorry! ’S just me.”

“Don’t fucking do that!” you whisper fiercely in his general direction. You didn’t even hear him approach.

“I didn’ mean to! I can’ fuckin’ see yeh!”

You take a deep breath to steady yourself and your racing pulse, closing your eyes. There’s more light behind your eyelids than there is in the attic.

“Here’s my hand,” Harry announces, and you can feel it displace the air as it reaches toward you. You lean forward and find his wrist first before letting your fingers slide down to his hand, gripping the warm leather of his fingerless glove. He helps you up to your feet and doesn’t let go once you’re standing. You’re grateful for his touch.

“No luck finding a light, then?” you whisper. For some reason, it feels inappropriate to speak any louder.

“I didn’ get very far. Come with me.”

You nod before realizing he can’t see you. “Yes.”

The two of you stumble across the uneven floorboards. Your hand tightens around Harry’s as your foot meets something solid and he catches you before you trip. He pulls you around the object and your free hand finds the buttons of his flannel.

“Can we go back downstairs?” you ask, trying to keep any trembling from your voice. “We can find a flashlight or something. Where’s the door?”

“I—I don’ know,” Harry admits. His thumb rubs over the back of your hand. “We’ll find it, though. C’mon.”

You let go of his shirt and follow as he tugs you back the way you came. At least, you think it’s the way you came. Your internal compass is broken, unable to get your bearings in this oppressively dark place.

There’s a whisper of something cold against your cheek and you shriek again, batting at whatever it is with your free hand and clinging to Harry’s with your other like your life depends on it.

“Hey, hey!” he shouts over your screaming. He’s back beside you, arm at your waist, lips beside your ear. “Wha’s wrong? What?”

“I don’t—something touched me.”

“Where? Touched yeh where?”

“It was on my face.” Your voice shakes and you try to swallow down a chunk of your fear. “I’m sorry.��

“Nothin’ to be sorry for. Okay?”

“Yeah,” you whisper.

Harry’s arm leaves your waist and his hand touches your cheek, strokes your face. His fingers stumble over the line of your lips and find the other side of your face. “Still okay?” he checks.

“Yes,” you breathe.

Harry’s hand leaves your face and slips around the back of your head, leather sliding past your hair, and then his touch leaves you altogether, experimenting with the air around you.

“Ah,” he says.

“What?”

There’s a soft click and then you clap a hand over your eyes as orange light blinds you.

“Was the cord for the light,” Harry announces, amused.

“I thought it was a spider or something.”

“Or something.”

You bring your hand down and blink away the water that’s collected at the corners of your eyes while they begin to adjust to the newfound light.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Both of you are squinting at your surroundings, at the piles of boxes and loose papers and tools and furniture stacked up along the perimeter of the room. Your body tenses as you see something scurry between a matching set of chairs.

“I hate this.”

“Scared?”

“Only of the physical stuff. The bugs and animals and stuff that can hurt me.”

Harry cracks a smile and takes another glance around the room. “Okay, ghostbuster, let’s get to work. What exactly should I be looking for?”

You brush a thin layer of dust from your skirt and scuff the heel of your shoe against a suspicious stain soaked into the floorboards before you. “Anything that seems creepy or out of place. And old papers, something that might tell us about people who have lived and died here.”

“Okay. Why don’ you start looking through papers and I’ll work through the rest of this stuff, yeah?”

“Sure.”

Harry just watches you, and it takes a few moments for you to realize that you’re still squeezing his hand. You loosen your fingers and take a step backward. “Sorry.”

“Don’ be.” Harry gives you a smirk before he turns around to begin rifling through a heaping pile of what looks to be old children’s toys.

You find a tall stack of file boxes to your right and pull the topmost box down to the floor. When you remove the lid there is a bunch of birthday cards on top bound up with a thick rubber band. You pull the first one you see out and flip it open.

Marcia,

Celebrate the year behind you and prepare for the fun ahead. 

Happy 11th birthday!

Love,

Aunt Karen & Uncle Steve

On the back, the copyright dates the card from 1979. The next one holds a similar message, only from a woman named Kate. You toss the bundle to the side and find pictures beneath, a young girl and a fat black lab, the same girl sitting behind a large layer cake. You lift the rest of the pictures and find newspaper clippings, the scores for sports teams, a list of honor roll students. Some of the papers are gnawed around the edges, and when you see something move at the bottom of the box, you scramble away across the floor.

Harry looks up at you, his brows drawn together. “Somethin’ wrong?”

“No.” You shake your head and begin packing everything back into the box before slamming the lid back onto it. There’s a small hole in one corner of the box. You shove it back toward the others with the toe of your shoe.

“Does this count as somethin’ creepy?” Harry holds up a doll that looks to be handmade. It has one button eye, but the other is missing, nothing but frayed yarn where it should be. The doll smiles at you with a blood red, sewn mouth. “I think it counts.”

“It’s definitely creepy,” you agree. That’s when a mouse that looks closer to the size of a rat wiggles out of the box you were just looking through. You clamp your lips shut to keep quiet. But Harry sees it as well. He sets the doll gingerly atop a rocking chair and clears his throat.

“D’yeh wanna go?”

“Yes.”

“Would we really have found somethin’ up here, anyway?” Harry tries to reason. You’re not sure at all. Realistically, you would have liked to find something like an obituary, but would you even know if whoever was in the photo had died in the house? You don’t have the right resources to do adequate research tonight. But you are upset that after the number of times you’ve already gotten the creeps up here, you could barely work through a single file box. It doesn’t seem worth the trouble.

“Where does most of the paranormal stuff actually happen?” you ask Harry. It’s your best bet, finding the source of the haunting and trying, somehow, to make contact. Although you’re not too keen on that idea, either. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea, but with Harry looking at you, you aren’t about to back out. He doesn’t think your major is a load of shit, and that’s motivating enough.

“Probably the basement.”

You smile sarcastically. “Great. I love basements almost as much as I love attics.”

Harry chuckles and works his way across the room until he reaches you. “Gets pretty cold down there. Dunno if your, uh, costume is gonna keep yeh warm.”

You blink at him and he smirks again. “Can borrow a sweatshirt if yeh’d like.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Harry crouches down beside the attic door, the ladder folded up atop the panel of wood. He stomps on the panel once, twice, and it falls open, the ladder rushing down to meet the carpet of the hallway below. Harry swings a foot onto the first unbroken rung and looks up at you.

“Pull that cord, would yeh?”

You reach up to yank on the chain and the lightbulb above you clicks out. Harry’s head disappears below the floor. You follow, lowering your foot blindly to find the ladder. His hand closes around your upper calf, guiding your toes down. HIs other hand catches your hip as your torso slips along the attic floor.

“All right?”

“Mhmm.”

“Okay. Yeh’re almost there. Just a few more inches.”

Harry’s one hand slips up to your waist, his other to the back of your thigh as he guides you down to touch your feet to the ladder. But his hands don’t pull away immediately.

“Harry.”

“Yes?”

“You’re staring up my skirt, aren’t you?”

“Now, that would be rude of me.”

“That doesn’t—”

“‘M only glancing. No staring involved.”

You breathe out a short laugh. “Let go of me, Harry.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Harry climbs down to the carpet and waits for you to drop next to him before he begins to let the ladder and attic door back up. It closes with a snap and then he smiles at you.

“So, your room?” you prompt.

“Right.”

Harry starts back through the halls and it’s silent for a moment before he speaks again.

“Love the black, by the way.”

“What?”

“It’s sexy. Risky business wearin’ a thong with a skirt that short, though.” He looks over his shoulder to flash you that smug smirk once more. You don’t know whether you’d rather smack or kiss it off his face.

“Very nice,” you answer.

“You’re welcome.” He stops outside a closed door. His room, apparently. He turns around to lean against the door, arms crossed over his chest. “What if I told yeh the entrance fee was those little black panties?”

You arch a brow, drawing your lower lip between your teeth. “What if I told you to fuck off?”

Harry grins. “Fair enough.” Then he twists the doorknob and presses backward into the dark of the empty bedroom.

Part 3: The Chills

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fan fic #harry styles fic #harry styles smut #harry styles angst #harry styles blurb #harry styles one shot #see through

[plantanarchy]

do you think you could talk a little about being autistic? im wondering if i might be autistic and im still not sure bc i like pass as neurotypical rlly well so far and i thought it would help to hear about actual people's experiences. you don't have to though and im sorry if this is weird!!

This has been in my inbox for a bit, I’m sorry! But yeah, I can talk about it. Keep in mind that everyone’s experience is different and its less of a “spectrum” from mild to severe/low to high functioning and more of a complex where different people have different experiences. A lot of people use functioning labels to dismiss the experience and opinions of “high functioning” folk when it comes to being autistic because tjey “don’t seem autistic” or “aren’t like those other low functioning autistic people”, but really “function” is relative and can even change day to day… on someone’s bad days they could be totally nonverbal rocking back and forth and on good days pass better at neurotypical than I do…

Ok so, I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I was ~10. I was essentially non-verbal in school and other high stress social situations and had been since I was very very young. This was interpreted as “very shy!” despite me having severe difficulty from a young age in saying anything at all to teachers, doctors, church people, even many of my peers, etc and often feeling like i was physically unable to speak but you know… because I spoke at home and with my neighborhood friends, I wasn’t considered non-verbal at all. Or I guess selective mutism is the correct term which is something I definitely still struggle with. Like when I was in middle school, I spent a few years literally being known by my mom’s friends and by some people at school as “Meep” because thata fuckin all I could physically say when somebody tried to talk to me haha

BUT ok that got away from me, point being: i was diagnosed with Aspergers at a young age which is a diagnosis that no longer exists/has been absorbed into the greater Autism diagnosis. Aspergers was separate for a long time because it was basically used to say “these kids are high functioning and different than those low functioning non communicative kids!”. Basically because I had most of the “cool and good” autism traits, my “not as cool and kinda crippling” autism traits and needs got shoved aside and essentially ignored for a long, long time. Which I think happens to a lot of kids! Even to the point of not getting a diagnosis at all or getting a wrong diagnosis and only realizing later in life what may be going on and what was missed.

Whoops before this becomes a bitter tangent, back to my experience of autism I guess. Ok, so on top of still being selectively verbal/mute (some days are worse than others and sometimes it isn’t even directly anxiety related it’s just a mostly mute day), my other symptoms include 1) it’s almost physically painful to make eye contact with anyone 2) formal social situations are beyond me, I never know what is correct or what’s coming next and usually I survive informal social situations by cracking jokes and making weird references to shit or being obnoxious and just accepting the label of “weird ass obnoxious kid but that’s just bre” 3) usually feel like I’m just two steps away from understanding what’s going on in some social situations lol like sometimes i have good intuition, can read people, can guess at what they’re thinking and then something happens that makes me question my entire interpretation of the situation and I realize maybe I wasn’t reading them correctly the whole time!!!! It’s the social equivalent of being the only one to get a wrong answer on a math problem and frantically rechecking your work lol 4) sensory overload yayyyyy when too many things happen at once (which can be like… 2 thing), I zone out and feel like my environment is unreal or blurry (fun and cool dissociation) and I can never predict what will cause that overload or when but also a lot of people have the very dramatic “autistic child screaming from sensory overload” image in their brain and thats not always accurate… my overload results in shut down 5) also along with that, I have sensory issues such as texture, sounds, etc. Certain fabrics as a kid would legit make me cry if I touched them or if my mom made me wear them (WINDBREAKERS ARE SENSORY HELL) and that still happens lol also with stuff like… chewing sounds, shoes that touch my toes in any way, loud music/bass, etc 6) along with that and with sensory overload… stimming. Stimming is basically a self-regulatory response to overwhelming stimuli and plenty of non-autistic people also do similar things when faced with high anxiety situations. Like foot jiggling, pencil tapping, nail biting, pencil chewing, etc it’s basically a soothing compulsion and not always something many autistic people can control without great effort and that control comes at the cost of not regulating anxieties or sensory overload well. I’ve got and always have had a lot of verbal/language stims and am very reptitive in my speech and writing patterns (y'all and lad anyone???) which is kinda self soothing. I have literally always had catchphrases. When im on my own i also do rock baxk and forth and other repititive body motions, also fidgeting with objects, especially cool round objects 7) catalog all the useless info in my brain!!! I can memorize information very well (not numbers though) and when I was a kiddo that got me labelled as #gifted and I was “savant” level in reading and writing but that is less cool and fun to people than beinf a math or science savant or something. 8) anyway related to that, as evidenced by this blog, I get VERY INVESTED in certain topics/ “special interests” to the point that it eclipses all other thoughts in my brain yay!!! Which isn’t a bad thing, I mean it gets me through and also if you have “good” special interests, people think you’re smart and interesting and ask your advice about stuff lol

Symptoms I don’t have that a lot of people think of when they think of an autistic person 1) I am horrendous at math I fuckin hate it numbers are the devil!!!!!! 2) 99% of my humor is sarcasm and I can understand it and figures of speech lol though sometimes i do get it wrong if i can’t read you otherwise 3) I don’t have “zero empathy”, I can feel for the plights of others VERY strongly, and can usually see any (most) POVs if it’s explained to me

There are others probably and there are certainly autistic people who have thise traits and who have different traits than I have. There are LOADS of different ways to be autistic. But also, there’s a lot of overlap between autism and between other things like ADHD, anxiety disorders, etc! So keep that in mind. Some people are strongly anti-selfdiagnosis of autism but knowing how easy it can be for kids who don’t present 100% stereotypically to slip through the cracks, I am all for it. I pass a lot of the time as neurotypical and can do most society things ok, though I have a steep learning curve compared to others… and with passing as neurotypical comes the frequent dismissal of my opinion on autism related topics and the lack of acknowledgement that actually I often DON’T pass as neurotypical and at those times my lack of passing is interpreted as rudeness, deliberate lack of effort on my part, stubbornness, lack of intelligence, lack of professionalism, an assumption that I’m angry with someone or don’t like them, etc etc. It’s an endless, awful cycle!

And I don’t really have too much personal advice for figuring out if you’re autistic or not… I did go through a point in time where despite being diagnosed I strongly denied that I was autistic and kind of had to come back to that as a near adult and realize nope… definitely autistic. And then knowing what to do with that info once youve figured it out is just… I mean there’s not much. There are little to no resources for autistic adults, very few support groups made up of autistic people and led by autistic people, very little resources directed at autistic people themselves in general, usually the focus is on the parents or guardians and talk aboit autistic people as abstract concepts… whoops, can you tell I’m bitter haha gonna end this before I go full “mental health professionals failed me and I’m a mess” etc