This Thing Upon Me [Order The eBook] [Harry Styles]

Chapter 45***

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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***THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN EDITED AND IS NO LONGER CENSORED***

Crown and anchor me

Or let me sail away

Joni Mitchell | Blue

We were obsessed with tattoos and each other. For months we were the only ones in the band who'd gotten them, and it seemed we couldn't get enough, because we were always one-upping each other. I'd trusted him early on to tattoo me a few times, and I'd finally gotten the chance to return the favor in Sweden with the gun I bought him for his birthday (which we took everywhere in case the inspiration hit.) His new ink (my handiwork) said Friday, a ridiculous inside joke because he was always singing "Friday" by Rebecca Black.

Alone and bored in a hotel room in New York one day, I pulled out the gun and he let me tattoo him again with anything I wanted. I chose his ankle, since it was easy to cover up in case he hated it, and I chose a tiny cross symbol that to this day I couldn't fathom a reason behind choosing. He then gave me a matching one on the same ankle, and it became our second identical tattoo (in addition to the black hearts.) Eventually Liam and Louis began getting tattoos as well, starting with the meaningless ankle screws which Z inked on for them, but in my heart, tattoos would always be sacred to he and I alone. They were ours; stories inscribed permanently on our flesh because we weren't allowed to speak them just yet.

'Hey Blue...and there is a song for you...ink on a pin...underneath the skin...an empty space to fill in.' Joni's words and inimitable melodies had never felt so poignant before. I'd listened to the song a hundred times and never felt the impact of every solitary word she crooned until now. He and I? We weren't just tattoos, we were music. We were lyrics; timeless and indecipherable. Ink, needles, pens. Words scratched out onto napkins or directly onto our skin.

Rubber and road—endless days of travel. Tour busses, t-shirts, sound booths, and staticky mics. We were lovemaking in unfurnished rooms, and Sunday secrecy, and notes scribbled onto loose-leaf that was crumpled after reading. In fifty years, he would be all that defined my youth apart from the band, with his languid swagger, cigarettes, and Gucci by Gucci. With his sleepy gazes and colored quiff and lackadaisical bearing. In this, he would rule my adulthood, categorizing my days by either B.Z. or A.Z. There was no before or after without him. And when I considered the idea of love in the years to come, he would emerge out of the haze of departed memory, acting as a baseline for which I measured all my other relationships against.