rivers_bend

estrella30 had an autocorrect situation on twitter that I don't even remember exactly now, but it somehow led to this plot bunny wherein Harry was stuck in a fic and pining for Nick. The original tweet had something to do with tour, I think. This has magical books and idek what.



So I think probably Harry and Nick are at an antiques market and Nick keeps picking things up and telling Harry he should buy them and Harry is just like, omg what am I going to do with that? What does it even do? and it like makes popcorn over an open fire or something, but then Nick finds a book called "Young Harold and the Winter Palace" or something, and he's like HARRY HARRY HARRY YOU HAVE TO GET THIS, and Harry asks the woman how much she wants for it, because Nick is SO FUCKING EXCITED, and though he would NEVER EVER EVER admit it, Harry kind of likes when Nick calls him "young Harold" especially when he's got Harry pinned naked to his bed by his hips.
 
And Harry buys the book and takes it back to Nick's, and it sits on the coffee table for a while and then gets moved and moved again, and then one day Nick leaves Harry all warm in his bed when he goes in to work, and Harry has done all the shopping, and the other boys are busy, and he's watched everything on the DVR, so he's poking around Nick's things, and he finds the book and makes himself a nest on the sofa with blankets and a cup of tea and a banana, and he sits down to read it.
 
It's bigger than a normal hardback, about half again as tall and half again as wide, and the covers were once grey, and more like fabric than anything else, and they're darkening with age. The title is embossed in black, and there are flecks of silver in the H of Harold like maybe it used to be foiled. There's a picture below the title, stark black trees against a white hill with the hint of a building's silhouette at the top. He tucks himself into the blanket, takes a sip of his tea and opens the book.
 
and then something idk, maybe there's a line that sounds funny or something and he reads it out loud, and suddenly there's no blanket and no tea and no Nick's flat, and he's on a horse in the snowy woods wearing pantaloons or breeches. Yes. Snug-fitting knee breeches.
 
And Nick gets home and there's no Harry, but that's not all that strange, Harry doesn't live there after all, and he often goes out shopping or to pick up muffins or whatever, but then Nick goes to sit on the sofa, and what Harry definitely does not do is leave his phone on the coffee table next to a banana with only one or two bites taken out of it. And if he spills what looks like a whole cup of tea, he cleans it up. At the very least, he picks up the mug and puts it back on the table before going home to get clean clothes. Except why would he even do that--he's always looking for excuses to put Nick's clothes on instead of his own. Not to mention that at least a third of the clean laundry in the basket in the corner of the bedroom is actually Harry's stuff, including, Nick's pretty sure, a couple of pairs of jeans and probably some pants.
 
And Nick is not freaking out, he's not, except for how he totally is, because he's used to not knowing exactly where Harry is, but HARRY ALWAYS HAS HIS PHONE WITH HIM. And right now HARRY DOES NOT HAVE HIS PHONE WITH HIM AND THAT IS NOT OKAY.
 
Nick calls Louis and Louis doesn't know anything, except that it is weird that Harry wouldn't take his phone, but if he just went to the corner shop he totally could have accidentally left his tea on the couch instead of putting it on the side and then it fell over; it's not like the couch in their shared apartment wasn't covered in tea stains half the time. And he could have forgotten his phone. So Nick waits, but Harry doesn't come back, and he calls Aimee and she tells him to stop freaking, and he calls Lou, because she might know something, but she doesn't. He can't figure out a way to call Harry's mum without worrying her, so he leaves that for the time being and decides he can at least clean up the tea while he's waiting.
 
When he unfurls the blanket to see what the damage is to his upholstery, the book falls out onto the floor. He'd totally forgotten about it, and sets it aside while he puts the blanket in the washer and gets out the spot cleaner and stuff. He tries to forget about worrying, but Harry's phone is getting text alerts and email alerts, and that does NOT HELP, and he's actually kind of totally freaking out, so he calls Aimee again.
 
While she's talking him down, he picks the book up just to have something to do with his hands, and he starts leafing through it. He comes to an illustrated page, and is struck by how much the sketch of the boy leaning against his horse's flank looks like Harry, with his curls and his hands, and even the little wrinkle Harry gets between his eyebrows when he's worried about something. He finds himself tracing the picture with his fingertip while Aimee tells him about the jacket she saw in a shop window that she absolutely has to go back and buy.
 

In the meantime, Harry is cold and wet and he doesn't know where he is and he's got a fucking horse with him, which, yay, he doesn't have to walk, but he's not sure what he's going to do when the horse gets hungry, because he's pretty sure that horses need more than snow and twigs, and HE needs more than snow and twigs, but he doesn't want to think about the fact that he hardly got to eat any of his banana before he was somehow ripped out of Nick's flat and dumped in the woods, so he'll think about the horse instead. The horse, at least, seems to know where it's going, trudging its way along a path winding through the trees. Harry tries to get it to go faster, but either he's doing it wrong, or the horse knows that he doesn't belong to Harry and doesn't care to do what he says.
 
As the day wears on, Harry starts wondering if Nick is back from the station yet. Wonders if time moves the same here as it does at home or if it's like those Narnia movies he watched with Gemma, where if he could somehow get back now, even though he's been here for AGES, his tea would still be warm and Nick would still be at work. Wonders if Nick is worried about him if time does move the same. If only he knew.
 
 
When Nick realizes that he can see the hint of what DEFINITELY looks like Harry's tattoo on the picture's wrist where the floppy sleeve has pulled back, he interrupts Aimee mid flow and asks if she thinks it's possible that Harry got sucked into a book. She laughs until she realizes that he thinks he's being serious, and then she tells him to stay where he is and she comes over.
 
When Aimee gets there Nick is sitting on the floor next to his coffee table holding a book with post-it notes bristling from the edges. Nick drags her down next to him and flips to the first post-it, jabbing at the page it's marking. It's half a page of text with a sketch above it, quite detailed, of a knight on horseback. Or a courier. Whoever it is is wearing clothes instead of armour. Okay... she says. What am I looking at? And Nick tells her it's Harry.
 
He flips to the next marker and this time at least the boy in the picture is bigger than her thumbnail and you can see his features. He does look like Harry, she's got to admit, but Harry's got one of those faces, doesn't he? She tries that on Nick, and he snaps at her that now is not the time for 'average face' jokes, and she's like, woah, okay, I didn't mean that, because she'd forgotten about the whole thing with the average face comments, though she's not sure how because Nick teases Harry about that all the time, still, even though it's been months and months and months.
 
The next picture he shows her is of the horse hitched up outside some kind of old inn--Ye Olde Inne--it looks like to her, and the back of the boy from the other pictures as he disappears through the door.
 
 
When Harry sees the inn up ahead he wants to cry, but he doesn't do it. Well, not much, maybe just a few tears on cheeks already wet with snow dripping off the trees. 

There's smoke coming from a chimney, and a hitching post out front, and he can smell something roasting. it doesn't smell as good as when something is roasting at his mum's house, but it smells pretty good, and he's fucking starving so he doesn't really care. He suddenly misses Niall like burning, but he's done crying, so he's just going to figure out how to tie up the stupid horse and get some food. 

The people in the inn are strange in a way Harry can't quite put his finger on. But there's a woman just inside the door who nods at him and takes him to a table, and brings him a beer and asks if his horse needs anything and then brings him a big plate of stew, so he doesn't dwell too much on how strange everything seems. 

As Harry picks up his spoon, he reaches for his hip to get his phone out. It's habit, and he's been doing it all day, but for some reason the lack hurts more now that he's somewhere warm and has food in front of him. He wants his mum, or Nick, or Louis, or just someone who can tell him that everything is going to be okay. Nothing feels okay, and he is NEVER buying anything that Nick tells him to again. Assuming he gets back home. God he misses home. 
 
The stew is tasty, but it reminds him of the Saturday lunch special at the pub he and Nick like to go to, and he is not going to cry in the middle of a crowded inn because he's not, but why is he here and how is he going to get home?
 
And that's when he realises that he just spent a whole morning and into afternoon sitting on a horse's back riding where the horse took him instead of actually trying to find a portal or a door or a fucking wardrobe or whatever might get him back where he belongs. He puts it down to shock, because what the fuck. And then he remembers that the title of the book is Harold and the Winter Palace, and on the cover, the palace was on a hill overlooking the woods, and maybe that means the answer is at the Palace, and he's been riding towards it all day, and that makes him feel a little bit better.
 
When the woman who brought him his food comes over to see if he wants more beer--and he hasn't even noticed that he's the only one she's waiting on, everyone else has to shout to get her attention--he asks her how far away the palace is. "Which one," she asks, and he's thrown, because how is he supposed to know, he doesn't know ANYTHING about this stupid place, but then he remembers the clue is in the question, or the answer's in the title, or whatever, and he says, "The Winter Palace".
 
Oh, she says, not far, half a day's travel if you have a fast horse. Harry does NOT have a fast horse. He has a SLOW horse, and he doesn't have his phone so he doesn't know what time it is, but the sun was below the tree tops when he stopped, so half a day's ride sounds more like he'd be out and about in a world where he doesn't belong for half the night. "Do you have any rooms?" he asks, and that's when he realises that he not only doesn't have his phone doesn't have any pockets at all, and therefore he doesn't have any way to pay for his food or a bed. 
 
But the woman smiles and says she hasn't any guest beds left but her bed is plenty big enough for two if he doesn't mind sharing.
 
She's happy and friendly and Harry gets the idea that it's not money that she wants from him, so he says that sounds perfect. Her smile gets even bigger. She tells him she'll have her boy put his horse in the stables and offers to bring him some apple pie. Harry tries not to think about the time Louis dared Niall to fuck a McDonald's apple pie to see if it was as good as the dude in the movie said, and Niall was drunk enough to do it, and it was only because Zayn didn't want to hear him bitching about a scalded cock for the next month that he intervened.
 
She brings him more beer and some pie and as the evening wears on some of the guys start singing, and Harry ends up getting sucked in and before he knows it, he's learning a bunch of medieval pub songs and being slapped on the back by burly men in rather fragrant clothes.
 

While Harry is busy charming an inn full of people, Nick has failed completely to stem the freak-out tide. It's not like he looked that closely, but he doesn't remember seeing any pictures in the book at all when he picked it up in the store, but he knows for SURE that there are pictures showing up now that weren't there before.
 
Aimee takes the book from him and reads ahead, giving him snatches of detail when it gets to the point that she's having to fend him off with elbows and feet because he's trying to climb on top of her to read over her shoulder or take it back and mope more. 

"Oh, look, he stops to talk to a unicorn while his horse has as drink from a stream," she says, and "He's finally noticed that bag on the back of his saddle is a saddle bag. There's a cloak and some money in there." then, "Ugh, Grimmy, go and make me some coffee. I don't know what you think we can do, and I'm not giving  you this book back until you eat something."
 
Nick does as he's told because he's too tired to fight anymore, and he's known Aimee for a long time and if she says she's not giving him the book back, she's not giving him the book back. Besides, he's being ridiculous. He lives without Harry ALL THE TIME. Because that's how it goes when you're dating an international pop sensation. And that's how he LIKES it. If Harry were around all the time it would drive him completely mental.
 
"It's just that he doesn't have his phone," he shouts through to the lounge. And he's going to keep on believing that because his other option is admit that Harry is STUCK IN A FUCKING BOOK and he might never ever come back. 


Harry's horse does seem better for a rest, and it's sunny if still chilly the next day, and he can see the palace in the distance, so he's feeling a bit more positive. But once he starts riding there's not much to do, and he can't stop thinking about how much nicer it would be to be at brunch with Sam and Lou and Lux and nick, which was their plan this weekend, and what if time doesn't move more slowly at home, what if it moves faster, and what if one day for him is actually years, and while he was sleeping Nick forgot all about him and Lux grew up and went to school and his band found a new fifth member or just kept touring without him, what then? What if he does get home and only his mum even remembers that he ever existed? He's never had a panic attack before, but he's wondering if this is what it feels like. 

That's when he sees the stream and the unicorn, and he does talk to it, but it doesn't talk back. It just kind of wanders off when he gets to the part of the tale where he's definitely not a virgin, but it would be super great if the unicorn could grant him a wish anyway. Though maybe unicorns don't even do wishes. How is he supposed to know? 

He finds a grove of apple trees which still have a few late apples clinging to the branches and he eats those and drinks from the stream--upstream from where his horse was drinking because he's pretty sure he read somewhere that you're supposed to do that, and he feels a little better, but he still wants someone to come and find him. They're supposed to start another round of press in three days. Paul is going to kill him if he's not back. 

Though to kill him he'll have to find him, and then at least he'd be found. He'd like to be found. What the hell is Nick doing? He's the only one who knows the stupid book even exists. Is he trying to find Harry at all? 


Nick is definitely trying to find Harry. Time is running about four times slower for Nick than Harry, but he is not anything like four times less distraught. Harry at least has adventure to occupy him, and he has the advantage of knowing that he exists and is still alive. Nick doesn't know either of those things for sure. 

As Harry continues toward the palace, more pictures are showing up in the book back and Nick's place. Aimee is doing a pretty good job of convincing Nick that means that Harry is okay, at least while the pictures show him stopping by a stream, and wrapping a cloak around his shoulders, but when the illustration shows Harry lifting a large door knocker on an imposing black door adorned with rivets the size of a man's fist, Nick freaks out again.
 
"He could be walking into anything!" Nick says. Aimee tells him to read ahead and see what's going to happen. He flips forward a dozen or so pages, but when he tries to read the words, his eyes slip off them. It's like they're written in Russian or Greek, though he can see the words are in English and he should be able to read them.
 
Aimee does NOT like the look on his face and reaches out and slam the book shut, trapping his fingers. "Never mind," she says. "Stupid idea."
 
But he won't let her take the book back, wrestling it away from her with a ridiculously steely grip and going back to the picture of Harry knocking on the door. The words on that page are legible, and Nick reads aloud: "The sun was setting as Young Harold approached the Palace." And then he's gone.
 
The weirdest thing, she thinks at first, is that there was no 'pop' as the air rushed to fill the space where he'd been. She thought there was supposed to be a pop when shit like that happened. But one minute he was sitting there, feet shoved against her thigh defensively, and the next he was gone, leaving the book flopped open on a fold of blanket.
 
 
Nick goes from sitting on his couch in his mostly white living room, to sitting on a red velvet chair in a room that's easily six times the size and filled with so much crimson, gold, and purple that he's not sure his eyes aren't actually bleeding. "What the FUCK," he says.
 
"Sir?" comes a voice from the corner behind him. He whirls around to see a man in old-fashioned livery carrying a tea tray through the door. That's when Nick looks down and sees that his jeans and jumper are gone, and he's wearing as much gold and crimson as the room, and his shoes have giant buckles on them.
 
"This is not funny," he mutters.
 
"I was going to show the guest in," the liveried man says. "Would you prefer I didn't?"
 
"Guest?" Nick says. "Harry? Where's Harry?"
 
"The gentleman did not have a card," the infuriating man says. "He said he's travelled a great distance, and you've always instructed us to show hospitality to travellers.
 
It has to be Harry. There is no other option. Nothing else makes sense. Nick starts shouting, "Harry! HARRYYYY!" and runs toward the door the man with the tray came through.
 
He hears a cry of "Nick!" that sounds like it's coming from several rooms away. Though the hall that Nick's run into is big enough that it could just be at the end of it.
 
"Harry!" he shouts again, still running, and he hears footsteps over the sound of his own shoes slapping on the stone floor.
 
Harry rounds the corner ahead, looking somehow not ridiculous in a cape and dark green velvet jacket over cream colored breeches. He should look ridiculous. Possibly getting sucked into a book gave Nick brain damage.
 
They run at each other and cling in the middle of the hall like-- well, honestly, like they've been kept apart by a magic book and thought they would never see each other again.
 
Nick clings long enough that he expects to hear a delicately cleared throat behind him, but it seems the butler or whatever he is has either stayed in the gigantic sitting room or doesn't care that his master--at least Nick thinks he was implying Nick is his master--is groping a traveller in the corridor.
 
Usually Nick's the one pushing Harry off, because Harry is forever squeezing him hard enough to crack his ribs, and fondling him when he's trying to hold a conversation, and generally making a nuisance of himself, but now it's Harry squirming and pushing against Nick's chest until Nick gives in and loosens his hold and realizes that he was crushing Harry's face into his neck and Harry probably couldn't breathe. 

He tries to ask if Harry's okay, but it comes out, "WHERE WERE YOU???" instead.
 
"I am NEVER BUYING ANYTHING YOU FIND AGAIN," Harry answers, because as happy as he is to see his boyfriend, this is DEFINITELY Nick's fault.
 
"How was I supposed to know it was evil?" Nick says, because how was he supposed to know? Last time he checked he was dating Harry Styles, not Harry Potter.
 
"I thought I was going to be here forever," Harry half whispers and then he's almost knocking Nick over in an effort to get to his mouth, kiss him breathless.
 
Harry's nose is still cold, even after being tucked into Nick's neck, but his mouth is hot and frantic, one second sliding over Nick's lips, the next sucking on his chin, biting at his jaw, then back so Harry can try to crawl down Nick's throat tongue first. Nick's arms are getting all tangled up in Harry's cloak, and Harry's stepped on his foot three or four times, and this is so not the ideal venue for reunion makeouts, but Nick doesn't really care. He maybe wonders for a second if this is what it's like making out with Superman, except Superman probably doesn't have this much stubble, not that Harry has THAT MUCH stubble himself, but it's obvious he hasn't shaved in a couple of days, and fuck, how long has Harry been here? More than just the afternoon Nick's been missing him, obviously, and okay, yeah, this is too distracting.
 
"Harry," he says, which Harry apparently takes to mean 'please try to get your hand into these ridiculously tight breeches,' because that is what he does instead of answering.
 
"HARRY," he says again, taking Harry by the forearms and pushing him a few inches away. "There's furniture here. And tea. Should we go find it and sit down?"
 
"I am SO MAD AT YOU," Harry says, but he shoots in to peck another kiss on Nick's lips, so Nick isn't too worried about it. And he manages to manhandle Harry back down the corridor into the gold and velvet sitting room. 
 
The butler is still calmly laying out the tea service. Nick felt like he was kissing Harry forever, but it can't really have been that long. Sure, there are cakes and little sandwiches and a bewildering array of tiny spoons for two people, but the guy is moving with quick efficient moves so he can't have been doing this for more than a few minutes. "Tea, sirs?" he says. 
 
Harry starts laughing and can't stop. This doesn't faze the butler, who just helps him out of his cloak and holds out a chair for him, though Harry's nearly doubled over. Nick sits down on the love seat at a right angle to Harry's chair and adds several lumps of sugar to Harry's cup. 
 
 
Harry can't believe that Nick is actually there at the palace when he arrives. He has a minute where he's sure it's not actually Nick at all, just a really vivid hallucination, but he seems just as relieved to see Harry as Harry is to see him, and he smells like Nick even though he's wearing the same ridiculous clothes Harry is, and that's enough to reassure him. He's a little confused that Nick doesn't seem bothered by the butler serving them tea, but TEA, and Nick must think he's in shock because he puts way more sugar than any one person needs into it, but then, Harry was a little hysterical so maybe that makes sense. 
 
He doesn't ask any questions until they've had their tea and the butler guy goes back to wherever butlers come from, but then he starts demanding answers. Unfortunately, Nick doesn't really have any. He relays his hours of panic, and Aimee's uselessness--though Harry has seen Aimee handle Nick when he's being a huge drama queen about something, and he finds her pretty useful--and how one second he was home wondering if he'd ever see Harry again and the next he was here in ridiculous buckled shoes (and he better get his converse back, or heads will ROLL), and he listens to Harry's story, and then they kind of look at each other and eat the tea sandwiches, and they don't know what to do. 
 
They decide to explore, for lack of any better ideas, but then a different man in the same livery as the tea-serving guy comes in and asks if Harry will be requiring a room. A room, Harry assumes, that will have a bed.
 
"Yes!" Harry says, but the guy doesn't make any move to show him to one until Nick echoes him.
 

"Shall I put him next to you, sir, or in the other wing?" the man asks, and Nick is pretty sure that WITH ME is not the right answer, so he says next to, because he has no idea where he supposedly sleeps in this place and that seems like the best way to find out. His room might be better than Harry's. Who knows?

They walk for ages and finally get shown into a room with huge windows and an even huger bed, and the guy shows Harry how to ring the bell to call if he needs anything and then leaves them alone.

So they have lots of sex, and then ring the bell for food and bath water, and then have more sex, and then it turns out that Nick, who is inexplicably a prince in this land, is looking for someone to marry in order to satisfy the king and queen, or inherit, or some other insane marriage plot, and he chooses Harry, obviously, and then it turns out that kissing the groom after saying 'I do' is the secret to getting back home, and they've only missed like two days, and Finchy and the show bot did the breakfast show while they were gone, and the press had to do without Harry for a couple of interviews, and everyone lives happily ever after.

The end



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