#tennisfic

[zaynandhisboys]

I just finish reading one love and I love it. What do you think would happen next for Harry and zayn?

Sorry this took me so long! i didn’t have a chance to answer it immediately then it got lost. 

Anyway, what happens next: i think those two crazy kids make it. I think that at their heart, those two understand each other really well despite their one blind spot, and have basically been dating for years anyway. So they go out for ice cream, and maybe it’s a little weird because their dynamic is so established and now they’re changing it, but it’s also such a relief. Zayn can finally watch without pretending he isn’t when Harry licks ice cream off his fingers like the tease he is, and Harry can put a hand over Zayn’s on the table and smile as stupidly as he always wants to at him. And most of all, they can kiss when they get back to the house, something more awkward than Harry’s showstopper at the game that was the result of so many years of tension, but still sweet and like a declaration. 

Then of course they go inside and all the rest of the team tries to pretend they weren’t watching from the windows and Zayn rolls his eyes at all of them and Harry demands if they have anything better to be doing, and it ends up with all of them watching TV together, Zayn and Harry cuddled together like always, except it’s better because there’s not that ache at the bottom of it, that the cuddling isn’t enough. Harry walks Zayn to the door when he leaves that night, and this time the kiss isn’t short or sweet, it’s Harry wanting to savor it in case this day was just a dream--but it wasn’t, and even if Zayn doesn’t stay that night, he comes back the next day, and it’s not long before he is staying almost every night. 

[zaynandhisboys]

Ooooh... E for One love. Also, W?

E: If you wrote a sequel to One Love, what would it be about?

Liam finds love! But if we want the Zarry one, it would be after graduation, and Harry would be starting to play pro--then get seriously injured, enough to bench him and possibly end his career. Zayn, meanwhile, is getting frustrated as a low level flunky at a magazine or something. So as Harry deals with the one thing he’s driven his life towards possibly not happening, and working himself back into shape, while Zayn’s not sure Harry should risk not being able to walk again for a game, Zayn has to deal with the comparative mundanity of his life and how he doesn’t feel like he’s actually using his talents, while Harry thinks he’s got it lucky that he has job security.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?

I think there’s a happy medium between the two! A specific one is often limiting, and I generally deviate anyway. But a too broad one sometimes doesn’t work as an actual prompt and won’t inspire anything. So I think something in the middle is best, but I prefer more general ones if I have to choose, because that gives me more room to play. 

fanfic ask meme

[zaynandhisboys]

☾★☆■♦ ∇ for One Love. I hope those aren't a love of questions, but I completely love this fic. Everything about it. and WELCOME BACK IZZY I MISSED YOU.

☾ - sleep headcanon

The cuddling doesn’t change, really, once they get together. They’ve always cuddled and they still cuddle. Just now Zayn stays almost every night, and Harry doesn’t feel guilty keeping him there, doesn’t need to trick him into it, and Zayn doesn’t need to feel guilty about staying. 

★ - sad headcanon

Harry doesn’t make it to the pros for long. He injures himself before he really makes it, not seriously but enough that he’ll never compete on that highest level. It gets him seriously depressed for months, until he discovers coaching can be fulfilling as well. But he gets a twist to his lips sometimes when he watches Opens on TV, something bitter and pained, that makes Zayn turn off the TV if he’s there. 

☆ - happy headcanon

Liam settles in very nicely. His relationship with Zayn’s friend doesn’t last long, but he meets a nice girl at a party who he ends up in a long term relationship with who he can go on double dates with Zayn and Harry with, and he quickly becomes confidant of his place on the team. By the time he graduates, he can hardly remember feeling lost at all--he laughs with the rest when Louis teases him about thinking Zayn could be on the tennis team, once upon a time. 

■ -  Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

Louis is the only one who ever really goes into Zayn’s room, in his apartment. He’s at the tennis house so often that it doesn’t occur to the other boys to go there, and Harry doesn’t want to push boundaries too much, doesn’t really want to torture himself that way, and also doesn’t like to remember Zayn has a whole life outside of them, one that Harry can’t access. Once they’re together, Harry goes over more, but it’s still easier to be at the house, with their mutual friends. They mainly just go to Zayn’s when they need some real privacy. 

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

Zayn gets paint everywhere. Harry’d thought he’d known that before, but somehow it gets even worse once they’re going out. He always has paint on him. Sometimes he gets paint on Harry, not in a hot way just because that’s apparently what happens when you hang out with Zayn. But maybe a little in a hot way too, because Harry can’t help but like the marks Zayn leaves on him, like reminders he was there. 

∇ -. old age/aging headcanon

Harry refuses to acknowledge his body slowing down. He keeps playing tennis, keeps pushing it, until Zayn is seriously worried that he’ll hurt himself more than he has before. He has to sit him down properly, talk it out like he hadn’t known how to as a kid, and tell him that he loves him but he’s got to know he’s getting older and he can’t bounce back from his injuries like he has to. Harry agrees with ill grace, but he lets Zayn coax him into some more sedentary hobbies as well. 

[zaynandhisboys]

okay first I wanna tell you that the latest chapter of the arrow fic was really great and the zarry and zouis + Freddie was amazing <3 , Second for the fic meme one-love : ♡ ( your favorite part), because it's one of my faves and it's so unique

I’m so glad you like arrowfic! (fun fact: that zouis scene was one of the first scenes I conceived of in this fic.) 

As for One-Love, I love both the club scene, then Harry’s monologue after it. i have a thing for possessive Harry in Zarry, and the club scene is a lot of that--Harry pining, then managing to prevent Zayn from hooking up with someone. Then his monologue about how much he loves Zayn...that’s the first time we really see how hopeless he (well, both of them) feel the situation is. It always makes my heart hurt. “Sometimes he stays. Those are the best nights.”...my poor Harry. I love it. 

drop the title of a fic i wrote + a symbol in my ask

[zaynandhisboys]

I just wanted to say that One Love is a delight from start to finish! I love the outsider POV; I love Liam's confusion as to why Harry and Zayn aren't Harry/Zayn; I love how you write OT5; it's so funny and the pining is so lovely!!

Thanks! I was pleased but surprised with how the outsider POV turned out myself--that could have gone so horribly wrong. But i think it worked for One Love and poor Liam’s outsider’s confusion, so there you go! And I love writing OT5. I’m glad it translates :D

readers fic meme!

[zaynandhisboys]

For one love 7: Where did the title come from?8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

7: Where did the title come from?

My usual title process is write the fic, then desperately try to find a title that sort of fits the fic. In this case I knew i needed a tennis pun. So basically I put a bunch of tennis puns I came up with down, and then had my friend/fic cheerleader/tennis expert choose which one she liked best. 

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Well, there were those gifs of Harry playing tennis, so that helped...

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

I don’t think so. This was always pretty clear what it was going to be. There sort of is in that it’s basically the zarry tennis version of the ziam fic The Underdogs, so that is a bit of an alternate version not by me.

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

As I said above, the idea for this fic came from The Underdogs, which is a hockey au where the boys except Zayn are all on the hockey team but Zayn hangs around with them and is best friends/in love with Liam. I read that, and I think i just decided I wanted to write a Zarry version of it. So the pairing was part of the conception of it. 

Fic asks!

[zaynandhisboys]

omg can I ask for a deleted scene to 'one-love' i cherish that fic so much I always go back to reading it.

So it looks like I’ve only done two alternate POV scenes from One-Love, here and here. There are also bits and pieces in its tag. Other than that, I’ll see if I think of anything, but I think that fic didn’t have much cut...

[zaynandhisboys]

Have you ever thought about what happens in the future of One-love? Do Harry and zayn stay together or do they drift apart as they go further in school and onto their different interests? You write them as individuals so well like their passions for each other and interests was amazing and it just had me curious how their futures ended up. :)

Well, as with most of my fics, I like to imagine they do end up together. And I think this time they really do--One-Love Zayn and Harry seem really solid, and accept all parts of each other and really know each other. So yeah, I think they end up together. 

Harry maybe goes pro for a little, but he gets seriously injured, enough that he has to stop playing (or Zayn sits him down and very seriously insists he stops before he seriously cripples himself). So he starts coaching, probably at a college level. And maybe some days he misses playing, misses the thrill of winning, the adrenaline of it--but he likes helping kids too, and the strategizing, and he likes that Zayn doesn’t give him worried looks whenever he comes home. 

Zayn gets work as a graphic designer. He’d love to do the whole artist thing, but he’s practical enough that he knows he can’t rely on it, and that they can’t survive on Harry’s income as an athlete. So he works as a designer and does his own fine art on the side, and it means he can travel to matches with Harry and that he can work on his own schedule, and it’s good. he starts to make a name for himself in it, and he finds he’s proud of it. 

They end up living in a small college town near the school Harry works at, and they have a dog and a cat, and they adopt two kids, probably. Sometimes the other boys come visit and they remark on how similarly Zayn and Harry are raising their children as they raised the team. Neither of them might have made it big, gone on to realize their pipe dreams. But Harry gets to come home to Zayn in his office and kiss him before dragging him out to make dinner, and to eat with the kids and hear about their days at school, and one of the kids is artsy for Zayn and one’s an athlete for Harry (though she prefers basketball and Harry’s not sure he can forgive her for that) and they’re still ridiculously, sappily in love, and really it’s everything they could have dreamed of.