OOF!!!!!!! I have been saving this for a bit because I wanted to savor it and it was just as good as I’d hoped. I love the way Harry lets himself be a little vulnerable with Niall for a moment and then snaps right back into the pose. That line about the smugness that Niall thought they’d moved past is SO good — I feel like there are so many layers of emotional nuance there and it’s so good to think about. It’s like a moment where Niall knows that Harry’s slipped back into this other version of himself but Harry doesn’t know that Niall knows or something, or isn’t fully conscious of it, or doesn’t know how it reads to Niall. I don’t know my brain is so dead from diss writing I have no mental energy left to do a good close reading!! But I’m just REALLY enjoying all of these layers to Harry’s character and I think Niall is such a good fic POV to write that from. He feels like such an observer, like he’s always cataloguing those little shifts in emotional tone even if he doesn’t fully know how to interpret them or to fit him into his sense of who Harry is. Also Kendall’s gaze raking over him in a proprietary way, and Harry responding to that with that slow smirk... I am super intrigued by the way that liking sex / the feeling of being desired / the feeling of having a reputation as a good lover is part of who Harry is and yet is also tangled up in these complicated insecurities or uncertainty about who he is and how people perceive him. VERY INTO THIS FIC!!!!!!!!