Rating: E
WC: ~10k
Summary: In which Louis has spent twenty-nine years trying to wrangle his aggressive feline familiar, Zayn has spent twenty-eight years trying to discover how to live a familiar-less existence in a world built on soulmate-familiar principles, and a coffee shop encounter might solve both of their problems.
(Based on Prompt 96: soulmate au where everyone has a familiar and your familiar has to find their soulmate in order for you to be able to find yours. too bad yours happens to hate all other animals and leaves the room as soon as another familiar enters it.)
“Dear diary. Today is going to be a good day, and here’s why…”
“What are you doing?” Louis mumbled as he bit into a piece of toast.
“It’s been almost two years and today Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson reunite. Louis is very excited about…”
Louis’ chair screeched along the kitchen floor as he flew up out of his seat, quickly grabbing the paper from Niall’s grasp. As he scanned the page he found it amounted to lines of nothing.
“What is this?” Louis asked again. “We’ve discussed how Harry Styles will never be spoken of in this flat. I don’t care how long it’s been.”
Niall snatched the paper from Louis and proceeded to draw a line across the page before writing.
“Today is the day that he-who-shall-not-be-named is coming to dinner.”
Or the one where Harry and Louis don’t believe in soulmates… until they do.
Summary: For the first time in his life, Louis doesn’t know where he’s going. Harry doesn’t mind.
OR: roadtrip with desert feelings, too much snack food, and empty motels. Harry is definitely absolutely not an alien. That would be ridiculous.
tags: Roadtrip; Scientist Louis; Supernatural Elements; Snacks & Snack Food; dangerous levels of Tom Petty exposure; American weirdness; wistfulness; Loneliness; Comfort; equal apologies owed to biologists and people who live in Nevada and people who like slim jims; Cacti; feelings about science; Explicit Sexual Content
a day late but happy new years! what better way to start 2019 than w/some alien!zayn?
“Operation Icarus is a no go! I repeat Operation Icarus has been compromised.”
Zayn’s three hearts plummet to xir feet as Niall’s shout crackles through the walkie talkie.
Louis’ grim face hardens when he replies, “Agent Horan, come in. What’s your status? What’s happened?”
“Fuck! Fucking shit!” The radio cuts in and out with static. Zayn feels faint, and xe doesn’t think it’s from Earth’s shitty atmosphere.
Even as his knuckles turn white with how tightly he’s gripping the table, Louis’ voice remains calm. “Agent Horan, what’s going on out there?”
Harry shifts uneasily beside Zayn, leaning in for comfort. The humans can’t see enough dimensions to see how Zayn curls one wing around Harry’s shoulders, but xe knows Harry, despite being half human, inherited the eighth sense and can feel the reassuring pressure through the folds of space. They nudge Zayn gratefully.
“Payne’s been compromised!” Niall yells into the speaker, voice distorting halfway through. “I’ve got him, but they’re right on our tail. Everyone needs to evacuate now!”
“Fuck,” Louis growls under his breath because the plan goes to shit if their inside man gets outed. It was difficult enough trying to sneak two intergalactic beings off Earth without the bloody government up their arse. “Horan, you and Payne need to disappear if you’re that hot. Split up if you must, but try to stick together. But we’re going through with Icarus.” Zayn snaps xir surprised gaze onto Louis, this rough-and-tumble human who lost his entire family to hostile aliens but still dedicates his life to saving interstellar refugees like Zayn and Harry from the xenophobic government. “We’ve come too far,” Louis insists. “This is our only shot for the next half century. A solar eclipse and Zayn’s planet drifting this close to our solar system, we won’t get this opportunity again.”
“It’s a fucking suicide mission,” Niall snaps. Something explodes on his end of the line, and Zayn winces. “It’s too risky.”
“It’s suicide if they stay, and it’s suicide if we try. I, for one, would rather die trying,” Louis retorts. Harry tenses at Zayn’s side when Louis throws the walkie talkie down. It doesn’t have time to skitter to the floor before the warehouse base they’ve holed up in explodes in a deafening flash of fire and light.
Harry wore his hair down, brushed until it shone, pushed back and carefully tousled out of his face. It was a little cold for his shirt to be so unbuttoned, but it felt rare to get to dress up and not wear his chefs whites that he bakes in every day. He was wearing black-on-black, and had been careful not to accidentally get flour on himself on his way out the door.
Harry had gotten to the cafe first, apparently, and had ordered an iced coffee while he waited for Tom to get there. He had a rose in a copy of Norwegian Wood set out on the table. The signal that they had agreed on. Under the table, his foot kept bouncing, keeping in time with the spikes of anxiety that he was feeling.
Tom was late.
He’d messaged Harry to let him know, but he could arrive at any moment, and Harry’s shaky hands had almost knocked over his iced coffee about five times.
At four fifteen, he almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the door open. But it wasn’t Tom. He only knew that it wasn’t Tom because it was Louis. Why was it fucking Louis? Shit. Fuck. Harry tried to casually hide himself behind his hand so Louis wouldn’t see him there. Why was he here, ruining yet another part of Harry’s life?
*
The bakery Harry inherited from his grandmother is on the brink of going out of business. The new coffee shop opening up across the street is sure to be the final nail in the coffin. To add insult to injury, the coffee shop general manager is extremely attractive. Harry’s only comfort during this nightmare is his internet crush. A You’ve Got Mail AU.
When Louis discovers his husband is having an affair that could ruin his future, he recruits the most qualified person he knows to bring him down: Harry Styles, the asshole who’s been pining after Louis’ husband since university and somehow thinks no one has noticed. Now Harry has to choose between protecting his unrequited love or helping Louis destroy him.
“What? About you?” Louis countered, raising an eyebrow and rolling a bit of the beer sticker between his fingertips.
“Yeah,” Zayn shrugged. He squeezed his ankle, causing a small shiver to run through Louis’ leg.
“Reckon you could be,” Louis shrugged back, side-eyeing Zayn and smirking a bit cheekily when he saw that his joke landed, still pretending like his beer label was much more interesting than Zayn.
“Reckon I could be what?” Zayn pressed, clearly willing to play.
“Could be lovely,” Louis answered, looking back up at him. “Could be an arsehole, dunno. Would have to know you a bit better before I could say,”
or the one where louis winds up dating zayn whilst also dating harry. it’s okay though, since harry is also dating zayn. maybe they should all just date one another and be done with it.
Unknown: Hey, is this Louis? I’m Pedro, the owner of the car you hit this morning
After a quick back and forth during which Louis apologized repeatedly, he thought that would be it. He was glad that Pedro was being so nice about it, but he figured they’d said everything they needed to and it would probably come to a close soon with Louis never hearing from him again. Which was fine.
Maybe if they ever ran into each other and figured out who the other was while in the neighborhood, they could be somewhat friendly. They weren’t incredibly close to each other, but Louis walked past the guy’s house at least a few times a week with Clifford, usually in the evening before bed. It wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.
But the conversation didn’t end. At least, not the way Louis expected it to.
“But if we do that, you have to be absolutely sure,” Harry emphasised, pinning Louis down with a serious look.
“Of course, I’m sure. I said so, didn’t I?” Louis confirmed, holding Harry’s gaze and nodding intently. “I’m sure, Haz. I promise.”
“Okay, but…” Harry swallowed and a frown formed between his brows. “I need you to promise me something else…”
Louis looked a bit puzzled, a bit tense, but nodded slightly, “Of course, H. What is it?”
“You need to promise me to never fall in love with me.” Harry said nervously, fiddling with his rings.
~~~ Written for the 1D Aro/Ace Fic Fest Round II Prompt 8: Aroace best friends that always get told they’ll fall in love one day, but they never do and would love for their family to finally understand what it means to be aromantic.
Harry has never felt like this before. Not ever. Not with anyone. It confuses the hell out of him. And he’s not so sure he’s happy about it. What’s he supposed to do now?
Welcome writers, to round 3 of the zouisfest! Sign-ups are now officially opened!
As a quick reminder, here are the most important rules (for the full list of rules, click here):
the main pairing has to be Zouis (Zayn/Louis). This can be a romantic, queerplatonic or non-romantic pairing.
you may claim a prompt from our prompt list or choose to write your own prompt
there is no minimum or maximum wordcount
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Thank you to everyone who has submitted prompts, and thank you to E for letting us use the prompts from previous rounds. You can find the link to all the submitted prompts here.
Once you’ve picked your top 3 prompts, you can fill in the form here. We ask you to pick 3 prompts solely for the small chance that your prompt has already been picked, as we work on a first come, first serve basis and we cannot guarantee that we can stay completely up to date with the sign-ups. We will however try our best to get back to you asap!
Once you’ve received your confirmation, you’re officially signed up and will have until July 28th to complete your fic.
We cannot wait to bring the fandom more zouis-centered fics, and we hope you’re as excited as we are!
If you would like to submit your fic for the 1D Monthly Fic Roundup for July 2025, please check this post on how to submit or visit our blog @1dmonthlyficroundup! If you are submitting a fic on behalf of a writer, please let us know that you are doing so with their consent. For the July post we are accepting all fics published between 28 June-27 July.
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Podfics We do accept podfics for the roundup! The fics can be older fics as long as their podfic version is new. So if you posted the podfic in the current month, you can submit it!
Writers of these July fests (and any I’m forgetting!) are welcome to submit their fics via ask or submission:
One by one they returned to him. From the depths of a raging ocean he’d found Harry, not a ripple of disturbance visible on the surface of the boy who used to be a monsoon. Niall whirled in the wind and a charge in the air, his presence translucent and as prone to whim as his judgment. And despite the biting scorch of Louis’s combustible anger, his temperamental flame still held warmth.
The four of them together after decades of separation should have been grounding, and yet Liam felt like a cave on the brink of collapse, a hollow ache echoing deep through his foundation where a fifth element should have been.
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OR: Four immortal boys on a cross-country quest to save the world, but first they have to figure out how to save themselves.
