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Notorious

Summary:

“Scared?” Louis asks, punctuated by a deep drag of his cigarette. With his other hand, he brings his thumb and index finger to his chest and undoes another button. The bare skin is somehow still amber and aglow, decorated with small hairs. Harry wants to catch them in his teeth and pull.

He drinks. “I’ve always been scared of unpredictable people. But I get over it.”

Louis leans back and smirks. “Now you’re scared of yourself. You’re afraid you’ll fall in love with me.”

“That wouldn’t be hard.”

In fact, it would be nearly effortless. It’s everything else that’s been taking him a lot of effort these days.

Louis lowers his head just to look up at Harry through lightning-rod eyelashes. “Careful.”

--

1946. WWII has just ended, but there's still work to be done.

To help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent Harry Styles receives a new assignment: recruit Louis Tomlinson, the American son of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. Neither knows the full extent of the task they're asked to complete nor the full impact they will have upon each other.

The stakes are quite high.

Notes:

Hi all,

This fic is based on the plot and characters of a 1946 Alfred Hitchcock film called "Notorious." I highly recommend you watch it (after reading this fic, bc spoilers!)

I had the time of my life writing this. It obliterated my time and my imagination. I'd be honored to have contributed to even a small percentage of how you choose to spend your free time.

Since this fic is based on film noir, I tried to navigate my prose in the spirit of the genre; taught and elegant, clever and slightly sinister. And there's a reason I tagged angst first.

To avoid spoilers, I will not place trigger warnings at the top of chapters in which they feature more heavily (or at all.) So if any of these themes trigger you, please proceed with caution or avoid this fic entirely.

I LIVE for comments. Seriously, please, please comment. If you want to make my day, comment after chapters, not just after the work. If you want to make my week, comment with passages or lines you enjoyed reading.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

---

I do not claim to own anything related to One Direction, Alfred Hitchcock, or anything else that has helped inspire this work.

On that note ...

Please Read! This is quite important to me.

I know nothing about the real personalities, preferences, and experiences of either Harry Styles or Louis Tomlinson. Their public personas and what a stranger can know about them from online media, plus the original characters created for the original film, plus my own creativity, have all inspired these characters. I do not believe any of my writing bears any resemblance to reality whatsoever. This is a work of fiction in every sense of the word.

Thank you for reading!

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

Miami, Florida. 3:20 pm. April 24, 1946

The men who waited outside the courtroom all looked exactly the same. Same beige suits, same stiff matching fedoras, same pristine white handkerchiefs folded neatly into their pockets. They discussed the Miami heatwave, the new baseball season, and their wives’ cooking.

One of the men surreptitiously pried open the door, which was ill-advised but, thankfully for him, unnoticed. He had excellent timing. The older gentleman with the gavel had just begun to speak.

“It is the judgment of the court that the defendant Troy Austin, having been found guilty of the crime of treason by the United States by the jury of this court for the Southern district of Florida at Miami be committed to the custody of the United States attorney general for imprisonment in an institution of the penitentiary type for a period of 20 years.”

His answer assured, the man quickly closed the door and waved to his colleagues. They got into position, cameras raised high and their bodies clustered around the door in a capitalist blockade. The doors opened, wide this time, and the participants exited in somber fashion.

Most were ignored in favor of one man, slightly diminutive in stature with his hands in his pockets, who focused resolutely ahead of him and ignored the reporters.

“Just a minute, sir, if you please. We’d like a statement.”

“Mr. Tomlinson, do you have anything you’d like to say about your father?”

“Do you think your father got what he deserved?”

“Are you pleased that your father is going to pay the penalty for being a German Nazi war criminal?”

Louis Tomlinson kept walking.