This Shifting Ground

by zarah5

One Direction University AU.
In which Louis, law student, is the cheeky waiter to Harry’s dates. This is how it starts.
Words:28933 complete

Genres: Fan Fiction, LGBT

87 pages, ebook

Published January 11, 2013

Reviews

[Irina Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shit.

Bear with me for a minute as I go off on a personal tangent.
I hereby officially retract any demeaning, mean or ridiculing remark I have ever made, intentionally or not, about One Direction. Because today I spent my day watching Larry Stylinson fanvids and they are CUTER THAN KITTENS and also the whole group is hilarious. Plus I discovered that 1D songs, while they still aren't reaching new levels of musical creativity and eargasm-causing awesomeness, are a great mood booster.
So there. I'm apologising, to One Direction and the whole fandom (although I still don't approve of excessive fangirling, so tone it down, girls), for being a judgmental little shit who did her judging without researching first. (In my defense, it was the fangirls' fault.) And since I'm always right, that never happens. Cherish it.

This fic is lovely. Just so, so lovely. Unexpectedly lovely, which somehow makes it even lovelier.
I can't even properly compute all the sexual tension, casual affection, bromance and romance, Starbucks and jealousy and banter and bed-sharing and love. I can't. It's beautiful. It's all so beautiful.

As a side note, I browsed AO3 for a while before picking this as my 1D cherry-popper, and I noticed a wonderful thing: this fandom is awesome. It's one of those creative, prolific fandoms full of talented writers and generally cool, funny people, as most writers of good fanfiction usually are.
I'm so glad to have joined.

[Annika Unterberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friends-to-lovers-where-everyone-else-already-knows-they-are-into-each-other-and-they-act-like-an-actual-couple-before-being-one is officially my favorite trope!

The mutual pining, the cute interactions, the obvious love and the oblivious main characters, while sometimes infuriating, just have something alluring and keep my attention. Also all the angst that comes once one of the characters realizes they're in love and questions the other one's feelings. It's on the same level as enemies-to-lovers and fake-dating (my other two favorites) and therefore, simply perfection!

—> 4 stars

[Day-thief]

Even though the guys were cute and the writing was fine, I never felt invested in the MCs or the story. So I tried to be sensible for once and stopped at the 30% mark.

[ivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aww this was a sweet fanfic.

[Camila (previously the opinionated Catruler) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really a 1D or Larry fan, I literally only know four songs and the guys' names because two of my close friends are bat-shit crazy about the band (especially Harry). But I somehow ended up here, and it was nice. A cute, little short for a stressing day. I guess I can do this because I always read fanfics as if it were a brand new piece of writing that has nothing to do with the original franchise, so I don't really need to know much about the original characters or people.

[Maiko-chan [|]]

I'm dropping this yes but not because I'm not liking or enjoying the fic. To be fair I started this with minimal distractions so I got to fully enjoy the first quarter - which is really good, cute and sweet and humorous and sets a great tone for Harry and Louis forming a friendship alongside their attraction, and of course the best part being overall friendship between the 1D boys because this is the basis of every good 1D fanfic - but then distraction came in the form of Teen Wolf. If you've been looking at my status updates lately you'll know I've definitely become obsessed; so obsessed that I've gotten my best friend to start watching, my mom to marathon the first two seasons with me while I rewatch with her, and my boyfriend to consider watching the show. So, ya know, if you aren't watching.... So of course when my mom suggested we continue I couldn't say no, and that led to not focusing on reading this fic. Personally I just don't believe it's fair to the fic to read it while this distracted, but I'm also just not enchanted with it enough to pick it back up in a few hours, but that isn't to say you shouldn't give it a try.



Favorite quotes:

It’s as if Louis blinks, and suddenly Harry is third on the list of people he calls when he’s bored or feeling low, when he needs a laugh or a good rant. Actually, Harry is Louis’ first choice more often than not because Louis knows better than to disturb Niall when he’s out with Amy, or Zayn when meeting Liam for what they carefully don’t call dates.

Liam and Zayn are kind of ridiculous. Everytime Louis hints at it, though, at how they should just stop it with their strange mating dance to get to the good part, Zayn looks at him with a patient expression and says, “Harry” with an odd weight to the name.

As if it were the answer to a question Louis just hadn’t thought to ask.

This quote especially resonates with me.

And with Harry paying, he’ll make sure to get the largest serving, whatever it’s called considering all Starbucks sizes sound big to Louis. Why not go with XS, S and M for a change? That would be original.

[Blue Bayou .]

Like the finest food. Wonderful being eaten but gone so fast. Lovely!

[Camy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

Cute