FIC: The Wait
Title: The Wait
Author: evelynegrey
Fandom: One Direction, RPF
Pairing: Harry/Louis
Rating: R
Word count: 3200
Disclaimer: I certainly do not own, or know, One Direction.
Summary: Louis has made many mistakes. The question is if he'll ever be able to make up for them.
Notes: This is a story about love, plain and simple. So it's dedicated to all the people I love. You know who you are.
They don't talk, much. Busy with their own things, with different people. Maybe taking the long way around, sometimes, just to make sure they don't pass each other in the corridors. Maybe letting Liam or Zayn or Niall walk in between.
Initially, Harry had avoided him to the point where Louis doubted they were even in the same band anymore. Eventually, he'd settled for just ignoring him until it seemed to have become second nature. Now, he sees right through him, like he's part of the furniture, a mediocre painting on the wall at most. Like he's not aware he's there at all. Louis has long since convinced himself that it's better that way.
But it isn't, and when it finally hits there's no one there to hold onto when he stumbles and falls.
With a sort of disjointed determination inherent in the mildly drunk, he makes his way over to the bar, music rattling in his rib cage, lights flashing behind his eyes, and stays there for the rest of the night. He convinces himself that he doesn't know better, and drinks until the colours turn into black and white, sacred simplicity, and doesn't notice when he tips over the edge into oblivion.
He wakes up to white washed walls and gravel in his throat. Zayn is asleep at his side, fully dressed and stretched out on his back like he's ready to get up and leave at any moment, arm cradling his face to keep out the sunlight. Louis wants to reach out, to hold onto something solid until his head stops spinning, but Zayn isn't his to hold onto. No one is.
He remembers arguing with Liam, and it sends a shiver of dread down his spine. He remembers shouting, and vicious words that fall so easily from his lips in the worst of places, almost like he's been saving them for the time when they will make the most damage. He remembers the sticky sweet smell of Zayn's cologne as he carried him back to the hotel. He remembers Harry, but that's the only part he won't let himself feel. The rest he deserves, but not that.
“Zayn,” he whispers, voice finding no leverage in the hollows of his throat. “Zayn.”
And it's a small sense of relief to watch him open his eyes and fill the room with his presence, breaking the silence with a gentle huff of breath.
“Hey,” he mumbles, rolling onto his side. “How are you feeling?”
Terrified, Louis thinks. Absolutely scared shitless.
“Hungover,” he replies, burying deeper under the covers. He remembers Liam telling Zayn to stay with him. Why had he done that?
“Yeah, me too,” Zayn admits mildly, his eyes murky and unfathomable under his long lashes. He's beautiful even like this, Louis thinks, but he'd never tell him that. He probably knows it anyway.
“Did I talk to him?” Louis asks with nausea lacing every syllable.
“Talk to who?”
“Him.” It's ridiculous how he can't even bring himself to say his name any more.
“No,” Zayn says gravely. “You didn't talk to him, but you probably should.”
Louis squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing at the headache that's building in between. “Do you think Liam's right?” he forces himself to ask because he can't do this alone, can't imagine a time when he doesn't hate himself long enough to think that he deserves something other than the hollow ache in his gut.
Zayn sighs. He sighs and turns over onto his back again, fingers burying into his long fringe, a little defeated now, after sleep. “I think anyone would be lucky to have him,” he admits after a pause that's almost cruel.
“That doesn't really answer my question,” Louis says weakly.
“Alright,” Zayn sighs again. “You want my honest opinion? You're an idiot.” Louis doesn't think he can argue with that. “He's the best thing that ever happened to you. No, shut up,” he interrupts, hand flailing before Louis' even opened his mouth. “Better than the band, better than us. We were there. Liam was there.”
Louis can taste bile on the back of his tongue, a sickening thumping in his ears that must be the blood rushing to his head. “What do I do?” he croaks.
“Fix it.”
They have the day off so Louis showers after he's thrown up in the toilet with the sound of his own humiliation ringing in his ears. He scrubs every inch of his skin and turns the water on too hot and combs out his long hair until it covers his red rimmed eyes so he doesn't have to look at himself in the mirror. It's afternoon when he finally leaves his hotel room and there are golden rays of sunshine falling in sideways through the windows, lightning up a path to Harry's room at the other end of the corridor. He checked with Zayn that he's really in there, but it seems no one has ventured out of the hotel yet. Maybe Harry doesn't remember everything either.
A badly concealed expression of shock passes over Harry's face when Louis lets himself in and stands awkwardly in the doorway, wondering how long it's really been since they were alone in a room like this. Years, probably, he thinks as he watches Harry's features smooth over, turning back to the TV where he's playing a game Louis doesn't recognise. He had no idea Harry had an x box in his room.
“Hey,” Louis offers, watching a little green ball blow up on the screen as Harry shoots it with unexpected precision.
“Hey, Louis,” Harry replies gently and it's like a poke to his nervous system to hear him say his name. It's like he'd expected him to forget it by now. “Do you want to play?”
Louis doesn't, but he does want to be sat next to Harry on the bed so he trots over and curls up against the pillows, surrounded by Harry's sleep smell and crumbs between the sheets. He joins the game just to have something to do with his hands.
Harry's elbow bumps into his, sharp and frighteningly real, and Louis tries to remember the words he's rehearsed all day but there is no good way to say it, no easy solution to the heap of wedges he's managed to shove in between for the sake of his own pride. He'd tried to cut every bond, every single trace of familiarity only to realise, now, that all he's managed is a mess of tangled up emotions that seem to swell and surge across the sheets between them every time they move.
Because he still remembers every shape of Harry's person. The ins and outs of him. The lies and the truths alike. And he still longs for that which used to be his. He still defines himself by what Harry made him, and maybe it wasn't just something he did. Maybe it's something he is, as permanent as the ink carved into his skin, once designed with the single purpose of guiding him back home when he got lost. And that's where he is now, dangling on the very precipice of what makes him him.
Such a terrifying sentiment.
“I made a mistake,” he says. Harry shifts slightly beside him.
“Hm?” he hums in reply, focus somewhere else entirely.
“A mistake,” Louis repeats, trembling.
“With what?”
“Us.”
And it takes approximately three seconds for that single syllable to have the effect Louis could have easily been able to anticipate if he wasn't so wrapped up in his own misery.
Harry drops the controller. It makes a soft sound against the sheets, and Louis watches how everything on the TV screen turns to chaos until the letters GAME OVER flash in red across it.
“What exactly are you saying?” Harry asks, voice slow and rounded as always, but Louis can hear something break in the way he tilts the words, holding something back.
That I miss you, Louis thinks, and stares at the screen so he won't have to look at Harry. That I don't know who I am without you?
“I don't like the way things are between us,” he says but doesn't recognise his own voice. It sounds stilted and dumb.
“They are that way for a reason,” Harry tells him, and there's a clear warning there now, something cold that doesn't suit him.
“Look, I never lied to you,” Louis tries, watching Harry bend over so his elbows are resting on his knees, head bent low between them. “I told you I wasn't ready.”
“You should have been.”
“I was eighteen.”
“And I was sixteen!” When he suddenly turns and looks over his shoulder, Louis isn't at all prepared for it. “You broke my heart.”
Louis recoils, shutting down completely at the look in Harry's eyes. “I'm sorry,” he mumbles and waits for Harry to tell him it's not good enough, that it's too late, but it never comes. Instead, he gets to his feet, picks up his wallet and keys from the nightstand and leaves.
Louis' not sure how long he's sat there on Harry's bed, but eventually he picks up his phone and sends off a message to Liam. “I tried. He hates me.”
“TRY HARDER,” comes the reply.
But Louis doesn't know how to try harder. He doesn't know what Harry wants or needs or longs for any more. He doesn't think he can fill the shoes of that someone who's supposed to make all Harry's dreams come true. And it's stupid, because he never thought he was, yet here he is, being yelled at for something he never claimed to be in the first place.
The words GAME OVER are still flashing angrily across the screen.
He calls Eleanor next, who's on the other side of the world, back home, and cries for hours, trying not to mention Harry's name. There are so many things he can't tell her, and it takes ages to get his message across without mentioning how their whole relationship wasn't so much about the pursuit of happiness as it was about running. How the main reason it's worked so far is because she's never really there. And he can't tell her about all the mistakes he's made - how she was one of them. So he doesn't, and eventually, she hangs up in his ear.
And it feels final, somehow, when he's alone in his hotel room later that night, letting his hand trace the line of fine hairs down his abdomen, and he thinks about Harry. It's been a long time, but he can still remember how quiet he was, focused and determined, up until the point when he came, fingers long enough to span Louis' backside when he sat in his lap. And he thinks about them pushing into him as he grinds down, a faint whimper escaping him as he feels Harry's breath ghost across his cheek when he squeezes his eyes shut. It doesn't take long at all until he's squirming, and it's Harry's name that tumbles from his lips then. It's the imprint of Harry's fingertips that burn all over his skin when he cries out, and afterwards, it's the recollection of a memory, a fragment of Harry's smell, that lingers in the sheets when he goes numb.
He doesn't think he's ever taken that long to recover, before.
They fly somewhere new the next day, and Louis sits curled up by the window on the plane, Harry by the aisle, and Zayn in between, like it's always been, or at least for as long as Louis cares to remember. The tour goes on, and Louis spends most of his spare time alone, which isn't at all like him, but then, he's never actually been properly alone before. He tells Liam and Zayn and Niall about the break up, and they don't ask many questions. Good lads, he thinks. Good lads. And Harry remains where he was; two seats away, in the room next door, on the other side of the stage, but never closer than that. Never quite where Louis can see him.
Yet he can't bring himself to regret the things that was never within his control and he thinks that if Harry doesn't want him, it's only fair to let him go. There's still a pair of Harry's pajama trousers in Louis' suitcase and there's still a little bit of a scar on the inside of Louis' lip where Harry hit him once, by mistake, and even if they can't make new ones, there are still memories left that shaped them into the people they are. Louis likes to think he left at least a few marks, maybe even a scar, for Harry to remember him by.
Almost two months later, they're waiting to play their last show in a country that's a little too hot and sticky to be entirely comfortable, and Louis' still insisting on making his final cup of Yorkshire tea even if it will likely cause him to need a wee in the middle of their gig, before they head out onto the stage. He leaves the boys to their own little rituals, and heads over to the small counter where the kettle and assorted teas are predictably waiting, requested by their management and one of the few luxuries they're all still adamant about. Submerged in his own thoughts, he lets the kettle boil and thinks about surfing, maybe taking Liam out once their tour is over and done with, to battle the waves of another sunny beach, when someone speaks behind him.
“The boys say you broke it off.”
Louis looks up, bent awkwardly over the counter with the kettle fuming between himself and Harry, who's leaning with his hips braced against the wood, looking for all the world like he's been standing there all along. He hasn't. Louis would have noticed.
“Yeah,” he replies, straightening, still determined to make his tea.
“Why?” Harry asks, and Louis wonders if it's a trick question. Since when do they talk about this stuff? Since you were stupid enough to tell him the truth, he thinks, spilling water on the floor. You owe him.
“You know why,” Louis says distractedly, because he doesn't quite feel solid enough to say it out loud, again. Harry looks at him with sober eyes, unreadable.
“Do you really mean it?” he asks.
“Yes,” Louis tells his tea cup. Harry's silent again and it's killing him. It's killing him that none of this is over yet and it probably never will be. It will just go on and on and on until Louis' a mad old man with Harry's pajama bottoms under his pillow, jerking off to the memory of Harry's hands on his skin while he hopes for an early grave where he can finally forget. “So do you think...” he hears himself say, urged on by fantasies about his own dire fate. “Do you think you could... You know...” And he just can't bring himself to say it, because it would feel like stabbing himself in the leg, really. “Again?”
It doesn't make any sort of sense, yet Harry looks at him as if it does, and then people are shouting at them to get ready and give the girls a show, and Louis hasn't even tasted his tea yet. Harry looks over his shoulder, one second away from walking out on the mess that is his and Louis' tattered past, when he turns back and says, “What makes you think I stopped?”
It turns out to be one of the best shows they've ever put on, Zayn going absolutely insane with his high notes, Niall jumping higher than he ever has before, Liam prattling on incessantly between songs and Harry just being Harry, dancing and playing to the gallery until the crowd threatens to swallow him up in their unadulterated euphoria. Louis stands in the middle of it, laughing, and wonders if the lights ever shone this bright before. If the night was ever this infinite. It's so easy to imagine that they will remain like this, burning with the stars, an everlasting imprint against the blackened dome of a night sky.
And when the show is finally over, and they all crowd together to take their final bows, Harry meets his gaze and holds it, offering a weak smile that holds everything they ever was in that small instance of recognition. Everything they are and everything they could be, he thinks, reflected back at Louis where he stands with his arm around Niall and white noise buzzing in his ears. It's like a switch has been turned on in his head, light filtering through his thoughts until he can finally see himself in daylight. The boy he was, powerless in the face of such a burden, and the man he is, stupid enough to want to shoulder it. And he thinks he doesn't mind so much if his name becomes victim of stereotypes, if this is the one thing that he will let define him for the rest of his life.
That evening, they all have dinner together. The band, the crew, the musicians all crowd together in the hotel restaurant to celebrate the end of something that no one can bring themselves to properly sum up. 134 shows, 20 countries, 68 cities, 1,635,000 tickets sold, 7 babies born, 3680 cups of Yorkshire tea and 51 tattoos, Louis thinks to himself, but he doesn't say it out loud. It isn't needed.
He sits quietly and watches Harry across the table, maybe smiling, maybe dipping his elbow in his plate, but mostly just waiting. And when the room finally starts to empty, people milling about to say goodnight and goodbye to one another, the five of them walk together to the lifts that will take them to their floor, one last night away before they finally get to go home.
Niall tumbles out first, laughing at something only he understands, and Liam holds onto Zayn's elbow when they follow, soft crinkles around his eyes and a spring in his step. Louis lingers, waiting for Harry to step out and leave him to bring up the rear, but Harry doesn't move and the echos of the other boys' voices slowly die down, until Louis can only hear the thumping of his own heart, the crackle of his bones when he takes one step forward.
Harry catches him by the wrist, fingers curling over the rope there that seems to be all that's holding Louis together. He hasn't touched him in years, but Louis remembers that press of his palm, the warmth of his fingertips against his pulse point, and he's shaking now, but Harry tugs on his arm anyway and pulls him against his chest so that he can feel every shiver, every flutter of Louis' swollen heart, pumping love into every fiber of his being - relentless.
And this is where he holds on, he thinks, arms finding the hollows in Harry's back that he once carved, where they fit. This is where the story begins.
Author: evelynegrey
Fandom: One Direction, RPF
Pairing: Harry/Louis
Rating: R
Word count: 3200
Disclaimer: I certainly do not own, or know, One Direction.
Summary: Louis has made many mistakes. The question is if he'll ever be able to make up for them.
Notes: This is a story about love, plain and simple. So it's dedicated to all the people I love. You know who you are.
They don't talk, much. Busy with their own things, with different people. Maybe taking the long way around, sometimes, just to make sure they don't pass each other in the corridors. Maybe letting Liam or Zayn or Niall walk in between.
Initially, Harry had avoided him to the point where Louis doubted they were even in the same band anymore. Eventually, he'd settled for just ignoring him until it seemed to have become second nature. Now, he sees right through him, like he's part of the furniture, a mediocre painting on the wall at most. Like he's not aware he's there at all. Louis has long since convinced himself that it's better that way.
But it isn't, and when it finally hits there's no one there to hold onto when he stumbles and falls.
With a sort of disjointed determination inherent in the mildly drunk, he makes his way over to the bar, music rattling in his rib cage, lights flashing behind his eyes, and stays there for the rest of the night. He convinces himself that he doesn't know better, and drinks until the colours turn into black and white, sacred simplicity, and doesn't notice when he tips over the edge into oblivion.
He wakes up to white washed walls and gravel in his throat. Zayn is asleep at his side, fully dressed and stretched out on his back like he's ready to get up and leave at any moment, arm cradling his face to keep out the sunlight. Louis wants to reach out, to hold onto something solid until his head stops spinning, but Zayn isn't his to hold onto. No one is.
He remembers arguing with Liam, and it sends a shiver of dread down his spine. He remembers shouting, and vicious words that fall so easily from his lips in the worst of places, almost like he's been saving them for the time when they will make the most damage. He remembers the sticky sweet smell of Zayn's cologne as he carried him back to the hotel. He remembers Harry, but that's the only part he won't let himself feel. The rest he deserves, but not that.
“Zayn,” he whispers, voice finding no leverage in the hollows of his throat. “Zayn.”
And it's a small sense of relief to watch him open his eyes and fill the room with his presence, breaking the silence with a gentle huff of breath.
“Hey,” he mumbles, rolling onto his side. “How are you feeling?”
Terrified, Louis thinks. Absolutely scared shitless.
“Hungover,” he replies, burying deeper under the covers. He remembers Liam telling Zayn to stay with him. Why had he done that?
“Yeah, me too,” Zayn admits mildly, his eyes murky and unfathomable under his long lashes. He's beautiful even like this, Louis thinks, but he'd never tell him that. He probably knows it anyway.
“Did I talk to him?” Louis asks with nausea lacing every syllable.
“Talk to who?”
“Him.” It's ridiculous how he can't even bring himself to say his name any more.
“No,” Zayn says gravely. “You didn't talk to him, but you probably should.”
Louis squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing at the headache that's building in between. “Do you think Liam's right?” he forces himself to ask because he can't do this alone, can't imagine a time when he doesn't hate himself long enough to think that he deserves something other than the hollow ache in his gut.
Zayn sighs. He sighs and turns over onto his back again, fingers burying into his long fringe, a little defeated now, after sleep. “I think anyone would be lucky to have him,” he admits after a pause that's almost cruel.
“That doesn't really answer my question,” Louis says weakly.
“Alright,” Zayn sighs again. “You want my honest opinion? You're an idiot.” Louis doesn't think he can argue with that. “He's the best thing that ever happened to you. No, shut up,” he interrupts, hand flailing before Louis' even opened his mouth. “Better than the band, better than us. We were there. Liam was there.”
Louis can taste bile on the back of his tongue, a sickening thumping in his ears that must be the blood rushing to his head. “What do I do?” he croaks.
“Fix it.”
They have the day off so Louis showers after he's thrown up in the toilet with the sound of his own humiliation ringing in his ears. He scrubs every inch of his skin and turns the water on too hot and combs out his long hair until it covers his red rimmed eyes so he doesn't have to look at himself in the mirror. It's afternoon when he finally leaves his hotel room and there are golden rays of sunshine falling in sideways through the windows, lightning up a path to Harry's room at the other end of the corridor. He checked with Zayn that he's really in there, but it seems no one has ventured out of the hotel yet. Maybe Harry doesn't remember everything either.
A badly concealed expression of shock passes over Harry's face when Louis lets himself in and stands awkwardly in the doorway, wondering how long it's really been since they were alone in a room like this. Years, probably, he thinks as he watches Harry's features smooth over, turning back to the TV where he's playing a game Louis doesn't recognise. He had no idea Harry had an x box in his room.
“Hey,” Louis offers, watching a little green ball blow up on the screen as Harry shoots it with unexpected precision.
“Hey, Louis,” Harry replies gently and it's like a poke to his nervous system to hear him say his name. It's like he'd expected him to forget it by now. “Do you want to play?”
Louis doesn't, but he does want to be sat next to Harry on the bed so he trots over and curls up against the pillows, surrounded by Harry's sleep smell and crumbs between the sheets. He joins the game just to have something to do with his hands.
Harry's elbow bumps into his, sharp and frighteningly real, and Louis tries to remember the words he's rehearsed all day but there is no good way to say it, no easy solution to the heap of wedges he's managed to shove in between for the sake of his own pride. He'd tried to cut every bond, every single trace of familiarity only to realise, now, that all he's managed is a mess of tangled up emotions that seem to swell and surge across the sheets between them every time they move.
Because he still remembers every shape of Harry's person. The ins and outs of him. The lies and the truths alike. And he still longs for that which used to be his. He still defines himself by what Harry made him, and maybe it wasn't just something he did. Maybe it's something he is, as permanent as the ink carved into his skin, once designed with the single purpose of guiding him back home when he got lost. And that's where he is now, dangling on the very precipice of what makes him him.
Such a terrifying sentiment.
“I made a mistake,” he says. Harry shifts slightly beside him.
“Hm?” he hums in reply, focus somewhere else entirely.
“A mistake,” Louis repeats, trembling.
“With what?”
“Us.”
And it takes approximately three seconds for that single syllable to have the effect Louis could have easily been able to anticipate if he wasn't so wrapped up in his own misery.
Harry drops the controller. It makes a soft sound against the sheets, and Louis watches how everything on the TV screen turns to chaos until the letters GAME OVER flash in red across it.
“What exactly are you saying?” Harry asks, voice slow and rounded as always, but Louis can hear something break in the way he tilts the words, holding something back.
That I miss you, Louis thinks, and stares at the screen so he won't have to look at Harry. That I don't know who I am without you?
“I don't like the way things are between us,” he says but doesn't recognise his own voice. It sounds stilted and dumb.
“They are that way for a reason,” Harry tells him, and there's a clear warning there now, something cold that doesn't suit him.
“Look, I never lied to you,” Louis tries, watching Harry bend over so his elbows are resting on his knees, head bent low between them. “I told you I wasn't ready.”
“You should have been.”
“I was eighteen.”
“And I was sixteen!” When he suddenly turns and looks over his shoulder, Louis isn't at all prepared for it. “You broke my heart.”
Louis recoils, shutting down completely at the look in Harry's eyes. “I'm sorry,” he mumbles and waits for Harry to tell him it's not good enough, that it's too late, but it never comes. Instead, he gets to his feet, picks up his wallet and keys from the nightstand and leaves.
Louis' not sure how long he's sat there on Harry's bed, but eventually he picks up his phone and sends off a message to Liam. “I tried. He hates me.”
“TRY HARDER,” comes the reply.
But Louis doesn't know how to try harder. He doesn't know what Harry wants or needs or longs for any more. He doesn't think he can fill the shoes of that someone who's supposed to make all Harry's dreams come true. And it's stupid, because he never thought he was, yet here he is, being yelled at for something he never claimed to be in the first place.
The words GAME OVER are still flashing angrily across the screen.
He calls Eleanor next, who's on the other side of the world, back home, and cries for hours, trying not to mention Harry's name. There are so many things he can't tell her, and it takes ages to get his message across without mentioning how their whole relationship wasn't so much about the pursuit of happiness as it was about running. How the main reason it's worked so far is because she's never really there. And he can't tell her about all the mistakes he's made - how she was one of them. So he doesn't, and eventually, she hangs up in his ear.
And it feels final, somehow, when he's alone in his hotel room later that night, letting his hand trace the line of fine hairs down his abdomen, and he thinks about Harry. It's been a long time, but he can still remember how quiet he was, focused and determined, up until the point when he came, fingers long enough to span Louis' backside when he sat in his lap. And he thinks about them pushing into him as he grinds down, a faint whimper escaping him as he feels Harry's breath ghost across his cheek when he squeezes his eyes shut. It doesn't take long at all until he's squirming, and it's Harry's name that tumbles from his lips then. It's the imprint of Harry's fingertips that burn all over his skin when he cries out, and afterwards, it's the recollection of a memory, a fragment of Harry's smell, that lingers in the sheets when he goes numb.
He doesn't think he's ever taken that long to recover, before.
They fly somewhere new the next day, and Louis sits curled up by the window on the plane, Harry by the aisle, and Zayn in between, like it's always been, or at least for as long as Louis cares to remember. The tour goes on, and Louis spends most of his spare time alone, which isn't at all like him, but then, he's never actually been properly alone before. He tells Liam and Zayn and Niall about the break up, and they don't ask many questions. Good lads, he thinks. Good lads. And Harry remains where he was; two seats away, in the room next door, on the other side of the stage, but never closer than that. Never quite where Louis can see him.
Yet he can't bring himself to regret the things that was never within his control and he thinks that if Harry doesn't want him, it's only fair to let him go. There's still a pair of Harry's pajama trousers in Louis' suitcase and there's still a little bit of a scar on the inside of Louis' lip where Harry hit him once, by mistake, and even if they can't make new ones, there are still memories left that shaped them into the people they are. Louis likes to think he left at least a few marks, maybe even a scar, for Harry to remember him by.
Almost two months later, they're waiting to play their last show in a country that's a little too hot and sticky to be entirely comfortable, and Louis' still insisting on making his final cup of Yorkshire tea even if it will likely cause him to need a wee in the middle of their gig, before they head out onto the stage. He leaves the boys to their own little rituals, and heads over to the small counter where the kettle and assorted teas are predictably waiting, requested by their management and one of the few luxuries they're all still adamant about. Submerged in his own thoughts, he lets the kettle boil and thinks about surfing, maybe taking Liam out once their tour is over and done with, to battle the waves of another sunny beach, when someone speaks behind him.
“The boys say you broke it off.”
Louis looks up, bent awkwardly over the counter with the kettle fuming between himself and Harry, who's leaning with his hips braced against the wood, looking for all the world like he's been standing there all along. He hasn't. Louis would have noticed.
“Yeah,” he replies, straightening, still determined to make his tea.
“Why?” Harry asks, and Louis wonders if it's a trick question. Since when do they talk about this stuff? Since you were stupid enough to tell him the truth, he thinks, spilling water on the floor. You owe him.
“You know why,” Louis says distractedly, because he doesn't quite feel solid enough to say it out loud, again. Harry looks at him with sober eyes, unreadable.
“Do you really mean it?” he asks.
“Yes,” Louis tells his tea cup. Harry's silent again and it's killing him. It's killing him that none of this is over yet and it probably never will be. It will just go on and on and on until Louis' a mad old man with Harry's pajama bottoms under his pillow, jerking off to the memory of Harry's hands on his skin while he hopes for an early grave where he can finally forget. “So do you think...” he hears himself say, urged on by fantasies about his own dire fate. “Do you think you could... You know...” And he just can't bring himself to say it, because it would feel like stabbing himself in the leg, really. “Again?”
It doesn't make any sort of sense, yet Harry looks at him as if it does, and then people are shouting at them to get ready and give the girls a show, and Louis hasn't even tasted his tea yet. Harry looks over his shoulder, one second away from walking out on the mess that is his and Louis' tattered past, when he turns back and says, “What makes you think I stopped?”
It turns out to be one of the best shows they've ever put on, Zayn going absolutely insane with his high notes, Niall jumping higher than he ever has before, Liam prattling on incessantly between songs and Harry just being Harry, dancing and playing to the gallery until the crowd threatens to swallow him up in their unadulterated euphoria. Louis stands in the middle of it, laughing, and wonders if the lights ever shone this bright before. If the night was ever this infinite. It's so easy to imagine that they will remain like this, burning with the stars, an everlasting imprint against the blackened dome of a night sky.
And when the show is finally over, and they all crowd together to take their final bows, Harry meets his gaze and holds it, offering a weak smile that holds everything they ever was in that small instance of recognition. Everything they are and everything they could be, he thinks, reflected back at Louis where he stands with his arm around Niall and white noise buzzing in his ears. It's like a switch has been turned on in his head, light filtering through his thoughts until he can finally see himself in daylight. The boy he was, powerless in the face of such a burden, and the man he is, stupid enough to want to shoulder it. And he thinks he doesn't mind so much if his name becomes victim of stereotypes, if this is the one thing that he will let define him for the rest of his life.
That evening, they all have dinner together. The band, the crew, the musicians all crowd together in the hotel restaurant to celebrate the end of something that no one can bring themselves to properly sum up. 134 shows, 20 countries, 68 cities, 1,635,000 tickets sold, 7 babies born, 3680 cups of Yorkshire tea and 51 tattoos, Louis thinks to himself, but he doesn't say it out loud. It isn't needed.
He sits quietly and watches Harry across the table, maybe smiling, maybe dipping his elbow in his plate, but mostly just waiting. And when the room finally starts to empty, people milling about to say goodnight and goodbye to one another, the five of them walk together to the lifts that will take them to their floor, one last night away before they finally get to go home.
Niall tumbles out first, laughing at something only he understands, and Liam holds onto Zayn's elbow when they follow, soft crinkles around his eyes and a spring in his step. Louis lingers, waiting for Harry to step out and leave him to bring up the rear, but Harry doesn't move and the echos of the other boys' voices slowly die down, until Louis can only hear the thumping of his own heart, the crackle of his bones when he takes one step forward.
Harry catches him by the wrist, fingers curling over the rope there that seems to be all that's holding Louis together. He hasn't touched him in years, but Louis remembers that press of his palm, the warmth of his fingertips against his pulse point, and he's shaking now, but Harry tugs on his arm anyway and pulls him against his chest so that he can feel every shiver, every flutter of Louis' swollen heart, pumping love into every fiber of his being - relentless.
And this is where he holds on, he thinks, arms finding the hollows in Harry's back that he once carved, where they fit. This is where the story begins.