FIC: Niall's Story
Title: Niall's Story
Author: evelynegrey
Fandom: One Direction, RPF
Pairing: Harry/Louis
Rating: R
Word count: 1000
Disclaimer: I certainly do not own, or know, One Direction.
Summary: Harry and Louis' relationship from Niall's point of view.
Notes: For my Harold, as always, and for my t'hy'la for emotional support.
Niall wakes up to a darkness he isn't used to. The blinds are drawn and the cramped room is still wrapped in a quiet blanket of sleepy night time, some absurd hour of the early morning when no one's supposed to be awake, and certainly not Niall. He remains still, eyes closed as he tries to recapture the strands of his retreating dreams, but something cuts through the silence and startles him, a soft sound from the bed right next to his.
“Quiet,” he hears Louis' voice whisper, and there's a giggle hidden somewhere in that small puff of breath.
“They'll hear us,” Harry's raspy voice replies, muffled but still audible above the rustling of sheets and clothes.
“They're asleep. Just be quiet...”
Niall feels his face flush even before his tired mind has had time to catch up, putting the pieces together at an agonisingly sluggish pace, and then another soft moan gets drowned in the faint sounds of lips moving across skin, Harry's unmistakable laugh following as their bodies shift only feet from where Niall is lying motionless and tense like a hard-strung wire ready to snap.
He thinks about turning the lights on, about yelling and pointing and running out the door in a storm of outrage. He thinks about waking the whole floor and cause a scene, to let his embarrassment fall somewhere else and not have to deal with it right here, right now. But he doesn't, breath faltering and fingers curling into loose fists as the soft but inevitable squeaking of a rickety bunk-bed starts up - because at the end of the day, that's not at all who he is.
So he lets his heart pound with adrenaline, blood pulsing loudly in his ears, because he recognises Louis' moans, his hoarse voice and breathless begging, Harry's muffled attempts to keep him quiet. And it isn't at all how Niall had imagined it; the pleasure sprinkled with laughter and Harry hitting his head at some point, whining helplessly until Louis manages to soothe him with hands and mouth. It's clumsy and awkward, affectionate and weird, but not at all what Niall had imagined sex to be like.
Even after the quiet has once again settled around them, interrupted only by Zayn's easy snoring and a clock ticking gently on the wall, Niall rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling while the smell of pheromones and sweat and love mingles at the tip of his tongue. His head is spinning with it all, the magnitude of it, and yet it had seemed so easy, for them. It hadn't changed them, and the world hadn't moved with them, and now Harry is snoring in Louis' bed and it wasn't bigger than that, not for them. And Niall just feels so young, suddenly. Like there's so much he doesn't understand about all the things that really matter. Not when his best friends are pushed together at the bottom of a tiny bunk-bed, sleep-warm and safe, while time slowly turns to dust under their eyelids.
It's only when dawn peeks through the cracks around the windows that he manages to drift off, exhaustion forcing him asleep while his heart continues to beat out a strange rhythm.
Years later, little has changed. Niall is still in awe of the world and it wonders, trying to soak it all up while there's still time, and they're still just a bunch of kids with dreams too big and pocketfuls of luck, taking their fill where they can get it. And Niall doesn't think he'll ever get used to this, and he doesn't think he'll ever stop being afraid of that one day when it's all going to end, because the evanescence of it heart-wrenching, and sometimes he doesn't think he'll ever find anything so bittersweet as the screams of broken people, lonely people, begging them for just one more song, one more moment of oblivion.
But when they all wipe the sweat of their foreheads, adrenaline still licking the insides of their veins after a show, Niall still feels comforted by the familiar sight of Louis' hand on the small of Harry's back, guiding him into the tour bus with subconscious ease. They don't talk much, any of them, but Harry and Louis are the quietest of them all, the silence weaving between them like threads in a cocoon, wrapping them up and tucking them in, until there's only the two of them, world forgotten as they shut it all out.
Niall's curled up on a couch, watching them interact without a single word passing their lips, as if they know where the other has been and will be, every step of the way, as Harry passes Louis his glasses and Louis presses his lips to Harry's shoulder, to the small inky heart just beneath his sleeve. And when they finally make it over to the sofas, they slot together like folded wings, impossibly long limbs just sliding into place, fingers finding fingers in a blatant display of familiarity that has shivers scuttling across Niall's bones.
And when Louis looks at Harry, there's something in his eyes that seems bigger than him, and when Harry smiles at him, there's echoes of sleepless nights in it, an affection deep as his voice when he leans in to whisper impossible things in his ear.
And it's probably all kinds of dysfunctional that Niall knows exactly what Louis sounds like when Harry drives him to orgasm in the small hours of the morning, or that Harry loves to leave a myriad of teeth-shaped marks on the insides of Louis' thighs where almost no one will see them, but it feels safe, because if love like that exists Niall thinks the world can't be anything but wondrous. If love like that exists, then Niall doesn't mind the wait.