fic: time and time and time again (i'll fall for you, i think)
title: time and time and time again (i’ll fall for you, i think)
pairing: alex day/harry styles
summary: Thinking it over, it doesn’t really matter where they are- whether they’re in a no-name suburb without plutonium, or Napoleonic France fighting Americans, or in Alex’s bedroom listening to music- at any given time, Alex is the safest thing Harry knows, and that’s terrifying and wonderful all at once.
word count: 6,760
author’s note: this is ridiculous and it’s back to the future au and to be honest i have no idea how this happened, but here it is. (all the thanks in the world go to lucy and craze for their unending support). this is also the first time in a while my default icon has been even slightly relevant, so that's good.
art: reili, who is the abolute best in the world, made me a poster and an icon and it makes me smile :)
Harry doesn’t quite remember a time before he met Alex.
Well, sure, he does. He remembers afternoons in the park, evenings with his guitar by the stream in the small area behind his house, walking aimlessly through the shopping centre about three miles down the road. He remembers it all, but none of it seems very relevant, now.
(Something he’ll learn about Alex is that Alex can never just be part of something, he’s always everything, always makes himself completely everything.)
(Something he’ll learn about himself is that Harry will always let him be everything, always.)
-
Alex moves in when Harry’s just finishing school, planning for University, somewhere, he’s not really sure yet. He’s drowned amid a constant stream of information and brochures and phone calls and he doesn’t quite remember when he resurfaces from it all for a small break, but he knows when he does Alex is just there, at his bakery ordering an apple turnover and a small cup of tea.
(“Cream and sugar?” Harry had asked, mind still flying thirty miles a minute, already turned around to put the kettle on and heat up a turnover.
“No, thank you.” Had been the reply, followed shortly by “I’m sweet enough, I think.”
Harry had paused, staring at the stranger with big hair and a duffle bag, and promptly doubled over laughing until the whole sop was filled with giggles and guffaws.
“Oh,” After Harry had finally caught his breath. “Are you, now?”
The stranger looked at him, grinning. “It seems like you already think so.”
“I’m Harry.” He’d replied. “Harry Styles of Cheshire.”
“I’m Alex Day.” The stranger said, pausing before answering. “I don’t have a place where I’m from, not really.”
“That’s alright.” Harry hands him the tea, piping hot from the kettle, and his turnover warm and crispy from the industrial sized ovens they don’t really need for such a small bakery. “Everyone needs a place to start out, and you’re here, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Alex replied. “It appears I am.”)
He comes into the bakery nearly every day after that, and Harry develops a fondness for him, a small liking (though it’s not small, it’s strong, stronger than anything he’s ever felt, even subtley) for him. He’s witty and charming and intelligent and doesn’t seem to ever be bothered by Harry’s slow speech or scatterbrained conversations.
Harry also seems to be the only person Alex really knows, at least at first. Slowly, however, Harry notices other patrons that come in and order and maybe even sit and chat saying hello to him. The rest of the town calls him Doc, which Harry thinks is very strange when he learns his name is actually Alex Richard George Day and he’s not a doctor at all.
“People like to make assumptions.” Alex says the first time Harry asks him about it. “Sometimes I just let them. It’s easier that way. An eccentric man wanders into a pretty quiet town with funny hair and a white coat over his skinny jeans and wham, he’s a doctor.” He smirks. “Sometimes it’s quite a bit of fun, just to let people assume and then laugh when they’re wrong.”
Harry chuckles politely, but even as his mouth opens he doesn’t mention all the times he’s listened to the kids at school talk about him, in passing or in bathrooms or classrooms or places they think Harry can’t hear, how he hangs on every word they say. “I don’t think I could do that.” He says, finally. “Let other people think whatever they want about me.”
Alex doesn’t ask Harry for details, but he thinks Alex might understand anyway. It’s something Harry appreciated about Alex. He speaks candidly most of the time, lets loose whatever he’s thinking at any given moment, but when things get heavy, he tones it down, makes every word count. It’s one of his more endearing habits.
One of his less endearing qualities (or more endearing, Harry reasons, it really depends on his mood) is asking Harry endless questions about his life. When did he learn to play the guitar, what were his GSCE’s like, what Universities is he looking at, what does he want to do with his life , et cetera. Sometimes conversations with Alex sound much more like conversations with his guidance counselors at school, or particularly nosy relatives.
They never make Harry anxious, though. They never make him want to lay out on a rooftop and bake to death, or take a train with his guitar and move to the west to start up an indie band and never look back. They make him feel like it’s okay not to know things, it’s alright not to know exactly what he wants to do yet in life. Alex never judges, and more often than not has some words of wisdom, things that are probably meant to make Harry feel better and more secure, but really just make him snort and make Alex hit him across the arm in retaliation.
“You know,” Harry thinks aloud one day as Alex is rummaging around, possibly looking for a spoon for his tea, but whoever really knows with Alex, anyway? “You’re only about two years older than me. Why aren’t you in Uni?”
Alex smiles a peculiar little smile, one that’s a story to himself, and then shrugs. “Uni didn’t quite work out with me.” He grins. “Too much to do, too much of a structured schedule to do it in.” He emerges from behind the closet door, pulling out a bright blue pen and looking triumphant. “But, anyway,” He continues. “A question for a question I’ll say, Harry.” He smirks, and Harry sighs, taking a sip of tea. “What made you work at a bakery, then?”
Harry puts his mug down and folds his arms together, fingers tumbling over the bracelets from concerts far away and more scragglier ones made of bits of string he’d found lying around. “I needed money.” Is the answer he finally settles on. “I wanted a new guitar, so I needed money.”
“But why a bakery?” Alex asks, puttering around the flat, looking for something else amid the mess of papers and charts and notebooks. “Bakeries are kind of dull, aren’t they?”
“They’re not so bad,” Harry says defensively. “I mean, it’s a lot of work, but I get to work with, uhm, the cakes and stuff.” Alex’s head perks up. “I get to decorate, you know,” Harry smiles brightly. “I’ve gotten quite good at it.”
Alex looks at him for a moment, before a smile passes over his face. “That’s good, Harry.” He nods, before turning back to a stack of charts that look like music sales. “That’s really good.”
-
Alex does a lot of things that Harry pretends to understand but really doesn’t.
He knows he’s an inventor, a builder, someone whose mind is so busy and bustling that it emerges in everything he does. He spills creativity out of every part of him, and sometimes being around Harry makes him feel like he’s catching some of it, like it might be rubbing off on him.
Inventing, though, is something Harry has no understanding of. Alex can mutter for days on end about needing a certain metal or alloy or wire or whatever and Harry will still have no idea what he’s looking for, even after Alex has explained himself thoroughly for the third time. Somewhere between Alex’s mouth and Harry’s head, the words stop flowing and all Harry knows by the end of the day is Alex is someone he doesn’t know if he’ll ever fully understand.
Whether Harry understands it or not, though, watching Alex work is a thing of beauty. He focuses for hours on end, staring, working, not letting himself be interrupted by anyone or anything, and just creates. Ale puts a piece of himself into every little thing he makes, be it a can opener that also doubles as an iphone charger or a solar powered amp that cranks up to eleven. Watching him work and think is seeing an Olympic athlete in their element, it’s watching something that was so obviously meant to be come to fruition.
(Once, a long, long time ago, Harry wasn’t a romantic, wouldn’t call another person a thing of beauty, but meeting Alex has a way of changing things, of changing everything.)
It takes Alex a long time to actually show Harry any of the things he’d made, be it music or metal. Harry doesn’t think it was out of fear of criticism- Ale thrives of critisicm, of showing people he’s right and even if he isn’t at the time, he’ll damn well prove the world wrong. Maybe Alex thought Harry couldn’t be trusted with knowing all of Alex’s creations, because Harry now knows for certain that there are some highly illegal things floating around that flat. (“It’s for science, Harry!” he’d called the first time Harry found a full quart of arsenic under the bathroom sink. “Science!”)
Harry thinks that, in the end, Alex just wasn’t sure if Harry would stick around long enough to even bother explaining things and going through the whole process that is inviting one into the life of Alex Day.
(Harry doesn’t say it, but he thinks Alex knows anyway- he’ll stick around so long as Alex will have him. He hopes forever, if that’s enough.)
-
Alex shows up at Harry’s flat one day, which is unique in its own right, but what catches Harry’s attention is the gleam in his eye and the way his hair’s ruffled against the wind and he looks so excited.
Harry kind of wants to press him against the door and kiss him until his excitement catches.
(He doesn’t, though.)
“You’ve got to come see this.” He says, tugging Harry’s wrist and pulling him outside. “You’ve got to see what I’ve done, and Harry, this is brilliant, this is the best I’ve ever made-”
Harry’s never quite sure what he’s going to see when Alex pulls him away at all hours of the day- or night- but he knows that it doesn’t really matter, because he’ll always go with Alex, always.
Alex doesn’t wait for Harry to answer (although Harry’s sure by now Alex has to know the answer’s yes, always yes) before he turns and scampers down the front porch and into the street, still chattering on excitedly to no one, leaving Harry to keep up.
They run and run and run until they hit Alex’s street, and immediately something catches Harry’s eye. Where Alex’s bike is usually tethered to the mailbox in the front of his flat, there’s a car parked, and upon closer inspection, it’s really not just any car, it’s-
“Where on earth did you get a DeLorean?” Harry mutters in awe, running his fingertips over the flip-winged doors and the sleek grey finish.
“Irrelevant.” Alex says quickly. Harry stifles a giggle. “But I figured, for what we’re doing, I might as well do it in style.”
“And what, exactly, are we doing?” Harry asks, still slightly preoccupied with the license plate that reads OUTTATIME. Alex grins, and in that moment Harry knows that whatever they’re doing isn’t something small, it’s something huge and identifiably Alex.
“We’re going where no man has gone before, of course.” Alex says, before he frowns slightly. “Well, I suppose you’d say where man has already been, before, but in a new and improved way.” He flashes Harry a smile and Harry thinks it doesn’t matter whether man or monkey’s been there before or will never be there again, if it’s Alex’s plan it must be worth it.
“I’m ready.” Harry grins, and Alex stops, looking surprised.
“I haven’t even properly told you what we’re doing, yet!” He chuckles, but Harry shrugs.
“Whatever it is, it must be good.” Is his answer, and Alex smiles so brightly at him the stars look dim.
He grabs at Harry’s wrist and tugs him forward excitedly, and Harry almost, almost falls into his arms. (He’s not a teen romcom, though, so he doesn’t, thankfully). “Well, come on, then, let me show you!” He pulls out a set of keys from the pocket of his ridiculously tight jeans and clicks it twice, revving the car to life and sending the doors opening upwards. Cautiously, Harry moves forward.
Inside the car looks nothing like anything Harry’s seen in person before. He feels, rather, like he’s stepped into an old rerun of Star Trek that his mother used to watch. Lights and switches and buttons and circuit boards line the dashboard, colors and sounds beep at him, all highlighting a large display board where the words day month time year all shine back at him.
The question of what in the world is this hangs on the tip of Harry’s tongue, but he doesn’t have to ask it, not really, because he knows what this is. He’s seen the diagrams in Alex’s room, he’s helped him research car models and crash rates and durability tests. He knows the plots of timelines that are tacked to Alex’s wall, knows how he’s been trying to understand how to make this work for months, maybe even years.
This is a time machine, and Harry has never been more proud of Alex.
“You did it.” He breathes. “You figured it out.”
Alex raises an eyebrow. “I wasn’t sure that you had figured out what I was trying to do, to be quite honest.”
Harry thinks he should feel offended, but doesn’t- never does, not with Alex. “I know you well enough, by now.” Harry mutters, still staring in awe at the blinking lights and the sleek interior and even though this is, yeah, a time machine the teenaged boy inside him keeps going ohmygodthisisafuckingdelorean. “I’ve seen what you’ve been trying to do for ages.” He looks up at Alex, all wide eyes and unadulterated excitement. “And you did it.”
Alex takes a pause, staring straight at Harry, before he pulls him into the car, lets him topple into the passenger seat before taking his own seat on the driver’s side. “Well, let’s see if it works, then.” He raises an eyebrow, looking at Harry almost challengingly.
“You haven’t tested it, yet?” Harry asks incredulously, and his look only deeps when Alex adapts a look that’s half coy and half shy.
“I wanted to test it out with you.” For the first time the whole night, he doesn’t meet Harry’s eye, and a slight blush rises on his cheeks. “If you want to, that is.” Harry’s stomach flips as he grins back.
“Well, I’m here,” He says, and he is, he’s here in a time machine with Alex, and he doesn’t know how this could get any more bizarre, or any better. “Let’s test this baby out.”
Alex grins, and Harry buzzes with nervous energy as Alex sets knobs and dials and number displays to the same day but ten minutes prior. He checks his watch in comparison to the watch in the car, then turns to grin at Harry, muttering a “Here goes,” as he turns the car on in full.
The DeLorean sings as Alex makes his way up to eighty-eight miles.
-
“The thing with time travel.” Alex explains one evening, lying flat on his back on the roof of his flat, Harry on a blanket next to him. “Is that it’s fickle, so fickle.” He sighs, looking at the smattering of stars they get, even in urban London. “You can’t do too much to mess things up, you know. Can’t find yourself, can’t talk to yourself, can’t give people information they’re not meant to have until years later. There are so many rules.” He grins slightly. “I should know, I made most of them.”
Time travel, by now, is old hat to the two of them. It’s something Harry knows how to do (with Alex’s help) inside and out and he’s pretty sure he could travel back to China in the late second century without giving too much thought to technical machinery and things of that nature (although a language barrier might be something he considers problematic). As much as they seem to do it and know how to do it easily, however, it never loses it’s luster, never it’s sparkle. Being able to go and experience and live and understand in all eras and spaces and time-continuums is something Harry will never stop being awed and terrified of at the same time, and he thinks Alex feels the same.
“What are you thinking, about?” Alex interrupts his thoughts, like he’d heard his name in Harry’s head. “I can feel your mind going a mile a minute.”
“Nothing in particular,” Harry answers. “And not really a mile a minute, just pretty quickly.”
Alex snorts and somehow manages to bump shoulders with Harry, despite their horizontal positioning on the roof. “You might as well have been racing the DeLorean with how fast you were thinking.”
Harry smiles and feels this overwhelming fondness for the young man to his left, and wants to lean over into his space and just lay closer to him in the cool summer evening. He wants to ask about every rule and regulation and idea and question and hear it all even if he loses track midway through, so long as Alex keeps talking.
He settles for staring up at the stars, instead.
-
“Do you ever want to go back to a time in your own life?” Alex asks as they’re lounging around in his room, eating stove-top soup and drinking flat diet cola. “Just to remember how things were,” He pauses. “Maybe even change how things turned out?”
Harry puts his soup down, the bowl clattering on the bedside table, and moves to sit cross-legged on the bed. “No,” He answers honestly. “I don’t.” He thinks and thinks and thinks about everything that happened before Alex and how much brighter the world seems after Alex, and he can’t find a single reason to want to change that. “Not really.”
After a long pause, Harry braces himself and asks “Do you?”
Alex frowns, but answers immediately, like he always does, like he’s always the most certain person in the world, no matter what he’s saying. “Yes.” He nods. “Yes, I do.” He blinks, and suddenly he’s somewhere far off (in another time, Harry knows), and it takes him a while to come back, a while until his eyes lose their reminiscence and remembrance of things past.
“When?” Harry asks, and he hates himself a little bit for wanting to know, for not already knowing, for never knowing much of anything when it comes to Alex.
“An old time,” Alex says. “A very, very long while ago- or maybe it wasn’t that long, not really, but it feels like it.” Alex tucks a leg under himself, propping his head on his fist. “A time with an old friend of mine.” Harry bites his lip (and tries not to feel so second-rate, so unwanted), and Alex is still very far away.
“But,” he says suddenly, and now he’s speaking slowly, in a way he almost never does, a way that doesn’t sound like everything he’s saying is factual, like he’s always right. “I think, if it meant I’d have never met you, then things must have turned out how they should have.” He reaches across from his desk chair and grabs at Harry’s ankle, long and spindly fingers holding firmly to the line of his pant leg.
Harry doesn’t say anything for a long moment (there are no long moments, though, not really- moments are moments and seconds are seconds but feelings command time more than any flux cappacitator ever could) until he replies quietly into the stillness of the room. “I guess so.” It’s all he can get out around the lump forming in his throat.
Alex shakes his head, moving his hand over a few inches to intertwine his fingers with Harry’s. “I know so.”
-
Harry walks into Alex’s flat one day (he’s long since acquired a key, found tucked into the pocket of his favorite sweatshirt that Alex borrowed because he always seems to be cold but god forbid he own more than two items of clothing at a time), and he’s bickering with a blue haired boy in dark jeans and a studded leather jacket .
(Harry has a brief moment where he wonders what time period he bought the jacket in before remembering that not everyone has a time traveling sports car, Styles, you’re an idiot.)
“Who the fuck are you?” The boy asks, and Harry’s too taken aback to feel insulted.
“Tom, shut up.” Alex sighs, turning to Harry and looking apologetic. “Sorry, this is Tom, he’s a nutter.” He looks up at Tom with hard eyes. “Tom, this is Harry, so will you just please pretend to know how to be nice?”
Tom snorts. “I’m as nice as they come.” He mumbles, but offers Harry a tight smile, one that Harry tries to return but honestly isn’t sure how to.
“Tom’s one of my oldest friends,” Alex says, and Harry can tell he’s just trying to keep the silence in the room at a minimum, filling it up with mindless chatter and backstory. “We met through precarious circumstances that I needn’t go into right now-”
“We both made videos on an obsolete website.” Tom cuts in, and Alex looks mildly annoyed.
“-and we made a bit of music together, in our time.” He finishes, looking to Harry for something, but Harry can’t tell exactly what. He feels about as uncomfortable as Alex looks, though he’s not quite sure why.
“That’s really neat.” Harry offers, sitting down at the kitchen table, smiling as Alex passes him a soda.
“If you want to call it that.” Tom mutters. Alex rolls his eyes. Harry doesn’t quite know what to do.
Tom sort of feels on edge all the time, if Harry had to put it into words. One second he’s content and relaxed, and then the next he’s passive-aggressive, and Harry’s never met someone like this, someone he has to walk on eggshells around. It sets him on edge as well, and poor Alex looks like he doesn’t quite know what to do.
The afternoon continues to be tense, even if Harry can’t really identify why, or what he’s done to make this stranger dislike him so much in their maybe thirty minutes of initial interaction. It’s clear, though, that Tom absolutely is not a fan of Harry, might even go as far to say that Tom completely hates Harry. He’s not extraordinarily bothered by it, so much, he just isn’t sure why it’s happening in the first place. (Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he wonders if it’s upsetting Alex as much as it’s worrying him.)
“Tom comes around every once in a while.” Alex sighs once the door’s shut with a flash of blue hair and shiny leather. He shakes his head, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walks to the living room. “It’s tiring whenever he does now, and it sucks, because we used to be really close.” Alex must catch Harry’s incredulous look, because he chuckles and continues on almost sadly.
“Tom never used to be as, well, bitter as he is now.” He curls his leg underneath himself on the couch, looking far-off again. “He used to be, I don’t know, more lively, more excitable.” Alex frowns. “He’s just angry, now, at everything and everyone, although I guess mostly he’s just angry at me.”
“Why?” Harry wonders. “What did you do?”
Alex frowns, but resigns to an answer anyway. “Tom doesn’t like that I’m into time travel and things like that.” He sighs. “He doesn’t like that I know how he could turn out, musically, in two, three, ten years from now. He thinks it’s cheating.”
“But you don’t do that?” Harry says, confused. “You don’t go and look to see what’s popular, then do it first?”
“Obviously.” Alex rolls his eyes. “That would completely mess with the entire time space-” He looks at Harry and smiles into a breathy sigh. “You know all of this, I know, and I’ve tried to explain it to Tom, but, well, he’s stubborn.”
“Not more stubborn than you!” Harry mock gasps, and Alex stares at him for a moment before throwing his head back in laughter, and Harry feels like the universe is back on its hinges again.
“I’m so lucky to have you, Hazza.” Alex grins, leaning his head on Harry’s shoulder. Harry doesn’t say anything (because Harry never has to), but he’s pretty sure Alex knows he feels the same.
-
One time they don’t pack enough plutionium, because everything has to go at least partially wrong at some point.
They’re stuck sometime in the fifties, Harry thinks (all the times and places are their own and wonderful in their own ways, but sometimes they all just blend together) in a little no-name suburb with white picket fences and old cars and a marble town hall with a clock tower. It looks like something out of an old movie, or an album cover that’s meant to be sort of ironic. It’s the sort of town that Harry thinks he could find his parents or grandparents in, if he looked hard enough.
Harry never looks, not really. Never looks for people or things that remind him of home. When he’s out, he’s only with Alex. He’s not looking for some deeper meaning, or a series of events. This is Alex’s journey, always Alex’s journey, and he’s just lucky enough to be along for the ride.
Their ride right now, though, is nonexistent, and while Alex is so sure I packed extra, fuck, I know I did, Harry’s more than content to just wander around and observe, aloof and curious as he is wherever they go. He’s fascinated by the hometown feel of this place, and the sort of detachment that comes along with visiting a place he knows he’s never been, or never would have been.
He wanders the whole day, grabbing lunch in a silver-plated diner with bottled coca cola and menus that look like extras from the film Grease. He watches kids skate by on their painted boards, watches girls in their long skirts and pinned hair giggle after them. It feels like he’s in a movie, or an attraction at a fair, built just for him. With his jeans and white t-shirt, he doesn’t look all too much out of place from the greaser boys across the way at the gas station. In fact, he might even look like he fits in, which is comical more than anything.
Alex finds him around sunset, when big, sweeping storm clouds are dusting over the sky, casting the town in a yellowish grey light. He looks frazzled, his hair sticking out in all directions, button down shirt un-tucked from his (thankfully he’s worn these ones today) plain denim jeans. Harry offers a sympathetic smile, standing up from the bench he’d been sitting on, reading a book that most certainly didn’t exist in wherever they were.
“D’you figure it out?” Harry asks, reaching out a hand to pat down Alex’s hair. Alex closes his eyes for a minute, sighing contently, before they snap open again and he’s back to going a mile a minute.
“I think so,” He mumbles, already turning around and motioning for Harry to follow him, which he does without hesitation. “We’re actually pretty lucky we landed here on this day, there’s a huge storm coming in-”
“Oh, wonderfully lucky, we are.” Harry comments, and Alex grins.
“No, we need the storm, see-” He motions to the far off line of building in the town, where a tall peak can be seen just over the head of office buildings and churches. “That’s town hall, and their clock tower is the highest peak in town, yeah? We’ve got to attract lightning to it, the sheer strength should be able to jumpstart the DeLorean and we’ll be able to get back home without a problem.” He grins as the hall finally comes fully into view, now been reworked as a lightning rod, a straight line of metal up the highest part of the tower, with a long wire leading down to the open hood of the car. “It’s quite simple, really.”
Harry can’t even come up with a witty comment, just continues to stare, dumbstruck, between the lightning rod and Alex. “Are you sure this is safe?” He finally asks. Alex looks like he might guffaw, but instead chooses to nod seriously.
“I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.” He replies, and Harry snorts.
“Of course you would.” He chuckles, but Alex shakes his head.
“Alright, let me rephrase.” Alex looks away, a hint of a blush crawling up his cheeks. “I wouldn’t let you do it if it wasn’t safe.”
Harry blinks, the same fluttery feeling he’s come to associate with everything Alex settling in his tummy once more, but before he could even begin to think of a response to something like that, thunder booms overhead, and Alex is tugging his wrist and leading them to a place underneath the awning of a store.
“This should be good,” Alex says, and for the first time he sounds nervous. “It’ll work, I know it will.”
The rain comes down almost the second they’re under the awning, pouring buckets and waterfalls like they’ve fallen into a ride at a waterpark. Thunder booms and booms and booms, and in the distance, they hear their first crack of lightening, sharp and crisp like a whip’s snap.
“Any second now,” Alex murmurs, “I know it will work.”
Harry, on a burst of bravery that comes from being inches away from what looks like a typhoon, reaches over and tangles his fingers with Alex’s. “I know it’ll work.” He mumbles, and for a moment Harry thinks Alex’s grin lights up the entire street with a blinding flash, that his smile is so bright he’ll blow out the whole world-
“Here it is!” Alex yells suddenly, and Harry looks away from him to see that the blinding light wasn’t from Alex’s smile, but the bolt of lightning that’s hit the clock tower, bluish white light firing down the wire attached to the DeLorean. “I think it’s working!”
On the street, the DeLorean suddenly roars to life, the lights inside shining dimly through the tinted windows, and Alex lets out a long breath, letting go of Harry’s hand to run it through his hair, sighing in relief and excitement.
“It worked!” He breathes, eyes shining, the lightning still swooshing and traipezing in the sky. “I can’t believe it worked.”
“I knew it would.” Harry mumbles.
They stand apart for a long moment, watching the lights as they fly and spark. Harry’s just about to break the silence when Alex moves close up behind him in the midst of the lightning show and Harry just breathes, resting back on his shoulder. No matter how terrifying this may be, how worrisome this whole situation could have been, Alex is safe, Alex is a constant, Alex is the one thing he knows will never change no matter what ridiculous time period they’ve gotten themselves stuck in this time. Thinking it over, it doesn’t really matter where they are- whether they’re in a no-name suburb without plutonium, or Napoleonic France fighting Americans, or in Alex’s bedroom listening to music-
At any given time, Alex is the safest thing Harry knows, and that’s terrifying and wonderful all at once.
“Are you alright?” Alex asks quietly, breath warm against Harry’s ear. Harry smiles and leans back a fraction of an inch further, his back pressed to Alex’s front, comfortable like they were made to fit together.
“Brilliant,” He says as the lightning finally dies down, the rain slowing to a gentle patter. “Absolutely brilliant.”
-
The first time they kiss, it’s up against the DeLorean, which really, Harry thinks, is quite fitting.
It’s a little messy, a little desperate, a little brought on by maybe being chased by Indians somewhere out in the Midwest of Colonial America, maybe, but it’s everything they are, really. Harry and Alex, pressed tightly together up against a machine that could do wonderful and horrible things, all at once, and neither one of them a clue what they’re doing.
It’s very fitting, and when they pull away, breathless and still angry at each other for putting themselves in harm’s way, it still feels like the closest thing to home Harry thinks he’s ever imagined.
“That was nice, then.” Alex says, smile nearing a smirk, and Harry realizes that he doesn’t have to say anything in response, instead just pulls Alex back in for what he hopes will be the second of an infinite number of kisses.
They learn how to be a couple like they learned how to be friends- quickly, like it’s something they should have been doing their whole lives.
Harry gets used to staying over at Alex’s, used to falling asleep in his bed when Alex is up late playing the guitar, used to waking up to gentle kisses to the side of his head. He falls into being able to lean over and kiss Alex whenever he wants, of not having to repress the urge to reach out and touch, just to make sure he’s still there.
It’s a lot of getting used to, but it comes easily, and even when they argue over getting into trouble in different centuries and dynasties, even when they scream because in the end they’re both stubborn but they’re also both understanding, it’s still something more amazing and better than Harry could have ever dreamed up, and that makes it so, so worth it.
-
They sort of changes the direction of pop music in the early twenty first century, which is bizarre and something Harry can’t quite wrap his mind around, so mostly he just chooses not to.
He meets the members of One Direction before they’re even close to being dubbed as such, when the DeLorean slips back into the space time continuum and coughs up a cloud of smoke that Alex says means it’s not going to go anywhere for a little while. Harry sighs, but he can’t really keep the fondness out of his tone when he says he’s going to wait outside for Alex to fix it. He walks around, stretching his legs, when he hears the music, soft and unsure and everything he remembers being.
Drawn to it, he walks the length of the block before he comes on an open garage, with four boys sitting around in beat up bean bags and moth eaten rugs. Harry’s never felt more at home.
“’lo,” He calls, and they look up, curious. “You guys sound good.”
The one on the rug nearest to him snorts, running a hand over his fringe. “We sound like shit.” He clarifies, voice tinted with sarcasm. “But thanks for your lies.”
“Louis,” One of the other boys snaps at him, before turning to Harry. “We appreciate it, really, we’re just going through a bit of a rough patch.”
“Want some new ears?” Harry asks, making his way into the garage, not really caring if they’re going to say no or not. “I’d love to help,” Thumbing back to the DeLorean down the block, still wheezing with smoke, he grins. “I think we’ll be here for at least a little while.”
Their names are Louis, Niall, Liam, and Zayn, and they’re possibly the funniest boys Harry’s ever met in his life. Trying to make or break it in a world between sounds is a task they’ve taken on with a grace Harry doesn’t think he’s ever had, before or after the world was stretched out at his fingertips. They’re different than anyone he’s ever met before, collectively and individually. They know who they are and they know what they want to do, they don’t know is how to do it, exactly.
He sits with them for hours that day, helping them work through songs and giving them advice and telling them hey, they should maybe try out for the x-factor, because why not. He mumbles to them about “you only live once- yolo, y’know.”, but they don't know, and he realizes they're not supposed to, not yet, anyway.
Harry learns to play the piano that day, and when they get back to the car Alex kisses him happily. “You and music go so well together.” He says once he pulls away. “I think I’ve told you that before, or I’ve meant to. But you do.”
They take their time making their speed back up to eighty-eight.
The next weekend, when they land in the twenty third century for no reason at all, Harry sees a now vintage One Direction CD on the wall of an antique store he and Alex stop in for giggles. Alex is the one to point out the list of thank you’s on the back of the insert, the small to harry, wherever you are.
Harry buys the CD and spends the rest of the afternoon feeling fond over these boys it feels like he knew.
-
The DeLorean takes a beating after a while, chipping here and there, fragments of paint lost somewhere in time. Alex says it adds character, and after a while, Harry finds he has to agree. He remembers each ding and dent like a battle scar from an adventure that should be told in books and movies and songs and histories.
There’s a scrape down the passenger side door that happened when they landed too close to an industrial warehouse circa the early nineteen hundreds, somewhere near where the triangle fires happened. Alex had insisted on trying to hide the car as much as they could, lest people find it and riot - they almost did, anyway.
On the mirror, there’s a large dent that almost but not really interferes with seeing out of it, but Alex keeps forgetting to replace it and after a while they just learn to live with it.
“It’s becoming a big heap of junk, isn’t it?” Alex says fondly as they stagger out of the car late one afternoon, exhausted and just wanting a cup of tea.
“It really is.” Harry agrees, and he and Alex look at each other and burst into a hysterical fit of laughter, brought on by overtiredness and over-fondness.
“Don’t worry,” Alex says to the DeLorean once he’s stopped wheezing with laughter. “We’ll never get rid of you, not ever.”
“Not ever?” Harry asks, because the promise of forever sounds daunting and beautiful all at once.
“Not ever.”
-
“Do you think we’ll ever get tired of this?” Alex asks, curled up on Harry’s chest in the backseat of the car, his shirt still off and hair still matted from post adrenaline rush sex that comes from narrowly escaping whatever situation in time they’ve gotten themselves into.
(In this case it was running from Americans after the Boston Tea Party, but Harry doesn’t quite remember the smell of the tea so much as he remembers the sound of Alex breathing out his name over and over.)
Harry isn’t sure if Alex is talking about time travel, or living on the edge, or if he’s talking about them being together. He tightens his grip on Alex’s hand, their fingers tangled together against the cool leather interior of the car.
“Maybe.” He answers honestly, and it hurts like a pain in his gut. “But I sure hope not.”
Alex rolls over, his elbows digging into Harry’s sides, but it doesn’t matter so much when he leans up to kiss Harry softly on the lips, softer than most of the things they are, slower than most of the things they do. It feels like it means much, much more.
“I hope not, too.” Alex says once he pulls away. “Because I quite like you, Harry Styles.”
Harry feels a swell of emotion bubble up somewhere in his chest, but fights in back in exchange for a smile. “And you’re not so bad yourself, Doc Alex Day.”
Alex smiles and curls back into Harry’s chest, fitting his head where Harry’s neck and shoulder join together, and for a long moment, they don’t have to worry about getting back to their own time, or doing a million things at once in some long forgotten era- for now they’re just Alex and Harry, and Harry thinks that’s enough every time.