feelings
Title: feelings
Pairing: Harry/Zayn, indiscreet mentions of Liam/Louis
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Harry falls in love with Zayn when he's not supposed to.
Warnings: Mentions of group sex, tourbus sex, bathroom sex and feelings, feelings, feelings
Disclaimer: If they were mine, Harry and Louis would be dressed in banana suits everywhere they went. Tough life, though.
Notes: Because the lack of Zarry in this fandom hurts my soul. And because, this GIF.
-
It’s like playing tennis. And maybe quoting a romantic comedy isn’t the best way to fortify the argument, but in retrospect, it really is just like playing tennis, an innocent physical act. Only like, ten times better. Completely harmless and in so many ways the best thing ever. Until you catch feelings then it just ruins everything.
-
They didn’t plan it or whatever, just like they don’t plan anything else. It’s just one of those things. Always count on Louis suggesting something incredibly stupid yet strangely tempting when he’s drunk. He gets the usual assorted responses that can range from a frown (Zayn) to a giggle (Niall) to a glare (Liam), but it’s always Harry who grins optimistically like Louis is God, and eventually gets them all to jump into the wagon. Hence the countless tour accidents and mishaps that Harry is more proud than ashamed to have been a part of. (Remember that one time in Amsterdam when they crashed an intimate wedding by pretending they were friends of the band and how they ended up in a gay bar afterwards because they either were too drunk or too sober to resist the offer? They will bury themselves before Paul hears a word of it.)
This time though, it wasn’t Louis’s fault. Shame they couldn’t blame it on alcohol, either.
They just came back to their hotel after their gig Birmingham and like always, struggling to make the proper transition from being in an arena-full of screaming girls, basking in the applause, to going back to their empty, cold hotel rooms when there was still leftover energy buzzing in their spines and no one to release it to. Going out wasn’t an option, just like anonymity wasn’t an option, and they’d been told earlier that the club was a long drive from their hotel (how very convenient), plus there was a storm clamoring outside their windows and the image of hitting a tree on the way with Louis’ crap driving wasn’t that inviting. So they had a mountain of reasons (excuses) to stay inside and make the most out of it.
It wasn’t all that bad, Harry thought, as Niall and Louis started imitating the characters’ voices on the French movie they were watching, which they understood nothing of, while their limbs made a messy tangle on the floor. Harry thought they’d gone soft-- old men with no social lives, preferring domestic entrapment to stirring up trouble somewhere like normal rockstars. It was actually kind of nice.
But they were vibrating. They might be cozy and warm but there was a kind of uneasiness that Harry felt whenever one of them shifted or did something to cause a slight commotion in their little huddle. Harry thought they could ignore it until Niall reached an honest hand down his trousers and unleashed a moan loud enough for it to matter. “Do you guys mind?” He asked.
They’ve all done it before at some point, wanked off in the presence of whoever was there in the room and too tired excuse himself to give privacy. But it was the first time all of them wanted the same exact thing. Harry didn’t have the courtesy to pretend he didn’t yearn for anything but to get off.
But it was Liam who took the first bold step, the irony. He had some kind of desperation about him that all of them were feeling, mutely taking Niall’s hand out of his pants and replacing it with his, and Harry allowed himself to freak out for a second and understand the depravity of the situation while he gawked at Niall’s hip bucking frantically over and over against Liam’s hand, only to be disrupted by a hand running along his thigh. Louis and Zayn were both eyeing him. There was a locomotion of feelings stirring up inside him but he eyed back.
At this point he knew they were past the awkward stage. They craved it too much for anything else to matter. Or at least Harry craved it, because the moment Zayn unzipped his fly and groped his already stiffening cock, all that’d been seething inside him since the tour started slowly oozed out, untwisting him from some kind of knot he didn’t realize he’d been tied to. It wasn’t as if they were about to profess their love or anything, or come out of the closet or anything, or exchange sweet kisses, or anything. There was just something about the feeling of Zayn’s lips around the head of his cock and the knowledge that Louis and Liam and Niall on the other side of the room doing something he was pretty sure was in the same category that drove him crazy and made him think that this was crazy and hot and too depraved and might just be the single most stupid and best idea they’d ever conceived as a band. He came in less than a minute.
-
They didn’t know where the line was drawn until that night after in London when Niall eased forward to aim for Liam’s lips. They were somewhere between restless and completely willing for just about anything.
Liam drew back. “Dude, I have a girlfriend.”
Everything stopped. Harry let go of Louis’s cock for a second to catch the cloud of shame dawn on Niall’s face as he quickly removed himself from Liam. “Shit.”
Harry didn’t hear “shit I’m sorry”, but “shit I didn’t know there were rules.”
Apparently there were rules, however unwritten. Louis and Liam, after all, had girlfriends. Which meant this was crazy. Wonderful, but crazy.
The next day, Louis gathered them for a band meeting. The sun was only about to rise; Niall hadn’t had proper breakfast yet, Zayn and Liam seemed only half-awake and were yawning a lot, and Harry was still feeling unresponsive, but they didn’t complain. They reckoned they needed to have this conversation, needed to establish some basic ground rules before they jumped back out to the firing range and one of them got hit again.
“So snogging’s off limits.” Louis announced without much ado.
“Because obviously sucking cock is a lot less intimate than kissing.” Zayn offered sarcastically, wrapping his arms around himself and Harry could see how the movement caused his white t-shirt to hike up and reveal a conservative amount of blanket-creased skin, but Harry tore his eyes away because it should be too early in the morning for him to notice these kinds of things.
“You’d be surprised, but it actually is.” Louis said casually. “So unless you’re madly in love with one of us, I suggest you keep that pretty mouth to yourself, Malik.”
Zayn scoffed. Harry’s grip on the edge of the table tightened. “It’s fine with me.” He lied.
“And you?” Louis cocked his head to Niall, who was aimlessly biting on his nail and looking a little lost. Harry fought the temptation to snap his fingers at him.
Niall blinked, twice, after Louis did snap his fingers at him. “I don’t see how my opinion on this would matter, but yeah, I’m cool.” He stopped chewing for a second, catching himself. “Why though?”
“Why what?” Louis asked.
“Why are we not allowed to kiss?”
Louis squinted at like he was probably the dumbest person he’d ever had the misfortune of encountering, “Because kissing’s way too emotional, my dear child” he said the way a mother would tell her daughter how the stork dropped her off by the window, “and let’s face it, as much I as love you guys, kissing becomes -” he hesitated, “God, I’m gonna sound stupid - it becomes a bigger deal when you have a girlfriend.”
Niall didn’t look convinced. “Whatever.”
“Why, Niall, did you really want to kiss Liam that bad?” Louis taunted. Liam and Niall just blushed.
“I’m just saying.”
“What?”
Niall hesitated. “Nothing.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Never mind. It’s not important.”
“Niall, you know next to Liam you’re the worst liar in the group,” Louis gave him a look that always knew how and where to push them into submission, “out with it.”
“I think you guys are hypocrites.” Niall declared unabashedly, “Both of you.” He turned to Liam, who was now suddenly fully awake. “If you’re so concerned about whether or not you’re cheating on your girlfriends, why agree to do this in the first place?”
Louis’s head snapped back, eyes narrowing. “Wow.”
“How is getting each other off any less intimate than kissing? I don’t get it.”
“You don’t?”
Niall shook his head.
The way with which the girlfriends were tied into their whole group sex situation was a sore wound, and Niall just rubbed salt on it. So Harry waited for the anger to cloud on Louis’s face.
However, surprising everyone, Louis just raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.
“Look, Niall, I’m gonna make it simple. I love Eleanor with all my heart and I’d rather cut my arm off with a blunt chainsaw than let anything hurt her.” He pursed his lips the way he always did when he couldn’t be arsed to give a few more fucks than he already was. “But she’s miles away and you’re here. And I love the way your mouth feels around my dick. So, logic.”
It was Harry who broke the tension by barking out an uncharacteristically loud laugh. The others joined in a few exchanges of confused glances later, and Harry felt a surge of relief knowing they could laugh about it now. It felt good, to know that this newfound…whatever…was now a part of the group just like anything else was. Because that meant they were in it for the long haul.
No one ever admitted to being gay. No one ever admitted to being in love. No one ever admitted to wanting more than the physical. But it just made sense. And it was better than random hookups with chicks because between them there’s another level of trust.
It was a reasonable arrangement. They needed release, and they got it. No fuss, no drama. After all, they were still friends who’d make fun of each others’ fashion statements and stare at girls’ boobs together when they weren’t sucking each other’s cocks.
This was all the excuse Harry felt he needed.
-
And Harry is happy. Or is he? He reckons you can only lie to yourself so many times before the whole search-for-the-truth thing starts to get boring.
And when he does get bored, he allows himself a night of clichéd crisis management, where he’s lying in bed and staring aimlessly at the ceiling for hours on end, asking where he can find the kind of happiness his heart can’t quite understand yet. And maybe if he stares hard enough, it’ll give him some kind of direction.
His eyes will tire eventually. And right at that moment when his eyelids drape over the light and leave the darkness in their wake, he sees graceful wisps of cigarette smoke curving lazily around distinct tattoo markings, before completely falling asleep.
-
Then morning descends, and he wakes up to Zayn smoking out in their balcony, humming something sad like a love song. Then Louis walks in the room, body slamming him and his arse landing on Harry’s face. Harry will tell Louis to fuck off, Louis will tell Harry to fuck him instead, and although that’s a joke, Harry will blush, and Louis will hold him and tell him sweetly that the others waiting for him to come down for breakfast and will Malik please stop gazing into the distance like a sulking brokenhearted lover. Zayn will give them both a sad smile, discarding what’s left of his butt, and walk out of the room.
There have been moments of weakness where Harry’s two guilt trips away from telling the other lads, or maybe Louis first, not because he’s closest to him exactly, contrary to popular belief, but because Louis is so incredibly honest it’s as inhuman as it is magnificent, that whatever it is that they’re doing… the casual sex thing, he wants out.
But said moments are hard to come by. Especially when it’s past 11 pm right after a hard day’s work, and there are lips wrapped around his cock and he’s too tired and too far gone to shove away the person attached to them, specifically Zayn, because he has an unhealthy oral fixation or something, so Harry just lets his head thump back against his self-restraint, and chokes back the ‘I love you’ bubbling in his throat.
-
So this thing they’ve decided to do, it explains for a lot of things.
It explains why they’re in a semi-public bathroom stall right now, public display of affection be damned. Zayn is down on his knees, while Harry is backed up against a wall, keeping his hips from thrusting forward as Zayn’s lips suck on his hipbone. They’re still sweaty in their outfit for the “I Want” set but Zayn just has to, has to, get Harry off in one of the restrooms outside their dressing room before they leave the venue and drive back to the hotel.
“Easy, Haz.” Zayn has both hands holding Harry’s hips back, and that kind of helps.
Harry knows he will regret it but he throws his gaze down to examine Zayn from this angle, his eyelashes and cheekbones jutting out even more beautifully from the rest of his face, and it kills Harry that he can’t touch, that he won’t allow himself to.
“You’re gonna be quiet for me?” Zayn asks, lips hovering just an inch away from Harry’s cock, teasing him.
Harry nods mutely, desperate for it, and has to close his eyes when Zayn curls his fingers around the base and wastes no more second before taking the plump head slowly into his mouth, lips tightening around it a little too good for Harry to keep quiet. He unleashes a small strangled cry, knees bucking, and feels the need to pull at Zayn’s hair a little too roughly when Zayn takes him all in, the tight ring of his lips grazing every part of Harry inch by inch, letting the tip of his cock hit the back of his throat.
Harry squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe air back into his lungs.
Zayn uses one hand to reach behind him and squeeze Harry’s arse, as he sucks passionately and relentlessly, head bobbing up and down in perfect rhythm to Harry’s uncoordinated thrusts, not stopping for breath. Harry thinks his spine might eventually tear down the middle because the lazy swirl of Zayn’s tongue just around the head and the slow, wanton drag of his lips at every drawback is too much, too much for Harry. Zayn maintains a steady suction, just firm enough to make Harry keen and claw at everything his hand can latch onto.
Zayn is so good at this Harry feels his vision begin to blur.
Then Zayn’s mouth leaves him, and Harry tries to swallow the broken sound tearing from his throat. Zayn looks up at him, eyes glassy and mouth swollen, and Harry always stops and takes what little time he has to marvel in this moment, to see Zayn like this, pliant and beautiful. He wonders idly if he treats the others as good as he treats Harry.
“Don’t stop.” Harry mouths at him, fingers gripping Zayn’s hand, beckoning him.
“I wanna try something.” Zayn whispers back at him, getting on his feet.
Before Harry has time to register what’s going on, Zayn is already undoing his own black pants and pressing his hip against Harry’s. He slides down a hand between them, Harry’s eyes widen at the anticipation of what’s about to happen next, then feels Zayn’s hand fondling both their cocks, letting them graze each other in a way that sucks out all the air from Harry’s lungs. He sees blinding stars explode behind his eyelids. Because this is too good. Too good.
“Ohhh…”
This time both of them are struggling to muffle their shocked screams as they thrust into each other in a messy, uncompromising rhythm. It’s wonderful, like they just discovered something new and wondrous at the same time slapping themselves for having just discovered it.
The feel of Zayn’s cock against his own sends his head thumping back against the tiled wall, his mouth parting, lost in the pleasure.
“Fuck…” Zayn charges forward and presses their foreheads together, their mouths only a quarter of an inch apart, and Harry suddenly has an incapacitating need to snog Zayn and taste the inside of his mouth, to finally seal their lips together in a sweet, desperate kiss. He needs it. If he can just lean in a little bit more…
Then Zayn cants his hips just so before Harry’s keening at the sudden change of angle and pressure and oh fuck, that feels wonderful on his cock.
“Please…” Harry doesn’t even know what he’s begging for. Just wants it.
They maintain the friction, hips slamming blindingly into each other some more, hot breath tickling skin, and Harry feels his spine rattle at the fireworks shooting from his groin all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes, his whole body melting against itself, and grips Zayn’s hips when he can feel the familiar pressure start to build up.
“Not gonna last-” He croaks out brokenly, voice deeper and raspier than normal. Their thrusts get wilder and messier and more frantic than ever before, rubbing against each other like there’s no tomorrow, and Harry can feel his eyes roll to the back of his head.
Zayn moans “Harry, Harry, Harry…” before Harry breaks apart into a million tiny pieces, flying off the ground as jolts after jolts of pleasure wreck every fiber and nerve in his body. He can see bright light behind his eyes, taking his body somewhere it’s never gone before. At the same time, Zayn lurches forward and bites into Harry’s bowtie as he rides the wave of his own orgasm, hips jerking gracelessly and spills warmly onto Harry’s belly. Harry eventually crashes back down on himself, feeling the air return to his lungs, and acknowledges the sticky liquid that is now smeared on both their cocks. They don’t move at first, just breathe through the aftermath.
After a while, Zayn frowns upon the mess they’ve made on each other with a little blush on his face that Harry can’t help but find endearing. He eventually takes a step back, zipping himself back into place and Harry feels like a lost soul.
Zayn looks as guilty as Harry feels. Because they both know, and they both can’t deny, not with the evidence drying out in Harry’s skin, that they went somewhere they shouldn’t have gone.
There’s a familiar nasty churning in the pit of his stomach, the one he gets when he can’t have something he wants, so very badly wants. He clears his throat. “Zayn, I’m so-”
“Don’t.” Zayn says curtly, before walking out the stall and slamming the door behind him.
-
They swap a lot, so everyone gets to have a turn with everybody. Again, this wasn’t planned; it just sort of came about naturally, just another one of their many unspoken rules. However the pattern becomes predictable after a while. There’s only a finite number of possible permutations involving five guys, so he’s bound to see the pattern after some time.
Louis is kind of rough with him most of the time. Thrusting so far into his mouth he can feel Louis’s cock hit the back of his throat, and Harry likes it, it makes him moan and suck harder, which is why Louis loves to slap him around and call him a slut. And yes, that turns him on, too.
Liam is gentle with him, why is Harry not surprised. Liam likes to touch his face while Harry has his hand wrapped around Liam’s dick, wants to see him lean into the palm of his hand. And Liam has nice, soft hands and Harry loves the feel of it against his cheek. It may not be for romantic purposes, but he appreciates how Liam is so tenderly tactile with him, like he’s afraid Harry might break if he’s not careful enough. Harry likes to switch between Louis and Liam consecutively because the contrast drives him wild.
Niall is the frantic one, the one that has a traditional 12-year-old’s horniness written all over his actions. He always does things quick and fast like someone out the door’s chasing after them, and Harry always has to remind him to relax, to enjoy the feel of Harry’s tongue play slowly with his shaft. Harry likes the way Niall chokes out his name during his orgasm, desperate and broken, or the way he loses consciousness altogether when he’s done. It makes him proud to feel like a man taking care of his little brother when he’s not too busy wincing at the conflicted irony of that statement.
They’re all great, Harry’s had a good time getting his way with each and one of them, because they’re his friends and he loves his friends.
But Zayn. Zayn is different. And yes, Zayn loves to suck his cock. And yes, he loves it. It’s like he worships Harry’s cock, sucking and licking like it’s the best brand of candy that’s ever been in his mouth. But while Harry can only sit back to enjoy it, fingers clinging onto Zayn’s hair until his knuckles turn white, there’s a certain kind of pain tearing at his chest. And the better it feels in his groin, the worse it gets in his heart. It’s only when Zayn resurfaces and looks into his eyes that the ache starts to go away little by little, and it’s when Zayn moves the hair sticking messily into his forehead that it dawns on Harry this is more than just lust. First time it happened, in Manchester, to be exact, Harry knew he was fucking doomed.
-
It probably started right around the time Harry had taken an interest in Zayn’s smoking. Shoving cancer sticks into your mouth had never seemed a tempting idea to Harry, but whenever he caught Zayn sneaking to the back to have a fag and five minutes of silence all to himself, it kind of stole Harry’s attention.
Harry remembers wondering how something so wrong could look something so right as he watched Zayn’s cheeks hollow around the stick and let a rich puff of smoke roll teasingly out of his mouth. Harry always found his lips parting on their own, unable to deny the desire to inhale the cloud of steam into his lungs.
This was before the group sex thing, so yeah, it kind of alarmed him.
Harry found Zayn doing it once while they were in the LA, shooting their first music video, so you could just imagine the kind of excitement and buzz they were all having, yet Zayn was hiding in the back of a building, celebrating on his own. Zayn knew his friends weren’t particularly fond of his nasty habit, so he tended to hide himself, the one thing he was given space for. But even Harry wanted to a part of that.
“You came here to judge me from afar, Styles?” Zayn said when he finally saw Harry after having stood from a distance, admiring him stupidly for quite some time.
“Quite the opposite,” Harry wanted to say. Zayn looked breathtaking. He was leaning against the stonewall, one knee folded, body relaxed and face two blows away from euphoric. He looked beautiful like this, unbridled, and Harry felt his heart crack at the edges knowing the other lads would never this side of Zayn. “No,” Harry said out loud.
“Then stop staring like an idiot, you’re making me blush.”
“Sorry.” Harry returned the small smile Zayn gave him, not moving an inch closer even if he knew he was allowed to.
“You wanna?” Zayn offered him the stick he’d already been smoking in an outstretched arm. Harry’s impulse was to say no, but he figured this could be an excuse to walk closer. He wasn’t planning to, really he wasn’t, he wasn’t a fan of the whole thing, but when he was close enough, he reached out for it anyway. Zayn looked surprised himself.
He put the stick between his fingers, just looking at it and hesitating for a moment, then felt Zayn’s eyes on him, he looked up to make sure, and indeed they were fixed on him, and he didn’t expect the tenderness that he found there, telling him it was okay, soothing all his trepidations away. So he brought it to his lips, a sense of resoluteness taking over him, and took a slow drag. He blew the smoke out before it got too far in, and was thankful he didn’t embarrass himself by coughing all over the place like he expected he would.
Zayn graced him with a toothless grin, followed by a soft, throaty ‘huh’, and then stole back the stick from his fingers. “Impressive.”
There was swelling of pride in Harry’s heart. “I try.” It tasted horrible, but it didn’t seem to matter that time.
They finished one whole stick passing it back and forth between each other, laying side by side in the silence. It was nearing sundown and Harry felt a kind of calm he’d never felt before, and he liked it, loved the press of Zayn’s fingers at every exchange, and the private smile Zayn gave him whenever he took a brave drag. He felt his whole body relax against the wall, like he could stay there forever.
After lighting up what might’ve been their fifth stick, Zayn finally broke the comfortable silence. “The guys are not gonna like it if they find out I’ve exploited your innocence.”
“That’s why they’re never gonna find out.” The guys could go fuck themselves, but that’s not really why Harry didn’t want them to find out, because this - this moment - this was between them, and no one else had to know about it. Of course back then, Harry thought it was a big brother worship kind of thing.
Zayn smiled that smile again, that secret half-smile only those close to him got to see, looking golden in the sun, “Maybe you’re not as uptight as I thought you were.”
“Fuck you, I’m not uptight.” Harry snapped defensively. Oh he was uptight, but only when he was around Zayn and he never really knew why. Zayn was cool, and maybe he was a private person and he and Harry didn’t drape themselves on each other all the time like he did with the other guys, but Zayn laughed when it wasn’t funny and he understood when it was complicated.
“Maybe in some ways, but in ways that matter, you kind of are.”
Harry narrowed his eyes at him playfully. “Was this your ulterior motive all along? Offering me cigarette like a gentleman and psychoanalyzing me when you think I’ve had too much?”
“This might surprise you, but I don’t want to go anywhere near that head of yours, Styles. Too much stuff I don’t need to see.”
“I’ll take that as an insult.”
“I didn’t mean it otherwise.”
They shared a lazy chuckle, and it might’ve been from the fuzz in his head, but he wanted to tell Zayn he wanted another batch. Before he could say anything, Zayn was already stuffing the lighter and the pack back into his pockets and pushing himself off the wall. “We should go back to the house. They’re probably looking for us now.”
“Yeah, we don’t want them getting any ideas.”
Zayn peered curiously at him, interested, and Harry decided to brush it aside by suggesting “Race me?”
Zayn’s expression turned deadly. “Oh, you’re on.”
They scrambled back into their feet and ran through the beach, the sand getting in Harry’s face while he could hear Zayn cheering and whooping merrily ahead of him, voice molding with the wind and the waves crashing behind them, and it might have been the happiest Harry had ever seen him.
Harry hardly ever goes back to the day in his head, but when he does, he faintly recalls it as the day he fell in love. Or the day he and Zayn shared a moment. Either or.
-
“It’s like a routine.” Liam begins.
Louis scoffs and screws up his face like the words physically hurt him. “Ugh, please don’t say it like that. You make it sound like we’re robots. It’s not robot sex.”
“Is it even sex at all?” Zayn throws a popcorn at Louis. It lands on Harry’s lap instead. Harry throws it back at him, grinning.
“More like getting each other off.” Niall says, arms around his guitar. “Handjobs, blowjobs, any other assisted orgasms.”
“Classy.” Harry comments under his breath.
“Did Niall just say assisted orgasms? I prefer the robot sex.”
“I’m just saying. We don’t exactly have sex, you know, invade each other in that way, because I may not an expert when it comes to the dynamics of gay sex, but I heard it can get pretty messy in there. And we, we don’t do that. We kind of just assist each other in getting off-”
“Niall, shut up.” Zayn and Harry both say at the same time.
“If you were to fuck someone in the arse though, who would it be and why? Let’s start with you, Niall, since you’re obviously very interested in the subject.”
“Justin Bieber.” Niall says a little too quickly.
“I didn’t say it had to be a dude.” Louis clarifies.
Zayn and Harry snicker.
Niall blushes. “Uh… ” He’s thinking.
“Wow, it took you 2 seconds to say Justin Bieber, but you can’t name one girl you wanna have--”
“That Victoria’s Secret model! What’s her name again! Giselle something!” Niall gets on his feet, panicking .
“Good save. Although if you do engage in anal sex with someone, you might wanna know their last name.” Louis says. “And you Harry?”
“Bundchen, I think it’s Giselle Bundchen.” Zayn interrupts.
Harry bites his lip. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest. You.”
Zayn gives him a weird look. “Me?”
“No, I meant--” Harry is blushing, shit. “I’m throwing the question at you.”
“Oh.” Zayn shifts his eyes away. “Well, then, I think David Beckham or something--”
“We’re the coolest, most heterosexual boyband ever.” Louis announces idly.
“Guys, can we talk about that later and get back to our topic?” Liam sighs exasperatedly.
“Oh, right, right, yeah.” Louis pats Liam in the back. “Niall was saying something about assisted orgasms.”
Liam clears his throat and puts on a delicate voice.“So babe, here’s the thing, me and the boys, we get each other off for solely biological reasons. No big deal.”
“Now you make it sound like we’re sex addicts.” Louis admonishes.
“Well, aren’t we?” Niall contributes uselessly, sniggering.
“I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response.”
“Oh, come on, Louis, we all know the way you had your way with Liam last night was not the doing of a decent, non-sex-addicted man.”
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.” Louis frowns at Niall’s devilish grin.
Liam motions over to them to shut them up and picks up where he left off. “It’s just sometimes it gets lonely on the road, babe, and - ”
“I’m gonna stop you right there.” Louis holds a finger up, interrupting him yet again. “Now you’re just making it sound like we’re a group of sad, desperate horny teenage boys who will do anything just to get laid and I won’t testify to that.”
“Testify to the being a teenage boy part or - ”
“You break my heart and you need to shut up.” Louis says to Niall.
Liam gets on his feet, desperate. “Well, what do I tell her?” When he’s answered with a shrug, he sits back down. “What are we even doing?”
The room goes quiet. It’s a question everybody and nobody knows the answer to. Harry sinks further into the couch, his leg brushing Zayn’s lightly. Zayn nudges him with his knee, he nudges back. Well maybe he does know, kind of. Or at least he knows why he wants to.
Louis sighs, breaking the silence. “Look, do you really have to tell Danielle?” He asks softly.
“Yes.” Liam says firmly. “It makes me sick knowing she doesn’t know this part of my life exists.”
“The moment she finds out, you know what that means right?”
Harry knows what the means. If Liam tells Daniel, Daniel will tell him to back out. And if Liam backs out, all of them will have to. And this whole thing ends. It’s a respect for group dynamic thing. Harry isn’t sure if he’s ready for that. But they respect Liam, and they will respect his decision.
“Well, I can’t really go on doing it knowing my girlfriend’s not okay with it, can I?”
Harry expects Louis to either laugh in his face, or call him gender-degrading names, but what Louis says next surprises him in the most heartbreaking way. “I wish I had your values, Liam.”
Liam gives him a sad smile, tousling Louis’s hair like he’s sorry, for all of them. “And I wish I had yours.”
-
So Liam is stalling. He hasn’t told Danielle yet, and Harry’s grateful.
They’re still in their outfits for their “I Want” set when they board the bus one by one, not even bothering to change in their dressing rooms, because there must have been at least 200 fans waiting outside the venue, hoping to get a glimpse even if it meant getting a skinned knee, and Paul wanted to herd the lads out of there as fast as possible.
Once they’re inside, Louis wastes no time and shoves Liam roughly down on the couch. “You son a bitch, why haven’t you told her yet?”
Liam shrugs. “For the same reason you haven’t told Eleanor yet.”
“But you were supposed to be the better man. You were supposed to take the high road.” Louis insists, standing over Liam like some semblance of authority. “Liam, at least one of us should do the right thing here and it sure as hell won’t be me.” Harry can’t help but hear the brokenness in Louis’s voice, how torn he is, like he’s fighting an inner battle of his own, how he yearns nothing else but for Liam to say no, he doesn’t need to do the right thing. But Liam just sits there mutely like he’s stuck.
“Liam, I’m only gonna say this once. Because if you were to ask me the second time, you know damn well what I’d say.”
Liam looks up at Louis with a glint of boldness in his eyes. “What would you say?”
Louis shakes his head. “Please don’t make do this.”
“I wanna hear you say it.”
Harry, Niall and Zayn just stand there and wait, contented to be on the observing end. Harry figures Liam and Louis share a kind of problem that three of them can’t hope to have therefore mustn’t nose in to trivialize it.
Louis looks Liam straight in the eye. “I’d say ‘Liam, don’t do it. Don’t tell her. We have a good thing here.’”
“Exactly.” Liam confesses in a small voice, reaching up to stroke Louis’s cheek a little more tenderly than Harry was prepared to see. “We have a good thing. Why waste a good thing?”
“My, my, Liam, is our complete lack of conscience rubbing off on you?” Louis starts running his fingers through Liam’s hair, jutting out his hips so he’s closer.
“Rub away…” Liam whispers, fingers still caressing Louis’s jawlines.
“I thought you said it made you sick that your girlfriend doesn’t know about your friends getting you off as a hobby.”
“Getting sick is a little underrated.”
The tense muscles on Louis’ face begin to relax, creases smoothing and knots unfolding. He chuckles. “I asked for your honesty, not a spew of your emotional slobber, Liam.” He swats Liam’s hand away and gently kisses it after. That might have been the most openly intimate nonsexual exchange Harry’s ever seen between any of them, then again, Louis is intimate by instinct.
Liam starts working on Louis’s fly, and Harry can definitely watch more of this until he feels an arm snake around his waist. He hears “What a bunch of dumdums” whispered hotly into his hear before he spins around and finds himself pressed up against Zayn.
“Hi.” He says, because he’s a poet, apparently.
Zayn moves a confident hand between Harry’s legs and Harry feels his whole body collapse under his knees. Zayn’s touch always sends some kind of jolt into him he can’t quite understand. He’s been feeling it for months, and he’s still feeling it now.
“Wanna take this to the bunks?”
“But Niall...”
“Oh.” Zayn stops, a little hurt.
Harry gets it and shakes his head a little too passionately. “No, I meant, Niall’s probably retired to the bunks. We don’t wanna wake him.”
A lazy smile creeps up Zayn’s face. “Hmm…”
“You wanna do it out here instead?”
Zayn scans the lounge area, where Louis and Liam are already splayed on the couch, hands going places, most of their buttons undone, and lets his tongue play innocently with the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t know, I kinda want it to be private. Plus Louis creeps me out sometimes.”
“I heard that!”
Harry submits into a giggle. “But with Niall in there, it wouldn’t be any more private now, would it?”
Zayn frowns. “We really should tell management we need a bigger bus. Not bigger exactly, just… you know, more rooms.”
“Oh yeah, don’t forget to mention it’s for our wild sex endeavors while you’re at it.”
“Oh they’re gonna love that. We can tweet it about it for the fans.”
“Imagine the look on Paul’s face.”
“Yeah I really don’t wanna picture Paul’s face right now.” Zayn starts to slide his hand along Harry’s thigh, and Harry can’t help the small “hmm” that bubbled from his lungs.
Before he knows it, Zayn is maneuvering them both into a cramped bathroom, least of Harry’s favorite places in the bus if he was being honest, but this is the way Zayn likes it, he likes spaces tight enough for them to breathe and share the same thick air. At least here Harry can wail all he wants and no one will care. And Harry can get pretty loud.
He’s about to tell Zayn he wants to be the one to go first tonight, but Zayn beats him to it, always does, already pushing Harry down by the shoulders. Harry drops willing on his knees, undoing Zayn’s belt with shaky hands, already hungry for that cock. Sometimes Harry can endure the delay when it’s bearable, even fosters it, like an itch that feels good when he finally gets to scratch it. Sometimes it’s something more than an itch, just raw, excruciating craving, that drives him insane if he doesn’t do anything to gratify it. Right now, he’s craving for Zayn’s cock. It’s hot and heavy in his hand, throbbing and glossy, and it makes his mouth water.
He’s too far gone to play games any longer so he takes it in his mouth in one careful move, mindful of the teeth. Zayn’s hips surge forward, which send his cock all the way in to the hilt, and Harry moans sympathizingly with him, knowing the feeling. He draws back, not missing the underside with one long lick as he does, and tongues the head indulgently, rubs his lips around it, while his hand runs up and down the shaft because he knows how much this drives Zayn wild.
He can feel Zayn’s fingers desperately fisting into his hair, guiding him, and he loves it, loves how Zayn is forceful yet careful, like he doesn’t want to hurt Harry, but wants to at the same time. Harry shoves it back into to his mouth, which gains him a strangled whine, and starts a torturous rhythm, bringing his lips all the way to the base, where his nose meets the soft caress of hair, and retreating just far enough so the crown gets caught between his lips. Zayn is mewling like an animal and Harry enjoys the rough pull of his fingers on his hair, steering him wherever he’s needed. He continues to suck fervently until his jaw starts to ache, slurping wantonly and tasting the mix of saliva and precome pooling underneath his tongue, and loves the little broken sounds he’s able to draw out of Zayn’s mouth.
“Fuh ma mou…”
“Wh-what?” Zayn asks. He sounds lost.
Harry releases him for a second. “Fuck my mouth.”
Zayn gazes down at him and their eyes meet. Zayn looks dazed, and yes, maybe a little lost. He touches Harry’s face, traces his jawline with trembling fingers, and nods.
Harry resumes and indulges him, knowing the end is near. Zayn does fuck his mouth, breathing gone haywire, not holding back this time, and Harry lets him, sucking harder and faster, assuring Zayn he’ll be there for him for that final crescendo. Zayn’s hips jerk once, twice, before crying out in a painful scream, spewing the familiar taste of warm liquid into Harry’s mouth. Harry swallows hungrily like a cat that’s been deprived for so long, his own cock throbbing at the feeling as it trickles down his throat, and licks off some that gathered in the corner of his mouth. No one else knows but Zayn’s the only one he swallows.
He clears his throat, his own erection getting heavy and uncomfortable in his pants, and gets on his feet in wobbly knees.
“Christ, Harry.” Zayn whispers, finger reaching out to gently wipe at the spunk still left in the corner of Harry’s mouth. He looks drowsy and mellowed out, absolutely beautiful.
“Can I kiss you?” Harry chokes out before he can let any string hold him back. “Please?”
Zayn’s eyes blink uncertainly at him, eyelashes so long they change the balance of the universe with every flutter. Harry just wants to kiss him. He just wants to- “Okay.”
Harry doesn’t bother with manners so he just tilts his head at the perfect angle, leans in and gasps into the momentous collision of their mouths, not wasting any moment for sweet and romantic. And it’s not sweet and romantic, it’s desperate and needy and messy, lips crashing into teeth and teeth biting into lips. He lets his tongue wander out to search and explore, to see if there’s any trace of hope, gnawing and biting at Zayn’s mouth in a furious, quivering desperation. He cradles Zayn’s head protectively between his hands, in case Zayn decides to pull back, and Harry doesn’t want him to pull back. Harry wants to kiss.
He feels his shoulders relax, along with the rest of himself, when Zayn finally starts to show a reciprocation of interest, letting his tongue curl into Harry’s at a languid, indulgent pace, their lips sucking and slipping into each other in a more cooperative rhythm. Harry can feel Zayn’s hand on his back, pushing him closer and it makes him sigh like a hopeless sod.
When the desperation starts to build up again, he accidentally bites down at Zayn’s lower lip at little too hard, interrupting the moment and costing him a whimper and a slight pull back. “Easy…” Zayn whispers, smirking tauntingly at him.
“Sorry, I just… I just…” Harry mumbles uselessly, blindly leaning in for another kiss, because the feeling is every bit of wonderful, even more amazing than he’d worked out in his head, and he hopes it’s one of those things that he and Zayn discover together and do more often, but Zayn holds him back with a hand on his chest, looking defeated.
“Harry, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Harry blinks at him, chest heaving. “What?”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Harry’s heart freefalls to the pit of his stomach. “It’s okay. We’ll do without the kiss.”
“I’m not talking just about the kiss.”
“Oh.” Harry’s heart falls with a crash. He tries to keep his voice steady. “Why?”
“Because it kills me.”
“What?”
“This demon.”
What demon? What are talking about? Please tell me you’re not serious. Please tell me Louis put you up to this. There’s no demon. Kiss me. I love you.
But Harry doesn’t say a word.
“Well, aren’t you gonna say anything?”
“I don’t understand. I thought we were good. I thought you were happy.”
“I am happy. Too happy in fact. I just… I have this demon inside me.” Zayn struggles to get the worlds out. “And it will only stop if I stop.”
“We all have demons inside us.” Harry says, unsure of the words coming out of his mouth, because Zayn is being an introspective bastard again, and now’s not really a good time for that, not when Harry wants to kiss, “Why else do you think Louis and Liam can do this and delude themselves into believing they’re not cheating on their girlfriends? There! I said it, they’re cheating on their girlfriends!” He can feel the anger mount. “But it doesn’t mean we have to stop.”
Zayn looks at his feet, subdued. “My demon is quite meaner.”
“Zayn, please speak English.”
“I’m in love with you.”
Harry blinks. That didn’t come from his mouth. That wasn’t his voice. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m in love with you, Harry.”
Harry can only blink some more.
“Look, I know, this complicates things. Especially since we agreed this was gonna be some kind of meaningless exercise that would relieve us from all the stress. But,” Zayn grimaces and shakes his head like he really is fighting a demon inside him, and that he’s losing. “I kind of caught something… Feelings. They’re pretty strong. Strong enough to tell me that I can’t keep on… doing this” He motions to the space between them, “if I feel like I’m taking advantage. And it’s wrong. Because I’m not even gay, but I don’t want anyone else but,” Zayn sniffs, “But you.”
After the agonizing minutes of silence that follow, Zayn lets out an unhumurous chuckle, it sounds hollow and wrecked, and it hurts Harry to hear it. “I’ve been trying to avoid it, Haz. Really, I have. I’m sorry.”
Harry wants to say “I love you too, I have been for the last 8 fucking months. I have wanted you each and every goddamn day of my life since.” But nothing comes out. Like his throat has already gotten used to being silenced for so long, it doesn’t know how to do anything else.
“I…” He clears his throat, swallows down any lump in the way, tries to get his vocal chords working, but, nothing. “I’m kind of tired. We should get some rest.”
Crash and burn. That’s what it is. Zayn’s eyes are cast down the floor and he looks like he’s torn in so many different ways, has lost the battle altogether, but nods, like he didn’t except anything better, like it’s always been a lose-lose situation on his end.
Harry tries again. “Zayn, I--”
“It’s okay, Harry, I get it.” But everything else about him says he doesn’t, not even a little bit.
Harry, meanwhile, cries himself to sleep.
-
The next day Louis pulls him aside as they queue for the buffet line at breakfast with the crew.
“The fuck happened last night?”
“What do you mean?” He tries to sound uninterested, panicking at the thought that Louis might notice the circles under his eyes then realizes he was smart enough to put a pair of shades on before hopping out of the bus.
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.” Louis looks like he hasn’t got the time nor the patience to beat around the bush. “And don’t give me that ‘I don’t wanna talk about it’ rubbish.”
“Louis, I’m not really in the mood and I’m really, really hungry. So if you can step aside please.”
“Zayn went home this morning.”
“What?!” Harry drops his tray.
“Paul worked his magic and Zayn was able to take the first flight to Bradford. He dropped everything, the tour, us - everything. So we figured whatever happened last night must have been major.” Louis crosses his arms. “Now will you tell me what before I come up with another lie because that’s obviously a joke! Ha, fooled ya! You should see your face!” He points a finger at him, crouching and laughing as he does so, then straightens up. “Now tell me what happened last night.”
Harry can feel the blood rush back into his body, which is good because he’s going to need all the strength he can get to strangle Louis. “The fuck, Louis, that’s not even remotely funny! You almost gave me a fucking heart attack! Jesus.”
“You have to admit though, it was kind of brilliant. Very dramatic.” Louis insists with a grin. “But seriously, what happened? Zayn is not talking and you’re not talking, and it’s freaking us all out.”
Harry hears the “us” so very distinctly so he peers behind Louis, and yep, surely enough, there’s Liam and Niall “covertly” sitting from a distance, obviously spying on their conversation. “What do you know?” He looks at Louis suspiciously.
“We know enough to know that something happened last night. And as you know me, Styles, I will be a pain in the arse trying to get answers from you. So why don’t you save yourself the trouble and just tell me? You know, make it easier for both ends.”
Harry gives in, picking up the tray that slipped out of his hands earlier. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Well, I got all the time in the world. Unless, of course, you’d rather give me the shorter version, because I’ve seen enough of the long version already.”
Harry feels the need to ask. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Harold, you beautiful, clueless idiot.”
“I know that’s gotta mean something.”
“It’s obvious!”
“What?”
“That you and that Malik boy are completely, stupidly - hmm, what’s the word - smitten with each other.”
Harry drops the tray, again.
“You really thought we wouldn’t notice?”
Harry just looks at him, motionless.
“Exhibit A.) Every time we bring up whole Danielle and Eleanor subject, you both react the same way. Trust me, we’ve seen it. Exhibit B.) In case you haven’t noticed, no one’s gotten a turn with either of you lately, oh wait, make that since forever. And Exhibit C.), who the fuck gives an arse about Exhibit A and Exhibit B, when you’re just so goddamn obvious it’s not cute.”
“Wow.” Is all Harry can say.
“Yep.” Louis purses his lips, swinging an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Now will you tell us what happened already?”
Giving up, Harry surrenders into a sullen nod.
-
“In summary, you owe him an apology.” Louis says.
“A very big one.” Liam intones.
“But I don’t know what to tell him.”
Niall starts mumbling something around a mouthful, barely audible, but Harry can tell it’s something he needs to hear. Niall may be a rambling idiot sometimes, but he does manage to make a point at others. Harry looks over to Louis for help.
“Translation: Harry, you’re really pretty but you’re not the smartest crayon in the box.”
Niall shakes his head vehemently at Louis and chews his food faster and with a purpose. “That’s not what I said. I said, Harry you’re an idiot.” He says after having successfully swallowed it without killing himself. Liam and Louis nod along in agreement.
Harry rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe that I’ve reduced myself into coming to you for advice, but what do you think I should tell him?
Louis, Liam and Niall exchange incredulous looks, like really? Did he just ask that question?
“Well, for starters, you can tell him what you feel.”
“It’s as simple as that, dumdum.” Louis agrees with Niall.
“No more playing around, Harry.” Liam says, his Daddy Liam-ness showing through especially strongly today.
“It’s as simple as that?”
“It has always been as simple as that.” Louis tells him with a passion.
“What does this mean though? What is this gonna do to the band, to us?”
Louis narrows his eyes at Harry like he’s going to kill him. “You really are an idiot.”
“What did I do now?”
“You just found out that the person you love, loves you back and you’re worried about the band? Harry, do me a favor and be a man, please.”
Harry squirms in his seat, feelings and knots and everything in between. “I don’t-I’m not quite sure--”
“All in favor of Harry growing the balls to stop being a cowardly pussy and tell Zayn what he feels?”
Liam, Niall and Louis all raise their hands.
-
It’s been so long, so fucking long, the longing, the waiting, and Harry decides he needs an ending to this unrequited love horror movie. He deserves something more. He deserves the world. Even better, he deserves Zayn.
After having swept the entire area, Harry finally gets word from one of the crew that Zayn just got back from wherever the hell he was hiding the entire day (which didn’t really impress their stage director because he missed rehearsal) and was spotted hanging out by himself in one of the terraces of the hotel that they’ve chosen to book for the night.
Harry finds him. Harry feels like he hasn’t seen him in years.
“Hey, you.” Harry walks out cautiously, heart clamoring in his chest.
“Jesus, you fucking scared me.” Zayn almost drops the stick of cigarette he had in his mouth.
“Sorry.” Harry murmurs.
They don’t say anything for the next few minutes, just watch the sunset together in silence. They really do have the nicest view of the city, the concierge wasn’t kidding.
Then Harry’s concentration gets disrupted by Zayn’s soft coughing. “Doesn’t that hurt your voice?”
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m quite known for doing things I’m not supposed to.” Zayn says bitterly. He looks rested - tired, but rested. Like he’s accepted his fate and has decided to live with it, even if it sucked.
Harry hopes it’s not going to suck for much longer. “Zayn…” He begins.
“What do you want, Harry?” Zayn says a little too quickly, like he’s been able to build a new stronger wall around himself.
Harry wants to say “To tell you what I feel, to tell you everything’s gonna be fine, to let you know you don’t have to fight the demon anymore” but instead he settles for, “You.”
“Me?”
Harry nods. “Only you. Always been you.”
Zayn stops for a moment, eyes directed at the sun, then reaches his hand out, like he didn’t hear anything, wall intact. “You wanna?” He offers his fag to Harry, like always.
And like always, Harry takes it. This seems a little bit too familiar, if you ask him. He sucks in the poison stick, inhaling it as far as it can go, and passes it back to Zayn. Smoking’s never tasted so good.
“So you meant what you said? About wanting me?” Zayn asks after awhile, blowing out the smoke through his nose.
“I meant every word.” Harry declares in a small voice.
“You’re serious.” This time Zayn does look at him. There are some cracks in the wall now.
“Well, duh.” He says flatly.
“For how long?”
“Quite long.”
Harry could be wrong but for a moment there, Harry could see a small smile creep into Zayn’s face. However it doesn’t linger for long.
“You know what, you’re an idiot.” Zayn hisses fondly, shaking his head.
“Geez, what is it with people calling me an idiot today?”
“Maybe because you are; a pretty idiot, but still.”
“You’re the idiot. For not knowing all along.”
“We’re both idiots.” Zayn admits casually like nothing hurts. “And you’re a pretty damn good actor.”
“Guess I’m not an idiot after all.”
“Guess not.”
Another silence passes.
“So, what’s gonna happen next? Where do we go from here?”
“Fuck if I know.” Harry says truthfully, taking back the cigarette Zayn passes to him. A warm glow spreads in his heart, though. Zayn is asking, which means he’s willing to do this. Harry and Zayn, against the world. “As you as freaked out as I am?”
“A bit more, I think.”
“Too bad, I don’t wanna scare you away or anything, you’re kind of my favorite.”
Zayn laughs, a loud laugh, the one Harry loves to hear, the one he can listen to for the rest of his life. He doesn’t say anything after a while, just looks at Harry with a kind of certainty he’s never seen on Zayn before, like for the first time, he’s not afraid, not anymore.“You are, by far, the best mistake I’ve ever made, Styles.”
“Can I keep you, then?”
Zayn smiles.
“You know, just ‘til I get tired of you?”
Zayn smiles brighter.
“You know, like forever maybe?”
Zayn passes the cigarette back to him, hand touching his, and this is really all the answer Harry needs.
-
Pairing: Harry/Zayn, indiscreet mentions of Liam/Louis
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Harry falls in love with Zayn when he's not supposed to.
Warnings: Mentions of group sex, tourbus sex, bathroom sex and feelings, feelings, feelings
Disclaimer: If they were mine, Harry and Louis would be dressed in banana suits everywhere they went. Tough life, though.
Notes: Because the lack of Zarry in this fandom hurts my soul. And because, this GIF.
-
It’s like playing tennis. And maybe quoting a romantic comedy isn’t the best way to fortify the argument, but in retrospect, it really is just like playing tennis, an innocent physical act. Only like, ten times better. Completely harmless and in so many ways the best thing ever. Until you catch feelings then it just ruins everything.
-
They didn’t plan it or whatever, just like they don’t plan anything else. It’s just one of those things. Always count on Louis suggesting something incredibly stupid yet strangely tempting when he’s drunk. He gets the usual assorted responses that can range from a frown (Zayn) to a giggle (Niall) to a glare (Liam), but it’s always Harry who grins optimistically like Louis is God, and eventually gets them all to jump into the wagon. Hence the countless tour accidents and mishaps that Harry is more proud than ashamed to have been a part of. (Remember that one time in Amsterdam when they crashed an intimate wedding by pretending they were friends of the band and how they ended up in a gay bar afterwards because they either were too drunk or too sober to resist the offer? They will bury themselves before Paul hears a word of it.)
This time though, it wasn’t Louis’s fault. Shame they couldn’t blame it on alcohol, either.
They just came back to their hotel after their gig Birmingham and like always, struggling to make the proper transition from being in an arena-full of screaming girls, basking in the applause, to going back to their empty, cold hotel rooms when there was still leftover energy buzzing in their spines and no one to release it to. Going out wasn’t an option, just like anonymity wasn’t an option, and they’d been told earlier that the club was a long drive from their hotel (how very convenient), plus there was a storm clamoring outside their windows and the image of hitting a tree on the way with Louis’ crap driving wasn’t that inviting. So they had a mountain of reasons (excuses) to stay inside and make the most out of it.
It wasn’t all that bad, Harry thought, as Niall and Louis started imitating the characters’ voices on the French movie they were watching, which they understood nothing of, while their limbs made a messy tangle on the floor. Harry thought they’d gone soft-- old men with no social lives, preferring domestic entrapment to stirring up trouble somewhere like normal rockstars. It was actually kind of nice.
But they were vibrating. They might be cozy and warm but there was a kind of uneasiness that Harry felt whenever one of them shifted or did something to cause a slight commotion in their little huddle. Harry thought they could ignore it until Niall reached an honest hand down his trousers and unleashed a moan loud enough for it to matter. “Do you guys mind?” He asked.
They’ve all done it before at some point, wanked off in the presence of whoever was there in the room and too tired excuse himself to give privacy. But it was the first time all of them wanted the same exact thing. Harry didn’t have the courtesy to pretend he didn’t yearn for anything but to get off.
But it was Liam who took the first bold step, the irony. He had some kind of desperation about him that all of them were feeling, mutely taking Niall’s hand out of his pants and replacing it with his, and Harry allowed himself to freak out for a second and understand the depravity of the situation while he gawked at Niall’s hip bucking frantically over and over against Liam’s hand, only to be disrupted by a hand running along his thigh. Louis and Zayn were both eyeing him. There was a locomotion of feelings stirring up inside him but he eyed back.
At this point he knew they were past the awkward stage. They craved it too much for anything else to matter. Or at least Harry craved it, because the moment Zayn unzipped his fly and groped his already stiffening cock, all that’d been seething inside him since the tour started slowly oozed out, untwisting him from some kind of knot he didn’t realize he’d been tied to. It wasn’t as if they were about to profess their love or anything, or come out of the closet or anything, or exchange sweet kisses, or anything. There was just something about the feeling of Zayn’s lips around the head of his cock and the knowledge that Louis and Liam and Niall on the other side of the room doing something he was pretty sure was in the same category that drove him crazy and made him think that this was crazy and hot and too depraved and might just be the single most stupid and best idea they’d ever conceived as a band. He came in less than a minute.
-
They didn’t know where the line was drawn until that night after in London when Niall eased forward to aim for Liam’s lips. They were somewhere between restless and completely willing for just about anything.
Liam drew back. “Dude, I have a girlfriend.”
Everything stopped. Harry let go of Louis’s cock for a second to catch the cloud of shame dawn on Niall’s face as he quickly removed himself from Liam. “Shit.”
Harry didn’t hear “shit I’m sorry”, but “shit I didn’t know there were rules.”
Apparently there were rules, however unwritten. Louis and Liam, after all, had girlfriends. Which meant this was crazy. Wonderful, but crazy.
The next day, Louis gathered them for a band meeting. The sun was only about to rise; Niall hadn’t had proper breakfast yet, Zayn and Liam seemed only half-awake and were yawning a lot, and Harry was still feeling unresponsive, but they didn’t complain. They reckoned they needed to have this conversation, needed to establish some basic ground rules before they jumped back out to the firing range and one of them got hit again.
“So snogging’s off limits.” Louis announced without much ado.
“Because obviously sucking cock is a lot less intimate than kissing.” Zayn offered sarcastically, wrapping his arms around himself and Harry could see how the movement caused his white t-shirt to hike up and reveal a conservative amount of blanket-creased skin, but Harry tore his eyes away because it should be too early in the morning for him to notice these kinds of things.
“You’d be surprised, but it actually is.” Louis said casually. “So unless you’re madly in love with one of us, I suggest you keep that pretty mouth to yourself, Malik.”
Zayn scoffed. Harry’s grip on the edge of the table tightened. “It’s fine with me.” He lied.
“And you?” Louis cocked his head to Niall, who was aimlessly biting on his nail and looking a little lost. Harry fought the temptation to snap his fingers at him.
Niall blinked, twice, after Louis did snap his fingers at him. “I don’t see how my opinion on this would matter, but yeah, I’m cool.” He stopped chewing for a second, catching himself. “Why though?”
“Why what?” Louis asked.
“Why are we not allowed to kiss?”
Louis squinted at like he was probably the dumbest person he’d ever had the misfortune of encountering, “Because kissing’s way too emotional, my dear child” he said the way a mother would tell her daughter how the stork dropped her off by the window, “and let’s face it, as much I as love you guys, kissing becomes -” he hesitated, “God, I’m gonna sound stupid - it becomes a bigger deal when you have a girlfriend.”
Niall didn’t look convinced. “Whatever.”
“Why, Niall, did you really want to kiss Liam that bad?” Louis taunted. Liam and Niall just blushed.
“I’m just saying.”
“What?”
Niall hesitated. “Nothing.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Never mind. It’s not important.”
“Niall, you know next to Liam you’re the worst liar in the group,” Louis gave him a look that always knew how and where to push them into submission, “out with it.”
“I think you guys are hypocrites.” Niall declared unabashedly, “Both of you.” He turned to Liam, who was now suddenly fully awake. “If you’re so concerned about whether or not you’re cheating on your girlfriends, why agree to do this in the first place?”
Louis’s head snapped back, eyes narrowing. “Wow.”
“How is getting each other off any less intimate than kissing? I don’t get it.”
“You don’t?”
Niall shook his head.
The way with which the girlfriends were tied into their whole group sex situation was a sore wound, and Niall just rubbed salt on it. So Harry waited for the anger to cloud on Louis’s face.
However, surprising everyone, Louis just raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.
“Look, Niall, I’m gonna make it simple. I love Eleanor with all my heart and I’d rather cut my arm off with a blunt chainsaw than let anything hurt her.” He pursed his lips the way he always did when he couldn’t be arsed to give a few more fucks than he already was. “But she’s miles away and you’re here. And I love the way your mouth feels around my dick. So, logic.”
It was Harry who broke the tension by barking out an uncharacteristically loud laugh. The others joined in a few exchanges of confused glances later, and Harry felt a surge of relief knowing they could laugh about it now. It felt good, to know that this newfound…whatever…was now a part of the group just like anything else was. Because that meant they were in it for the long haul.
No one ever admitted to being gay. No one ever admitted to being in love. No one ever admitted to wanting more than the physical. But it just made sense. And it was better than random hookups with chicks because between them there’s another level of trust.
It was a reasonable arrangement. They needed release, and they got it. No fuss, no drama. After all, they were still friends who’d make fun of each others’ fashion statements and stare at girls’ boobs together when they weren’t sucking each other’s cocks.
This was all the excuse Harry felt he needed.
-
And Harry is happy. Or is he? He reckons you can only lie to yourself so many times before the whole search-for-the-truth thing starts to get boring.
And when he does get bored, he allows himself a night of clichéd crisis management, where he’s lying in bed and staring aimlessly at the ceiling for hours on end, asking where he can find the kind of happiness his heart can’t quite understand yet. And maybe if he stares hard enough, it’ll give him some kind of direction.
His eyes will tire eventually. And right at that moment when his eyelids drape over the light and leave the darkness in their wake, he sees graceful wisps of cigarette smoke curving lazily around distinct tattoo markings, before completely falling asleep.
-
Then morning descends, and he wakes up to Zayn smoking out in their balcony, humming something sad like a love song. Then Louis walks in the room, body slamming him and his arse landing on Harry’s face. Harry will tell Louis to fuck off, Louis will tell Harry to fuck him instead, and although that’s a joke, Harry will blush, and Louis will hold him and tell him sweetly that the others waiting for him to come down for breakfast and will Malik please stop gazing into the distance like a sulking brokenhearted lover. Zayn will give them both a sad smile, discarding what’s left of his butt, and walk out of the room.
There have been moments of weakness where Harry’s two guilt trips away from telling the other lads, or maybe Louis first, not because he’s closest to him exactly, contrary to popular belief, but because Louis is so incredibly honest it’s as inhuman as it is magnificent, that whatever it is that they’re doing… the casual sex thing, he wants out.
But said moments are hard to come by. Especially when it’s past 11 pm right after a hard day’s work, and there are lips wrapped around his cock and he’s too tired and too far gone to shove away the person attached to them, specifically Zayn, because he has an unhealthy oral fixation or something, so Harry just lets his head thump back against his self-restraint, and chokes back the ‘I love you’ bubbling in his throat.
-
So this thing they’ve decided to do, it explains for a lot of things.
It explains why they’re in a semi-public bathroom stall right now, public display of affection be damned. Zayn is down on his knees, while Harry is backed up against a wall, keeping his hips from thrusting forward as Zayn’s lips suck on his hipbone. They’re still sweaty in their outfit for the “I Want” set but Zayn just has to, has to, get Harry off in one of the restrooms outside their dressing room before they leave the venue and drive back to the hotel.
“Easy, Haz.” Zayn has both hands holding Harry’s hips back, and that kind of helps.
Harry knows he will regret it but he throws his gaze down to examine Zayn from this angle, his eyelashes and cheekbones jutting out even more beautifully from the rest of his face, and it kills Harry that he can’t touch, that he won’t allow himself to.
“You’re gonna be quiet for me?” Zayn asks, lips hovering just an inch away from Harry’s cock, teasing him.
Harry nods mutely, desperate for it, and has to close his eyes when Zayn curls his fingers around the base and wastes no more second before taking the plump head slowly into his mouth, lips tightening around it a little too good for Harry to keep quiet. He unleashes a small strangled cry, knees bucking, and feels the need to pull at Zayn’s hair a little too roughly when Zayn takes him all in, the tight ring of his lips grazing every part of Harry inch by inch, letting the tip of his cock hit the back of his throat.
Harry squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe air back into his lungs.
Zayn uses one hand to reach behind him and squeeze Harry’s arse, as he sucks passionately and relentlessly, head bobbing up and down in perfect rhythm to Harry’s uncoordinated thrusts, not stopping for breath. Harry thinks his spine might eventually tear down the middle because the lazy swirl of Zayn’s tongue just around the head and the slow, wanton drag of his lips at every drawback is too much, too much for Harry. Zayn maintains a steady suction, just firm enough to make Harry keen and claw at everything his hand can latch onto.
Zayn is so good at this Harry feels his vision begin to blur.
Then Zayn’s mouth leaves him, and Harry tries to swallow the broken sound tearing from his throat. Zayn looks up at him, eyes glassy and mouth swollen, and Harry always stops and takes what little time he has to marvel in this moment, to see Zayn like this, pliant and beautiful. He wonders idly if he treats the others as good as he treats Harry.
“Don’t stop.” Harry mouths at him, fingers gripping Zayn’s hand, beckoning him.
“I wanna try something.” Zayn whispers back at him, getting on his feet.
Before Harry has time to register what’s going on, Zayn is already undoing his own black pants and pressing his hip against Harry’s. He slides down a hand between them, Harry’s eyes widen at the anticipation of what’s about to happen next, then feels Zayn’s hand fondling both their cocks, letting them graze each other in a way that sucks out all the air from Harry’s lungs. He sees blinding stars explode behind his eyelids. Because this is too good. Too good.
“Ohhh…”
This time both of them are struggling to muffle their shocked screams as they thrust into each other in a messy, uncompromising rhythm. It’s wonderful, like they just discovered something new and wondrous at the same time slapping themselves for having just discovered it.
The feel of Zayn’s cock against his own sends his head thumping back against the tiled wall, his mouth parting, lost in the pleasure.
“Fuck…” Zayn charges forward and presses their foreheads together, their mouths only a quarter of an inch apart, and Harry suddenly has an incapacitating need to snog Zayn and taste the inside of his mouth, to finally seal their lips together in a sweet, desperate kiss. He needs it. If he can just lean in a little bit more…
Then Zayn cants his hips just so before Harry’s keening at the sudden change of angle and pressure and oh fuck, that feels wonderful on his cock.
“Please…” Harry doesn’t even know what he’s begging for. Just wants it.
They maintain the friction, hips slamming blindingly into each other some more, hot breath tickling skin, and Harry feels his spine rattle at the fireworks shooting from his groin all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes, his whole body melting against itself, and grips Zayn’s hips when he can feel the familiar pressure start to build up.
“Not gonna last-” He croaks out brokenly, voice deeper and raspier than normal. Their thrusts get wilder and messier and more frantic than ever before, rubbing against each other like there’s no tomorrow, and Harry can feel his eyes roll to the back of his head.
Zayn moans “Harry, Harry, Harry…” before Harry breaks apart into a million tiny pieces, flying off the ground as jolts after jolts of pleasure wreck every fiber and nerve in his body. He can see bright light behind his eyes, taking his body somewhere it’s never gone before. At the same time, Zayn lurches forward and bites into Harry’s bowtie as he rides the wave of his own orgasm, hips jerking gracelessly and spills warmly onto Harry’s belly. Harry eventually crashes back down on himself, feeling the air return to his lungs, and acknowledges the sticky liquid that is now smeared on both their cocks. They don’t move at first, just breathe through the aftermath.
After a while, Zayn frowns upon the mess they’ve made on each other with a little blush on his face that Harry can’t help but find endearing. He eventually takes a step back, zipping himself back into place and Harry feels like a lost soul.
Zayn looks as guilty as Harry feels. Because they both know, and they both can’t deny, not with the evidence drying out in Harry’s skin, that they went somewhere they shouldn’t have gone.
There’s a familiar nasty churning in the pit of his stomach, the one he gets when he can’t have something he wants, so very badly wants. He clears his throat. “Zayn, I’m so-”
“Don’t.” Zayn says curtly, before walking out the stall and slamming the door behind him.
-
They swap a lot, so everyone gets to have a turn with everybody. Again, this wasn’t planned; it just sort of came about naturally, just another one of their many unspoken rules. However the pattern becomes predictable after a while. There’s only a finite number of possible permutations involving five guys, so he’s bound to see the pattern after some time.
Louis is kind of rough with him most of the time. Thrusting so far into his mouth he can feel Louis’s cock hit the back of his throat, and Harry likes it, it makes him moan and suck harder, which is why Louis loves to slap him around and call him a slut. And yes, that turns him on, too.
Liam is gentle with him, why is Harry not surprised. Liam likes to touch his face while Harry has his hand wrapped around Liam’s dick, wants to see him lean into the palm of his hand. And Liam has nice, soft hands and Harry loves the feel of it against his cheek. It may not be for romantic purposes, but he appreciates how Liam is so tenderly tactile with him, like he’s afraid Harry might break if he’s not careful enough. Harry likes to switch between Louis and Liam consecutively because the contrast drives him wild.
Niall is the frantic one, the one that has a traditional 12-year-old’s horniness written all over his actions. He always does things quick and fast like someone out the door’s chasing after them, and Harry always has to remind him to relax, to enjoy the feel of Harry’s tongue play slowly with his shaft. Harry likes the way Niall chokes out his name during his orgasm, desperate and broken, or the way he loses consciousness altogether when he’s done. It makes him proud to feel like a man taking care of his little brother when he’s not too busy wincing at the conflicted irony of that statement.
They’re all great, Harry’s had a good time getting his way with each and one of them, because they’re his friends and he loves his friends.
But Zayn. Zayn is different. And yes, Zayn loves to suck his cock. And yes, he loves it. It’s like he worships Harry’s cock, sucking and licking like it’s the best brand of candy that’s ever been in his mouth. But while Harry can only sit back to enjoy it, fingers clinging onto Zayn’s hair until his knuckles turn white, there’s a certain kind of pain tearing at his chest. And the better it feels in his groin, the worse it gets in his heart. It’s only when Zayn resurfaces and looks into his eyes that the ache starts to go away little by little, and it’s when Zayn moves the hair sticking messily into his forehead that it dawns on Harry this is more than just lust. First time it happened, in Manchester, to be exact, Harry knew he was fucking doomed.
-
It probably started right around the time Harry had taken an interest in Zayn’s smoking. Shoving cancer sticks into your mouth had never seemed a tempting idea to Harry, but whenever he caught Zayn sneaking to the back to have a fag and five minutes of silence all to himself, it kind of stole Harry’s attention.
Harry remembers wondering how something so wrong could look something so right as he watched Zayn’s cheeks hollow around the stick and let a rich puff of smoke roll teasingly out of his mouth. Harry always found his lips parting on their own, unable to deny the desire to inhale the cloud of steam into his lungs.
This was before the group sex thing, so yeah, it kind of alarmed him.
Harry found Zayn doing it once while they were in the LA, shooting their first music video, so you could just imagine the kind of excitement and buzz they were all having, yet Zayn was hiding in the back of a building, celebrating on his own. Zayn knew his friends weren’t particularly fond of his nasty habit, so he tended to hide himself, the one thing he was given space for. But even Harry wanted to a part of that.
“You came here to judge me from afar, Styles?” Zayn said when he finally saw Harry after having stood from a distance, admiring him stupidly for quite some time.
“Quite the opposite,” Harry wanted to say. Zayn looked breathtaking. He was leaning against the stonewall, one knee folded, body relaxed and face two blows away from euphoric. He looked beautiful like this, unbridled, and Harry felt his heart crack at the edges knowing the other lads would never this side of Zayn. “No,” Harry said out loud.
“Then stop staring like an idiot, you’re making me blush.”
“Sorry.” Harry returned the small smile Zayn gave him, not moving an inch closer even if he knew he was allowed to.
“You wanna?” Zayn offered him the stick he’d already been smoking in an outstretched arm. Harry’s impulse was to say no, but he figured this could be an excuse to walk closer. He wasn’t planning to, really he wasn’t, he wasn’t a fan of the whole thing, but when he was close enough, he reached out for it anyway. Zayn looked surprised himself.
He put the stick between his fingers, just looking at it and hesitating for a moment, then felt Zayn’s eyes on him, he looked up to make sure, and indeed they were fixed on him, and he didn’t expect the tenderness that he found there, telling him it was okay, soothing all his trepidations away. So he brought it to his lips, a sense of resoluteness taking over him, and took a slow drag. He blew the smoke out before it got too far in, and was thankful he didn’t embarrass himself by coughing all over the place like he expected he would.
Zayn graced him with a toothless grin, followed by a soft, throaty ‘huh’, and then stole back the stick from his fingers. “Impressive.”
There was swelling of pride in Harry’s heart. “I try.” It tasted horrible, but it didn’t seem to matter that time.
They finished one whole stick passing it back and forth between each other, laying side by side in the silence. It was nearing sundown and Harry felt a kind of calm he’d never felt before, and he liked it, loved the press of Zayn’s fingers at every exchange, and the private smile Zayn gave him whenever he took a brave drag. He felt his whole body relax against the wall, like he could stay there forever.
After lighting up what might’ve been their fifth stick, Zayn finally broke the comfortable silence. “The guys are not gonna like it if they find out I’ve exploited your innocence.”
“That’s why they’re never gonna find out.” The guys could go fuck themselves, but that’s not really why Harry didn’t want them to find out, because this - this moment - this was between them, and no one else had to know about it. Of course back then, Harry thought it was a big brother worship kind of thing.
Zayn smiled that smile again, that secret half-smile only those close to him got to see, looking golden in the sun, “Maybe you’re not as uptight as I thought you were.”
“Fuck you, I’m not uptight.” Harry snapped defensively. Oh he was uptight, but only when he was around Zayn and he never really knew why. Zayn was cool, and maybe he was a private person and he and Harry didn’t drape themselves on each other all the time like he did with the other guys, but Zayn laughed when it wasn’t funny and he understood when it was complicated.
“Maybe in some ways, but in ways that matter, you kind of are.”
Harry narrowed his eyes at him playfully. “Was this your ulterior motive all along? Offering me cigarette like a gentleman and psychoanalyzing me when you think I’ve had too much?”
“This might surprise you, but I don’t want to go anywhere near that head of yours, Styles. Too much stuff I don’t need to see.”
“I’ll take that as an insult.”
“I didn’t mean it otherwise.”
They shared a lazy chuckle, and it might’ve been from the fuzz in his head, but he wanted to tell Zayn he wanted another batch. Before he could say anything, Zayn was already stuffing the lighter and the pack back into his pockets and pushing himself off the wall. “We should go back to the house. They’re probably looking for us now.”
“Yeah, we don’t want them getting any ideas.”
Zayn peered curiously at him, interested, and Harry decided to brush it aside by suggesting “Race me?”
Zayn’s expression turned deadly. “Oh, you’re on.”
They scrambled back into their feet and ran through the beach, the sand getting in Harry’s face while he could hear Zayn cheering and whooping merrily ahead of him, voice molding with the wind and the waves crashing behind them, and it might have been the happiest Harry had ever seen him.
Harry hardly ever goes back to the day in his head, but when he does, he faintly recalls it as the day he fell in love. Or the day he and Zayn shared a moment. Either or.
-
“It’s like a routine.” Liam begins.
Louis scoffs and screws up his face like the words physically hurt him. “Ugh, please don’t say it like that. You make it sound like we’re robots. It’s not robot sex.”
“Is it even sex at all?” Zayn throws a popcorn at Louis. It lands on Harry’s lap instead. Harry throws it back at him, grinning.
“More like getting each other off.” Niall says, arms around his guitar. “Handjobs, blowjobs, any other assisted orgasms.”
“Classy.” Harry comments under his breath.
“Did Niall just say assisted orgasms? I prefer the robot sex.”
“I’m just saying. We don’t exactly have sex, you know, invade each other in that way, because I may not an expert when it comes to the dynamics of gay sex, but I heard it can get pretty messy in there. And we, we don’t do that. We kind of just assist each other in getting off-”
“Niall, shut up.” Zayn and Harry both say at the same time.
“If you were to fuck someone in the arse though, who would it be and why? Let’s start with you, Niall, since you’re obviously very interested in the subject.”
“Justin Bieber.” Niall says a little too quickly.
“I didn’t say it had to be a dude.” Louis clarifies.
Zayn and Harry snicker.
Niall blushes. “Uh… ” He’s thinking.
“Wow, it took you 2 seconds to say Justin Bieber, but you can’t name one girl you wanna have--”
“That Victoria’s Secret model! What’s her name again! Giselle something!” Niall gets on his feet, panicking .
“Good save. Although if you do engage in anal sex with someone, you might wanna know their last name.” Louis says. “And you Harry?”
“Bundchen, I think it’s Giselle Bundchen.” Zayn interrupts.
Harry bites his lip. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest. You.”
Zayn gives him a weird look. “Me?”
“No, I meant--” Harry is blushing, shit. “I’m throwing the question at you.”
“Oh.” Zayn shifts his eyes away. “Well, then, I think David Beckham or something--”
“We’re the coolest, most heterosexual boyband ever.” Louis announces idly.
“Guys, can we talk about that later and get back to our topic?” Liam sighs exasperatedly.
“Oh, right, right, yeah.” Louis pats Liam in the back. “Niall was saying something about assisted orgasms.”
Liam clears his throat and puts on a delicate voice.“So babe, here’s the thing, me and the boys, we get each other off for solely biological reasons. No big deal.”
“Now you make it sound like we’re sex addicts.” Louis admonishes.
“Well, aren’t we?” Niall contributes uselessly, sniggering.
“I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response.”
“Oh, come on, Louis, we all know the way you had your way with Liam last night was not the doing of a decent, non-sex-addicted man.”
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.” Louis frowns at Niall’s devilish grin.
Liam motions over to them to shut them up and picks up where he left off. “It’s just sometimes it gets lonely on the road, babe, and - ”
“I’m gonna stop you right there.” Louis holds a finger up, interrupting him yet again. “Now you’re just making it sound like we’re a group of sad, desperate horny teenage boys who will do anything just to get laid and I won’t testify to that.”
“Testify to the being a teenage boy part or - ”
“You break my heart and you need to shut up.” Louis says to Niall.
Liam gets on his feet, desperate. “Well, what do I tell her?” When he’s answered with a shrug, he sits back down. “What are we even doing?”
The room goes quiet. It’s a question everybody and nobody knows the answer to. Harry sinks further into the couch, his leg brushing Zayn’s lightly. Zayn nudges him with his knee, he nudges back. Well maybe he does know, kind of. Or at least he knows why he wants to.
Louis sighs, breaking the silence. “Look, do you really have to tell Danielle?” He asks softly.
“Yes.” Liam says firmly. “It makes me sick knowing she doesn’t know this part of my life exists.”
“The moment she finds out, you know what that means right?”
Harry knows what the means. If Liam tells Daniel, Daniel will tell him to back out. And if Liam backs out, all of them will have to. And this whole thing ends. It’s a respect for group dynamic thing. Harry isn’t sure if he’s ready for that. But they respect Liam, and they will respect his decision.
“Well, I can’t really go on doing it knowing my girlfriend’s not okay with it, can I?”
Harry expects Louis to either laugh in his face, or call him gender-degrading names, but what Louis says next surprises him in the most heartbreaking way. “I wish I had your values, Liam.”
Liam gives him a sad smile, tousling Louis’s hair like he’s sorry, for all of them. “And I wish I had yours.”
-
So Liam is stalling. He hasn’t told Danielle yet, and Harry’s grateful.
They’re still in their outfits for their “I Want” set when they board the bus one by one, not even bothering to change in their dressing rooms, because there must have been at least 200 fans waiting outside the venue, hoping to get a glimpse even if it meant getting a skinned knee, and Paul wanted to herd the lads out of there as fast as possible.
Once they’re inside, Louis wastes no time and shoves Liam roughly down on the couch. “You son a bitch, why haven’t you told her yet?”
Liam shrugs. “For the same reason you haven’t told Eleanor yet.”
“But you were supposed to be the better man. You were supposed to take the high road.” Louis insists, standing over Liam like some semblance of authority. “Liam, at least one of us should do the right thing here and it sure as hell won’t be me.” Harry can’t help but hear the brokenness in Louis’s voice, how torn he is, like he’s fighting an inner battle of his own, how he yearns nothing else but for Liam to say no, he doesn’t need to do the right thing. But Liam just sits there mutely like he’s stuck.
“Liam, I’m only gonna say this once. Because if you were to ask me the second time, you know damn well what I’d say.”
Liam looks up at Louis with a glint of boldness in his eyes. “What would you say?”
Louis shakes his head. “Please don’t make do this.”
“I wanna hear you say it.”
Harry, Niall and Zayn just stand there and wait, contented to be on the observing end. Harry figures Liam and Louis share a kind of problem that three of them can’t hope to have therefore mustn’t nose in to trivialize it.
Louis looks Liam straight in the eye. “I’d say ‘Liam, don’t do it. Don’t tell her. We have a good thing here.’”
“Exactly.” Liam confesses in a small voice, reaching up to stroke Louis’s cheek a little more tenderly than Harry was prepared to see. “We have a good thing. Why waste a good thing?”
“My, my, Liam, is our complete lack of conscience rubbing off on you?” Louis starts running his fingers through Liam’s hair, jutting out his hips so he’s closer.
“Rub away…” Liam whispers, fingers still caressing Louis’s jawlines.
“I thought you said it made you sick that your girlfriend doesn’t know about your friends getting you off as a hobby.”
“Getting sick is a little underrated.”
The tense muscles on Louis’ face begin to relax, creases smoothing and knots unfolding. He chuckles. “I asked for your honesty, not a spew of your emotional slobber, Liam.” He swats Liam’s hand away and gently kisses it after. That might have been the most openly intimate nonsexual exchange Harry’s ever seen between any of them, then again, Louis is intimate by instinct.
Liam starts working on Louis’s fly, and Harry can definitely watch more of this until he feels an arm snake around his waist. He hears “What a bunch of dumdums” whispered hotly into his hear before he spins around and finds himself pressed up against Zayn.
“Hi.” He says, because he’s a poet, apparently.
Zayn moves a confident hand between Harry’s legs and Harry feels his whole body collapse under his knees. Zayn’s touch always sends some kind of jolt into him he can’t quite understand. He’s been feeling it for months, and he’s still feeling it now.
“Wanna take this to the bunks?”
“But Niall...”
“Oh.” Zayn stops, a little hurt.
Harry gets it and shakes his head a little too passionately. “No, I meant, Niall’s probably retired to the bunks. We don’t wanna wake him.”
A lazy smile creeps up Zayn’s face. “Hmm…”
“You wanna do it out here instead?”
Zayn scans the lounge area, where Louis and Liam are already splayed on the couch, hands going places, most of their buttons undone, and lets his tongue play innocently with the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t know, I kinda want it to be private. Plus Louis creeps me out sometimes.”
“I heard that!”
Harry submits into a giggle. “But with Niall in there, it wouldn’t be any more private now, would it?”
Zayn frowns. “We really should tell management we need a bigger bus. Not bigger exactly, just… you know, more rooms.”
“Oh yeah, don’t forget to mention it’s for our wild sex endeavors while you’re at it.”
“Oh they’re gonna love that. We can tweet it about it for the fans.”
“Imagine the look on Paul’s face.”
“Yeah I really don’t wanna picture Paul’s face right now.” Zayn starts to slide his hand along Harry’s thigh, and Harry can’t help the small “hmm” that bubbled from his lungs.
Before he knows it, Zayn is maneuvering them both into a cramped bathroom, least of Harry’s favorite places in the bus if he was being honest, but this is the way Zayn likes it, he likes spaces tight enough for them to breathe and share the same thick air. At least here Harry can wail all he wants and no one will care. And Harry can get pretty loud.
He’s about to tell Zayn he wants to be the one to go first tonight, but Zayn beats him to it, always does, already pushing Harry down by the shoulders. Harry drops willing on his knees, undoing Zayn’s belt with shaky hands, already hungry for that cock. Sometimes Harry can endure the delay when it’s bearable, even fosters it, like an itch that feels good when he finally gets to scratch it. Sometimes it’s something more than an itch, just raw, excruciating craving, that drives him insane if he doesn’t do anything to gratify it. Right now, he’s craving for Zayn’s cock. It’s hot and heavy in his hand, throbbing and glossy, and it makes his mouth water.
He’s too far gone to play games any longer so he takes it in his mouth in one careful move, mindful of the teeth. Zayn’s hips surge forward, which send his cock all the way in to the hilt, and Harry moans sympathizingly with him, knowing the feeling. He draws back, not missing the underside with one long lick as he does, and tongues the head indulgently, rubs his lips around it, while his hand runs up and down the shaft because he knows how much this drives Zayn wild.
He can feel Zayn’s fingers desperately fisting into his hair, guiding him, and he loves it, loves how Zayn is forceful yet careful, like he doesn’t want to hurt Harry, but wants to at the same time. Harry shoves it back into to his mouth, which gains him a strangled whine, and starts a torturous rhythm, bringing his lips all the way to the base, where his nose meets the soft caress of hair, and retreating just far enough so the crown gets caught between his lips. Zayn is mewling like an animal and Harry enjoys the rough pull of his fingers on his hair, steering him wherever he’s needed. He continues to suck fervently until his jaw starts to ache, slurping wantonly and tasting the mix of saliva and precome pooling underneath his tongue, and loves the little broken sounds he’s able to draw out of Zayn’s mouth.
“Fuh ma mou…”
“Wh-what?” Zayn asks. He sounds lost.
Harry releases him for a second. “Fuck my mouth.”
Zayn gazes down at him and their eyes meet. Zayn looks dazed, and yes, maybe a little lost. He touches Harry’s face, traces his jawline with trembling fingers, and nods.
Harry resumes and indulges him, knowing the end is near. Zayn does fuck his mouth, breathing gone haywire, not holding back this time, and Harry lets him, sucking harder and faster, assuring Zayn he’ll be there for him for that final crescendo. Zayn’s hips jerk once, twice, before crying out in a painful scream, spewing the familiar taste of warm liquid into Harry’s mouth. Harry swallows hungrily like a cat that’s been deprived for so long, his own cock throbbing at the feeling as it trickles down his throat, and licks off some that gathered in the corner of his mouth. No one else knows but Zayn’s the only one he swallows.
He clears his throat, his own erection getting heavy and uncomfortable in his pants, and gets on his feet in wobbly knees.
“Christ, Harry.” Zayn whispers, finger reaching out to gently wipe at the spunk still left in the corner of Harry’s mouth. He looks drowsy and mellowed out, absolutely beautiful.
“Can I kiss you?” Harry chokes out before he can let any string hold him back. “Please?”
Zayn’s eyes blink uncertainly at him, eyelashes so long they change the balance of the universe with every flutter. Harry just wants to kiss him. He just wants to- “Okay.”
Harry doesn’t bother with manners so he just tilts his head at the perfect angle, leans in and gasps into the momentous collision of their mouths, not wasting any moment for sweet and romantic. And it’s not sweet and romantic, it’s desperate and needy and messy, lips crashing into teeth and teeth biting into lips. He lets his tongue wander out to search and explore, to see if there’s any trace of hope, gnawing and biting at Zayn’s mouth in a furious, quivering desperation. He cradles Zayn’s head protectively between his hands, in case Zayn decides to pull back, and Harry doesn’t want him to pull back. Harry wants to kiss.
He feels his shoulders relax, along with the rest of himself, when Zayn finally starts to show a reciprocation of interest, letting his tongue curl into Harry’s at a languid, indulgent pace, their lips sucking and slipping into each other in a more cooperative rhythm. Harry can feel Zayn’s hand on his back, pushing him closer and it makes him sigh like a hopeless sod.
When the desperation starts to build up again, he accidentally bites down at Zayn’s lower lip at little too hard, interrupting the moment and costing him a whimper and a slight pull back. “Easy…” Zayn whispers, smirking tauntingly at him.
“Sorry, I just… I just…” Harry mumbles uselessly, blindly leaning in for another kiss, because the feeling is every bit of wonderful, even more amazing than he’d worked out in his head, and he hopes it’s one of those things that he and Zayn discover together and do more often, but Zayn holds him back with a hand on his chest, looking defeated.
“Harry, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Harry blinks at him, chest heaving. “What?”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Harry’s heart freefalls to the pit of his stomach. “It’s okay. We’ll do without the kiss.”
“I’m not talking just about the kiss.”
“Oh.” Harry’s heart falls with a crash. He tries to keep his voice steady. “Why?”
“Because it kills me.”
“What?”
“This demon.”
What demon? What are talking about? Please tell me you’re not serious. Please tell me Louis put you up to this. There’s no demon. Kiss me. I love you.
But Harry doesn’t say a word.
“Well, aren’t you gonna say anything?”
“I don’t understand. I thought we were good. I thought you were happy.”
“I am happy. Too happy in fact. I just… I have this demon inside me.” Zayn struggles to get the worlds out. “And it will only stop if I stop.”
“We all have demons inside us.” Harry says, unsure of the words coming out of his mouth, because Zayn is being an introspective bastard again, and now’s not really a good time for that, not when Harry wants to kiss, “Why else do you think Louis and Liam can do this and delude themselves into believing they’re not cheating on their girlfriends? There! I said it, they’re cheating on their girlfriends!” He can feel the anger mount. “But it doesn’t mean we have to stop.”
Zayn looks at his feet, subdued. “My demon is quite meaner.”
“Zayn, please speak English.”
“I’m in love with you.”
Harry blinks. That didn’t come from his mouth. That wasn’t his voice. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m in love with you, Harry.”
Harry can only blink some more.
“Look, I know, this complicates things. Especially since we agreed this was gonna be some kind of meaningless exercise that would relieve us from all the stress. But,” Zayn grimaces and shakes his head like he really is fighting a demon inside him, and that he’s losing. “I kind of caught something… Feelings. They’re pretty strong. Strong enough to tell me that I can’t keep on… doing this” He motions to the space between them, “if I feel like I’m taking advantage. And it’s wrong. Because I’m not even gay, but I don’t want anyone else but,” Zayn sniffs, “But you.”
After the agonizing minutes of silence that follow, Zayn lets out an unhumurous chuckle, it sounds hollow and wrecked, and it hurts Harry to hear it. “I’ve been trying to avoid it, Haz. Really, I have. I’m sorry.”
Harry wants to say “I love you too, I have been for the last 8 fucking months. I have wanted you each and every goddamn day of my life since.” But nothing comes out. Like his throat has already gotten used to being silenced for so long, it doesn’t know how to do anything else.
“I…” He clears his throat, swallows down any lump in the way, tries to get his vocal chords working, but, nothing. “I’m kind of tired. We should get some rest.”
Crash and burn. That’s what it is. Zayn’s eyes are cast down the floor and he looks like he’s torn in so many different ways, has lost the battle altogether, but nods, like he didn’t except anything better, like it’s always been a lose-lose situation on his end.
Harry tries again. “Zayn, I--”
“It’s okay, Harry, I get it.” But everything else about him says he doesn’t, not even a little bit.
Harry, meanwhile, cries himself to sleep.
-
The next day Louis pulls him aside as they queue for the buffet line at breakfast with the crew.
“The fuck happened last night?”
“What do you mean?” He tries to sound uninterested, panicking at the thought that Louis might notice the circles under his eyes then realizes he was smart enough to put a pair of shades on before hopping out of the bus.
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.” Louis looks like he hasn’t got the time nor the patience to beat around the bush. “And don’t give me that ‘I don’t wanna talk about it’ rubbish.”
“Louis, I’m not really in the mood and I’m really, really hungry. So if you can step aside please.”
“Zayn went home this morning.”
“What?!” Harry drops his tray.
“Paul worked his magic and Zayn was able to take the first flight to Bradford. He dropped everything, the tour, us - everything. So we figured whatever happened last night must have been major.” Louis crosses his arms. “Now will you tell me what before I come up with another lie because that’s obviously a joke! Ha, fooled ya! You should see your face!” He points a finger at him, crouching and laughing as he does so, then straightens up. “Now tell me what happened last night.”
Harry can feel the blood rush back into his body, which is good because he’s going to need all the strength he can get to strangle Louis. “The fuck, Louis, that’s not even remotely funny! You almost gave me a fucking heart attack! Jesus.”
“You have to admit though, it was kind of brilliant. Very dramatic.” Louis insists with a grin. “But seriously, what happened? Zayn is not talking and you’re not talking, and it’s freaking us all out.”
Harry hears the “us” so very distinctly so he peers behind Louis, and yep, surely enough, there’s Liam and Niall “covertly” sitting from a distance, obviously spying on their conversation. “What do you know?” He looks at Louis suspiciously.
“We know enough to know that something happened last night. And as you know me, Styles, I will be a pain in the arse trying to get answers from you. So why don’t you save yourself the trouble and just tell me? You know, make it easier for both ends.”
Harry gives in, picking up the tray that slipped out of his hands earlier. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Well, I got all the time in the world. Unless, of course, you’d rather give me the shorter version, because I’ve seen enough of the long version already.”
Harry feels the need to ask. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Harold, you beautiful, clueless idiot.”
“I know that’s gotta mean something.”
“It’s obvious!”
“What?”
“That you and that Malik boy are completely, stupidly - hmm, what’s the word - smitten with each other.”
Harry drops the tray, again.
“You really thought we wouldn’t notice?”
Harry just looks at him, motionless.
“Exhibit A.) Every time we bring up whole Danielle and Eleanor subject, you both react the same way. Trust me, we’ve seen it. Exhibit B.) In case you haven’t noticed, no one’s gotten a turn with either of you lately, oh wait, make that since forever. And Exhibit C.), who the fuck gives an arse about Exhibit A and Exhibit B, when you’re just so goddamn obvious it’s not cute.”
“Wow.” Is all Harry can say.
“Yep.” Louis purses his lips, swinging an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Now will you tell us what happened already?”
Giving up, Harry surrenders into a sullen nod.
-
“In summary, you owe him an apology.” Louis says.
“A very big one.” Liam intones.
“But I don’t know what to tell him.”
Niall starts mumbling something around a mouthful, barely audible, but Harry can tell it’s something he needs to hear. Niall may be a rambling idiot sometimes, but he does manage to make a point at others. Harry looks over to Louis for help.
“Translation: Harry, you’re really pretty but you’re not the smartest crayon in the box.”
Niall shakes his head vehemently at Louis and chews his food faster and with a purpose. “That’s not what I said. I said, Harry you’re an idiot.” He says after having successfully swallowed it without killing himself. Liam and Louis nod along in agreement.
Harry rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe that I’ve reduced myself into coming to you for advice, but what do you think I should tell him?
Louis, Liam and Niall exchange incredulous looks, like really? Did he just ask that question?
“Well, for starters, you can tell him what you feel.”
“It’s as simple as that, dumdum.” Louis agrees with Niall.
“No more playing around, Harry.” Liam says, his Daddy Liam-ness showing through especially strongly today.
“It’s as simple as that?”
“It has always been as simple as that.” Louis tells him with a passion.
“What does this mean though? What is this gonna do to the band, to us?”
Louis narrows his eyes at Harry like he’s going to kill him. “You really are an idiot.”
“What did I do now?”
“You just found out that the person you love, loves you back and you’re worried about the band? Harry, do me a favor and be a man, please.”
Harry squirms in his seat, feelings and knots and everything in between. “I don’t-I’m not quite sure--”
“All in favor of Harry growing the balls to stop being a cowardly pussy and tell Zayn what he feels?”
Liam, Niall and Louis all raise their hands.
-
It’s been so long, so fucking long, the longing, the waiting, and Harry decides he needs an ending to this unrequited love horror movie. He deserves something more. He deserves the world. Even better, he deserves Zayn.
After having swept the entire area, Harry finally gets word from one of the crew that Zayn just got back from wherever the hell he was hiding the entire day (which didn’t really impress their stage director because he missed rehearsal) and was spotted hanging out by himself in one of the terraces of the hotel that they’ve chosen to book for the night.
Harry finds him. Harry feels like he hasn’t seen him in years.
“Hey, you.” Harry walks out cautiously, heart clamoring in his chest.
“Jesus, you fucking scared me.” Zayn almost drops the stick of cigarette he had in his mouth.
“Sorry.” Harry murmurs.
They don’t say anything for the next few minutes, just watch the sunset together in silence. They really do have the nicest view of the city, the concierge wasn’t kidding.
Then Harry’s concentration gets disrupted by Zayn’s soft coughing. “Doesn’t that hurt your voice?”
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m quite known for doing things I’m not supposed to.” Zayn says bitterly. He looks rested - tired, but rested. Like he’s accepted his fate and has decided to live with it, even if it sucked.
Harry hopes it’s not going to suck for much longer. “Zayn…” He begins.
“What do you want, Harry?” Zayn says a little too quickly, like he’s been able to build a new stronger wall around himself.
Harry wants to say “To tell you what I feel, to tell you everything’s gonna be fine, to let you know you don’t have to fight the demon anymore” but instead he settles for, “You.”
“Me?”
Harry nods. “Only you. Always been you.”
Zayn stops for a moment, eyes directed at the sun, then reaches his hand out, like he didn’t hear anything, wall intact. “You wanna?” He offers his fag to Harry, like always.
And like always, Harry takes it. This seems a little bit too familiar, if you ask him. He sucks in the poison stick, inhaling it as far as it can go, and passes it back to Zayn. Smoking’s never tasted so good.
“So you meant what you said? About wanting me?” Zayn asks after awhile, blowing out the smoke through his nose.
“I meant every word.” Harry declares in a small voice.
“You’re serious.” This time Zayn does look at him. There are some cracks in the wall now.
“Well, duh.” He says flatly.
“For how long?”
“Quite long.”
Harry could be wrong but for a moment there, Harry could see a small smile creep into Zayn’s face. However it doesn’t linger for long.
“You know what, you’re an idiot.” Zayn hisses fondly, shaking his head.
“Geez, what is it with people calling me an idiot today?”
“Maybe because you are; a pretty idiot, but still.”
“You’re the idiot. For not knowing all along.”
“We’re both idiots.” Zayn admits casually like nothing hurts. “And you’re a pretty damn good actor.”
“Guess I’m not an idiot after all.”
“Guess not.”
Another silence passes.
“So, what’s gonna happen next? Where do we go from here?”
“Fuck if I know.” Harry says truthfully, taking back the cigarette Zayn passes to him. A warm glow spreads in his heart, though. Zayn is asking, which means he’s willing to do this. Harry and Zayn, against the world. “As you as freaked out as I am?”
“A bit more, I think.”
“Too bad, I don’t wanna scare you away or anything, you’re kind of my favorite.”
Zayn laughs, a loud laugh, the one Harry loves to hear, the one he can listen to for the rest of his life. He doesn’t say anything after a while, just looks at Harry with a kind of certainty he’s never seen on Zayn before, like for the first time, he’s not afraid, not anymore.“You are, by far, the best mistake I’ve ever made, Styles.”
“Can I keep you, then?”
Zayn smiles.
“You know, just ‘til I get tired of you?”
Zayn smiles brighter.
“You know, like forever maybe?”
Zayn passes the cigarette back to him, hand touching his, and this is really all the answer Harry needs.
-