Archive of Our Own

There are no signs and there are no stars aligned
No amulets, not a charm
To bring you back to my arms
There’s just this human heart
That’s built with this human flaw
             What was your question? Love is the answer

It’s a Friday morning when Louis bumps into him (literally bumps, because how else were they ever going to be reunited after six years?, because it’s days like today that make him crawl into Zayn’s bed long after he should be asleep and whine until Zayn sighs, carefully dog-earing a page of whatever he’s reading, and reaches his arms around to give Louis the cuddle that had been pretty inevitable all along).

Louis has his routine, is the thing. 

His alarm goes off at 7:20 every morning, and he presses snooze exactly twice (up and at ‘em by 7:38, doesn’t matter how cold it is, banging on the wall above his bed if he can still hear Zayn’s snores), a quick shower (no less than six minutes, no more than seven), throw on some pants before barging on in next door to smack Zayn’s arse until he’s giggling and swatting, some slacks, a button down, a not so quick brush through his hair (he’s got it down to a science, really), before walking the two blocks to the tube, four stops, right to the door of his favorite coffee shop (it makes shit coffee but the tea tastes like home), and then the five and a half blocks to the school.

And Louis loves his routine, loves how he can almost taste that tea before pressing snooze for the second time, loves that Zayn never opens his eyes wide enough to actually connect one of his flailing limbs with much of anything, loves that he’s factored time in for sifting through the piles of clothes that cover the floor of a room hardly wide enough for his bed, hates anything that will interrupt it.

And it’s just, god, it’s just fucking like Harry Styles to enter stage left, right in the middle of his goddamn morning routine. 

He hasn’t even had his tea yet.  He’s not quite equipped to handle much more than dodging Zayn’s limbs before he’s had his tea.

“Louis?”

And, fuck.

It’s been six years.

He’s just standing there, tall, shoulders more broad than Louis had remembered, pale, hair long and disheveled in a way that is almost artful, though if Louis knows Harry (and he does), it really does just naturally flow that way, no technique necessary.

Hair technique: that was maybe always the biggest difference between them from the start, Louis thinks.  He (Harry) would mock him (Louis) mercilessly for the hours of life wasted in front of a mirror, jumping in to ruin whatever he (Louis) had just spent the past fifteen minutes creating. That was always the thing about Harry, he just.  Never cared.

Harry is there, he’s really there, and all Louis can do is stand there, gaping, trying to force a sentence, any sentence, from between his lips and failing miserably.

Harry, being Harry (Harry Styles, after six years), throws back his head and laughs, leaping into Louis’s arms with all the energy of a goddamn bear cub.  “I’ve really missed you,” he makes out between giggles.

Harry goddamn Styles. After six years.

Louis has got his hair in his mouth, overwhelmed by flannel and warm skin and sunlight (hadn’t it been a rainy day last he checked?) and coffee (black, if he remembers correctly (he does)).

He’d probably be lying if he said he hadn’t missed this, but that’s the thing about Louis. He’s pretty practiced at avoiding the truth (six years).

“I’ve, erm, what the hell are you doing here?” (Pulling back)

“Haven’t quite lost your way with words, I see.” (Laughing, throwing an arm over his shoulders)

And yeah. Not much has changed, really. Or rather. This doesn’t change much, really.

“You’re here,” he whispers once they’re seated across from one another in his favorite little booth, Yorkshire in hand, dumping in precisely two and a half packets of sugar while Harry looks on in disgust.

“Yeah,” Harry chuckles. “How are you, Louis? Didn’t think I would ever live to see the day Louis Tomlinson would be up and about before at least ten thirty.”

“Well, I’m a working man, Styles, gotta bring home the bacon, don’t I?”

“Do you?”

“Zayn sure as hell isn’t going to do it.”

“Look at yourself, all buttoned and slacked up, talking about bacon and work. Uni hasn’t corrupted you too much, has it?”

Louis laughs, “Only you would see me, finally employed, and call it corruption.”

“Capitalism, it’s got to you!”

“That’s not quite the way my mum sees it, she’s only just stopped sending my monthly support cheques.”

And it’s so. It’s six years ago again and it’s a particularly warm day and they’ve snuck out of Mr. Manning’s study hall to lie out in the sun and smile.

Louis tries to remind himself to blink, but it’s hard, it’s so hard when he’s got Harry in front of him and his hair is long and full and he’s finally grown into his eyes and Louis can just barely see the edge of tattoos from under his shirt and it’s so much to just try to have a conversation with this man sitting here with him.  

“I can’t believe you’ve got a real job."

“I have to pay my bills, Harry.”

“You’re all grown up.”

“Almost.”

“It’s been ages.”

“Six years.”

“You never called.”

“Neither did you.”

And, well. There it is.

They hadn’t even tried to stay in touch.  The thought of hearing Harry’s voice, giggling at the vibrations of his laughter from a continent away, and feeling only a cold phone by his ear was physically painful. Louis hates the phone. He hates rainy days and whatsapp and not being home for holidays and he hates the Atlantic Ocean. It was shit and it wasn’t going to happen.

Not to mention that Louis was (is) an absolute coward and he wasn’t (isn’t) quite sure what to say. How to apologize. How to explain.

No one had been surprised when Harry never joined the rest of them at Uni. He didn’t need it, to be honest. He was talented and creative and charming and lovely and brilliant at almost everything he tried and Harry would be fine without it. Louis just. Louis wasn’t. He never has been. Harry’s got effortless curls and Louis has spent hours styling his hair and Harry bounded off to America, full of hope and giggles and New York City and Louis had gone to London and studied education and did his homework most nights and had gotten good marks and it’s not that he didn’t know how to have fun, he has plenty of fun, it’s just that he has to pay the bills and Harry, well, Harry doesn’t. 

“I’m going to be late.” It’s not that he feels guilty for growing up, it’s more that he’s grown up without Harry and it’s. It’s not something Louis ever thought would happen, is it? But six years is a long time.

“Don’t go to work today, Lou.” Louis’s breath hitches at the nickname, a low plead. He’s forgotten the way Harry can make each blink a sentence, each touch a paragraph, each word an essay. That’s a blatant lie. He hasn’t forgotten much of anything. “It’s been six years.”

“I’m. Harry, I can’t be late." 

Harry doesn’t even dignify that with a response, which, like, probably makes sense considering his disregard for any and all social constrictions (time and the concept of lateness being only two of them).

Harry doesn’t say a word, though it kind of feels like it’s his turn to, right? Louis spoke last, and he doesn’t feel obligated to do whatever the speech equivalent of double texting Harry is. He’s not obligated to Harry at all, in fact, hasn’t been for about six years.

When it becomes clear that Harry really isn’t going to respond, not even a nod or a smile or a wave or anything to acknowledge the fact that Louis just opened his mouth and said words, he takes it as his cue to leave.

Besides, he really is going to be late. 

Louis stands, stumbling over Harry’s tattered guitar case as he pushes away from the table. He hadn’t noticed it, balancing Harry’s equally tattered backpack beside the chair.  Covered in bumper stickers and doodles, it’s so quintessentially Harry he’s having some trouble breathing. Louis’s eyes narrow in on the long ago “Hi!” scribbled in black sharpie on the handle in his own handwriting. 

He hasn’t seen that case in six years.

Louis hates himself as soon as the door shuts behind him, and it’s, well. It’s a similar feeling to the gnawing in his gut he’s felt each day he didn’t call. It’s not as if he doesn’t know he’s a coward, but he just cannot do this right now, cannot go there, cannot be everything Harry has expected him to be all these years. It’s been six fucking years. It’s. It’s really difficult to avoid change. Another lie. Some things never change.

He arrives at work only a few minutes late, but the kids have already started to file in and Liam shoots him this look and that’s really all he remembers until break. 

Louis loves his job, is the thing.

He loves these kids, loves watching them grow over the course of a year, loves watching them explore and learn and loves helping to guide them through their daily adventures. He loves that he’s greeted each day with hugs around his knees, loves watching a pair of four year old eyes light up when they’re finally able to articulate exactly what they want him to do. He loves cajoling Liam, who’s been doing this for years (though he’s not quite sure how), into putting on a puppet show for the kids in drag with full on voices. He loves how Zayn always rolls his eyes when they’re at a pub and he and Liam start in on analyzing everything that’s happened with every child over the course of the last week.

It’s just that he studied education so that he could reform it. And now, well, here he is, assistant reception instructor at Parkside Primary and it all comes so naturally to him after a lifetime of caring for his sisters. It’s so easy, it’s so safe, and it so works for him.

Louis is totally, completely, adequately content. 

Or at least. He has been. He’s been fine; he’s been on track. He (almost) knows what he’s going to do with his life, his mum is proud, he’s growing up.  And if there isn’t that extra little twinkle in his eye there maybe once had been (about six years ago if he had to guess (he doesn’t)), then that’s. That’s what growing up is all about.

It’s as if he comes to consciousness locked in the teachers’ bathroom, gripping his wallet between sweaty fingers as he leans against the cool wall. He’s got this picture in it, tucked somewhere between his torn library card and high school ID, frayed at the edges and fading from six years of being tossed around. It’s the two of them, Harry tucked neatly under Louis’s arm, smiles rippling across dimpled cheeks, and it’s. It’s been awhile since he’s given the picture a second glance, longer still since sunshine has permeated his features.

Louis once knew they were inevitable, knew it more fully and completely than he has ever understood himself, but he thinks maybe he forgot the fallibility of an infinity. Maybe he never knew it.

Time is such an asshole. 

Here he is, with a job leading to a career, an apartment with his best friend, a loving family, a degree, a – he’s got a lot, but at the moment he’s having trouble remembering how he got here. Louis has a lot of regrets, but he really just hates himself for not hearing Harry’s voice every day for the past six years. 

Louis opens his eyes, taking a deep breath. Dust mites float about the stall, aimless, easy. He’s almost jealous.

Inevitability leaves too much up to fate. Inevitability was never an option.

No more lies: he was never meant to wait.

Another breath. Slowly regaining consciousness. Louis stands, shakes out his hair, blinking up at the lightly dusted air and reaches into his pocket, praying the number is the same.

“Lou?” He hadn’t realized he was holding in that last breath until he lets it out.

“How fast can you get to Parkside Primary?”

“Love, I’m already there.”

Louis is flushed enough that Liam doesn’t doubt him as he stumbles over “Just vomited all over the faculty bathroom, think I better take the afternoon off, yeah?,” and he’s speed walking out of that cold, cold building into the aggressively cloudy day, waves of dimples rippling over his smiling lips.

There he is, squinting into a tattered copy of Animal Farm, the only book Louis had ever seen Harry read twice (he’d recognize that torn cover anywhere, probably), a mint chocolate chip cone in hand and ice cream dripping down his chin. Harry doesn’t care about anything.

Louis wants some, so he takes it, slurping the ice cream between his own lips before Harry even registers his presence. It’s so, so normal, so practiced, so easy, so natural. 

It’s inevitable. 

“I’ve missed you too,” (grinning) and there might be ice cream in his hair, but hey. Maybe that’s inevitable too.

The book closes without much noise at all (he wonders how many times Harry has reread it over the course of the past six years, wonders if he’s got it memorized yet). “Let’s go,” Louis whispers, grabbing a hand, any hand, and hauling the other boy up. “Cannolis! Cannolis and coffee!" 

And they’re off.

It’s early afternoon by the time they’re walking out of the shop, cannolis and sugared down coffee to go in hand, wandering through the pseudo-Italian streets as bikes whiz past and middle-aged women call out to friends from across streets from stories above.

Louis knows this path, this city, almost as well as he knows Harry (pretty damn well), though he almost wishes the two of them could get lost in the side streets and maybe (maybe) hibernate there with only cannolis and laughter for company. He doesn’t think he would mind. 

When they arrive, the Thames River is dirty as it has always been, a dull brown with bits of McDonalds takeaway bags floating along in the lazy current. Louis loves the consistency of that, loves that probably no one will ever take his small hideout beneath the footbridge along the Esplanade because no one else would ever risk dipping a foot into its tinged depths. 

Louis is afraid of many things (looking in mirrors at night, student loans, dementors, the passage of time in six year increments), but foot fungus isn’t one of them.

And Harry, well, Harry isn’t afraid of anything.

And when Louis is beside him, shoulders touching, legs swinging, tongue laced with powdered sugar and ricotta, he thinks he maybe almost gets that.

“And, y’know, the streets of New York are so loud, all the goddamn time, I don’t think my eardrums will ever fully recover,” he’s saying as Louis tunes back in. “And it’s like, yeah, I knew what I was getting myself into, but at some point it’s time to move on, right?”

Louis shakes his head, pulling a face and ruffling Harry’s (effortless) curls. “And that was the longest you stayed in one place, seriously? I’d say I’ve got no words, but, I mean, you know me.”

Harry barks out a laugh. Harry always laughs. Louis loves making Harry laugh. He’d make it a full time profession of he could.  “Yeah, about ten or so months, I’d say?  Stayed seven in Seattle, it’s a great city.  You’d love it, Lou.”

“What did you do for seven months in Seattle?”

“Well I was working at this McDonalds, you know?  And they’d just started to try and unionize, it was amazing, Lou, you should have seen it. They were risking everything, you know? I just had to see it through.”

Louis wishes he could be more surprised than he is.  It’s just so Harry, all of this. “How the bloody hell did you end up in Seattle, anyway?”

“Biked,” Harry shrugs, as if biking across a fucking country is the most natural thing in the world. 

Louis’s thighs (which are perfectly in shape, if he does say so himself) flinch at the thought. “What the shit.” 

“I stopped along the way, saw everything. Took six years, didn’t it?”

“It’s just not casual, Harry, not casual at all!”

“It becomes pretty casual when it’s six years off your life, I guess.”

Harry and Louis, Louis and Harry, they had always flowed together so easily, right from the start, and Louis isn’t a poet or anything (he really isn’t), but he’s always thought of them as a bit of a river, maybe the Thames, dirty and abandoned, but so smooth, so easy, so natural. The river always runs into the stream. It’s some kind of geological law, probably. 

He and Harry, they’re geology. 

Louis is sometimes so cheesy he makes himself gag.

“We had so much fun, Lou, someday you’ll come with me and I’ll show you all my favorite spots. It’s such a great country, so much more exciting than Great Fucking Britain. And the boys will be all over your accent, you’ll see. You could pull even without those tight pants you insist on wearing.” 

He didn’t hear much after that first word. “We?”

“We?”

“We. You just said we.” 

“Oh, erm, yeah. Me and Nick?”

“Nick?” It sounds familiar, so familiar. Where had he heard about Nick before?

“My roommate in New York? He, erm, came with me.” New York. Harry’s first stop on his tour of America. Nick was there for all six years. From the beginning.

“Were you two, uh? Were you?”

“What?” 

Louis rolls his eyes and gestures crudely (thrusting a few fingers from one hand into the curled other, if you must know).

Harry instantly reddens. “Yeah, Nick was. He’s. Yeah, we were.” 

Their little pocket of shade is suddenly a touch too chilly. Louis is used to running cold. He shivers.

It’s not like he ever expected Harry practice complete celibacy for six years. He’s his own person with his own desires and that’s cool, that’s chill, it’s been six years and Louis has fucked plenty of other people himself. It’s just, Nick is a name and Nick is a we and this is not something Louis ever expected.

Harry doesn’t put down roots, is the thing. And even now, after all these years, Louis had thought he knew this boy better than anyone else did.  It’s not as if he’s easy to pinpoint, but. They’ve been apart for six years and Harry hadn’t been finding himself at all. He’d been finding Nick. There’s so much he’s missed out on.

Inevitability: it’s not magic.

Louis wonders if there’s any of Harry left to find, or if he’s scattered to so many different corners of so many different countries he’ll never really be whole. He wonders if Harry knows this yet, or if he’s still looking.

He wonders if Harry wants to be found.

Louis feels the geologic foundations beneath his feet shift, and it’s. It’s a lot.

“Christ, man, way to leave out the most crucial fucking moments of your journey!”

He doesn’t wait for Harry to finish a whispered “Not nearly the most crucial aspects, Lou,” before he pushes him off their shady ledge and into the river.

It’s pretty satisfying at first (he’s got to stop lying; it’s completely satisfying through and through), as Harry splutters back up, shaking water from his eyes and splashing about. He’s almost guilty (lie) when he spots the look on the other boy’s face as the current begins to drag him away. Harry’s face is one of absolute horror as he thrashes wildly, lunging for the shore, and Louis isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to stop laughing.

Until one large, cold, hand dripping with dirty river water locks around Louis’s ankle and pulls.

He is so going to kill Harry.

He means this in a very stern, no nonsense, assistant reception instructor reprimanding a Very Bad Child way and not at all in a way that causes him to surge up, still laughing, splashing water in every direction, but especially in Harry’s general one. 

“Oh, fuck you fuck you fuck you,” he mutters once they’re lying on their backs out on the grass next to the bridge, staring up at the cloudy sky above.

Harry laughs in response. Harry always laughs in response. 

“We’ll never fucking dry off now, you asshole!” 

“Suck it up, Lou, you’ve got no sympathy on this end.” (smiling, leaning up on his elbows)

“Well I’ve got us into this mess, it’s your job to get us out of it, isn’t that how this has worked in the past?” 

“Dunno, it’s been six years, hasn’t it?” Louis very firmly believes Harry deserves the shove he gets, though he nearly topples over (from what would be a relatively stable position for anyone with any sense of balance or, you know, a grip on gravity, Louis might add). “Jesus, you have got to stop pushing me,” but he’s already hauling himself up, tugging the sopping t-shirt over his head.

“What are you doing?”

“Best way to get warm, take off what’s making you cold.” Harry is stupidly logical. 

Emphasis on the stupidly, Louis is thinking as the shirt comes up and over and— 

He thought he had caught a corner of a tattoo earlier when Harry’s shirt had ridden down, but he hadn’t expected.

It’s funny, how familiar all of this has been, their same rhythm, their same relationship; six years and it hasn’t felt like much has changed – between them, that is. But this. This is different.

Six years ago, Louis knew Harry’s body better than his own. He knew the wide expanse of pale skin, every mole, every freckle. Fuck, he knew the difference between the moles and the freckles on Harry’s back. He’s not even sure if he’s got moles on his own back at all, for God’s sake.

And it’s. He was wrong. He was so, so wrong. He hasn’t been the only one who’s grown up. Harry has been drifting on through time and space for the past six years (how many minutes is that?), too, and he’s.

Harry’s not a boy anymore.

(3,153,600 minutes)

It’s so clear as he discards the wet shirt on the ground, movements impossibly smooth, and his skin isn’t quite so pale anymore, it’s more of a tan, glowing brightly under a cloudy sky, and his shoulders are broad but his waist is narrow and Louis may or may not spot some hair leading his eyes down, down down down…

And the tattoos. Louis thought he was bad, covering one arm in these stupid little doodles (he loves them, he really does), but Harry has been so much more bold (everything Harry does is Bold), and he’s got these swallows that almost make Louis’s eyes want to stop trailing in a definite downwards direction and to rest on his collarbones forever.

He probably doesn’t care as much as he should that he’s ogling (is that a real word that real people use?  Louis suddenly isn’t quite sure about a lot of things.) his (best?) friend, and Harry doesn’t seem to mind. When Louis finally remembers to shut his damn mouth (and get a goddamn grip), Harry is staring right on back, a distinct smirk set in the delicate tilt of his pink lips (get a grip).

“Oh, shut up.”

Harry barks out a laugh. “Some things just never change, mate.”

And yeah, Louis has probably had this look on his face once or twice before.

“What, you’re not so cold after all?” He’s still got that stupid little smirk on his face.

“What? I. Yeah.” Louis fumbles over the buttons on his shirt, before rolling it, along with his slacks, into a pillow and lying down on it, Harry by his side. Still smirking.

Louis is so, so not used to feeling this unsure of himself. He’s got his routine. He knows his routine, knows Zayn. He’s got his mates, he’s got his job he’s got his life. It’s done already; he’s set. There’s something about this feeling that’s so unfamiliar, so distant, he’s not even quite sure if it’s him inhabiting this body anymore. He hadn’t known six years of stability could crumble in only a few hours.

Harry sucks.

(Really, really well, if Louis remembers correctly (he does))

They don’t say much, but it isn’t awkward. Louis can feel the grass tickling his back with each breath, can hear the river flowing on lazily without them, can see the sun slowly setting from between the clouds, can feel Harry’s body heat, almost almost not quite touching. Time passes.

It’s a Friday afternoon, and they’re relatively alone.

The first time Louis sat in this spot (under the footbridge, next to the river), was about seven years ago, the morning of the first day of sixth form. With Harry. He was always with Harry in those days. They had been inseparable throughout all of secondary school, but sixth form was, well. Louis doesn’t have many memories of sixth form that don’t include Harry.

The morning before their last first day of school, Louis had stayed over at Harry’s and together they had woken up before the sun, stumbling along the banks of the river until they reached this point. They had sat, travel mugs of tea in hand (Louis wonders if Harry would choose coffee now), chewing on everything bagels, some sort of beginning of an end (or rather, end of a beginning).

God, it was so cheesy. Obviously it had been Harry’s idea. Obviously. But Louis hadn’t made fun of him, had even, for once, really loved it, really embraced it, truly believed.

“Hey, Lou.  What was it you threw away that morning?” Harry blinks against the sun.

Louis smiles. That was how their morning had ended. Harry had torn these little scraps of paper from his brand spanking first-day-of-school-new notebook and they had each written something to crumple up and toss into the depths of the river to flow on down the stream and away from them, just one word. They had each been given the opportunity to throw away the old and hey. Maybe it had been the beginning of the end after all. 

“Shit. Can’t quite remember, can I?” Liar. He’s such a goddamn liar.

Obviously he remembers exactly what he scribbled on that paper, quickly, hand shielding the notebook so Harry’s efforts to have “just a peek, Lou, come on!” would be in vain. For fuck’s sake, he remembers the way Harry’s hair fell into his eyes, the way he looked equal parts grumpy kitten and excited toddler, not at all the young man he (technically) was – of course he remembers only the single most important word he’s ever thought.

The sun that shines through Harry’s pores fades a fraction of a lumen at Louis’s response. Not that Louis has the equipment to test that hypothesis. Not that he has a hypothesis. Not that he notices.

Louis always knew he hadn’t been a science major for a reason. 

This time the quiet is heavy. Silently, it holds six years of thoughts never verbalized, words caught beneath thick tongues, and Louis is worried he might choke on the concept of forever and the reality of today and the sudden lack of inevitability.

The silence would probably be too heavy for a professional physician’s scale. What is that? 204 kilos? Yeah. Definitely heavier.

“Hey, Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“If I was any fictional character, who would I be?”

And Louis can’t help but let out a snort because who else but Harry? (Seriously. That wasn’t rhetorical.)

He takes a moment, considers his options carefully. “Christopher Hayden.”

It’s Harry’s turn to let a surprised chuckle escape, and balance is restored in the universe. Or at least in Louis’s. “From Gilmore Girls?”

“Obviously.”

“That’s actually incredibly accurate,” and if the corners of his mouth droop downwards slightly (ever so slightly), Louis pretends not to notice. Or at least. Pretends he doesn’t need to pretend.

“Yeah, babe. S’why I said it. Always on the run, looking for a better time, can fit all the possessions you care about into a single backpack to be taken on all sorts of motorcycle adventures.”

“Don’t forget about my bitchin’ taste in music,” Harry adds, no sign of dimples despite the grin he’s got etched onto his face.

Harry’s vocabulary would indicate he’s just as much of a dork as ever. Some things never change. “Wouldn’t dream of it, babe.”

“So does this make you my Lorelai?”

And the gut wrenching, intestine twisting, stomach clenching thing is: it does.

It’s the first time this, this thing between them has been verbalized probably in, um, if Louis has to wager a guess, ever. He thinks maybe he might vomit lying almost naked beneath the clouds, so close to Harry he can feel each of their individual atoms attract, can hear his heart beating in time with his own.

The sun is beginning to set, and, god, six years ago, how much would he have killed to hear Harry at all acknowledge something, anything between them, for him to finally (finally) recognize that yeah, Louis is Harry’s, Louis has always been Harry’s. He almost laughs because it’s not so different now as it should be. As he wishes it was. As he never, ever, thinks it will be.

“Suppose it does. That one’s not so inaccurate either, is it?”

Harry’s dimples look saddened when he answers (can dimples even look saddened?), but at least they’re back. “Fun loving, dependable, a mouth that’s clever as all hell, just the tiniest bit annoying.” He looks up, glances at Louis as his mouth turns up imperceptibly (except Louis percepts it, Louis always percepts it). “You’d make a great mum."

“Oh, shove off, I’d make a bloody fantastic mum.”

Harry throws back his head and Louis wants this moment (the purple and orange of the sky streaking across Harry’s face, mouth opened wide, eyes closed as he laughs) to last forever.

But Time being the asshole that she is, obviously it doesn’t.

Louis stretches out, still giggling, as he leans toward Harry and his foot connects with something solid.

He jumps up just as the guitar case begins to tip backward and-

“Oh, fuck!” the case hits the ground and pops open. Louis had completely forgotten Harry had been lugging it around all day with his backpack as they had lain, soaking up the sun. He takes the guitar out, examines it for damage. There isn’t any, but he apologizes anyway. “That could have been bad, shit, Harry, I’m so sorry.”

“You kickboxing with my baby? Yeah, I’d think so,” but he’s laughing. “Really, Louis, it’s fine, everyone’s safe and healthy, aren’t we?”

And it’s all so Harry that Louis can hardly breathe. He’s sitting there, cradling Harry’s old guitar, the one he saved up for back in year eleven when he took it upon himself to teach himself the instrument using only old practice books he had found at some yard sale and the occasional youtube video. His mum had, of course, offered to pay for real actual lessons, but fifteen year old Harry had insisted that this was way more poetic, mum, come on.

Louis smiles, running his fingers over the back of the guitar’s neck where he had tried to carve Harry’s name one night after they had smoked in Zayn’s basement. He had forgotten the second ‘r’ and had triumphantly presented Harry with a guitar owned explicitly by a ‘Mr. Hary Styles.’ He’s not sure if Harry’s forgiven him for that even now.

Zayn had laughed so hard and for so long that Harry had forgotten about the guitar in favor of a debate over whether it would be worth it to attempt CPR or if that would maybe just put Zayn in more danger of suffocation than he was already in. Harry had just completed his CPR training, you know, it really would be fine, Lou.

“I can’t believe you still have this,” Louis whispers, giving the strings a hesitant strum. His bare chest molds around the wooden body as if it remembers Harry moving Louis’s fingers carefully into a G chord, his breath hot on the back of his neck as he taught him to play.

He remembers Harry’s other hand trailing lightly down his bare back, lower, lower, lower still, remembers entire days when Harry’s mum would be away visiting Gemma at her Uni and they wouldn’t bother wearing any clothes at all.

He remembers long nights of duets, Harry on his carved and stickered guitar, Louis on the old piano at his mum’s, their voices weaving together above the chords and keys.

He remembers the endless contradiction of a stuttering heart and lithe fingers dancing over strings.

“Couldn’t just give up my baby, could I?” Harry interrupts his thoughts, still staring at the instrument lovingly.

And if anyone understands just how deep Harry’s love for his guitar, his stupid, stupid, cheap, used guitar, goes, it’s Louis.

He remembers that Harry had bought a second seat on his (their, Louis reminds himself, their) flight to America because he couldn’t bear the idea of his baby below them, left with the rest of the luggage, didn’t trust just anyone to carry it right. 

Louis had mocked him for it in front of Zayn (“I swear, Harold, you’ll be married one day with kids and a mortgage and a house next door for your damn guitar”), but had kissed over his calloused fingers later (“beautiful, beautiful, lovely boy”), once his bedroom door had closed, once the lights were out and he couldn’t see anything but pale skin and the air between them.

“Do you still play as often?”

Harry shrugs. “I tried, for awhile. Played in a few bars when I first got to New York, played on the streets a bit in Boston, but I dunno, really. Didn’t feel much like it by the time we got to Seattle. Felt a bit – dunno. Felt a bit forced then I think.”

Louis nods in understanding. Not because he hasn’t played his piano much over the past few years, though that’s true as well, but because everything’s felt a bit forced recently. This whole balance between growing older and remaining himself, this whole leaving the past in the past, this whole job-husband-kids-401k kind of deal has been a bit forced. His whole routine.

Forced to move on, forced to pretend he hasn’t.

Louis smiles softly, looking up to find Harry watching him intently. He strums his fingers in a tentative G. “Not too shabby, hm? I haven’t forgotten everything you’ve taught me, have I?”

“No,” Harry smiles back, “not at all.”

“Would it feel a bit forced if I asked you to play something, just like old times?" 

Harry’s smile widens into what could be described as a definite grin. “No,” he repeats, “not at all.”

Harry holds the guitar protectively, smoothing over the peeling stickers advertising a beach in Australia and a mountain in Vermont and a school at home (riddle idea: if you can forget a home in six years, was it ever really there? It’s not his best.). Harry strums a few times, carefully tuning the instrument before he begins. 

And Louis knows he asked for this, knows he requested it, knows it’s sweet and nostalgic and nothing but lovely, but still. As Harry begins, Louis forgets to breathe. He forgets anything but the sweeping of Harry’s long hair across his forehead, the way it just touches his shoulders, the way his tongue holds the notes so surely, so gently, his dark green eyes staring right into Louis’s. He’d forgotten how intense Harry’s gaze can be.

Traveling north, traveling north to find you
Train wheels beating, the wind in my eyes
Don’t even know what I’ll find when I get to you
Call out your name, love, don’t be surprised

Louis remembers, with sudden, almost absurd clarity, the first time he heard Harry sing Train Song.

They had been at one of those campfires that had been so popular around year eleven. Everyone, their whole year had been there, with drink and laughter and more drink and just a touch of dancing (just some of the girls and Harry, really.  Most of them men hadn’t had the balls yet, if he’s honest). 

It was late, and everyone else had gone home or off into the woods to drunkenly fumble under unwashed jeans.

Louis almost misses the simplicity of year eleven.

It had been just him and Harry left, the last men (men, ha) standing, which meant they were responsible for waiting the fire out. Louis had always somehow managed to stay late, but just not late enough, before. He’d never had to be the one to wait around for the embers to burn out or the first rays of dawn, whichever came first. 

But that night, there they had been, him and Harry and a still lit fire and stars, so many stars.

Nothing at all in my head to say to you
Only the beat of the train I’m on
Nothing I’ve learned all my life on the way to you
One day our love was over and gone

Louis can taste the smile on his tongue, closes his eyes and can feel the cool breeze of the night, the warmth of a fire before him. 

He can hear Harry, eight years younger, voice higher and tinny, crooning the lyrics over at Louis, can see the giggle bubbling over his lips, can feel Harry’s touch as he brushed his arm on a particularly impassioned stroke of the strings. They had been sitting so close.

And Louis knows, he knows, that the perfect beer is cheap and shitty, that it’s not complete without the burned chocolate chip cookies Harry had brought in a stupid tin for them to snack on by the fireside.

The fire hadn’t been nearly as warm as Harry was.

What will I do if there’s someone there with you?
Maybe someone you’ve always known
How do I know I can come and give to you?
Love with no warning and find you alone

It’s not jealousy he feels for Nick right now, it’s really not. It’s just that, god, these past six years he’s wanted Harry next to him all the time and he hasn’t been and it hasn’t been okay and it’s not about who he kisses or who he fucks, Louis doesn’t care who he kisses or fucks, but.

Maybe it is a bit of jealousy. 

It’s so many miles and so long since I’ve met you
Don’t even know what I’ll find when I get to you
But suddenly now I know where I belong

Louis has heard Harry sing these same words more times than he can count, has heard him croon them by countless campfires, whisper them into Louis’s ear as he fell asleep, serenade them from outside Louis’s bedroom window when Louis had been out of school sick for a week and hadn’t answered any of his texts, shout them as they finally got to the top of that giant fucking hill on the outskirts of town and finally, finally, got to bike down (no brakes allowed), hum them under his breath as he finished up his math homework. 

He’s heard Harry sing these words a hell of a lot of times, but none of them compare to this.

Louis once read a book about a kingdom trying to write a dictionary. It’s not such a difficult quest, except that no one can agree on the definition for delicious. Everyone thinks it’s something else – apples, pudding, beer – and they begin to turn on one another, fighting and killing and damming water supplies. When a page finally stops the fighting and makes water flow to thirsty villages once again, the people finally agree: delicious is the first sip of water after a drought.

That’s what this is, this whole, whirlwind, run into Harry fucking Styles on the street leave work early spend the day feeling like a goddamn sixteen year old thing.

The first sip of water after a drought.

It’s many hundred miles and it won’t be long
It won’t be long, it won’t be long, it won’t be long

The notes hang in the air, Harry’s fingers hang off his guitar, Louis’s mouth hangs open, two pairs of eyes hang wide, hang still, hang connected. 

When Harry resurfaces, shaking his head, it’s to glance at his watch and.

Yep. That’s probably about when the moment ends.

“Shit! Shit shit shit, I’m going to be so late.” Harry leaps up, stumbling as he throws his shirt back on.

Louis isn’t quite sure how he gets it together quickly enough to respond, how he shakes himself, takes a breath, resorts to banter. “Since when have you ever kept a schedule?" 

“Since, erm. Since Zayn planned these drinks weeks ago and, shit, I’m going to be so late. Haven’t seen him in months and I’m going to be late.” 

Time freezes. 

Now, seriously, this is the moment time chooses to freeze? To abandon Louis in for what he can only assume to be all of eternity?

Louis can feel the blood pumping through his veins slow, stop, freeze over. 

“You’re going out for drinks with Zayn?”

Harry glances up, throwing his backpack over his shoulder, and Louis is standing there, almost naked, in public, and suddenly this all seems so much less romantic, less lovely, more real. All of this, this whole damn day. Harry himself. 

What the fucking hell had he been thinking, skiving off work to strip in a very public place with his – his what?  It’s been six years.

“Oh, sorry Lou, I’m sure you’re welcome to join, I know I’d love to have you.”

But that’s not. That’s not. It’s not about an invite or lack thereof, or maybe it is, maybe it’s six years of invitations lost in the mail because it’s been almost six years since he’s spoken a word to Harry, but apparently the same hasn’t been true for Zayn. Zayn, his roommate, his best friend, the only constant he’s ever known, Zayn has been chatting with Harry for six years and Louis had no idea. 

He’s not quite sure why he’s surprised, because yeah, the three of them had all been close through school, really close, and why shouldn’t Zayn keep in contact with one of his best friends? If Louis were at all a better person than he is he would have done the same. It’s just. How could he not have known? And Zayn knew, knew when Louis had stumbled into his room earlier this morning to slap him awake that he would be seeing Harry today, that Harry was here, within mere miles, and he hadn’t said anything and Louis hadn’t known.

He and Zayn have never really talked about Harry at all, is the thing. Not for six years. There was a time at the beginning, the summer before Uni, right after Harry had left and Louis hadn’t, when Louis had been a bit of a mess. The two of them, Louis and Zayn, they’d been working at this coffee shop down the street from the little apartment they were renting and it just. Louis’s mind wandered frequently and it went to places he didn’t want it to go and.

They were a teary few months. Very Harry Centralized months. Yet Louis doesn’t remember the name itself ever being mentioned. Neither of them had quite wanted to go there, not yet.

But then they’d started Uni, and Uni was so, so good for Louis. Louis killed at Uni. Not the classes specifically (it’s not like his marks hadn’t been so far off, they were just so not even a little bit Louis’s focus at that particular point in time), but the parties, clubs, football, sex. Louis got really good at sex. And Harry was just. Not a huge part of his life anymore (lies, lies lies. Harry always came first. Louis maybe just learned to hide that better (turns out it doesn’t feel any better to tell the truth)).

Louis and Zayn never really spoke about Harry, but Louis had never stopped thinking about him. He didn’t know what Harry was up to off in America, but he would spend class time imagining all the adventures Harry had probably been on, all the people he had met, a journey Louis could have joined if only—

Nope. That’s as far as the daydreams go.

The point is that Louis had no idea – no goddamn idea – what Harry had been up to for the past six years and Zayn had and it sucks and he knows it’s his own fault (it’s all been his fault), he really, really does, but he feels pretty justified in this betrayal. Pretty damn justified. 

Because the thing is, he hadn’t been the only one who had sucked at communication six years ago. There were two of them, him and Harry, and maybe he had never called, but neither had Harry. 

Turns out, Harry had called Zayn.

And he’d thought, well, Louis had thought a lot of things six years ago, most of which turned out to maybe not be all that true. But he had really believed that he and Harry were something different, special, geologic and inevitable and volcanic and forever. Inevitable.

He thought it had been six years, but really all along it was this gaping black hole threatening to pull him in and he’s been teetering on the edge, but one step closer and everything is gravitational. 

Harry is a dying star and all Louis can do is sit there and be absorbed. 

Turns out Gravity is as much of a bitch as Time is an asshole.

“Sure, Haz, I’d love to.” (this time even Harry knows the lie when he hears it (turns out he’s as good of a liar as Louis is (they’ve each had six years of practice)))

“Might want to put a shirt on, love,” and fuck Gravity, honestly. Louis feels himself tilt a millimeter closer to the edge. He wavers.

By the time they arrive at the bar (Puzzles, obviously – “Is that the puzzle?” Harry asks as they walk through the door), they’re mostly dry, decidedly wrinkled, and positively late. Zayn is seated where he always is – last stool on the left at the bar – and he’s already on what appears to be his second drink of the night, an empty glass still standing next to his still mostly full one.

If Harry’s face lights up when he sees Zayn, Louis doesn’t notice. He really, really doesn’t.

And then Harry’s running over to their little corner of the bar (the one he and Zayn and occasionally Liam have inhabited almost every Friday night for the past six years) and planting a loud wet kiss on Zayn’s cheek and Zayn is shouting because, yeah, Harry was his friend too. It’s only after he’s finished wiping off his cheek and reshaping his hair that Zayn notices Louis perching delicately on a stool (third to the left (the one Liam normally sits in, as Harry has altogether quite rudely claimed his own)). 

Louis has never seen Zayn’s expression change quite so quickly, and it’s only for a moment, but Louis has got a pretty good view and a pretty good understanding of the way Zayn’s mind works. When he sees his smile falter, sees Zayn lose control for the length of a heartbeat, he shoots back a little smile of his own, reassuring, soft, confident.

Louis has never felt quite so far from confident in his life. There’s a black hole sucking him in and the only thing he’s sure of is Gravity’s existence. Pulling, pulling, pulling.

Louis had forgotten just how radiant Zayn is around Harry. It’s funny because out of everyone Louis knows, Zayn is just that. He’s Zayn, and probably since around year seven he’s never been afraid to be Zayn and all that goes along with it. He’s constant and lovely and goofy and serious and funny in such an unexpected way and he’s Zayn. But Harry brings out this whole other side of him, and it’s not that this side hasn’t existed for the past six years, but more that it’s been hibernating (hibernating because of Louis) and it’s. It’s really nice to see Zayn’s smile loosen at the corners, to see him just throw his head back and just snap right into the Zayn who had existed in sixth form. 

Zayn and Harry have known one another forever; Louis forgets that sometimes. They lived next door to one another as children, had grown up together, and once Harry and Louis had been seated next to one another in homeroom on that first day of secondary school, he’d been adopted into their little duo without second thought, because that’s just who Harry and Zayn are.

But there had been a small infinity of moments before Louis realized he would never have to eat his lunch alone. 

Louis had instantly bonded with Zayn; skipping class to smoke behind the teacher’s parking lot, spending hours at one another’s houses so that he could get help with understanding whatever the hell Shakespeare was trying to say and remind Zayn for the eight hundredth time why it matters to learn about the French Revolution.

But with Harry, it had been faster than an instant bond. It had been staying up all night laughing in various 24-hour diners, texting one another from across the room and annoying whoever had the misfortune to sit between them (usually Zayn) with synchronized giggles.  It had been ankles brushing beneath a table and warm lips and hair that smells like peppermint and eyes that hold entire universes and first kisses and last kisses and—

Louis is in public and he is not (he repeats: not) going to go there. 

The point is, they had been a trio, but they’d also been made up of duos and there had been a time in which Louis had loved this about the three of them, loved everything about the three of them.

And Zayn is radiant around Harry because, yeah. Harry has that effect on people.

It’s awful in an almost hilarious way (Louis is laughing on the inside. Ha. Ha ha ha.), because this is the first time Harry’s Zayn has resurfaced in six goddamn years and if history had gone a different way, maybe all of Zayn’s smiles would be more loose and maybe none of them would ever spend time on their hair and maybe this is why it’s important to study the French Revolution (Louis is the aristocracy, only this time no one had the heart to overthrow him).

They’re made up of a pattern of repeated histories, the three of them. 

Sitting there, watching Harry and Zayn laugh and chat as if the past six years have been the most insignificant amount of time (which, like, it probably has been for two that were built from one another right from the beginning), is the first time Louis has had a chance to actually form a thought since he saw Harry this morning (was it really just a few hours ago?  Jesus Christ.), and it’s not working, it’s not good he’s cycling and he’s going there and this hasn’t happened quite like it is right now since That Summer.

The thing is, and Louis has always thought this, that a person is made from their decisions, right? It’s all well and good to say you favor good over evil, redemption over justice, resistance over oppression and all that, but what does it mean if, in the moment, you’re thinking and saying and doing otherwise?  If you’re not constantly resisting, is that really what you favor? 

And if that’s the thing, if Louis is this human person he’s created for himself, then, god, what do his decisions really, truly say about him? 

Sitting down next to Harry and Zayn at lunch that day, copying Zayn’s English homework every day of year eleven, staying home from school when his sisters got sick, deciding to join Harry on his cross Atlantic journey of self discovery, passing notes with Harry through every one of Ms. Carey’s lectures, staying home from the airport that day, sleeping for three weeks after missing his flight, going to uni, getting a job, paying his bills, developing his routine, spending hours on his hair a week:

Louis wonders at what point he stopped resisting. Sometimes he thinks maybe he never really started. 

“Can I get you lads anything to drink?”

And thank god, all of the gods, for Niall Horan, the Greatest Bro Louis Has Ever Known and Bartender Extraordinaire.

“If you could just get me some direct mouth to tap access, that would be fantastic, mate.” 

Louis is not even a little bit joking, but Zayn is oblivious and Niall gets it and Harry is laughter personified.

“So the usual for the laddy lad lad on the right,” Niall winks at him, turning to Harry. “You’ve never come in here before,” he accuses. 

Harry giggles. “I don’t believe I have,” he only stumbles a bit as he stands to make a little bow and holds his hand out for a shake. “Harry Styles.”

“Holy shit!  You’re Harry? What the fuckin’ hell, mate, get in here!” And Niall is leaning over the counter to wrap a still giggling Harry in a Signature Niall Hug ™. “I’ve heard way too much about you, I think.” 

“Jesus, don’t trust a word these assholes drop.”

“Oh yeah? Tommo isn’t to be trusted, eh?” Niall raises an eyebrow in Louis’s direction because yes. Niall knows a lot of things about Harry due to a whole lot of late nights nursing a beer long after Liam and Zayn have skipped off into various sunsets together. Louis is an emotional drunk, okay? But also, like. It wouldn’t really make sense for someone to know Louis without knowing Harry. And Niall knows Louis (a little too well, if you ask him). So there you go. 

“Fuck off, Nialler,” for some reason escaping him, Harry is finding the whole scene hilarious. Louis maybe needs to be more drunk.

It’s funny, the three of them together again.  The conversation flows easily between work (Harry rolls his eyes in Louis’s direction and Louis orders another drink), newly discovered restaurants (Niall takes out a notebook as Harry describes what he swears to be the absolute greatest kebab in the Occident), and their siblings (Harry’s dimples are in full display as Zayn tells him how Waliyha scored top marks last year), and it’s the same. It’s exactly the same. Which is nice, Louis supposes, but it doesn’t feel natural and it doesn’t feel real. 

He remembers sitting in the back of a science class one year, bored out of his damn mind and waiting for the clock to slowly reach lunch. Mr. Barnes was droning on about the solar system and gravity and time space continuums and Louis wasn’t in the habit of paying all that much attention in classes he shared with Harry, but, honestly, he was so bored he was forced to listen.

He remembers learning how the solar system is held in place by the gravitational pulls of many black holes, balanced between them. If one were to move a fraction of a centimeter, Gravity would shift and the solar system would shift and we’d all be nothing at all. It’s all chance, all of it. Louis remembers being so completely struck by this idea, overwhelmed by the likelihood of nothingness.

He can’t help but recall the drone of Mr. Barnes’s voice as he glances to his left at Harry’s profile, deep in conversation with Zayn about how he felt looking over the vast expanse of the world on top of a mountain somewhere in Colorado (“The mountains dared me to exist, Zayn! They’ll look you right in the eye and dare you.”), and Louis wonders if he’s ever been dared to do something so queer, so perverse, as exist.

The thing he was left thinking about, years after the lesson, is how if one had shifted, if just one black hole were to die, it would take years to even affect Earth at all. Geology itself would rocket toward a fate so far off from forever that the word would cease to exist and it would have no idea. 

A curl slips from Harry’s loose bun and he shakes it from his eyes, tucks it behind an ear.

Louis thinks maybe a black hole shifted six years ago and they’re only realizing it now.

He teeters a bit farther and his stomach drops as Gravity takes control.

He’s nursing his third (fourth?) beer when it happens. For a moment he thinks he’s imagining it, because Harry’s voice is even as he continues some story about getting trapped in a tornado with a bike and a backpack and a guitar and no shelter in sight. The curl stays behind his left ear, holding its place in their little universe.

He once read an article about phantom limbs, how after an amputation or losing a body part, people will continue to feel sensation in the area. Apparently it’s usually painful.

As Harry’s hand creeps slowly up his leg, feather light, Louis thinks he can sympathize. The tips of Harry’s fingers trace the inseam of his slacks, tip toeing above his knee, higher, higher, not high enough.

Harry is more delicate than he used to be. His hands, too big for his body, used to rake up and down Louis’s thighs, searching, desperate; this touch is a ghost of thousands of former touches, a phantom spirit drifting between them, wanting, wanting, wanting. Louis aches for enough slight touches to fill six years.

Louis loses track of the conversation after that, far too conscious of his proximity to Harry, of each brush of their arms or kick of their feet, the constant airy presence of long awaited ghosts drifting back and forth, up and down his slack-clad leg, running over the inseam and back.

The first time Harry did this was nine years ago, in the spring. It was the last night of the school year and half their year was squeezed into Harry’s step-dad’s bungalow, sipping beers stolen from parents’ liquor cabinets and dancing wildly to whatever Rihanna album had just come out. He was fifteen and his biggest fear was the day his marks would be delivered (lie. He just didn’t know it yet. Actually, hey – it was probably that night he first found out).

He remembers catching glimpses of Harry from across the dance floor, sweat sticking hair to his forehead as he leapt about in a way that should have been so much more clumsy than it was. He was laughing, always laughing back then (did he ever stop?), and he remembers the sound of it cutting through the air, over the music.

Harry’s voice, his laughter, his smell, the sunshine emanating from his very core have always cut through whatever it took to get to Louis.

He remembers realizing it that night, on his way to decidedly drunk, surrounded by dozens of other people, people he cared about, and seeing only Harry. He’s not sure how long he sat there before a glowing brightness indicated Harry’s approach.

“Hey.” (plopping down beside him)

“Harold.” (nuzzling into the warm inviting skin of his neck)

“Louuuu have you had enough to drink, Lou?  Are you having fun Lou?” (slurring) (resting his cheek on Louis’s head)

“Seems like you’re having enough fun for over there for the both of us.” (a nibble on a particularly sensitive pulse point)

(a yelp)

(silence) 

There were a lot of things Harry could have said during that hiccup of calm between the depth of Gravity and the endlessness of Time and the pressing inevitability of a Single Moment.

A list of things Harry could have said:

•       “Damn straight”
•       “Let’s dance”
•       “I’m going to bed”
•       “Is there anything that scares you more than the constant threat of being afraid?”
•       “I love you”
•       “Fuck inevitability”

What Harry did: 

Harry did exactly what he’s doing now, and, just as he does today, Louis’s brain had briefly short-circuited as Harry’s fingers ran along the inseam of his pressed and beer splattered jeans. Unlike today, Harry had been greedy; there was no mistaking this as anything but a grope. Unlike today, there are no ghosts to hide behind, no wounds healed and reopened more times than Louis can count to consider.

That night, less drunk than either of them pretended to be, there had only been Louis and Harry, Harry and Louis, two boys tripping up a flight of stairs, laughter from behind closed doors, eyes that glitter, mouths that taste of music—

Louis closes his eyes, shutting out Niall’s questioning glances and Zayn’s crinkled eyes as he listens to whatever Harry’s saying.

Zayn and Harry’s voices meld together in the air above Louis in a melody he could never improve on. 

It’s all kind of bullshit, he thinks, opening his eyes and smiling into his beer. Nine years later, and here they are again. Not much has changed. Or rather. Everything has.

And if it’s all kind of bullshit, then really, what’s once more?

His beer has long since gone flat, but he picks up the half empty (or full?) pint glass and throws it back.

Louis wishes he was done with this goddamn lying: with Harry, there will always be a once more.

“I missed my boys though,” Harry is saying, patting Zayn’s arm with the hand not currently searing its prints into Louis’s upper thigh. “It’s been too many years without my boys.”

“Aw H, are you getting sappy on us now?” Zayn teases, though they both know that Harry always gets sappy when he’s drunk.

They both know that though he’ll deny it until the day he dies, Harry snores like a train, that he wakes up each morning with a sniffle and a smile, that he flosses twice a day, and that try as he might, he’s never been able to fully color within the lines. 

And it’s funny, now, looking at this man in front of them, and seeing a boy.

“I’m just—“ (Harry hiccups) “There’s a lot here.”

And – yeah.  There are oceans between them and mountain ranges surrounding them and Louis can feel tectonic plates shifting beneath his unsteady feet, pulling them further and further apart by the heartbeat. There are countries of distance, but there are pages and maps and textbooks of shared histories, moments documented and carefully filed away and Louis can’t remember thinking complete thoughts before he thought of Harry. 

He glances up, and finds Harry’s eyes boring into his own, though all  his words over the past few hours had been directed toward Zayn.

“We – I – missed you too, Haz.” He shakes his head. It’s not the most eloquent he’s ever been, but as Harry’s eyes widen and his fingers grab for purchase, Louis feels a weight being lifted. He can do this.

It’s the most honest he’s been with anyone in six years.

Louis blinks, and the moment’s gone. The conversation moves forward, but Zayn is smiling at him over Harry’s head. “Did Lou tell you about the time he was detained by the aquarium during a field trip last year? In front of a full class of four year old students?” 

“There’s the Louis I remember!” He can tell Harry’s fighting a losing battle as he holds back laughter.

“Hold on, where’s any of the context?” Louis shouts, outraged, but Harry is roaring with giggles (full of contradictions, that man) and he can feel his eyes begin to crinkle up in the corners in that way he always hated, knew would make him prematurely wrinkled, but he can’t really be bothered to mind right now.

“Not sure even I’ve heard that one, Lou,” Niall pipes in, leaning over the counter, chin in his hands.

“Wasn’t my fault James dropped his inhaler into the penguin tank and Liam was too scared to send him home without it!”

Harry’s still giggling and Zayn’s shaking his head, and Niall is shouting at some customer who’s interrupting the story by trying to order a drink and it all feels so familiar, so predictable, and if Harry hadn’t been gone for the past six years he’d have been sure he lived this moment already.

It’s nice, in a way. In a lot of ways, if he’s being honest, and, like, he’s really trying to. Be honest, that is. With himself, first off. Maybe even with Harry. 

“Zayn-y boy, do you mind if Harry and I walk you home?”

Zayn’s eyes narrow: a question.  

Louis closes his own and nods: an answer.

It’s colder by the time they exit Puzzles, waving to Niall as they round the doorway. Louis shivers despite Harry’s warm arm over his shoulders and moves infinitesimally closer to the heat of another body. He’s not going to let himself think about the last time he did that with this particular body. He’s not. 

The wind is blowing, damp, and any other night Louis would probably give his plan up to the threat of storm, but. 

If Harry isn’t afraid of anything, he can be fearless, too (maybe not as much of a lie as it once was. It’s a start.).

No one speaks until they’re back in the tiny apartment, Zayn trailing Louis into his bedroom. They leave Harry standing by the door, and Louis is pretty confident Harry can entertain himself for another minute, but he’s really really not so sure he’s ready for this conversation. 

“Lou.”

“Zayn, don’t.” He’s on a mission, quickly shuffling through the shit on his floor to find a big enough backpack.

“But are you sure—“

“I haven’t seen him in six years, Zayn.” Under that armchair he and Zayn had found at that yard sale a few years back? He thinks he remembers unpacking from his last visit home right by it.

“Jesus I know that, but it doesn’t mean this is going to end any better for you, Lou.” 

He whirls around, angry, now. “What the shit is that supposed to mean?” 

“You know exactly what I mean! Babe, I want you to be sane and good. What are you trying to do here?”

“I’m being good, Zayn. This is as sane as I’ve been in, well, in about six years if I had to wager a guess.”

“Alright, Lou, sure, but—“

“Fucking don’t Zayn. I haven’t seen him in six years and we find each other in the street? How many other times has he been back to visit and we haven’t happened run into each other, hm? How many other times have you two gone off to catch up and you haven’t thought it was worth it to let me know, ‘hey, Lou, Harry, our best friend, y’know, the guy you spent every day with for seven fucking years of your life, the guy you’ve been in love with probably since you laid eyes on him, yeah, Harry who you haven’t spoken to in almost six years is in town.’” He’s breathing heavily now, shaking almost violently.

This isn’t. Louis doesn’t. He feels tendrils of control unraveling, slipping from his twitching fingers.

Deep breath: he reins it in.

Zayn doesn’t say anything, but he nods.

“If we had seen each other sooner, if we had fixed this after one year or two or. God.”

Zayn starts, looking up.  “Are you trying to fix this now?  Is that what this is?”

Louis doesn’t have an answer to that at the moment. Or at least. Not one he’s ready to verbalize into legitimization. “I missed him too, Zayn.”

“I know you did.”

“Every fucking day.”

“I know.” 

Louis sits on the edge of his bed. He smooths the comforter, hands itching. “You don’t need to take care of me.” (softer) 

(a pause)

“I should go.”

“He’s probably waiting,” Zayn agrees. 

(a nod)

“Zayn?”

“Yeah, Lou?”

“I’m. I’m so sorry. For everything." 

“Louis.” 

He looks up.

“Just. Be careful.” 

Louis nods, picking up the bag (out from under the armchair because, like, this is all a very organized mess, as he’s had to explain to his mum a few too many times).

Harry is standing in the kitchen, their old tent at his feet, and though Louis’s head is aching and his hands are shaking, he can’t help but smile because they always were able to communicate without words. 

He’s changed, but he hasn’t changed enough for it to matter, not really.

Louis gathers blankets, pillows, and a bottle of shitty £9 wine (there was a £5 option, but adults always go for the second cheapest option. You can quote him on that), making his way to the door. He doesn’t need to look back to know Harry is right behind.

It’s only an eleven minute journey to their final destination (four blocks away and a well practiced climb up to the roof of the used clothing store).

He and Harry had discovered it on his sixteenth birthday (eight years ago. Shit). Looking for somewhere to smoke the spliff Louis had been carrying around in his back pocket all afternoon and full on ice cream sundaes, they had stumbled upon the nearly empty parking lot, the industrial dumpster, the two story building.

Louis had led the way, clambering up the dumpster’s hinges (he’s very graceful, really, he is) and tiptoeing along its chute connecting it to the building itself. It had been a rare, sunny day as they had sat cross-legged, grinning at one another on the scorching rooftop, stories above the people rushing about their lives below. 

And, like, true, technically it was trespassing, but the sundaes and spliff hadn’t filled Louis up nearly as completely as the warmth of Harry’s smile.

Time was never so much of an asshole up on the roof of that long since abandoned thrift shop.

Louis has a lot of memories on this roof, but they’ve all seemed to blur together in whorls of wide smiles and red lips and barks of laughter and hands too otherwise occupied to cover it up.

He hasn’t come up here much over the past six years and everything is pretty much where they left it that night. If he can’t be arsed to clean his own flat there’s no way he’s going to be cleaning the remaining evidence of their last night up here (their last night ever, their last night until this night). 

Anyway, there are these empty bottles partly filled with rainwater arranged in an intricate labyrinth Harry had once spent hours creating, there’s the couch they lugged up here one day not too long after they discovered their spot (sweating and grunting and suddenly concerned with far more pressing matters than how to get a couch onto a roof) sitting primly beneath the billboard, looking out at the street below.

There’s a lot here, Louis knows, between them, but above the world, standing up there in their place, it doesn’t feel like too much. Louis glances to his left, sees Harry looking back, and he’s suddenly giddy with the silence.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it,” Harry offers, and Louis grins, echoing Harry’s sentiment from earlier.

“Too long.”

A clap of thunder shudders through the air around them and Louis glances up at the oncoming storm. Shit. They’ll need to set the tent up quickly if they don’t want to get completely drenched.

He hurries to pull out the waterproof fabric and poles from the bag on his back, quickly slotting them together and trying to hold the half assembled tent upright as it begins to reclaim its own shape. He’s had a lot of practice in terms of tent assembly, but it’s not balancing quite right and he can’t let go to push another pole through and he’s only got two hands for God’s sake!

Louis absolutely does not shriek in an entirely emasculating way as the tent slowly falls forward, pulling up the material around his feet and sending him flailing to the ground and Harry absolutely does not guffaw in response, folding over himself and holding his stomach in pain as Louis glares up at him (absolutely not looking even remotely like a wounded kitten. Absolutely not). 

(Harry absolutely does not laugh even harder as huge droplets of rain begin to fall around them.)

“Christ, Styles, try helping a man up, it’s the least you can do!”

In fairness to Harry, he does try - Louis has to give him that. He reaches a hand down to haul Louis to his feet, pulling him up so quickly it throws them both off balance and Louis finds himself, once again, sprawled out on the now wet roof.

Only this time he’s got a wet boy beneath him.

Harry, wanker that he is, hasn’t stopped laughing for a moment.

And it’s so fucking cliché, isn’t it? He’s got a wet boy below him and a roof to themselves and they’re aligned completely, head to toe, and it’s been six years but he’s amazed by how well they still fit and he’s taken a solidly hefty fall twice in the past sixty seconds but he can’t remember ever feeling quite so light. 

This isn’t a fucking movie, not in the slightest, and Louis isn’t about to let whichever God or Goddess is in charge of the weather and boys that smell like sunshine to dictate anything for him. However much he— 

You know what? No.

The now wet Louis jumps to his feet (he definitely does not slip), grumbling as he tries to remember which end of the tent goes where. He used to be really good at this.

All of this.

Harry, to his credit (or lack thereof), does absolutely nothing but laugh.

The thunder is almost directly overhead by the time Louis figures it all out, and maybe he should be scared, as they’re on a roof in the middle of a city and there’s lightning shocking the air around them to life, but they’ve brought an astounding number of blankets and pillows and sleeping bags, all stuffed into his overflowing backpack, and lying on top of them in their (mostly) dry haven, Harry beside him, Louis finds it difficult to do much of anything but smile.

There’s a moment, then, that they lie beside one another, listening to the rain, neither quite ready to break the silence. 

There have been so many nights just like this one, so many days like this day. So many times Louis has wished he could get lost with Harry.

And so many times he hasn’t. 

The tent itself is tiny, and Louis can almost feel the walls closing in, nudging him closer closer closer to the boy (man) lying next to him. Their arms brush, not quite the static of electricity it used to be, but somehow something bigger. Real. There. 

Years ago, back when they were smaller and this tent was so much more, they would lie intertwined, knowing where one ended and the other began (because like. Please. What a stupid cliché of a sentence fragment that would have been.), but not caring one bit.

(Closer

closer

closer)

And now here they are, too big for this three person tent, (Harry’s) limbs everywhere and trying to inch farther and farther apart.

But it’s there. And it’s real.

His skin throbs with it, the heart on his upper arm pulsing to a heartbeat that doesn’t completely line up with his own.

It lines up with the one he got inked on his skin a few years ago.

He remembers getting his first tattoo so clearly, holding tight to Harry’s hand as he got that stupid little skateboarder inked into his forearm so many years ago. 

It’s funny (ha, ha) in a way, that Harry hasn’t ever seen all the ink now imbedded Louis’s skin, big and small that he’s gotten over the past six years (things that made him remember and things that made him smile and things that made the past six years seem like no time at all), considering he’s wished he had that hand to hold each time he went in for a new one. Considering they’re the last evidence of Harry he’s got.

And Louis regrets a lot of things (not calling his mum when he said he would, keeping the apartment an absolute sty, losing this), but covering his skin with Harry has never been one of them.

“Hey, Lou?” 

“Yeah, Haz?”

“Your new tattoos are really fucking sexy.” 

Louis huffs out a laugh.  “Not so new anymore, are they?”

“Guess I wouldn’t know, would I?”

Louis nods.  Harry’s fingers trace over the ‘OOPS!’ he’s got scrawled beside the stick figure on his forearm. Louis unsuccessfully attempts to repress a shudder.

“I’ve still got mine, you know.”

Louis knows.  It’s not as if he ever thought Harry would cover it, even after six years, but. It’s nice to have confirmation. “Yeah.”

It’s the only tattoo Harry had before he left for the States. They’d gotten them together; oops and hi, Louis and Harry, HarryandLouis, the day before he had left. Back when it was still a ‘they’ that were leaving.

He sits up suddenly, pulling away from Harry and digging into the bag he had packed, pulling out the shitty wine and a box of Oreos. “Bout that time of night, innit?”

Harry grins, making grabby fingers in his general direction, expression so eager and eyes so genuine and so so so overwhelmingly Harry.

“Oh shit, wait. Fuck. Shit bugger.”

“Whaaaat Lou? I’m dying of thirst over here." 

“I’ve forgotten a bottle opener.”

And Harry (fucking wanker) opens is mouth up, all the way (and he’s got quite a large mouth. Louis knows it pretty damn intimately), filling their small tent with cackles. “Fuck, Lou, it’s perfect, it’s just like back—“ he interrupts himself to laugh at his own hilarity. Fucking Harry. 

But he’s right. He’s totally right.

It’s every night they were sixteen, never remembering a bottle opener until they’ve got a bottle of wine, it’s smashing the neck of a bottle against a fence and having it erupt all over them (“But, hey,” Harry had said, “at least we got one sip out of it, right?”), it’s being mature enough to fool the man who works behind the counter of the corner store that they’re old enough to be buying this, but not mature enough to have prepared any way to open it.

Lying next to Harry, laughing so hard his ribs hurt, Louis is sixteen again with a bottle of wine and no bottle opener, struggling to push the cork through with a pen. 

It’s a delicate procedure, but Louis is quite practiced, if he does say so himself.

Of course the wine gets everywhere, but somehow that’s just funnier and the sky is heavy with rain, but the air in their tent is light and smells more than a little like grass in the sun.

Harry smells like photosynthesis and Louis is pretty upset about it. 

Louis manages to push the cork through, still giggling. He tries to take a swig, but remembers too late the unfortunate phenomenon of floating corks blocking up the neck and Jesus Christ, if anything could bring back sixth form in its entirety it’s Harry right here in this moment.

Any and all heaviness has dissipated by the time a flustered Louis, covered in red droplets of if wine, finally manages his first gulp and hands the bottle over to Harry.  “Damn, didn’t we used to be so much better at this?”

“Drinking?” Harry giggles, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure my tolerance has taken a nose dive since then.” 

“Can hardly manage two beers before you’re set to be taken home, hm?” Louis teases, nudging him.

“Can you blame me?  Fit boys all over the world,” Harry says, but he’s looking right at Louis. 

“Speaking of, tell me about this Nick, Harry dear.” He manages to get his request just shy of casual.

Harry starts, as if he never expected Louis to ask, but you know what? First things first they were friends and Louis wants to know. He wants to know everything there is to know about Harry’s past six years. He wants to know Harry. 

“Dunno where to start, really. He’s a Brit too, been in New York for five years or so, but when I was ready to leave he decided to come with. Drop everything, see the world, fly like a bird and all that.”

Louis nods. Harry tends to have that effect on people. He knows that better than anyone, except maybe Nick.

“He’s um. It was great, traveling with someone else. Made everything more fun somehow. But I’ve left him in Seattle. He found someone there, decided to put down some real roots and, y’know, I didn’t, so.” Harry shrugs. 

“He met someone while you were… I mean while you two were… together? Shit, that’s cold.” Louis takes another sip and the bottle continues volleying between them.

Harry laughs. “Oh no it was never quite like that, I mean. Not ever really, for me. You know me, Lou. I was quite happy for him.”

“So it was… What?" 

“Just, y’know, traveling around, the two of us. Some cities there would be someone else and in some there wouldn’t be. It wasn’t really about that. It was always just about meeting new people for me, meeting new places, and meeting each other as a new person in each new place. He’s great, Nick.”

“Oh.”

Harry’s always been like this, bouncing around from person to person, letting whoever kisses him first kiss him but never really committing or initiating or doing anything but reciprocate and it’s been six years and Louis is.

Well. It’s not like Louis has changed all that much either.

He thought at one point, maybe he had.

“It’s almost like that now.”

Louis glances to his left and Harry isn’t blinking. There’s an intensity vibrating between them that wasn’t there before. Louis swallows. “What do you mean?”

“This, now. It’s the same city, but it’s different. Same people, but we’re meeting again. Same dynamic, but different words.”

Louis nods. He doesn’t have much to say to that.

Harry’s lips quirk upward, but his eyes don’t waver. “It could have been that, this, in every city, in every place, for us. We could have discovered each other a thousand times over. You know I wanted that from the start.”

“You know it’s not that I didn’t.” He could swear the tent has started shrinking again. 

“Why not, Lou? Why didn’t you join me? I waited at the airport, you know. I almost missed my flight, wouldn’t get on the plane until Zayn literally pushed me. I didn’t want to go without you. That wasn’t what I wanted." 

Louis closes his eyes. The air was so much lighter just a moment ago. A moment ago they were passing wine back and forth, laughing about Nick and whatever else and they’ve never done this before, talk about them. They’ve never been so good at that part, and Louis knows, he knows they would have been so much better off if he had just said, if they had just called, if they had just talked that first night at that first party.

There hadn’t been any talking that night. Just Louis grabbing Harry’s hand and pulling him up two flights of stairs, just Harry tripping over the last step and pulling Louis down with him. Just two boys who couldn’t even make it to a proper bedroom. 

Time and Gravity took a break that night, let a minute stretch into hours, let the two move closer together more slowly than a shift of tectonic plates, faster than the speed of light.

A brush of lips, open mouths and hungry tongues and messy messy messy yes yes this. 

Their first kiss; it was never mentioned again. 

It had happened again only a few weeks later (another party, drunk and fast and warm and safe). And again only a few days after that (sober, pulled into the handicap bathroom stall between classes, spark and tingle and hot and real).

After that it became a thing. Under the desk during class, after school studying in Harry’s room, on Louis’s living room couch before his mum got home, up on this roof every night that summer. Louis couldn’t keep his hands to himself and he knew, he knew neither could Harry. 

No one ever said a word about it, least of all them.

It became a thing, but it didn’t become the thing. The article makes all the difference, you know.

Louis can’t exactly blame him – that’s just who Harry is; he giggles in class and pirouettes on a dance floor and laughs so hard he snorts milk from his nose. He begs for reluctant laughs and excited shouts and “Harry, Harry, over here!” from across the lunchroom. He’s a brilliant light and they’re all circling moths.

Harry’s never made a first move in his life. He stands, a galaxy upon himself, as stars and asteroids and moons and planets and teachers and parents and friends and lovers encircle him, approach him.

Louis had always felt so lucky for every moment Harry tore his eyes from the dozens of others begging for his attention to wink in his direction, for every joke shared by them and only them, for every night on this roof. It’s not as if he was ever lacking for time with Harry.  What they were was different, it was something else, something Louis knew Harry didn’t have with any other, but shit was Harry passive.

Louis is pretty sure Harry has never, not once, initiated a first kiss. And that’s not. It’s not anything Louis has ever been able to relate to.

Things have never just happened for Louis. It’s been years of working as a waiter and studying and crying and fighting and a lot of laughing, too, but. But.

Harry’s dancing through life, like the fucking Wicked song.

Things just come so goddamn easily to Harry. And when they’re together, breathing the same air, blinking the same melody, Louis can almost believe he can dance, too. 

The thing is that he had always thought of Them (with a capital T because that’s just how big they were) as the most real thing to him. It never had been, of course, but that hadn’t ever really bothered Louis at the time.  He hadn’t needed to talk about it because he knew they would. He hadn’t needed to think because thought would happen eventually.

He had thought they were inevitable and for a minute there, they were. 

The thing about inevitability, though, is that, like, it isn’t magic. There’s no one who’s going to make a conversation happen, who’s going to make him cry and think and feel. Louis hadn’t worried, hadn’t bothered, hadn’t needed, but maybe he should have.

Maybe the force of that one fucked up black hole just reached Earth, and this is it. Louis is so fucking done. Done lying and done sleeping and just so, so done with the passivity associated with what was once inevitable.

Louis opens his eyes. Harry’s there, staring, waiting for him to begin. Louis hasn’t got a whole lot to say. 

“You know when you asked what I threw in the river earlier?”

“Yeah?”

“I lied.”

“You lied?”

“Yeah. I totally lied. I didn’t forget, I didn’t forget anything. It wouldn’t really be an issue, you know, except for how I keep lying, Harry. I keep fucking lying. And I don’t want to lie anymore." 

He’s quiet for a moment.  “What did you throw in the river, Lou?”

“I, erm, I wrote down ‘today’.”

Harry sucks in a breath.  “Today.” 

“Yeah.”

“You threw away today.” 

The air in the tent his heavy, thick, substantial.  Louis wonders for a moment how they’re breathing through this mass of concrete solidifying in his lungs because he knows. Harry knows. Louis knows Harry knows. Harry knows Louis knows he knows. He’s reminded suddenly of that Friends episode, the one where Phoebe finds out Monica and Chandler are fucking and they know we know they know we know and, god, he’s done with this game. He’s so goddamn done with this flirtation with the truth, this knowledge of another’s knowledge without any kind of confirmation.

He’s going for clarity, here. 

Louis doesn’t wait for confirmation, doesn’t bother to wonder about the fallout of his actions or what Harry might think or what he might say or what he might do.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. 

He moves forward slowly: an offer, one Harry can still refuse, though Louis refuses to consider what it may mean if he does.

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about these transitional moments most days of the past six years. And he’s done lying, so, so done with the lying to himself, to Harry, to Zayn. He thinks back to just this morning, to leaving work sick. To Liam. He’s thought about this most days of the past six years.

And as he closes his eyes, moving inching his head closer, Louis knows, knows exactly what’s about to happen, knows it’s going to be reciprocated.

They’re only a heartbeat apart, and Louis can feel the heat of Harry’s lips on his own, so close, just the two of them in their tent of histories.

Two boys, one tent. It’s right out of what could very possibly be the greatest porno of their generation. Not that Louis is saying he and Harry could make the greatest porn of their generation, he’s not trying to dis any aspiring stars out there or anything, but, like, if he remembers correctly (and he does, there’s no way he could forget this (trust him, he’s tried)), they might just have a fighting chance. 

Louis is giggling before he can even stop himself, tipping that last half inch forward until their lips press together, warm, soft, easy, and he wishes he could say there were fireworks and explosions and hormones and he was instantly hard, but he’s honestly got no idea.  He’s too busy giggling.

Which is, like, probably pretty fitting.

“What,” Harry doesn’t say it like a question and he doesn’t pull away, murmurs it against Louis’s mouth, doesn’t separate them for a moment. “What could possibly be so funny right now in this of all moments, Lou?” 

Louis is the one who pulls away, just for a second, and it’s funny because if it had been Harry to stretch the distance he probably would have claimed it as some kind of metaphor for something. It’s a nice reminder, that sometimes it doesn’t always have to mean anything more than it is. Sometimes it really is just a stupid joke and chapped lips and giggles.

“Two boys, one tent,” he’s still giggling, but not quite hard enough to make his words completely unintelligible. 

It doesn’t even take Harry a moment to transition from the heavy layers of want that had suffocated the tent just a moment before to this giddiness that’s bubbling up and out of Louis now. Harry laughs, making his voice an octave deeper, which, like, is more of a feat now than it may have been six years ago. “Stranded in the snowy woods for the night with nothing but a tent and the flannel on their backs for warmth.” 

“However will these two strapping young men spend the time?” Louis finishes, and they’re both full out laughing now, though he’s not sure at what. It wasn’t that funny of a joke, not funny enough that he should be falling back on their bed of pillows and blankets, unable to breathe, but, well, here he is. 

It had never been like this before, had never been light and careless and easy. It had never, ever been easy.

Louis remembers the heaviness, the desire and love and, god, whatever else he had felt at the time, so much sometimes he had trouble thinking complete thoughts, had trouble breathing and pumping blood from arteries to veins. Harry had sometimes been so all-consuming he forgot he needed oxygen. 

It had been like that the first time they ever fucked, in Louis’s bed after school before his mum got home from work one Tuesday afternoon. He remembers Harry’s long, slow fingers deep inside, remembers his bruising kiss and thinking he should probably breathe but not wanting to stop, never, never wanting to waste a moment on something as inane as breathing.

They hadn’t been very good just yet, had known the basic mechanics, but hadn’t fully understood the process. Even then it had been a lot, but, later, it was so, so much more.

They had gotten so much practice over those last two years together, so many awkward fumbles and lingering touches and the slow lessons on each other’s bodies and orgasms, so, so many orgasms.

That’s the thing about being a seventeen year old guy fucking another seventeen year old guy: you’re completely on the same page, orgasm-wise.

Which was what it had been, Louis reminds himself. However many late nights filled with muted whispers and slow moving hands, however well he may have understood the meaning behind every possible intonation of a moan, every blink Harry may have given, that’s all it had been then. Sex.

And it had never been even what it is now. It had never been lighthearted laughter with breaks for tickles. 

It’s somehow harder to think of it as just sex (not that it had been especially easy before) when you’re covered in sticky wine and joking about porn. When you’re laughing so hard you don’t even remember how to kiss and the tent is lit up by street lamps and you’ve hit your head on the cold cement ground but it doesn’t even matter because you’re covered in blankets and kisses and you’re laughing, laughing, laughing.

When Harry’s kissing you slow and deep and it’s hard to remember what it had once been like, what anything had once been like, hard to think about anything but this and here and now.

It’s definitely familiar – not a first kiss by any means. Louis knows this mouth, knows it so well, knows exactly how Harry will moan when he bites at his bottom lip or how he’ll push forward whenever Louis leans away for a breath. When Louis moves to nibble along his jawline, he’s not at all surprised by the way Harry’s breath stutters to a halt. 

It’s like, Louis knows this mouth, but he doesn’t know this Harry. Harry sweeps his tongue inside Louis’s mouth, tilting Louis’s head upwards and tugging a bit at the longer hairs at the nape of his neck, twisting his tongue just so and – oh that’s new.

Louis thinks this may have been what Harry had been talking about. Relearning every aspect of someone in each new place, in each separate moment. There’s a chill to it, an underlying layer of trust with an air of excitement that hasn’t always been there. He thinks he may get it now. The appeal, that is.

Because, right, he’s the same old Harry, same lips same tongue same fingertips same giggle. This Harry, though, he’s not quite Louis’s Harry, but he is somehow so undeniably Harry’s own essence, and, like, it’s hard to reconcile those two. It’s hard to conflate his own bumbling lovely Harry with this assertive man.

This man who is so capable of taking control, of physically moving Louis where he needs him to be (laying on the floor of their tent, a blanket stretching over Harry’s back, encasing them, creating an insular tent within a tent. Two boys, one blanket.), of knowing exactly how this whole thing goes. 

This man who only breaks their kiss to rip off first his own shirt and then Louis’s, throwing them off to some far corner of their warm tent, which, really, couldn’t possibly be very far at all. And Louis can feel warm skin on warm skin and heat everywhere and this is all so very real he can hardly stand it. 

Whenever Louis has pictured this (and, shit, if he could count the amount of times he’d pictured this, he’d be, well, a goddamned liar) he’d seen the old Harry, his Harry, in a man’s body. And he’s been wrong, he’s been so wrong, for expecting that old Harry to wait for him, to let his body grow around him.

For all Harry’s desire to cling to his childlike independence, he’s grown up a lot, and it hasn’t been clearer than it is right here, right now, in the way he’s relentlessly kissing the coherence from Louis’s lips.

And boy oh boy, man oh man, is Louis glad he was wrong.

Because if he thought he’d felt want every other time all those years ago, it’s nothing compared to this overwhelming need. He can feel it behind his eyelids, in his heartbeat, in each skin cell Harry brushes against, can feel it in whatever is struggling to maintain a grip on his literal soul. He needs this so much he doesn’t even care he’s resorted to using literally instead of figuratively. Louis needs this. Literally. 

Harry deepens the kiss, tilting Louis’s head up a bit more until the angle is just right and Louis is right there with him, matching every swipe of the tongue with a bite of his own.

It’s such a practiced conquest, a mindless repartee. God, how he’s missed this.

Harry shifts so that Louis can feel him against his thigh and his brain stutters in time with his hips. There are four layers of clothing between them (he assumes), but he’s suddenly having trouble thinking clear thoughts apart from Harry Harry Harry. 

For his part, it doesn’t seem like Harry’s having an easier time of it and he begins to pull at Louis’s zipper. “Please, please, Lou,” 

Louis can’t be blamed for letting out a moan at the nickname (or for the way he nods semi-hysterically and moves to help Harry undo the zip and shove his trousers to his knees) (he doesn’t miss Harry’s big hands drifting and lingering over his (unfortunately) still cotton clad arse). 

Expecting to find only two layers now between them, Louis looks up to find a very determined Harry wrestling with his own skintight jeans. His stupid little eyebrows crease together as he wriggles and kicks on top of their makeshift bed, his now free (and hard, oh so very hard) cock bouncing with every movement and Louis would love to make a joke about how presumptuous Harry was to be tottering around all night with no pants on, but it’s been a few moments now and Harry is becoming closer and closer to what can only be described as disgruntled. 

It’s really easy to idealize Harry. Not just for Louis, even - it would be easy for anyone. The idea of Harry is sometimes overwhelming, just, this guy, this bigger than life boy, but it’s moments like these, moments when Harry is half naked and grumpy because he bought jeans a solid two sizes too small that he, and really, they, their whole relationship, is so incredibly humanized it’s hard for Louis to breathe with the reality of it all.

Somewhere, deep below the earth’s surface, tectonic plates shift back into place.

It may also be hard to breathe as he’s once again dissolved into giggles (giggles he will absolutely positively never admit to). 

“Heeey,” Harry whines, and the look in his wide eyes is so betrayed Louis can’t help but laugh even harder.

“Hey, have you ever tried a lotion and baby powder combo on these bad boys?” he winks as he moves to help Harry.  

Harry lets out a grin, dimples and all.  “I would, but I’d be worried it would combine to make a paste,” he squeaks the last word, a la Ross Geller.

They’re both giggling now and Louis’s mind flashes to hours (days, really) spent curled into one another on the beanbag chair in Harry’s den as Friends plays on the TV before them.

The Concept of Laughter has been one that has pretty consistently orbited around Louis’s consciousness throughout his life.  It’s his end goal in the vast majority of conversations he’s had and he likes to surround himself with people who appreciate a good laugh the same way he does.

But Louis doesn’t think he’s ever laughed with someone the way he’s laughed with Harry.

Out of all the people he’s laughed with, who he’s made laugh, he doesn’t think he’s heard any laughter more beautiful than Harry’s as he lies on the floor of a tent, dick out and completely hard, eyes dark with lust and bright with nostalgia as he throws back his head and laughs the exact way he did when they were sixteen in a den while Monica and Rachel argued above them. 

The jeans come off much more easily with Louis pulling and Harry squirming and Louis suddenly finds himself face to face with a completely naked Harry Styles.

Harry stretches luxuriously and Louis is sure he’s making fun of the way Louis is staring but he just can’t make his eyes stop raking over the expanse that is Harry’s torso and, god, he knows he saw the planes of his chest earlier by the river, but this, the way the butterfly on his chest shifts with his every movement, how his laurel tattoos scoop easily into the V of his hips directing his eyes down, down, down to the cock that is so clearly on display.  Louis knows his eyes are comically wide and he’s not sure when he last blinked, but he’s got this man in front of him, all long legs and tanned skin and easy movement and, really, who could blame him? 

His hand reaches out, almost beyond his control and skims down Harry’s side, brushing over his ribs and the dip of his waist and Harry’s breath hitches, his façade of nonchalance stuttering as skin brushes skin and neither of them are laughing anymore.

Louis sends up a quiet thanks, bro to Time as she slows down to a crawl.

A drop of precome drips out from Harry’s slit and Louis licks his lips in anticipation.  He doesn’t have the brainpower to comprehend how he lightly touched Harry’s hip and his dick started dripping. Louis files this essential piece of information away for future musing and instead slowly lowers himself until he’s at face level with Harry’s cock. 

It’s bigger than it used to be, for sure. Which, god, as good as it was before, Louis suddenly can’t wait to find all the other ways Harry has changed. 

“Hello again, lil bud,” he gives the tip a kiss hello and Harry giggles into the fist he’s been biting down on in anticipation. “Long time no see.”

“Not so little,” Harry grumbles (and he’s right, it’s not), but Louis takes no satisfaction out of the way Harry’s words die in his throat as Louis takes him all the way down (correction: he takes so much satisfaction. He takes all of the satisfaction). 

Louis loves sucking cock. Loves the heaviness in his mouth, the way the tip feels as he swirls his tongue around it, the tightening in his throat as he bobs deeper, faster, more. He loves sucking cock even more when whoever one is on the receiving end is as responsive as Harry is being now, gasping and moaning and “Lou, Lou, Lou”-ing. 

He can feel himself filling up as he sucks Harry in deeper, can feel drips of his own come seeping through his pants and he can’t help but moan around the cock in his mouth.

He squirms, trying to resist touching himself until it’s absolutely necessary and, just when he deems it crucial to his basic functioning, Harry pulls away from his mouth and flips them over, yanking at the waist of Louis’s pants. Louis can’t rush to assist him in any way possible fast enough.

And then they’re lying there, completely naked, Harry on top of Louis, rutting into his hip, dick still wet from Louis’s mouth making the slide oh-so-smooth.

There’s warm skin everywhere and tightness somewhere behind his belly button as Harry reaches down to fully grip him (for the first time in six years) and hands are everywhere: twisting a nipple and pulling at his dick and kneading his ass and inching closer closer closer to his hole and 

“Is this okay?” Harry pulls away from his mouth to ask and

“Please, please,” Louis whispers in response.

And the tip of Harry’s finger is already inching in wet with lube and

“Fuck, Harry, did you bring lube?” 

“A boy scout always comes prepared, Lou,”

And when Louis closes his eyes he sees Harry completely naked but for a fully patched sash, so proud and so, so beautiful and he loves this boy so, so much. “Presumptuous,” Louis mutters, but he’s grinning and can’t even begin to be arsed to hide it as Harry’s finger slides in and out and there are two, then three, and he’s moaning into Harry’s shoulder, biting and sucking at his collarbone and he can only just feel his orgasm building, he’s arching into it when suddenly Harry’s fingers are gone and he’s left rutting shamelessly against smooth skin and (though he’ll never admit it, ever, you hear him?) Harry will later swear that Louis begs (and he won’t exactly deny it).

Harry reaches behind Louis to find his discarded jeans, pulls a condom from one of the pockets and holds it up, waggling his eyebrows.  “All systems go?” he winks.

Louis rolls his eyes, reattaches his mouth to Harry’s in response, but he’s smiling.  He was obviously, always, going to be all systems go for anything involving the boy on top of him, but it’s nice Harry’s keeping up the illusion that any of this was anything but inevitable.

And there it is again, right, inevitability. Fucking asshole (get it? Get it?  Because that’s what’s about to—you know what? I’m sure you get it.). The thing is that this, this fucking (however mind shattering) without talking or acknowledging or anything, really, is inevitable. It’s exactly what had been going on six years ago.

Right now though, as Harry slowly rolls on the condom and begins pushing in, bending down to connect their mouths once again as Louis’s nails dig into the meat of his shoulders, it’s a bit harder to think of anything but the stretch and push and right there and please of it all. 

So he doesn’t.  Louis resolves to just not think about anything but how this is what he’s been missing for six years, this moment just past the liminal where there’s no transition or hesitation or possibility, there’s just this. 

There’s just Harry rocking into him surely and Louis thrusting up, matching his rhythm and urging him on, there’s heavy breathing into each other’s mouths because they can’t concentrate on tongues when there’s so much more going on here.

Not that it comes as a surprise to anyone, but Louis is a bit of a talker in bed. He loves seeing the way his words can affect others and, frankly, he’s damn good at dirty talk. But tonight it’s just downright embarrassing.  It’s like he can’t stop, can’t control it, and he’s not even sure if the words he’s babbling even make sense or follow any kind of logical train of thought. Though they’re way past logic here, he supposes. Have been for a while now. 

“Yeah, babe, right there, you know me so well, no one does this like you, so good babe, feels so good to have you in me again, theretherethere, can’t wait to feel this tomorrow, feel you tomorrow, please make me feel you tomorrow,”

Harry complies and he’s everywhere, hands petting at his skin, fingers scratching through his hair, thrusting into him, breathing in time with him, whimpering in response to Louis’s encouragements, forcing himself into every aspect of each of his senses. 

“Yeah, babe, come on,” Louis mutters.

“God,” Harry grunts out between thrusts, “did you just make a pun with my dick inside you?” He thrusts harder, recapturing Louis’s lips in his own and Louis is suddenly so sure that he doesn’t have a single cell on his body Harry hasn’t touched.

They both come laughing.

There’s a silence in the aftermath, but it’s comfortable, just a stillness in the air as they trace the come splattered over Louis’s stomach.  Harry draws a smiley face with semen and Louis wants to kiss him, so he does. 

They’re quiet and Harry closes his eyes, clearly thinking. There isn’t much in Louis’s mind besides a general wonderment at what might be in Harry’s. If this were a short story that would probably be some kind of symbolism. 

He doesn’t need to wonder for long before Harry opens his mouth, shuts it, tries again.

“You, erm,” he pauses, “you threw away today.”

Right. Louis supposes just going in for the kiss was maybe not quite as clear as he could have been, but, fuck, it’s hard. Words are fucking hard, you know? And, like, however much he’s grown or whatever in the past six years (Harry keeps insisting that he has and who is Louis to argue, really, at this point?) this shit is real and this shit is scary. Though, like, logically, what’s he actually got to lose here?  Another six years of radio (or any kind at all, really) silence? It’s not like he hasn’t survived it before.

And though he’d much rather lie in his post orgasm haze and draw pictures in the come on his chest, wrapped in warm blankets and warm arms, this question, this conversation is really the only inevitability that’s ever existed. It’s so clear to Louis, right here, right now, in this moment, in this tent, that there’s never been any inevitability between he and Harry at all. There have only ever been two boys who have been so incredibly bad at communication and a desperation for something he can’t even be sure exists. The only inevitability for Louis has only ever been this fear and, god, what a shitty realization to have when he could be fucking this naked warm boy who’s still latched onto his side like some kind of koala. 

But the point still stands, right? That this fear, this whatever’s been going on in his head for the past ten plus years is just inevitability and the hard part, whatever is coming next, is what he’s been pretending has been written in the stars. The stars never wrote shit, but Louis probably maybe can.

So this time Louis doesn’t even pause for a deep breath in, deep breath out (would that even be possible? Where the fuck is all that oxygen?). Not this time. No hesitation. No lying. No. He’s real and he’s here and, “I didn’t want to live in the moment, Harry. I never wanted to live in the moment. I wanted a real future with stability and a dog and 2.5 kids and, erm, you. I wanted tomorrow with you.”

Silence. That’s it. He said it. Very calm, very collected, very real. He’d give himself a nice little pat on the back if he wasn’t busy analyzing every move Harry makes, every twitch, every blink, every breath. Pats on the back can wait for later – Zayn will definitely be up for a congratulatory pat on this one.

Harry doesn’t stay a word, eyes wide. Mouth slack. Louis can suddenly feel the sweat between their bodies and it doesn’t feel cozy anymore. It’s cold and a little bit icky. He wants a shower.

“I want to be young and carefree and happy with you, Harry, and I mean. I wish I could travel and discover you over and over again in different places as a different person, but I can’t. I don’t want to discover a new you every day, I want something real and something we can talk about and I want Zayn to be able to say your name around me and I want to be able to shout from the rooftops what I want. I want to stop fucking lying."

“I don’t know what to say, Louis.” He sounds further away, his voice echoing around the tent. Louis hadn’t known that was a thing that was possible, for words to echo around a space with nothing to reverberate against, but hey. He’s learning a lot of things tonight.

“Say what you’re feeling, Harry. I mean, shit, it’s been six goddamn years, does it not-“ he breaks off as his voice cracks. Oh god. Breathe, Louis, breathe. “How does it feel to see me again because for me it feels a hell of a lot like it did six years ago.”

Harry’s shaking his head, moving further, moving closer, he’s everywhere and Louis knows that doesn’t make sense, he knows it, but he can’t really make sense of much at the moment. They’re both completely naked and he’s suddenly very conscious of that. “How do I feel?  I feel like it’s great to catch up, I feel like, like, like it’s fucking ace to see you again.” 

“It’s fucking ace to see me again? That’s what I get, Harry? I confess my love and it’s really ace to see me again?”

The second time he’s ever said that out loud. Love. He’s confessed his love.

“What the hell do you want me to say, Lou? That it’s what I wanted, that it’s what I want as well? That I’m ready to settle down and adopt and whatever the hell else comes along with that? Because I’m not, Louis. I’m not ready for any of that, I don’t want any of that, you know I don’t want any of that, you know it.”

“I don’t know shit, Harry. I’m not sure if you recall, but we’ve never actually discussed what I may or may not have wanted before.”  Louis’s voice cracks when he gets to Harry’s name and god, he hates himself for that. 

“I made it clear, Louis. I made it so clear. I’m not the one who fucking lied. It is what it is with me and this, this is it. This is me. It’s this you I don’t know.”

“You know me.” His voice is quieter than he wants it to be. He’s done lying, he should be celebrating, not. Whatever it is he’s doing right now.

“I don’t know you, Louis. You’ve changed. I can see you’ve changed.”

“That doesn’t need to be a bad thing, Harry. I haven’t changed in the ways it matters. You know me. You know me better than anyone,” he’s almost whispering by the end and he hates this, hates himself for the way his voice tilts up at the end of his sentences, the way he’s pleading.

“It is a bad thing. There’s so much more to do, so much more to experience. Why the fuck would I stop now when I haven’t seen South America?” 

And Louis isn’t really sure what to say to that. He’s not South America. He can’t give Harry South America and maybe this is what it was about all along. He was a pit stop on this world tour Harry’s been on and the fucked up thing, the thing that’s so fucked up beyond belief is that he’s not even so disappointed. 

The most fucked up thing of all is that in a way (in a few ways) he’s grateful to be a pit stop. He’s glad Harry bothered to stop for him.

Neither of them speaks for a moment and he doesn’t remember this tent ever being so painfully silent. No rustle, no giggle, just. Quiet.

He’s content for some reason he can’t quite figure out. Just feels good to have it all out there, maybe. Verbalized. Legitimized. It’s not that Harry doesn’t feel it too, but just that it’s not enough.

Louis gets that, in a way, wonders what his South America is, if he’s been there yet.

Neither one of them say anything just yet, and Louis can’t remember the last time he blinked. Can’t remember looking up and seeing anything but an empty bottle of wine and the blue walls of the tent and Harry, Harry, Harry. 

“You, erm, you never said what you threw in that day,” he offers once he can breathe again, a whisper, a truce, an understanding, a question.

Harry doesn’t respond. They’re touching everywhere, but neither moves to change that. It’s silent, but it doesn’t feel like a transition and (somewhere in the back of his mind) he knows he should feel really shitty about this, but right now he’s just relieved. Relieved Harry’s still here and relieved he can think and remember and feel and live the truth of whatever this, whatever his memories are.

He can’t take his eyes off of Harry’s face and they’re getting dry from lack of blinking and he can’t quite focus on any one thing, Harry’s own eyes floating in and out of focus.

He remembers the first time they did this, the first time they fucked like this in Louis’s bed before his mum came home from work, remembers the way his arse still ached as they lay staring at one another in his twin bed with the flannel sheets that had space ships on them, not speaking. They had fallen asleep that way, wrapped up in flannel and each other, and had only awoken when they heard his mum’s car turning into the driveway and had leapt out of bed in a haste to look somewhat close to put together by the time she came inside. 

Louis must fall asleep remembering it because when he next opens his eyes, it’s morning and Harry is gone.

He can’t exactly say he’s surprised when he wakes up to find only the indentation of another body next to his in their pile of blankets. It’s completely preserved in the stale morning air of their tent. It makes Louis a bit uneasy: the idea that he’s been breathing in Harry’s air in his sleep long after Harry himself had left.

Which, judging by the crisp coolness of Harry’s side of the tent, was a long while ago. In all honesty, he probably hadn’t ever even drifted off beside Louis.

He’s not surprised, but he balks a bit in retrospect at how comfortable and trusting he was to let himself be vulnerable enough to sleep beside Harry, even after their fight.

Louis decides to chalk it up to a post orgasmic haze and goes about pulling his dirty clothes back on, taking the tent down, packing up and shoving blankets and pillows into his oversized backpack.

It’s a much quicker process without the wind and the rain and the cackling boys. And that’s not surprising either, that he’s much more suave and skillful with no one around to impress.

The strap of his bag digs into his shoulder as he climbs down and begins the walk (four blocks) back to his apartment, back to Zayn, and he tries to focus on that, to feel the way it seems to cut through the material of his dress shirt and into his skin.

God, he’s still in his work clothes from yesterday morning. Something about that is funny, but he doesn’t really care enough to figure out what it is exactly.

He tries to appreciate that it’s a Saturday morning, as he doesn’t think he’s quite up for even a call in to tell Liam he’s still ill.

Funfact!—and he’s not sure just where he learned this one, but Louis definitely heard somewhere at some point that your skin cells are constantly dying, right? And that on average it takes seven years to regrow all completely new skin.

It’s funny to think that maybe he almost made it to existing as a whole new person, completely separate from Harry. In just another year, Harry never would have touched any of the cells he would have been built from. 

He’s not sure if that’s something he may have wanted, but it’s pretty irrelevant given how it took one day for Harry to completely consume him.

Louis sighs, shifts so that his backpack pushes harder into his shoulder, tries tries tries to concentrate on the jostle with each step as he climbs the stairs up to his apartment.

The apartment is just as they had left it the night before, not that he expected anything to be different. It’s early, he realizes, long before anyone in their right mind would have woken up. Long before his usual 7:20.

The living room is silent, cold, and he’s more aware than he ever remembers being of the long shadows that creep along the edges of the floor and behind the old ripped couch. Obviously he’s never been awake at whatever time this is sober before, but, still. There are lots of shadows. It’s moderately spooky.

Louis decides to blame it on the spook when he drops his bag on the living room floor and trudges off to Zayn’s bedroom (is trudge the right word there? He feels too unsettled to slink, but too light and inconsequential to plod).

Zayn’s still asleep when Louis gets to the doorway, spread out across his bed and snoring softly into his pillow. Louis smiles, tiptoes around so as not to wake him up, and slides in beside his friend under the warm comforter. 

Zayn shifts, rolling over to scoop Louis into his arms, and murmurs something soft into Louis’s neck. Louis doesn’t quite hear what it is, and honestly it was probably something from whatever dream Zayn is having, but it doesn’t really matter. He cuddles closer, holding Zayn’s arms tight around his torso, and feels himself sink into the familiar mattress, the warmth of someone else’s body heat.

He lets himself be fully enveloped in the completeness of another person. He can’t tell if he’s more grateful or shocked that he’s still capable of doing this with someone other than Harry.

When Louis wakes up for the second time that morning, Zayn is playing with his fringe and staring intently into his sleepy blinking eyes. 

Noticing Louis has awoken, Zayn greets him with a kiss to the forehead and a “morning, babe,” whispered into his skin, and they’re really very close, but Louis moves in closer, tucking his head under Zayn’s chin as he hums in response. 

Zayn’s fingers move from his fringe to the back of Louis’s head, scratching gently at his scalp and twirling the strands between his fingers.

Louis wonders briefly how many times Zayn has done this exact act, played with the hair of, scratched at the scalp of, a sleepy mopey Harry. He wonders how many times he could have done this with Harry, too, listened to Harry’s stretching and knuckle cracking as he woke up, carded his fingers through the wavy strands.

He’s not really sad about the missed opportunities, per se. He’s living his life. So is Harry. When he thinks it’s okay, he’s not deluding himself. He really truly genuinely means that.

Maybe not quite genuinely. Maybe he only really truly means that.

He two-thirds means it. But like, that’s more than half. That’s significant. That’s something.

“You ready to talk about it?” Zayn asks, and no, no he is not, but Louis thinks that if he says ‘no’ one more time in whatever his entire garbage life has become, he’ll vom. He’s a yes man now. Just call him Jim Carrey.

“I miss him, Zayn.” 

Zayn hums noncommittally and Louis thinks maybe that’s been the problem all along. It’s funny to think about how much of his life Louis has spent moping, not committing. It’s weird to imagine how much of his life he’s spent doing any one act, really, but moping in particular. God, what a waste.

“I’ve missed him for so long.”

“You didn’t get your fix over the past 24 hours?”

Louis doesn’t dignify that with a response because, like. There is no such thing as a finite fix of Harry. He figures Zayn gets it as his friend pulls him in closer in response. Or rather, in response to the non-response. Whatever. Zayn can be very cuddly when he wants to be and really, right now, that’s about all Louis can ask for.

“I think it’s just made me miss him more, if it’s even possible,” Louis’s voice is a few decibels softer when he speaks again. He can’t tell if it’s a lack of Harry in his general vicinity that just places and all around piano on his life as a whole, or if it’s Harry’s presence that creates a forte effect. 

“You’ve gotta stop giving him chances, babe.”

“It’s not—I’m not giving him chances,” Louis mumbles into Zayn’s collarbone. “It’s not as if he knew any of it until last night.”

Zayn pulls away sharply. “What—He didn’t know? He didn't know you're mind numbingly in love with him? This whole time?” 

Louis starts at the sudden lack of heat cocooning his body. He curls further into himself, a last ditch effort to retain any of it at all. 

“I can’t believe, oh fuck I was so sure it was that night—“ 

“What night?” 

“The night before he left without you. Fuck, Lou, the night before I found you crying in my bed in the morning and we had to spend the rest of the week figuring out late registration for uni, fuck I can’t believe you never told him!”

“I just, I couldn’t, Zayn, but, god, last night I did, and—“

“What was it then?”

“What was what?”

“What was it that had you crying in my bed, Lou? Why the hell didn’t you go with him?” It’s rare, to have Zayn get like this. Louis knows that normally, he can say just about anything without warranting any kind of reaction from his friend. It’s probably something to do with the years spent rolling his eyes and smiling softly at Harry and Louis’s antics. That, or just a built-in superhuman kind of Louis-resistance type thing.

Either way, Louis is having trouble remembering the last time he saw Zayn this agitated. It was possibly that Friday a year or two ago when they had arrived at their usual spots at the bar a half hour later and a couple had been sitting on their stools. Liam had asked them politely to move down and the guy had pushed him and Zayn had punched the guy. It had become a whole cycle of honor-defending and at the time, Louis had found it hilarious. It’s less funny now, as he avoids Zayn’s fierce eye contact. Louis winces in newfound sympathy for the poor punched guy that night.

“I don’t. It’s not. I couldn’t, Zayn, I fucking tried, okay? I tried to be carefree and easygoing and adventurous and happy and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fucking do it.” Louis remembers that morning, remembers lying in that tent next to Harry, sweating and shaking through the night because he couldn’t sleep he couldn’t think he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t do it. 

He couldn’t leave the country indefinitely, without a job or even a desire to get one, without his mum and his sisters, without a plan, without safety or even (though this thought wasn’t one he had let fully form at the time) guaranteed love.

It had been what Harry had wanted, to leave while he could, to travel and experience and explore and it’s a feeling Louis has wondered about periodically over the past six years. A world in which home wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t that Louis didn’t want those things, too, it’s just that.

Maybe he never was willing to give up everything for Harry.

Maybe Harry had never been enough of a home for him.

Maybe that’s okay.

Louis wonders, suddenly, if that’s what he has been expecting of Harry. If he has been wandering around all these years, waiting for Harry to come back and make him a home.

“I don’t even know who I am, Zayn,” Louis blinks up at the dust drifting through the Saturday morning light streaming in through the window and remembers sitting on that bathroom floor only twenty four hours ago, watching the dust swirl in the air around him and wishing he could join them in their aimless journey. He’s suddenly so, so glad he’s planted firmly on the ground. “How could I have not bothered to wonder who I am for six fucking years?” He can hear his Yorkshire accent getting heavier as he talks. Rein it in, boy.

Zayn seems to sense the shift in tone and breathes in deeply, out slowly. He pulls Louis closer and places a medium strength kiss on his temple. “You’re Harry’s Louis, but you’re also your Louis.”

It sounds so simple when Zayn finishes it off with another kiss, this time one that he smacks onto Louis’s forehead. Louis smiles at him, can feel his eyes crinkling and sun glinting. “Am I also your Louis?" 

Zayn nods solemnly. “You’re that Louis, too.”

And then he’s giggling and Zayn is giggling, too, and it’s a Saturday morning and Louis is warm and next to his best friend and he’s laughing and that, right there? Regardless of whatever continent Harry’s on, that’s amazing.

Everything is a lot more clear. Louis feels like he’s just snapped out of a six year long hazy hallucination and oh, god, he can’t believe he let another person slip him into that emotional coma.

It’s one thing to miss, even to miss so deeply it sometimes feels like it’s tied directly to your very essence, and another to forget your solitary experiences have got some value, too. The line doesn’t seem quite as fine as it did yesterday.

Louis sits up, stretches, and it feels something like how you always expect to feel the morning of your birthday or January first, but never quite do. He feels new, squeaky clean, though he hasn’t showered since yesterday morning and has been both rained on and come on since. 

“D’you want some brekkie?” he asks Zayn, yawning, moving to the edge of the bed and letting his toes dip over the edge to feel out the cold floor.

“Always,” Zayn mumbles into his pillow, moving to take over Louis’s now vacant side of the bed.

It’s moments like these that make Louis wish he had been less of a fucking wanker after Harry had left, when he got home that morning and found Harry’s camera sitting on Louis’s own bedside table (everything had been so interchangeable back then, they had been so interchangeable back then). He wishes he had actually used it instead of picking it up and promptly dropping it on the floor, shattering the lens. He couldn’t bear to get it repaired at the time, but maybe he should now, even if just to capture the way the sun is hitting Zayn’s profile as he snuffles deeper into the pillows.

Louis lets himself wonder for a moment where he would be right now if it hadn’t been for that six year hiccup. He likes his life, really, he does, likes his friends and his job and he really truly loves some of the kids, but there’s this rush somewhere behind his large intestine and he’s kept it contained for six years, held it back, but some kind of clot must have opened up when he first bumped into Harry (was it really just twenty four hours ago?).  He can feel his organs trembling at the seams, vibrating with something he hasn’t let himself feel in a long, long ass time. 

It’s nice, and for a moment, just for a moment, he wonders if his (lovely) life would be just a bit less… routine, a bit more if only he had just let it.

Something tells him that in some alternate universe, his alarm isn’t going off at precisely 7:38 every morning.

He wonders if he could have been a bit more like Harry if he had just pushed himself more, let whatever it is behind his large intestine breathe. (Louis only hates himself a little for letting this thought flit briefly through his consciousness, because, like, really? Really really really? To be like Harry? It’s what he’s always wanted.)

Louis must say some of this aloud from his position by the doorframe because Zayn shifts and looks up briefly, the space between his eyebrows creasing in that way that only happens when Louis starts crying or when Liam is late to their little Friday night gatherings. 

“You don’t want to be like Harry, Lou,” he says quietly, and the crease intensifies.

Is Louis crying? He can’t even tell anymore. He’s felt low key on the verge of tears for the past six years and very very high key on the verge of tears for the past twenty four hours, all shaky and shuddery and constantly blinking. 

“Louis,” Zayn sits up now, reaches out to Louis, but Louis is frozen by the door, caught in his own fucked up self deprecating train of thought by someone far more rational than he has ever been. 

After a moment, Zayn sighs, lowers his arm back to the bed. He’s still tucked into the white comforter, looks warm and cozy and Louis wishes he could join him but just can’t make himself move. 

“Harry’s a beautiful, lovely person. He’s kind and he loves so deeply and he gives his entire being to whatever cause it is he’s fighting for that week. It’s all very admirable.”

Louis is frozen. He knows this, knows how much Harry is, how overwhelming and all consuming and unreal he can be.

“He’s all these great things, right,” Zayn continues, sitting up a bit straighter, “but he’s also untouchable, in a way.”

Louis knows what he means. He’s too big, too much, too unattainable. He’s not a higher standard, he’s on a completely different scale. On a rating of 1-10, Harry is Drake. Or the perfect fried egg that’s got fully cooked whites and a runny yolk, or shouting along to your favorite song when it comes on the radio and you’re a little drunk and all your friends are there or something.

“Not in the way you’re thinking, Lou,” Zayn shakes his head.

“How—“ his voice cracks on the vowel, “how do you know what I’m thinking?” 

“Because I know you, babe, I know the way your mind works and I know how you see Harry and I’m trying to explain something to you for a moment, alright?”

Louis nods shakily. Alright.

“Harry’s my oldest friend and I love him, I love him so much, you know that, but,” Zayn pauses here, looks like he’s searching for the right words to relay this next bit, “but he’s not easy to love,” he decides upon, then nods, continues. “He’s actually, actually right hard to love. He’s warm and lovely, but he’s distant and he’s scared.”

Louis isn’t sure if he knows what that means. Harry isn’t afraid of anything.

“He gives himself to these causes, but doesn’t leave any of himself for the people or places he leaves behind.”

And, yeah, that’s actually. That actually doesn’t sound too far off.

“He trusts others too much, but he doesn’t trust himself and he’s kind of fucked, you know?” Zayn lets out a little laugh. “He’s so fucked, and you know, there’s this whole pedestal he’s constructed around because he is lovely and he is just every bit as lovely as you’re remembering, but he’s also, you know, fucked.” 

Louis tries a smile at that because Harry is. He’s fucked.

“And you, Lou,” Zayn smiles wider, the corners of his eyes crinkling a bit, “you’re scared too, and I get that, I do, but you’ve got so much that you are and so much that you give and you’ve got me and Liam and Niall and just, a lot. You’ve got a lot of things. You’ve got a lot of things Harry hasn’t.” 

Louis tries to let that sink in. Zayn’s still staring at him from his place on the bed and Louis pauses, really tries to let himself believe what he thinks Zayn is trying to say.

It’s hard, in a way, because he’s fucked up so fully and completely with Harry. He’s the one who didn’t show up at the airport that morning six years ago and he’s the one who still hasn’t offered any kind of real explanation for that, isn’t sure if he’s really got any kind of explanation for that besides an embarrassingly deep fear of the unknown. Sure, right, Harry didn’t call, but neither did he, and, fuck.

He’s petty and he holds grudges for, like, ever, and he can’t fucking make himself have conversations that need to be had and this whole thing between him and Harry? That’s on Louis.

All of that is true; he’s not going to pretend that it’s not, but Harry’s just a person also.  He’s aimless and he can’t put down any real roots and he runs away from his problems and he instills hope with no intention of following through and he loves and he loves and he loves and sometimes, sometimes that just isn’t enough. 

And that’s okay, Louis thinks, blinking at Zayn. It’s okay if maybe Harry isn’t his soulmate after all and it’s okay if he never was. It’s okay that they weren’t ever inevitable, that they were something needing work that neither of them ever thought to put in. It’s okay that the Harry he loves maybe doesn’t exist anymore. It’s okay that maybe he does. It’s okay. All of it. 

It is what it is, and all that.

The tears Louis has felt floating around in his eyes are suddenly threatening to overflow and he blinks faster. They’re not tears of sadness, really, more just tears of having thoughts that he should have had six years ago. They’re tears of being okay, but maybe wishing he had just picked up a goddamn phone.

“So,” he clears his throat, voice an octave deeper than it normally is. “So, erm, eggs alright for brek?” 

Zayn nods, smiles softly, and Louis sees that the space between his eyebrows is smooth.

He turns, pads softly into the kitchen, wishing he had paused halfway through that early morning emotional breakdown to remember to put on some socks.

Their fridge contains a grand total of three beers, half a stick of butter, some Lucky Charms, a molding clementine, a questionably expired bottle of milk, and, praise the lord, a carton that’s at least halfway filled with eggs.

They’ve always got eggs and cereal in the house somewhere, if only to prevent extreme grumpiness from one of the two; Zayn’s got to have his morning eggs, while Louis is a bit of a cereal man himself. 

It’s nice that, even now, even today, some things are still constant. It’s nice to have eggs. 

Louis busies himself cracking eggs into a bowl, pouring in a dash of the definitely expired but (probably) not yet harmful milk, adding salt, stirring. It’s so simple, so mundane. It could be any Saturday morning at all. It’s not an unusual thing on a Saturday morning, to be slightly hungover, reliving whatever adventures he had gone on the night before, and wishing he had remembered to put on socks.

It’s not really worth pretending it was just some lay, someone, anyone, he may have picked up at the bar last night, not when Harry’s smell still lingers on his fingertips, in his hair, under his skin. 

Louis pours the eggs into the pan, spreads the mixture around, turns down the heat.

And Louis, like, he really gets what Zayn was saying, he does. He gets that he’s idealized this person in his head, this figure that for sure is based off of real aspects of who Harry is, but isn’t actually Harry. He gets that before yesterday, he hadn’t seen Harry in six years, that whoever he’s constructed is based off of a Harry that most likely doesn’t even exist anymore.

He gets it, he does. Pinky promise.

It’s just that he doesn’t really care. He doesn’t care which Harry it is, doesn’t care if he’s not perfect, doesn’t care if he’s just as flawed as Louis is himself, doesn’t care even a little bit about the reality (or lack thereof) of inevitability.

He doesn’t even really care how much contempt Harry might have for the Louis that exists now, the Louis that’s slowly become everything Harry was ever afraid to be. He doesn’t care if Harry needs to go off and have these adventures, doesn’t care that no one really knows who Harry is, least of all Harry. He doesn’t care that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that he doesn’t care that he doesn’t care.

The only thing he cares about (the thing that is so supremely sappy Louis cringes a bit just at the thought of it), the only thing he cares about is Harry.

It’s not quite as unbearable once he lets himself fully embrace it. Or rather, he doesn’t really care about that either, about how grossly cheesy the innards of his own brain are.

He only cares about Harry. 

Louis stirs at the eggs and lets himself feel what that would truly be like, having Harry.

Not like having Harry because obviously Harry cannot be owned, but like, having Harry in his life. You get it. 

Louis closes his eyes, breathes in the smell of Harry and scrambled eggs and early morning sunshine and love, imagines it’s Harry he’s scrambling these eggs for, Harry who will come in here and distract him from his incredibly time sensitive cooking project only to halfheartedly tease him for fucking up the eggs once they come out burned, imagines it’s Harry he’ll whack because, that’s all you’ve got, really? I’ve just burned your eggs and you’re just going to take it? Where’s your fight, your spunk? Has America sapped you of that, too, hm? 

He imagines that it’ll be Harry’s turn to make the eggs tomorrow, or, wait, if he’s going all out he might as well imagine he’s got a fully stocked fridge while he’s at it. Let imaginary Harry bring him breakfast in bed, chocolate chip pancakes with syrup and whipped cream and yes, he does need both, because it’s delicious, Harold, that’s why. 

It’s so real in that moment, as Louis tips the contents of the pan onto a plate, he’s so present with Harry in the kitchen with the eggs. This is some next level pining. He’s almost got himself convinced that Harry has just gone out for coffee and a newspaper to the point at which he mentally rebukes himself for fucking up the timing on the eggs. They’re done and Harry’s not back yet and now they’ll either be cold or overcooked, but he’s not too upset about it. He’d jump at the opportunity to eat cold overcooked eggs with Harry every Saturday if he could.

He can almost hear Harry’s slow heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and, good, so the eggs won’t be too cold then. Louis can hear him getting closer and closer, hears him turn at their door, hears the footsteps stop, can’t hear anything for a moment, then a knock, quick and tentative and fast and assertive all at once and— 

Shit, that was real.

Louis startles, completely forgetting about the quickly cooling eggs he’s holding and dropping the plate to the floor, where it instantly breaks.

“Shit, shit shit shit, just a mo’ then,” he calls to whoever it is at the door, stepping over the ruined eggs and shattered dish on his way to let them in. “Sorry, sorry, fuck, I just—“

And that’s. That’s Harry. Real, actual Harry (he thinks). Before Louis can even begin to start processing the actual embodiment of his stupidly emotional daydreams, Harry pushes through the door and into his arms and he’s everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, lips and teeth and smell and as Harry licks at the corners of his mouth, Louis thinks yes yes yes and real real real.

He unfreezes, pushes back, runs his fingers down Harry’s (yes yes yes) forearms and up into his (real real real) hair, kisses back just as eagerly.

Really, Louis wishes he could push Harry away, run to the other side of the room, tell him to fuck off and explain what exactly is going on here, what’s been going on this entire time, why he’s here, what he’s doing, why why why, but it comes back to that same thing again, doesn’t it? He just doesn’t care. Harry’s solid and present and, yeah. Louis considers caring about something, anything else for about half a second, but decides against it. So not even close to worth it, not when he could be doing this.

This is what they should have been doing all along. Fuck healthy communication, honestly. Why talk to Harry when he can be breathing him?

“Lou? Lou! The fuck are my eggs at, bro, I’m—oh fucking shit!” Zayn coughs out, stumbling into the combined living area kitchenette. “Jesus Christ, can you two not get your shit together in a somewhat more private corner?”

Harry is giggling into Louis’s mouth and it’s really fucking with his rhythm. He doesn’t want to stop this, doesn’t want, to quote Zayn, to “get his shit together” in any kind of constructive way at the moment. He’d much rather be entirely destructive, thank you very much, at least if it looks anything like the direction this little reunion seems to be going.

But Harry’s full out laughing and who was he ever really kidding? None of this has ever been anything he’s been very capable of controlling.

Or rather. None of this has ever been anything he’s controlled.

Louis groans and reluctantly pulls away. “Eggs dropped, but they were burned anyway, so,” he shrugs, turning back to Harry in an attempt to finish what had been started.

“Fuck,” Harry’s still laughing to himself. “I was trying be all romantic with a grand gesture and all, but there are burnt eggs on the floor and Zayn’s grumpy and you’re just,” he shakes his head, laughing, cutting himself off.

“Oi, I object to that one, mate!” Zayn calls from the kitchenette, but Louis stopped paying attention after the first half of that sentence.

“Grand gesture?" 

“C’mon, Zayn, you know I don’t mean it like that!”

“Romantic?” Louis asks again, voice low and far and echoing off the walls. 

“Dunno how else you might’ve meant it, I was promised eggs is all,” Zayn calls back.

“I’ll make you some more, an omelet even. Better than Louis’s burnt ones. With cheese if you’ve got any?”

And what the fuck? What the fuck. Did Harry come all the way here just to bicker with Zayn and insult his eggs?  Just to kiss him and never speak of it again? Is that what inevitability is, this monotonous cycle of haziness and uncertainty? Because if so, he’s not about to just sit around and fucking take it.  He’s let Harry off far too easy for too damn many years. Fuck Harry, honestly. And fuck this.

“First off, Harold, my eggs would have been top fucking notch if you hadn’t burst in here with absolutely no warning, mind you, with no discernible reason as of yet because mate, if you’ve got one I’m all fucking ears, ready to hear whatever the fuck it is you’ve—“

“Right! Right,” Harry shakes his head, giving Louis the most serious expression he can muster while shaking with the effort to hold in his laugher. “I love you.”

“You, erm,” he stutters, “you what?” 

“I love you, Lou,” Harry’s still laughing, more at him this time, which, by the way, Louis has absolutely not overlooked and he’s not about to let slide. Although, maybe, like, maybe he won’t let it slide another time. Maybe he won’t not let it slide in this particular moment. 

“You love me?  I mean, like. Obviously I love you too, but.” He stops there, because there was never any but. It’s that simple, really. Louis has loved Harry for a whole lot of years and Harry? 

Harry loves Louis, too.

“Oh, shit.”

Louis startles; he had completely forgotten Zayn was home at all. 

“I’m, erm, I’ll just go pick up some more eggs then, yeah?”

Louis nods in his general direction, not able to bring himself to look away at anything other than Harry at the moment, all shiny hair and wide eyes and flushed cheeks and the practiced breathing of a yogi (in through the nose, out through the mouth).

He would have thought that he’d be at a loss for words right now, that he’d be dazed and faint and unsteady on his feet, but shit.

Louis hasn’t felt quite this grounded in six years.

He wonders if that’s the difference between need and want. If he doesn’t need this anymore and that’s what makes all the difference. 

The door opens and is slammed closed, Zayn’s footsteps retreating into their hallway and down the stairs.

And then they’re alone. And Louis isn’t much like Harry at all, not in a lot of the ways that once mattered, but he has got a lot. And Harry’s fucked, but he’s here and he loves Louis and. 

It’s been six years. 

Six years. Jesus. It’s hard to even comprehend how long of a time that is besides just, like. The difference between a twelve year old and a legal adult. Louis feels like he should be and feel a lot older than he did six years ago, at barely eighteen, but honestly? He just doesn’t. That was sort of the problem all along, though, wasn’t it? That six year hiatus on living. 

“I’m sorry," Louis bursts out. 

“No,” Harry seems more present, more forceful now than he ever did before. Maybe he took those six years to actually interact with the world, to grow up more than he thinks he has. “Louis, no. I came here to apologize myself and, shit, I just kissed you instead, which, right, that’s another thing to apologize for and now you’ve gone and beaten me to the punch and just no.” 

Louis has got a lot to apologize for, that much isn’t going to change, but Harry’s not here for that. He gets it. He supposes Harry’s got a few things to apologize for as well. “Alright.” 

“Alright.”

Louis raises an eyebrow. It’s not quite a challenge, but it’s not not a challenge, either. 

“Alright,” Harry says again, shakes his head, and then he’s staring right at Louis and, god, why can he never blink around Harry? This really can’t be good for his health. Like, the health of his optical fluids or whatever’s floating around in there. There must be a good reason why blinking is a thing, right? “I’m sorry,” Harry’s saying, and, right. Right. “I’m so sorry, Lou, you’ve got no idea, I mean it’s not like I didn’t know, all those years ago, and I went and left anyway and it’s been so long and then last night and I’m just,” Harry huffs out a breath. “I’m so sorry.” 

It’s the fastest Louis has heard Harry speak ever, probably. He wonders briefly if it’s because it’s something difficult for Harry to say or because Harry only wants to move on to whatever’s next. It probably says something about Harry that he’s got to ask that question in the first place, but then again, it probably says more about Louis that he’s even asking it at all rather than responding like a rational, sane, adult human would. 

Louis nods. “It’s alright, Harry. I mean, it’s not, but. It’s alright. And, like, I know this is your big moment and everything,” Harry’s mouth quirks up at that, almost a smile, “but I’m sorry, too. For never actually forcing us to say anything and never showing up that day and never calling or explaining and,” now they’re both laughing a bit, and it’s probably not appropriate at all for whatever it is that they’re in the middle of doing (could it be real adult communication? Is this it?), but it seems to be making the whole thing easier, somehow. “God,” Louis mumbles, “we’re pretty shit at this, aren’t we?”

Harry giggles, moves closer to where Louis is stationed by the counter. “I’d say we’re both a bit fucked, yeah.”

They’re quiet for a moment, just watching one another breathe. It’s nice, feels refreshing in a way this hasn’t since before that party all those years ago.

“I’m not asking you to give up South America, you know,” Louis says, finally. They’re still watching one another and it somehow feels like cheating to look away, as much as he’d like to right now. He’s not sure he really wants to see Harry’s reaction.

But Harry just nods. “I know that.”

“Okay.”

“It’s just, like, I don’t think I can quite give it up just yet?”

Louis nods. There’s a lot of nodding going on. They’re both standing there, staring at one another, heads bobbing like idiots. “I don’t think you’re meant to give it up.” 

“And I’m sorry, too, for lying a bit last night. It’s not that I don’t want any of that tomorrow… stuff. I definitely want it, or something like it, someday. There’s just so much more that I need to be first.” 

Louis gets that, a bit. “At least you know, like, what your South America is. Look at me, I don’t even know what I need to know,” he smiles self deprecatingly and Harry nods. 

“I don’t even know if South America is South America, you know? Tomorrow, settling down, popping out 2.5 kids and setting ourselves up with a retirement plan could just as easily be my South America, I think. Someday, you know? There’s just as much there. You’ve got a bit of my South America in you for sure.” 

Louis smiles at that. He’s not going to pretend he doesn’t want to be Harry’s South America.

“I just don’t want any of this,” Harry’s giant hand waves around in the air between them, gesturing, “to be about giving anything up.” 

“I don’t want you to be willing to give anything up for me, Harry,” and, hm, that’s new. Twenty four hours ago, he’d have put money on wanting Harry to give up everything for this, for him. It’s not about that, though. It was never about that. 

“D’you want to know what I threw in the river that day?” Harry asks. Louis shrugs. He’s not sure it really matters at this point. “I wrote down fear, y’know, and then I crossed that out and threw away tomorrow.”

This doesn’t really surprise Louis. It’s stupidly ironic, but no, not surprising. 

“Which, I mean, is funny in a way, considering what you wrote, and, like, I think that’s what surprised me earlier about the whole thing. Like the inverses, but you know, I’ve been sitting in that stupid café you took me to since four in the morning and I don’t think they’re really opposites after all.”

Louis doesn’t think they are either, not really.  Both getting at the same idea, weren’t they, some kind of restlessness with what is and a yearning for some kind of unknown freedom. And that’s so them, so stupidly them. Weirdly matching in some way he was never able to articulate.

Today and Tomorrow. That’s just the root of the whole thing, he thinks. Louis so focused on the next and Harry the present and really, like, individually they’re both pretty shit, aren’t they? What the fuck does tomorrow mean without today and vise versa? What the fuck does Louis mean without Harry?

“I think,” he says, smiling up at this man, this awful, amazing matching man in front of him, “I think that I love you and I think that’s about all I care about,” he takes a step forward, now close enough he can feel Harry’s body heat radiating off his chest.

Harry hums softly. “I absolutely second that notion,” he reaches down, fingers trailing lightly over Louis’s collarbone, his jaw.

This time, when he stretches up to close the gap between their lips, Louis doesn’t even pretend to consider doing anything else. He doesn’t let his brain travel to these stupidly vague and intellectual metaphors about black holes and gravity and falling falling falling. 

And besides, if he was going to let himself go there, he would probably find that he’s already fallen. He’s been felled.

This moment, just the simple, easy press of chapped lips against green apple Chapstick (Louis wishes he was surprised) is the human embodiment of giggling in a blanket fort on a rainy day and they’ve cleared up approximately zero things, yet nothing has ever made more sense.

Harry tastes the same way it feels to lie in a meadow on a summer afternoon and nibble on the greenest bits of grass.

Louis pulls away first, mostly because one of them was always going to have to and a little bit because there’s only so long you can stand with your dry lips pressed against someone else’s. 

“I’m supposed to be at my mum’s,” Harry says. “I was walking a few blocks away from here and I just. I didn’t mean to come here, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t not, you know?” 

“It’s alright,” Louis is smiling, can’t seem to stop. He knows.

“I’ll be back.”

“I know you will." 

“Really, Lou. I mean it this time. I’ll pinky promise you.”

Louis holds out his pinky in offering, loops it with Harry’s. “You’ll be back?”

“I’ll be back.”

He nods sharply, but neither pulls their pinkies away. 

“I’m, erm, I’m still going to go to South America. Like the real, actual one. I’ve already bought my plane ticket and everything.” 

“I know you are.”

“What are we going to do? I can’t—I don’t want to wait another six years for this.”

Louis shrugs, as best as he can with Harry crushing his pinky in a death grip. “We’ll call.”

Harry’s entire being relaxes, as if this was the most ingenious suggestion known to humanity. In a way it sort of is. “We’ll call." 

“We’ll call,” Louis agrees, shaking their pinkies a bit.

“I’ve really got to go, she’ll be wondering if I’ve fucked off somewhere again.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” Louis isn’t sure if he’s talking about worrying Anne or Harry fucking off. Probably a little bit of both. 

“We’ll call,” Harry repeats one more time: another promise.

Louis pulls his pinky away first. It seems as though once Harry’s given up on pulling away he’s completely forgotten how.

Harry turns toward the door. “Love you, Lou,” he murmurs, face flushed. Louis loves that, loves that this is still a bit scary for him, too. And now he can tell him. So he does.

“Love you too, Haz.”

Harry’s grin widens and he leans down. Louis closes his eyes and tilts his head up automatically, waiting for a kiss, but feels only the lightest peck on the tip of his nose. 

He can still hear Harry giggling when the door closes behind him.

Louis feels light, airy, grounded, and present as he turns in search of some sort of cleaning device for the temporarily forgotten eggs. He’d use a broom, but doesn’t want the eggs to get caught in the straw. It’s too solid for a mop. 

Not that it really matters; Louis isn’t sure they even own a broom or a mop. As a semi-adult man, he should maybe look into pricing on those. Or at the very least ask Zayn about them. 

In the meantime, he leans down to pick up the congealed eggs with his bare hand and throws it into the bin. There. Who can say he doesn’t clean, hm?

Louis is searching for a bit of paper towel to wipe the oil and whatever it is that the liquid of egg is made of off his hand when he hears his phone vibrate on the counter.

Fuck it, he thinks, reaching over to tap answer with greasy fingers.

“Hello?" 

“Hiii, Lou.”

“What the fuck, Haz?” Louis bites his lip to keep Harry from hearing the grin in his voice. He’s failing miserably and can’t really bring himself to mind.

“I’m calling.” 

“Oh my god, I didn’t mean now.”

“I mean I know, but I thought hey, no time like the present, is there?”

Louis hasn’t really got anything to say in response to that. “Suppose not.” 

“So listen, I’ve just left your apartment, right? I’ve walked only like a block, and I see this girl starts puking up last night’s adventure, right in front of my path. So I’m stopping, trying to see if she’s alright, if she needs a ride home or something, but she’s too busy puking to respond so, like, I was going to bring her to yours, actually, for a bit of a cleaning up, when a pigeon lands in it, lands right in the sick, bends over and starts eating it! Can you believe it, Lou? Circle of life at its most disgusting.”

Louis closes his eyes, lets Harry’s stupidly soothing voice and giggles wash over him as he tries his best not to actually picture the story as Harry continues on the walk to his mum’s. He makes a mental note to remind Harry that he can’t just go bringing hungover girls to strange men’s apartments and settles into the couch. Now that he’s finally got Harry on the phone after six years (six years!), he’s never hanging up again.

Louis smiles, feels the sun against his skin and the liquid egg between his toes, breathes in Earth and breathes out Harry, and there are all these things going on here (Time and Gravity and Black Holes and the Regrowth of Skin Cells and maybe even a hint of Fate), but he’s not sure if Inevitability is one of them.

There isn’t any real way to know if this is going to ever work out, if calling will be enough, if the past twenty four hours have been anything more than the greatest opportunity for closure he’ll ever get, but it somehow feels different all the same. It feels pretty close to enough.

He’s standing at the edge of this giant fucking black hole and there’s not a whole lot left to do but fall.

Louis lets Gravity take hold and just. Lets go.